Commissioner Adams hosts town halls to discuss the PDOT, BES and RACC budgets

Hey, I've got an idea. How about we spend less money on public art, and more on public roads and infrastructure? That way, you might avoid the embarrasment of watching BES vehicles fall into sinkholes.

At least think about a 2% for sinkholes fund?

A few years back we had a 6'x 6' deep sink hole right across the street from our house. Several city bureaus came out for over two weeks to try to lay the blame on the other. Our sewer lines here are over 100 years old and the street hasn't been macadamized for over 12 years even thought PDOT promised to do so eight years ago. So BES tried to lay the blame on PDOT because the street has numerous holes that street surface water can penetrate the street. The PDOT tried to blame the Water Bureau because the water lines here are over 80 years old and they are likely causing the problem. One day there were over six vehicles with twelve city employees looking down into the hole. Who paid for what I never did find out. They tried to make our neighbors pay the bill since they couldn't get into their garage all this time.

Suggestion for Adams, at your budget outreach meetings, listen to the taxpayers who complain that CoP isn't funding infrastructure adequately-even by a long shot. Forget all the pet projects and do something like fix the broken major sewer line in Lair Hill that has been broken for over a year and no definate time table is given for the fix. Get to work.

If you run your "townhall meetings" like the tram meeting at PSU, forget it. You and staff talked for two hours with a song and dance, then asked for audience questions for half an hour. The questions were 1 minute long, and your replies (many time not answers) were 5-l0 min. long.

By Francois Murphy

PARIS (Reuters) - The new tram running along the southern edge of Paris offers a glimpse of City Hall's plans for the future.

Its sleek carriages roll smoothly along a grassy strip built especially in the middle of the boulevard, squeezing what used to be six lanes of traffic into two narrow ones on either side.

The tram, which opened earlier this month, is a key project of Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, a Socialist, and his Green deputy in charge of transport policy, Denis Baupin, in their bid to force drivers out of their cars and onto public transport.

While other cities have sought to stem the flow of traffic in their gridlocked centers by charging drivers for the right to enter, Paris has kept the city gates open but slashed the space available for cars by adding bus lanes and widening pavements.

Sam Adams seems to be more concerned with posting pictures of himself in drag on his taxpayer funded blog site than fixing issues or responding to any letters. That is insulting to those taxpayers in the community who may have an issue with that sort of behavior! Time to recall! Let's get something done this year on budget. If Portland were a company it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. I am gay and love the gay friendly environment of this city but I think it's another matter altogether to flaunt what some would consider immoral behavior, especially when their money is funding your salary!

How about you get answers to the following for us at the meeting:

1) Cost of most efficient bus line compared to MAX (as promised to you, by Trimet) at the last CRC meeting.

2) Safety data for extend curbs (as promised by PDOT at your Burnside couplet town hall.)

3) Cost of streetcar per passenger-mile. Or average trip length or average # passengers on vehicle. (any of these will give passenger-miles) (as promised constantly)

4) Net lives save by speed bumps considering that they also slow emergency vehicles. PDOT certainly has studies on this since they promote speed bumps as a safety measure. Be sure to ask them about Les Bunte’s work at Texas A&M.

I am sure that you can see how each of these answers is important to making budgeting decisions as we certainly wouldn’t want to fund unsafe or uneconomical line items.

Thanks
JK