Roland, sorry to have to say this like you said to Terry: "but I think that you are wrong on the facts."

Your quote-"the tram and street car played a huge-and essential-role in stimulating the investment in housing, retail and office/research space in South Watefront".

Maybe you have your "tenses" wrong concerning "played". There has not been any research or retail space that has come to NM. As PDC's Larry Brown admitted today at the NM URAC Budget Subcommittee meeting, there has not been one research/bio-tech company that has come to PDC with interest in NM, nor has there been one such company in the doctor's funded OHSU Health Club building nearing completion.

"OHSU ate the vast majority of the cost overruns and overll cost of the tram..."

Even your boss Adams stated two months ago that there were over $11M in direct taxpayer cost for the tram (Oregonian Commentary). Now, add in the $5M that Council added last week-$16M. That is 30% of the tram cost per Adam's calculations. But the real calculations of taxpayer's cost as I and others have posted is much higher. Taxpayer costs is at least $36M: land, financing, design competition, permit fee reductions, LID subsidy, etc. Sorry to have to write it again.

"2 billion in private investment was secured a long time ago when the tram costs...was just $3.5M."

Another "tense" problem. $2 billion has not been "secured a long time ago"-its not even close. What is factual is that the total TIF dollars (taxpayer dollars) allowed for NM is $288M. That has been increased by an additional $35M by City Council last week by a taxpayer loan to NM URD-see Amendment 8. (This isn't even including the additional $2M from the Parks Department general budget for the park)

The City (taxpayers) are having to borrow the $35M from commercial banks to continue NM URD because it is broke-not enough TIF dollars coming in to even pay part of the NM identified projects. As PDC staff said today, the taxpayers borrowing will be maybe for five years, and staff didn't know what the interest rate we will be paying. And that is an additional cost to the $35M-that could be $8.5M plus for just a five year loan out of the taxpayer's pocket.

This gets to your quote "relatively small amount of the citys future property tax dollars (TIF funds) were able to leverage over $2 billion in private investment."

I don't think most taxpayers find $288M in TIF (NM Agreement) plus the interest/financing costs over just a 20 year (likely more)period of approx. $300M totaling at least $600M of taxpayers dollars to leverage "$2 billion" or even $6 billion is a "relatively small amount".

And I am not even including all the federal, state, ODOT, etc. tax dollars spent and coming into NM-and those are taxpayer dollars too.

"...an 8.5M dollar city contribution for parks, affordable housing, transit, roads and a greenway is somehow a huge public subsidy to $2B in private investment...I think is a stretch."

Your numbers are wrong. Approximate taxpayer investments according to the NM recent budget is: Parks-$21M; affordable housing-$26M; transit (tram/trolley)-$77M; roads-$10M; and greenway-$36M. Grand Total: $170M-not $8.5M as you state. And that isn't even adding in the financing costs, inflation factors, etc. PDC doesn't even list the financing costs in the budget.

"short answer is:no, there will not be an increase in the LID. It is capped and is not moving."

LIDs can be increased. Also what is not said is that in the latest Amendment 7 OHSU will be forming another LID just to build their parking garage with subsidized taxpayer's low interest rate- bonded by the taxpayers. Plus, there has been talk of possibly needing to form additional LID(s) consisting of future condo, property owners in NM to pay for the NM Agreement projects that are unfunded or underfunded.

Roland, I hope that our public officials/staff will present both sides of issues with fairness, and not present only one side of the issues. The other point of view from yours of NM URD and the tram issue has been presented fairly and should be at least acknowledged and not misconstrued.

And I apologize for any numbers that I might have misquoted because I didn't have time to pull out every single data on this issue, plus it is late.