100 Businesses

This is a press release from the Portland Development Commission.

January 4, 2007
MEDIA RELEASE CONTACT:

John Jackley, PDC
(503) 823-3315

New Office Development in Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Area

The Portland Development Commission (PDC) announces the first new office development in the Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Area. Assurety NW, a full-service insurance and financial service company has purchased a 77,000 square foot property, owned by PDC, along SE Foster Road between SE 88th and SE 91st Avenues at 8919 SE Foster Rd. The project is expected to break ground later this month.

Who:   Kidney Foundation of Oregon and Washington

When: June 23, 2005

The Kidney Foundation of Oregon and Washington was created in an effort to prevent kidney and urninary tract disease, improve the health and well-being of individuals and families affected by these diseases and increase the availability of all organs for transplantation.  The Kidney Foundation is an education-based organization that specializes in helping individuals and families who have been affected by kidney disease with financial assistance, free educational programs, support groups, and by educating the public in order to hopefully prevent or delay kidney disease.

100 business visits in Sam's first 100 days in office... actually it was 114 businesses. The first day Sam took office, he started this effort by visiting OHSU. From small to big businesses, Sam and I spent nearly an hour at each visit getting to know the vibrant local business community and hearing from them how City Hall can do things better. "I cannot count the number of times that people said, 'This is the first time anyone from the City Council has ever called me, much less come visit my business,'" stated Sam.

Related Documents

• Summary of 100 Businesses

Community Partners

• Portland Development Commission
• Alliance of Portland Neighborhood Business Associations
• Portland Business Alliance
• East Portland Chamber of Commerce
• Oregon Native American Chamber of Commerce
• Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce
• African American Chamber of Commerce
• Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs
• Oregon Native American Business Enterprise Network
• Oregon Economic and Community Development Department

Media Mentions

• Sam Adams visiting business, seeking concerns, Michelle Madison, Daily Journal of Commerce, Jan. 31
• Adams' 100 day of fortitude, Sources Say, Portland Tribune, Feb. 8
• 100 Days, a hundred projects, Jennifer Anderson, Portland Tribune, May 20
• Thinking like a business owner, Editorial, Oregonian, Jun. 1
• A conversation with Sam Adams 100 businesses, innumerable goals, Kennedy Smith, Daily Journal of Commerce, Sept. 30
• Adams hits 100 day in office at full gait, looking for his stride, Anna Griffin, Oregonian, May 24

Weblogs

• 100 Businesses

Milestones

• January 3, 2005 - Sam visits business number 1, OHSU
• February 17, 2005 - Sam visits business number 50, Oregon Public Broadcasting
• April 29, 2005 - Sam visits business number 100, Red Light Clothing
• May 25, 2005 - Marks the end of 100 Days
• May 25, 2005 - Sam visits business number 114, Thortex Inc.

Today, City Council unanimously passed a resolution to develop a city-wide strategy to manage invasive plant species in Portland. The resolution sets into action a plan that will be integrated into each of the City bureaus. The resolution calls for setting a 10-year goal to reduce noxious weeds on its lands and requires that the bureaus develop a 3-year work plan with consideration as to how they can combat invasive plants in their daily operations. There is support for regional weed management efforts and a call for partnership with state and federal agencies.

Earlier this month, Commissioner Adams held a town hall to address the problems and potential solutions for dealing with invasive plant species. More than 100 participants were invited to comment on an earlier draft of the resolution.

The resolution is a culmination of the hard work of many individuals from a variety of organizations including Three Rivers Land Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy, Metro, No Ivy League, Portland State University, Friends groups and city staff from Environmental Services, Parks, Water, Transportation and Planning.

Now, the bureaus can address ways of battling invasive plant species, build relationships with state and federal agencies that can assist with funding and support of current efforts to manage noxious weeds.

Clark Henry is the Program Manager for the Bureau of Environmental Service's Brownfields Program.

What in the world is a Brownfield? This and how can Brownfields create economic vitality for Portland were some of the questions that I helped answer on a tour with Commissioner Adams and his staff this afternoon.

Here we are at a PDC/City owned site in downtown St. Johns where BES will address 13 underground storage tanks and soil contamination and then work with PDC to redevelop the site and enhance the St. Johns commercial district.

