May 27, 2003
Widening Split Between City and Portland Business Alliance?
Returning once more to today's Tribune, there's an examination of whether the Portland Business Alliance's loss of the SmartPark contract marks the start of increasing tensions between the Alliance and City Hall:
Some members even argue that the alliance, Portland's most powerful lobbying unit, can now flaunt a stronger bargaining position during future city dealings.
"I'd proposed last summer that we really stop and consider whether we wanted to do this (garage-management) business because the primary purpose of the business alliance is not to be an operating entity but to be a business advocacy group," said George Passadore, the Wells Fargo Northwest region president who heads the alliance's board of directors.
"I saw these kinds of activities as getting in the way of our real purpose: to be the eyes, ears and voice for business in metropolitan Portland."
Of course, one of the other things the Alliance was supposed to do for the city, other than run garages, was to promote Portland as a place to do business. Under Kim Kimbrough, it's spent at least as much time criticizing Portland as a terrible place to do business. It's a nice scam, if you can make it work, I suppose. It also might end soon:
This summer, the city also will bid out a component of the parking contract that supplies marketing for all downtown businesses. The business alliance, under the contract, had been paid $645,000 annually to promote downtown services.
But if the approach of the Alliance, as part of being "the eyes, ears and voice for business" in Portland, is going to continue to undermine the very marketing campaign for which the city pays it, then perhaps it's time for the city to give that contract to someone else as well, and let the Alliance start fending for itself.
Comments (1)
The One True b!X on 27 May 2003
Even better: Perhaps, in the spirit of the cross-spectrum coalition which won the garage contract, groups which fall under the category of Katz's much-loved "cultural creatives" should forge a coalition of their own and make a run for the marketing contract.