The History of Street Paving and Sidewalks in Portland
Sam Adams
We will soon be coming out with some new funding options for getting more streets paved in Portland and more sidewalks built. In the meantime, I wanted to share this street paving history produced by PDOT a couple of years ago. And, ask for any creative ideas that you might have to get more Portland streets paved and sidewalked.
HISTORY OF LOCAL INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENT IN PORTLAND
Street design has changed over the years, but one area related to local infrastructure in Portland has remained constant - the involvement of property owners in the funding of local streets. While there has certainly been a range in how much property owners have paid to improver their streets, the City Charter has always made it clear that improving local streets required the financial involvement of adjacent property owners.
The first Charter, which established the City of Portland in 1851, contained language related to street improvements and what we now call the Local Improvement District process. Scott describes it in this way:
Among provisions likely to be amended was that… to allow a protest of the owners of one-third of the property on a street to stop improvements ordered thereupon, while tow-thirds of the expense of all improvements of streets was to be borne by the property adjacent…
Scott goes on to describe amendments to the Charter that altered the street improvement process:
1n 1862, an amendment was added, relating principally to street improvements, providing that half the expense of such improvements should be borne by the owners of adjacent property, and that a protest of the owners of two-thirds of the property must be obtained to arrest any street work ordered by the council.
This amendment carried through into the Charter of 1872, at which point the responsibility of for street improvements fell under a “Streets Commissioner.”
Even though the participation of property owners in the funding of street improvements has remained a constant overt time, the amount that property owners have paid to improve streets has varied. Even within the first 20 years of the City, there was not a consistent percentage that property owners paid as their share fell from two thirds to one half of the cost. As it stands today, the Charter does not make any statement or recommendation about the percentage of costs to be borne by the property owners, implying that they are responsible for as much as 100% of the costs.
Even today, there is a wide range in what property owners pay for street improvements. In some areas of the City, little to no public funding is available to assist property owners with the cost of improvements. In other areas, most notably low income neighborhoods, the City may pay 70% to 100% of the improvement costs.
The lack of any clear formula in state law or the City Charter and Code have led to a wide range of funding possibilities for local streets. This is consistent, it should be noted, with past programs. During the Depression of the 1930s, the federal government stepped in and improved streets through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was essentially a jobs program that focused on public works as a means for providing employment. As in some Portland neighborhoods today, many streets in the City were paid for at or near a 100% level by the federal government, while at the same time other street improvements were being made in the City where property owners of developers were covering the costs of the projects.
In effect, public resources have been used in areas where they could do the most good, or where there was a larger mission to be accomplished. However, it is illuminating to the degree that it falsifies a long-standing myth among citizens and government officials alike – that all of Portland’s local streets were paid for by the abutting property owners.
The implication of this myth was that property owners paid almost entirely for their street, a proposition that is nowhere near the truth. It is much more accurate, and also more relevant to the problems we face today, to state that property owners have almost always helped pay for at least a portion of the costs for improving their streets.
Posted by Sam Adams on October 11, 2005
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Comments by site visitors
If property owners are required to pay for some improvements, why not let them bid the job out to private contractors instead of only allowing PDOT to do it?
I am sure the city could inspect/approve it like home builders and it would be a lot cheaper than a monopoly like PDOT doing it. If nothing else, it would be a sanity check on PDOT pricing.
Posted by: Steve | Oct 11, 2005 6:28:36 PM
I hope that the new proposals will recognize all the work that went into the Portland Pedestrian Design Guide. Those of us on the Pedestrian Advisory Committee spent much time on this, as well as staff (Ellen Vanderslice was the lead staffer on the project). We worked through all the issues involved in pedestrian travel, and came up with a guide to how to design the sidewalks that work best for pedestrians: a clear path, separated from the street by a curb, street trees, and/or a planting strip. I hope we won't revert to the minimal and uncomfortable designs of the 1940's through 1980's, with a sidewalk right next to the curb, crowded with power poles and signs, where pedestrians are splashed by adjacent traffic, and in greater danger from an errant vehicle.
Posted by: Doug Klotz | Oct 11, 2005 10:10:45 PM
Actually, adjacent property owners can get private contractors to do the job of paving streets and making sidewalks. This happens all the time when private construction firms are already erecting buildings and need to improve the right-of-way.
And, like you suggest, all that needs to happen is for a PDOT inspector to sign off on the job after they make sure that the work is up to city code.
However, your intuition that it would be less expensive doesn't hold true most of the time; to get a private firm out there (passing up the opportunity for more lucrative work) -when it isnt already on site for another project- usually ends up costing significantly more than the work of PDOT's Bureau of Maintenance.
This is always an option, however. It's just one that is not usually utilized due to purely economic reasons.
Posted by: Roland Chlapowski, Policy Analyst | Oct 12, 2005 10:16:00 AM
Mr Chaplowski - The only erason I brought this up was because of a neighborhood around SE 82nd and Burnside mentioned in a Portland Tribune article who put their own speed bumps in at what they claimed was 10% the cost of PDOT. Do you have examples of private contractors bidding vs. PDOT that we could compare for facts?
Posted by: Steve | Oct 12, 2005 6:44:14 PM
I have to say, there's some really poor work done by the contractors the city uses, and the city is paying them a premium compared to government workers.
Posted by: Paul | Oct 15, 2005 5:14:50 AM
Paul - Do you have an example of poor contractor work vs the city? I find it really hard to believe with CoP workers and full benefits that contractors are at a premium.
In addition, I would only allow contractors with full CoP inspection approval (I assume inspectors would really grill contractors vs CoP work.)
Posted by: Steve | Oct 15, 2005 11:14:04 AM
Paving Portland. Have specs for neighbors who want to pave their own street. Always the problem of getting 100% to pay their share. When a new house is built charge the builder for the price of a street. If the street is paved put the money in a fund to help pave nearby streets. Make all streets eligable for neighborhood paving. Eliminate the bootleg business. But have specifications so the asphalt companies know how to figure their bid.
How many inches of gravel, inches of asphalt, etc. Also could include sidewalks. It will depend on the area.
Posted by: Patty Lee | Nov 2, 2005 1:47:43 PM
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If you go back to the first days of Portland's government (I suggest Jewel Lansing's excellent book), citizens of Portland were required to put in a day's labor on street maintenance each year.
Now that's community involvement :-)
Posted by: Chris Smith | Oct 11, 2005 3:41:06 PM