Translated: Brownfields are properties with environmental contamination or those that just look contaminated. Left as they are, Brownfields endanger human and environmental health while draining the economy by not providing employment, tax revenue or amenities.   

Despite Portland’s reputation as an environmentally minded city, we are home to more than 500 of Brownfields in need of attention. They exist in every community, though in higher concentrations within lower income communities and communities of color.

We toured several properties in various stages of cleanup and redevelopment such as old gas stations and a battery recycling facility to discuss the work of the Portland Brownfield Program. We talked about what the program does and innovative ways we can better clean up and facilitate new development, a cleaner environment and stronger community identity.   

Having recently been awarded $400,000 to provide environmental assessments and technical assistance, I am looking for property owners interested in redeveloping or selling their properties.  Sam’s office and the Portland Brownfield Program want to help you find ways to overcome difficult issues on your property.  We have a proven track record of providing financial and technical assistance that can help owners realize their vision for their sites.

Let me know if I can provide assistance to your business or group. I can be reached at:
(503) 823-5863, or clarkh@bes.ci.portland.or.us

Read an interview with Sam published by The Daily Journal of Commerce.

The other day, I had a chance to visit a business who is facing jobs cuts because of the cost of production.

Because of confidentiality, I cannot share the name of the company but their Chief Operating Officer (COO) was very honest with me. "The cost of production is 4 times higher here when compared to China. As a result, our parent company is considering moving these jobs overseas," stated the COO. "When you also factor regulations, environmental issues and insurance costs, it becomes even more compounded."

Although the COO's parent company has interest in keeping part of their operations in Portland, over half of the 30 family wage jobs could move.

Even though I read about local jobs moving overseas, it hits you much harder when you have a chance to meet the business face-to-face. It makes me wonder: How many other businesses in Portland are currently facing the same reality?

As part of the Hawthorne Sidewalk Sale Days, I stopped by 8 Women, 3614 SE Hawthorne Blvd.  I love the owner because she is so active in the Hawthorne Business Association, but she also runs a boutique others rave about.  Take the write up she got for Portland City Search By Annamaria Pardini: “This tiny boutique is brimming with unique and sought-after accessories, sleepwear and stylish gifts for mother and child. Trendy handbags from mod plastics to chinoiserie beckon through chandelier-lit windows. Every available space is adorned with chic and feminine accessories. Rows of cubbyholes are dedicated to the latest fashion jewelry. Tables are laden with pampering products from Treat, whimsical Goody Goody slippers, interactive books and other coveted giftables. Take time to explore the petite closets full of cute and sexy ladies' sleepwear and children's wear from the house brand, Boudoir Bebe."  City Search Editorial content is independent of paid advertisers. Any expenses are paid for by Citysearch.

Some of the best Strawberry/Rhubarb pie sits waiting for you in a chilled dessert case just 5 miles from downtown Portland at the new Bipartisan Café, 7901 SE Stark Street in Portland’s rebounding Montevilla Neighborhood/South Tabor Business District.  I did.  The cafe is open 7am through 5pm weekdays, 8am-3pm weekends.  Call Peter at 503-253-1051 for more information.

I helped kick off refurbished Empire Builder Amtrak train coaches today (nice hat, huh?). 

The Empire Builder provides daily service between Chicago and Seattle Portland via Spokane.  Amtrak is a vital domestic transportation link for Portland; Over 60,000 people board or depart from Portland’s Union Station.  Seattle/Portland-Chicago coach fares range from $125-$275 each way depending on advanced purchase and/or date of travel.

I am a big fan of Amtrak so earlier this year I sponsored a resolution passed by the Portland City Council calling for adequate and stable federal funding for Amtrak.

The Empire Builder was named for James J. Hill, founder of the now defunct Great Northern Railway.

The City of Portland owns Union Station. www.splintercat.org says, Portland’s Union Station was dedicated on February 14, 1896. It was built in the Italian Renaissance style, in a graceful curve that faced downtown. It was easily the finest rail station in the West, and was constructed in an elegant blend of brick, stucco and sandstone. The total project cost $300,000. Central to the station design was the 150-foot clock tower, which was later modified to include the neon "Go By Train" signs that are a familiar Portland icon today.

