Sam, we don't need more jobs in Portland. We need better jobs; less hours, more pay, more fun, more beauty, less products of better character and quality that last longer. This will happen when less money flows out of the community and the majority of workers and when we focus on restoring, not destroying, our local environment. The construction of the towers on what you call SOWA (a market-driven, faux-intimate diminutive) will provide only dollar benefit to a small minority of already wealthy investors and builders. The rest of us would be better off financially, socially, and psychologically if that area were restored to wetlands. We will not see more funding of schools as a result of those buildings and more residents and businesses. We will not see more parkland per person as a result. We will not see more forests and farmland. We will not experience more solitude and quiet. We will not enjoy more of the creative arts. We will only get more traffic, more pollution, more poverty, higher costs of living, and more public expenditure. You don't compromise with the future.

The investment you tout as providing solution is only more of the same problem. What does it take for you and the rest our elected leaders to realize this? How much more human expansion and destruction must Oregon bear before we wake up?