We do the Year-in-Review not only to hold ourselves accountable to you but to provide you a glimpse of our plans for the year ahead.
As you know by now, it's not my style to duck an issue just because solutions aren't obvious or because the solutions are obvious but there's no clear sense of how to achieve them.
In my area of City Council responsibility, I see four trends that give me great concern; 2007 is an opportunity to make real headway in solving them.
Transportation Conundrum
Portlanders rightfully take pride in the transportation innovations we have pioneered in the last 30 years. But still we lack a safe, comprehensive and sustainable transportation approach. We try to do more than ever, with relatively less than ever and we haven't decided what we're really trying to accomplish. We must decide with what kind of daily mobility we want to have.
Plight of Poor and Working Poor
Today, the ‘great life' in Portland is definitely for the highly-educated, highly-skilled worker. Problem is, not all Portlanders are highly-educated or highly-skilled. We must better address the root causes of poverty with more skill- and job-training programs that actually work.
Local Businesses Fight for their Livelihoods and Ours
Soaring internet sales, skyrocketing commercial land costs and the continuous march into Portland of national chains -- while these local and global factors are beneficial, they also present a great challenge to our home-grown entrepreneurs. We must do more to support the success of Portland-based businesses.
Failing Watersheds
As Portlanders we care about the natural environment. Our new one-of-a-kind Watershed Management Plan serves as a local environmental wake up call. And it shows the health of Portland's six watersheds at near failing. Living up to our environmental ideals should start at home; we must improve Portland's watersheds.
"Creative" Starvation
Even though the economic value of creativity and innovation becomes increasingly clear, our City government contributes just 2% of our large and small arts institutions needs; the national average is 5%. Arts education, while proven to improve scores across subjects, comes nowhere close to reaching every Portland child. We need to focus more public and private investments on the arts and business innovation.
These are tough problems. But I am bullish on our collective potential to overcome them. Look what we have done already.
Sam