In over a century of operation, Union Station has seen the freight operations that once surrounded it gradually move north and across the Willamette River, along with the major river terminals. Today, the station continues to serve as a busy passenger rail and inter-city bus hub, but is now surrounded by the lofts and townhouses of the trendy Pearl and River districts.

If you are a rail history fan, check out the Portland-based Pacific Northwest Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.

Earlier this year, Commissioner Dan Saltzman and I introduced an ordinance to lower the local business tax burden by raising the Owner’s Compensation Deduction from $75,000 to $125,000. 

We have not succeeded ...Yet.

Today I visited another local business that illustrates again why Dan and I need to keep trying…

“We feel like tax milk cows; we work seven days a week; we have over $3 million invested in our facility and equipment and the City says we only get $75,000 or a 2.5 percent annual return on our investment before they tax us,” said Don Riddle, President of Portland-based, Applied Plastics Machining based in Southeast Portland.  The Riddle’s business employs 16 workers.

Riddle and his spouse, Karen, recently called my office asking me to tour their facility and hear there concerns.  They are just now feeling an up tick in business after 5 years of recession. 

The Riddles are concerned that City Hall will prematurely declare victory over the recession, and impose more taxes.  They want a tax reduction.  They feel like they can build their business to be more competitive if they had a business tax reduction. 

“It seems like businesses are disliked in Portland,” says Don.  “Maybe its not true, but it seems like their real passion is for finding news ways to get money out of us, not really helping us.”

“If my wife and I were 20 years younger, we would move our business out of Portland,” says Riddle.  “As it is now, I’m 60-years-old, we will probably sell it and retire.” 

“When we retire, we are moving out of Portland,” says Riddle.  “There is no way I want to inherent the costs of the fire and police pension system.”

This report is an overview of the data we collected over the course of Sam's first 100 Days.  While the surveys in it are not scientific, they still give us a peak into the issues and concerns of Portland business-owners.  This information will serve as the starting point for a variety of measures Sam will pursue in Council aimed at revitalizing Portland's economy, reducing the cost of business within the city, and stimulating the growth of good, family-wage jobs.

100 Businesses Memo

What Sam did:

From January 3, 2005 to May 25, 2005, newly elected Commissioner Sam Adams fulfilled a campaign promise to visit 100 local businesses in his first 100 business days in office.

The first step was open outreach.  Sam’s office publicized to the business community, and to the public, that any business interested in having a one-on-one discussion with Sam should contact the office and request a meeting.  To ensure that this outreach was substantial and successful, Sam’s office utilized the Portland Development Commission (PDC), Oregon Economic and Community Development Department (OECDD), Portland Business Alliance (PBA), Neighborhood Business Associations (NBA’s), and local Chambers of Commerce – East Portland Chamber of Commerce, Native American Chamber of Commerce, Filipino Chamber of Oregon, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the African American Chamber of Commerce- to help get the word out to businesses across the spectrum, and across the city.  The response to this offer was great, and many businesses contacted the office to set up visits with Sam.

At the same time the office was eliciting contact from the community, it was pro-actively doing research on Portland’s most notable business enterprises.  For instance, the office reviewed The Portland Business Journal’s annual publication featuring Portland’s “Top 25” businesses, which are selected with different criteria.  The use of this news source exposed Sam and his office to a wide cross-section of businesses from a variety of sectors and categories, allowing Sam to make contact with some of Portland’s most important, pioneering, successful, innovative, and representative businesses.  In total, Sam began visiting local businesses, working off a list of over 150 businesses.

Sam’s visits encompassed a wide variety of site conditions- everything from a vacant parcel of real estate, to a yoga studio in the basement of a residential dwelling, to a business in the process of closing its doors and selling itself.

On average, each site visit lasted about 50 minutes.  On these visits, the owners, managers, and workers that Sam met with were asked a standard list of questions regarding the concerns they held for their businesses in particular, and the overall economic outlook and business climate of Portland more generally. 

When:  Sam visited his first business at 7:00 a.m. on January 3, 2005, the day he was sworn into office, and concluded his “100 Businesses in 100 Days” initiative with his last business visit on May 25, 2005.  When all was said and done, Sam visited 114 businesses.  In total, Sam spent roughly 95 hours visiting local Portland businesses over the timeline of the project.

