January 17, 2003
The Cultural Divide Between City and Citizen
There was a moment during last night's meeting of the Mt. Tabor Public Advisory Committee which was something of a breakthrough in my understanding of the growing divide between the powers-that-be inside City Hall and the citizens and residents of Portland.
It came during a hallway conversation several of us were having with a representative from the Bureau of Water Works, in which I asked if there was any appreciation or recognition at all inside City Hall that in terms of the burial of the Mt. Tabor reservoirs, the burden of proof appears to have been turned on its head. Instead of the City Council being required to prove to the people of Portland that the reservoirs need to be buried, groups such as the Friends of the Reservoirs are being required to prove that they shouldn't.
What followed from this question was an exchange which revealed the stark distinction between the way City Hall views the governing process and how the people of Portland view the governing process.
In essence, said the man from the Water Bureau, the City Council viewed the initial decision to bury the reservoirs (made, you will recall, as part of an overall budget decision) as a "technical decision" and therefore fully within the purview of the City Council to make on its own, without any extraneous public process.
I challenged him at this point, explaining that even if the Council truly believed the burial decision to be purely technical, it should be more than obvious to them now, given all of the widespread public and media attention the issue is receiving, that the decision was far more than merely technical. That it, in fact, involves many much broader issues, including those about the character of the city itself.
As such, then, why is the City Council seemingly just being stubborn, steadfastly refusing the reconsider a decision that clearly has far greater impact than they apparently first believed?
It was impossible to get him to concede to any of this. With mind-numbing certainty, he simply reiterated that the burial decision was a purely technical one, and that the only thing of a great enough public concern to warrant a public process was what to do afterwards.
And this is, it seems, the great divide between the people of Portland and their elected city officials. The view inside City Hall of public involvement appears to be one in which they simply do not believe that some issues of obvious public impact are required to be publicly aired and debated before decisions are made.
We are going to bury the reservoirs, they say. Now what do you want to put on top? We are going to have an aerial tram, they say. Now what do you want it to look like? We are going to have an ice rink in Pioneer Courthouse Sqare, they say. Now what can we do to make it even better?
These are not merely technical decisions, not merely the municipal equivalent of deciding whether we have enough pencils or whether we switch to pens instead. These decisions go straight to the public character of the City of Portland.
Yet time after time -- even in those instances where some sort of public process appears to be in place -- the backers of various projects make arrogant statements about their inevitability, or petulant comments about public involvement.
Think not only of Saltzman's statements about the reservoir burial, but of Francesconi's comments made about how the public will of course love the ice rink once they understand it -- despite the fact that as more is learned, the more people dislike the idea. Think of Mayor Katz, in response to a very small handful of malcontents at the JTTF renewal hearing, threatening to have everyone present removed.
Arrogance. Petulance. In treating the people of Portland like children, they reveal themselves to be childish in their views of the exercise of civic power.
So, that was my revelation last night. It's not surprising in the sense that, as a cynic, I'm quite used to elected officials being superlatively frustrating. But having only just recently become more involved with local issues -- and since local officials are much closer than those at other levels of government -- this is the closest view I have ever personally had of their worldview.
It baffles me, almost completely, that they appear to hold the people they serve in such little regard, and with a kind of such apparent (if sometimes subtle) contempt.
Comments (3)
The One True b!X on 17 Jan 2003
I should take a moment to mention that the above attitude of City Hall carries over directly into the just-announced February 19 event, which is very specifically being described as a public forum and not as part of the public process.
Every indication is being given that the burial decision is not to be revisited, which appears to leave the February 19 forum to be, as expressed at last night's meeting by Charles Heying during his rather pointed exchange with Commissioner Saltzman, just an opportunity for burial opponents to vent.
The One True b!X on 17 Jan 2003
Not to mention that the February 19 forum is apparently scheduled on the same night that the Mt. Tabor Neighborhoood Association meets. This doesn't reflect particularly well on City Hall's desire to pay any sort of active attention to the process of neighborhood involvement.
Jack Bogdanski on 17 Jan 2003
Welcome to Portland city politics. The real decisionmakers are a handful of wealthy people -- probably fewer than a dozen -- who always get their way. Always! West End rezoning, Pearl trolleys, trams, skating rinks, ugly parking structures. Look it up, B!x, it's the same 10 people. And their lobbyist? Fella by the name of Neil.
There's plenty of public involvement before the decision is made. But it's a public of 10.
Randy Leonard is the only hope. And he needs at least one like-minded council mate soon or he'll be marginalized or co-opted in no time.