Mmmarvel- did you attend the Townhall? If so, I wish you had introduced yourself. But if you didn't, as I suspect, I hope you'll refrain from characterizing the value of the information presented because you had no exposure to it.

I'm sorry you feel the way you do; we are not trying to be sneaky and were definitely not trying to incite any antagonism.

Concerned Non-Conservative-

First, thank you for not being reactionary or "knee-jerk" - it seems as though you are actually open to information, even if it means that you need to evolve your initial preconceived ideas about the project. Let me tell you, this has been a huge learning process for me and the project is not easily summed up in a neat sentence as some people seem to want.

Your concerns are totally valid, so let me respond to them and do my best to lay out what we are faced with, and why were are doing what we are doing. There are a couple major considerations.

First, a short while ago, Sam called for an independent audit that looked at the construction costs and the risks for any future price increases. It was just recently completed. (It did not talk in detail about operating costs, but those are largely going to be footed by OHSU.) The independent auditors found that THE biggest risk for more cost-overruns was "delay." Let me give you a little background on why that is so:

First, the city entered a contract (voted on by the previous city council) that legally obligates us to deliver the project by a certain date, though that agreement assumed full funding, which plays a role in things. If we don't deliver on time, we are at least potentially liable for damages and will almost definitely be sued by OHSU and other interests in the SWaterfront. Since there isn't full funding for the project, we don't believe we're actually liable for damages, but we'll probably still need to go to court. Besides the obvious negative of potentially losing chunk of change, we may also weaken our bargaining position vis-a-vis OHSU and the developers, something we wouldn't want to happen.

Second, the tram is being largely funded by an LID (Local Improvement District), which is basically a property tax paid by adjacent property owners for specific infrastructure improvements. In this case, it is for the tram. Now, counting on those millions of LID dollars, the city (as is standard procedure) took out a temporary line of credit to pay for the construction, since the LID dollars don't technically go into city coffers until after the improvement is complete.

But... if we stop the project, the LID participants won't have to pay those taxes, since they were paying them for a particular project - the tram. If that were to happen, we would have to pay the line of credit off with other city dollars. That would mean dollars from the general fund, which would actually take money away from schools and other city programs. That is something that critics have charged us with, but it hasn't been true (at least not up to this point), since the city dollars are tax dollars paid by property owners specifically for the tram. But, if we stop the project, then we will in fact have to take money from the city-funded portions of schools and roads and social services.

Further, if we mothball the project (something we've looked at) we will face wind-down costs, and if we decide to continue with it, we will face considerable "start-up" costs all over again - probably a couple or a few million dollars worth.

So... if we seem eager to get this done, that is why; believe me, we are not thrilled with the tram (personally, in hindsight, I think there were better options), we have nothing "up our sleeves" as some are charging, and no agenda - other than trying to do right by the public. This is obviously not a great situation, but we are trying to do the best we can with what we've been handed.

The reality is that we are dealing with some pretty tight constraints - ones which aren't easily summarized in a soundbite. But these are the reasons we are doing what we are doing... I hope you can appreciate where we are coming from.

If there is anything else I can clarify for you, let me know. I will do my best to give you a complete picture of what is going on. I will try to get up the costs of the LID withdrawal soon. I wanted that to be part of this post originally, but decided that just getting this up was important to do right away.

Thanks again for being thoughtful. Feel free to email or call me, too, if you want to.