What Sam Learned:

Business owners consistently relayed to Sam how much it meant for them to get a call back from Sam’s office and for Sam to take the time to visit their premises and hear their concerns.  Business owners were enthused by the lines of communications being opened with City Hall.

Two anecdotes, in particular, express this broad sentiment commonly mentioned at each business visit. 

During his visit to Intel’s Hillsboro plant, management told Sam, “This is the first time a city commissioner has ever done a site visit at our plant.” 

The owner of LunaGaia Yoga Studio relayed to Sam that she was, “startled that Sam’s office returned her call, and even more so that they said ‘yes.’”

Three overarching themes emerged from the business visits.  First, most of the businesses Sam visited don’t feel valued by city government.  Second, and related, business owners don’t have many interactions or exchanges with City Hall, only regulatory demands from different city bureaus.  Third, most businesses were not aware of local economic development goals or programs.

Furthermore, among the players and stakeholders in Portland’s economy, there was no agreement on the city’s economic goals.  Among the businesses he visited, there was scant knowledge of even the most general aims and objectives (let alone the specifics) of Portland city government’s economic development strategies and fiscal agenda.  Because of this, individual businesses didn’t seem to know either where they fit into the larger economic picture of Portland or what future trends originating from City Hall they could expect to see, profit from, work towards and help foster.  Furthermore, when it came to specific city bureaus, there was little knowledge of their particular goals or functions, though quite commonly there were feelings of frustration expressed towards them. The majority of businesses don’t seem to understand the role that the PDC plays in the Portland’s economy or the role of city government more generally.

Over the course of his conversations with various business owners, Sam heard a lot of “problem statements” – often repeated by many businesses in only slightly variant ways.  Several frustrations seem to have been shared by many businesses, especially among those businesses in the same economic sector (ex. food service, financial services, etc.).  Every once in a while a suggestion or a solution to the stated problem was offered.  More often than not, business owners were not sure what solutions to propose.

Problems and Solutions:

The following section of this report outlines the generalized results of our business surveys.

By completing the following qualitative analysis, we seek to open up new avenues of communication with the Portland business community. Ultimately, this is an attempt to improve the perception and reality of Portland’s business climate – hopefully attracting new capital and investment, and producing more quality, family-wage jobs. This will serve as a starting out point to develop constructive, desired, and economically advantageous policy changes. 

It is our hope that these qualitative survey responses will allow our staff to undertake a useful legislative agenda that effectively and efficiently addresses the major concerns of Portland area businesses. 

Methodology

This is not a scientific survey.  Because the businesses volunteered themselves to be interviewed, the set of businesses may not be representative of the Portland business community’s perspective as a whole.  At worst, this will slightly misrepresent the sentiments of the business community.  However, for our purposes, this is still a useful tool that we can use to identify the general concerns held by Portland businesses today.

What questions were asked?

1. Aside from your profitability, how do you know business is good?

2. Which economic indicators would you consider to make-up Portland’s Healthy Economy? (Please choose one or more.)

o Job Growth
o Retail Sales
o Manufacturing Sales
o Wage Rates
o Access to Capital
o Household income
o Land Costs
o Cost of Doing Business
o Building Permits
o Employment Rates
o Other:__________________
o Other:__________________
o Other:__________________

3. Is hiring qualified applicants an issue?  YES     NO

4. What is one thing Commissioner Adams can do to improve the business climate in Portland?

Questions 2, 3, and 4 on this survey provided us with the most data.  Note that the survey elicits from the respondent both information on their individual business and their views on Portland’s overall economy. 

