A Commitment to Sustainability

Visionary would be having more of a plan than just building another building. WHat are the goals of this sustainability center.

Yes, I realize sustainability makes everyone feel good, but try not to use the word sustainability in a sentence to describve what you want to do.

Sustainability and conservation are very important to me, but I cannot decipher the psychobabble surrounding this movement.

PLEASE give us some concrete ideas of what we should do.

I read the commitment statement and this has even less of plan than I thought. The statement is total fluff. I am surprised you didn't include a line condemning the war in Iraq as sustainable. At least you got the usual suspects (trough-feeders like Gerding-Edlen) another chance to angle for more taxpayer money.

Again, for all the haters, I am not against sustainability (at least what I think it is), it's we really don't seem to have any more of a plan than feel good petitions and building buildings.

We need to pass a law in Portland to stop using plastic grocery bags. Canvas bags have increased in popularity but the only way to make everyone use them is to remove all plastic bags from the grocery store. There are biobags that look like plastic but are 100% bio and another sollution would be to charge customers a fee for using the bio bags.

I mentioned this to Mayor Adams last night so lets all keep the pressure on to make it happen.

Thanks

Sean Gettings

SUSTAINABILITY is the ability to park a disabled vehicle (Chevrolet Van) on the streets of Portland for over ten (10) years with expired Alaska (7398BG) license plates after complaining to the city of Portland including our Portland Police disabled vehicles, mayor, transportation czar with no results.

GREEN is the new color of this once white van, all covered in moss, mold parked at 2741 SE 67th Ave.

RE: Abandon Vehicle

• Located in street at 2741 SE 67TH AVE

Chevrolet Van White Alaska Plates 7398BG, Vehicle has been stored on street for more than 10 years.

Wow, another plan to study something. Or, in this case, a plan to build a monument which will be devoted to having people go there to study something.

And I'm not talking in the educational sense, like PSU, where people study something in an effort to learn so they can go out in the world and do something. No, it's a place where a bunch of people can get together, pat themselves on the back and say "We're number ONE! in sustainability!", and claim that Portland is great so that we can attract conventions of "sustainability experts" from other cities who will have no problem flying into Portland's "sustainable" airport on a "sustainable" Boeing 737 airliner, just so they can ride MAX downtown to this building and spend a few days (hopefully they don't catch a glimpse of PGE's Boardman Coal Plant, or the Bonneville Dam and all the salmon getting eaten up by sea lions, on final to runway 28R!)

Portland isn't necessarily the best at "sustainability", it's that Portland somehow has a great marketing team that knows how to spin stuff to make Portland look good. Portland loves to extol its great Streetcar and Light Rail system. Never mind that 65% of Portland's transit ridership uses a bus. Never mind that the vast majority of Portland's geographic reach is reached only by bus. Never mind that one-half of TriMet's bus fleet is 14-18 years old, can't be equipped with particulate filters, clearly doesn't meet EPA Tier 2 emissions regulations, and these busses are still going to be on the road for the next five years.

Portland loves to say how it controls sprawl. Seattle is far more dense than Portland is (and by necessity - it's surrounded on two sides by large bodies of water! Portland actually grew over and partially exists on the west side of the West Hills!) The region continues to sprawl, thanks in part to that light rail line that stretched to Hillsboro helping develop land that only 15 years ago was farmland. Portland might be able to claim certain land use laws that don't exist in other parts of the country, but Portland is hardly immune from sprawl.

Portland's claim to fame in the highway system was removing Harbor Drive and replacing it with Waterfront Park. Of course, I-405 was built just a couple years prior, and I-5 was already built, so there wasn't really a need for three north-south freeways paralleling each other within one mile (from I-5 to I-405). But how many postcards will you find of Portland's vast unpaved street network, or the network of streets lacking sidewalks or even bike lanes?!!

We don't need to study anything. We certainly don't need a monument to study something. We need to move forward with this city and make it work for the residents who have lived here, paid taxes here, and have put up with the fleecing of the city. Portland doesn't need a "sustainability center". Sustainability doesn't put sidewalks in Cully, bike lanes on Capitol Highway, or improved bus stops on Vermont. Sustainability doesn't reduce the crime rate in Lents. Sustainability hasn't brought jobs to Rivergate. (And if Portland really wants to be "sustainable", why not shut down PDX and reuse the land for affordable, energy efficient housing that 80% of Portland's population could afford? THAT, my friend, would be a Sustainability Center.)