The quantification of qualitative data always requires some finessing, and there are potentially many different ways in which such finessing can be done.  The method employed in this exercise was as follows:

1)  Responses were grouped together into general categories.  These were:

• Land-related Issues
• Labor-related Issues
• Capital-investment related Issues
• Sales Volume and Profitability Issues
• Cost of Inputs
• Government Services, Regulation, and Licensing Issues
• Taxes

2) The “government issues” category is a sweeping aggregate of smaller issues (not including taxes) that are important in their own right.  Because of that, the “government issues” category, which as city officials is arguably the most important area for us to understand, was further broken down into the following sub-categories:

• Permitting, Regulatory, Licensing, & Service Issues
• Schools, Job-Training, & Education
• Public Safety & Police
• Social Services, and Health Care
• Transportation, Parking, Public Transit and Road/sidewalk Issues

Another prominent pair of issues that was relayed was “drugs and homelessness.”  Businesses were concerned with the effect vagrancy had on their foot traffic and overall sales.

3) Businesses were grouped together roughly by using broad industry labels that categorized businesses of similar types together.  This process was difficult, as creating overly broad groups of business types would play down potential data correlations that might highlight industry-specific concerns – but, at the same time, creating too small of groups would similarly disguise such patterns.  The final business categories were:

• Restaurants and food service
• Retail/Sales
• Banking/Investment/Financial Services
• Manufacturing and Production
• Construction/ Building/ Home Improvement Services
• Engineering/ Design / Architecture
• Transportation / Moving/ Shipping Services
• Healthcare/ Hospitals/ Health Services
• Arts/ Education/ Non-profits
• Hotel/ Travel/ Tourism
• Utilities
• Housing/ Real Estate
• Consulting/ Marketing/ Media Services and Products
• Technology
• OTHER

NOTE: If a single business relayed multiple concerns that all fell within one category (say, for instance, 3 types of Government-related concerns) that counted as one -not three- Government issue.

Finally, we examined both the overall business concerns, and investigated the possibility of unique patterns regarding the types of concerns/issues on an industry by industry level.

Here are the results:

ISSUES BY REGION:

Not surprisingly, businesses located downtown were much more concerned with drugs and homelessness than were other sections of the city.

INDUSTRY SPECIFICS:

When you break down the businesses into (roughly defined) sectors, there were interesting patterns to be found.  The top concerns expressed varied by business sector.  For instance, the main issues of Restaurants and Food Service enterprises were parking and transit issues, while the major concerns expressed by Financial Service companies related to finding qualified applicants and strengthening the city’s educational system.    

The main concerns expressed by each sector are as follows:

Restaurants: Parking and Public Transit Access
Retail: Bureaucracy
Financial: Finding Qualified Applicants and Education
Manufacturing: Qualified Applicants, Education/Job Training, Input Costs (Energy & Steel)
Construction: Qualified Applicants, especially engineers, Education, bureaucracy
Health: Qualified Minority Applicants
Non-Profits: Hiring at all levels, Transportation, Education and Public Safety
Hotels: Public Transit and Parking, Homelessness and Drugs
Real Estate and Housing: Zoning and BLF
Consulting and Media Services: Drugs, Homeless, Public Safety, Qualified Applicants and Job training
Technology: Qualified Minority Applicants

Overall, the largest concerns raised by Portland businesses are:

1) the layers of permits, licenses, and fees required by the city, and the cumbersomeness of the city’s bureaucracy,

2) taxes, especially the Business License Fee and the Multnomah County Income Tax, and

3) finding qualified, appropriately-educated employees, and its understandable corollary, the perceived inadequacy of educational and job training systems.

When engaged in analysis of quantified qualitative data, it is often useful to refer back to the original responses to avoid misreading the information collected.  Furthermore, for our purposes, it is useful to look at the concerns expressed by specific firms in order to outline what Sam proposes as potential solutions to the problems.  While many of these problems are rather easily addressed at the local, city-level, many others are not.  Take for instance the issues of diesel prices and global competitiveness – these issues are the results of global and national economic forces, and can thus only be adequately addressed on that level.  Keeping this in mind, here is an outline of his proposed solutions.  (We wish to emphasize again that these are only proposed policy solutions.  Sam looks forward to constructive policy development with the entire City Council and the Mayor.)

• Develop fast track package for business start-ups Economic dashboard
• City lead by example to prevent overseas outsourcing of city work and services Review neighborhood plan assumptions
• Appointed liaison to local brewery industry
• Raise the owner’s compensation deduction  to $125K
• Consolidated city statement of taxes, fees, and charges
• Fees on a development project should be limited to a percentage of the value of the total project
• Continue to fund industrial arts training in high schools and community colleges
• “more inclusive leadership and outreach”
• Expand storefront refurbishing programs
• Set up an express mini-bond program funded by major public-private prime contractors
• Defeat Senate Bill 555
• More crosswalks
• Change transit overlay on 102nd St.
• Continue to invest in marine facilities
• Fund collective merchant advertising for each business district renovation
• OCC funding- urgent
• HQ needs to be the right size (very supportive of HQ hotel)
• City Council needs to sell the benefits of projects like South Waterfront

Business owners also articulated to Sam more specific concerns and solutions which are currently being addressed and/or undertaken.  There are about 15 in total, and include a wide variety of things such as:

• Helping with the permitting process for expanding businesses
• Repairing sidewalks that discourage foot traffic and business
• Providing lender information to businesses struggling to obtain capital
• Changing antiquated requirements on food carts in Jameson Square
• Investing city dollars into local banks

CONCLUDING STATEMENT:

Commissioner Adams’s “100 Businesses in 100 Days” campaign resulted in:

• A better understanding of the challenges and concerns of contemporary Portland businesses
• An understanding of how city government can help (and hurt) business
• The creation and cultivation of avenues of communication between the business community and City Hall
• A list of specific problems to be addressed by city government
• Innovative solutions and suggestions from business owners
• A recognition of what it means to be an entrepreneur in the City of Portland
• The identification of some of Portland’s larger economic issues that must be addressed and/or adapted to in the future.

On May 25, I completed my promise to visit 100 businesses in my first 100 business days in office with my 114th business visit to Thortex. This archive chronicles my experiences getting to know the vibrant local business community and hearing from them how City Hall can do things better.

David Walker, Thortex Inc.
REMARKS
May 25, 2005

Wow.  I’d like to thank everyone for being here today and showing up for this event.  It’s great to be standing up here today – to be in a position where we can announce that we are expanding and employing more people because of our economic success.  Let me tell you, achieving this economic success was not at all ensured – in fact, it was quite risky and there were times where getting to this spot seemed uncertain. But, despite a recession on the national level, we’ve been able to find a market niche, produce quality products, hire people, and help be a part of the economy of Portland – something we can all be very proud to have done.

As I said, however, the road here has been bumpy.  Kathy and I started this business in our garage and on our dining room table.  We capitalized the business in part with a 2nd mortgage on our home and credit card debt.  And really, we wouldn’t have been able to make it to this spot – at least not in Portland, Oregon- without the helping hand of the city.

It was their interest, their arm-twisting and their strategically putting their money where their mouth is, that not only brought us to city of Portland, but which kept us in the state of Oregon, something I didn’t think was possible two years ago.

Really, it all came down to a phone call.  I called our corporate attorneys, Ball-Janik and told Steve Janik we were going to need some legal advice on closing on a piece of property in another state. Steve asked if I had talked to the City of Portland.  I asked Steve why I would bother to do that as I had heard a lot of bad press about doing business in the city.  He said I really owed it to myself to have at least one conversation and pressed me to call Sam Adams, which I resisted because I thought it would be fruitless and we were far along in the purchase of the property in another state.  Well I didn’t have to make that call because Sam, who was then Mayor Vera Katz’s Chief of Staff, who called me within the hour and was at our facility the next morning with representatives of PDC.

Because of that phone call, and the hard-nosed advocacy of Sam Adams, we were able to get the necessary economic support from the Portland Development Commission, which helped us by giving Thortex tax credits for each job we created in the city.  I am happy to say that at this point, we now have more than 160 employees, and that there are at least another 50 on the way.

The cooperation between the city and Thortex has led to something in everyone’s interest and the achievement of common goals.  We brought quality jobs into the city, and we were able to keep an economically viable business in the state.

Thortex is a shining example of the American dream.  With hard work, dedicated employees, a wife and partner that believed in me and shares my vision and the support given through wise economic policies and pro-active government agents – we have achieved a great deal of success. 

I am glad that you are all here today to share this exciting moment with us and once again want to thank everyone for their hand in making this possible.

Remarks announcing expansion of Thortex, Inc. and looking back at the first 100 days in office

I want to first thank my staff, especially Warren Jimenez, Roland Chlapowski, and David Gonzalez.  They’ve done a superb job these past 100 business days both staffing me and advocating for Portland’s working families.

Thank you for coming.  Sometimes it seems like we hear nothing but bad news about Portland’s reputation as a place to do business.  But this is a day for good news.

Thortex is an American success story.  Dave and Kathy Walker mortgaged their home and started a business in their garage, manufacturing high quality surgical implants.

Thortex started out in Clackamas County, with no interest in moving to Portland, because they had heard that Portland was unfriendly to business.

Working closely with PDC, I set out to change the Walkers’ minds.  We made the case for Portland’s competitive advantages: the availability of ready-to-build land, skilled workers, incentives, and a commitment to conquer the permit process in record time. 

In return, Dave promised to build this new manufacturing plant in Portland with 130 jobs.  He delivered 170 family-wage jobs.  And I am proud to announce today that Thortex plans to expand this manufacturing facility, hiring another 60 workers in the next two years.

The lesson from Thortex is this: City government must be a help and not a hindrance for people who want to invest and create jobs here in Portland. 

During the last 100 days, I visited 100 Portland area businesses.   It is my way of shining a spotlight on the needs of local firms and beginning an open dialogue with business.  Mostly, I listened and I learned.

I learned that businesses want to stay in Portland.  But many have concerns about the perceived lack of support from city government.  They want improvements in local government services, from administrative rules to permits to police.  And I learned that fees and taxes can mean the difference between a stable bottom line and having to lay off workers, or even move to a friendlier business climate.

I have not waited for the end of my first 100 days to act on these lessons.

With the support of the City Council, I have pushed through a $100,000 increase in neighborhood and small business district grants.  We rejected city bureau proposed cuts to frontline city business services, like street repairs, graffiti removal and downtown retail marketing, while we trimmed water rate increases and selected permit costs.

I proposed lowering the City Business License Fee for small businesses – an issue I will continue to pursue.  Today, the City Council will consider creating a task force to look at ways to help local businesses fight gentrification and gain equity by purchasing their workspace on an affordable basis.

I will work to cut more needless red tape, reigning in the carte blanche administrative rule making authority of some city bureaus.  We will pursue a nearly instant small business startup permitting timeline tailored to the needs of our young entrepreneurs.

We do these things with one goal in mind: to raise the standard of living for more of our citizens through family-wage jobs.

For too many Portlanders, it’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet. 

It’s time that Portland’s government, labor and business leaders stop lobbing verbal grenades at each other.  Together, let’s commit to the goal of raising Portland’s median family income to match the incomes of other western U.S. cities.  We are at $67,900 for a family of four and we need to get to $75,100. By setting this goal as a city, it will help raise more families out of poverty.

And to keep the spotlight on the needs of working families, between now and Labor Day, I will work 100 hours at the most common jobs in Portland, often low-wage, no benefit jobs that many Portlanders depend on for their livelihoods.  Jobs like the ones I used to hold down to get through high school and college.

Will Rogers said that, “Once a man holds public office he is no good for honest labor.”  I hope to prove him wrong.  From my upbringing, I know what it’s like to struggle from paycheck to paycheck; I know what it’s like to live on food stamps and subsidized public housing.  And I intend to use this experience to talk more about how we can fight poverty in Portland.

I believe we have to try new ideas and new ways of doing things.  We have to test and experiment.  Sometimes we will fail.  But we will learn from our failures and we will try again.  And it doesn’t matter who comes up with the solutions as long as we lessen poverty and create prosperity.

We can empower our people and our neighborhoods and business districts to help themselves, to out-hustle the competition, and put Portland on the map in the world economy.

No one part of this city – no one neighborhood – can be left behind.  That means no more business as usual.  From the West Hills to the Outer Eastside, we are all in this together.  We should all have a seat at the table of prosperity.

And speaking of a seat at the table, I want to invite everyone to a celebration of visiting 100 businesses in 100 days.  The party starts at 5:30 today at a new and independently-owned organic brewery called Roots.  It’s at 1520 SE 7th.  There will be music, food and drink and a chance to talk to small business owners like Dave Walker about our achievements and goals for the future.

Thank you very much.