November 21, 2003
(Updated) Metro Columnists, City Hall, And The Mt. Tabor Reservoirs
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
In today's column, Phil Stanford comes back to his repeated assertions that the City Council may be rethinking the reservoir plan:
Word around City Hall is that the mayor has had a change of heart on the multimillion-dollar reservoir-capping boondoggle. Now all she has to do is get water Commissioner Dan Saltzman to come along. ... Might not be easy, since Saltzman is not usually noted for his political horse sense. ... What she ought to tell him is that the public admires politicians who admit they made a mistake -- and this one's a whopper.
The last couple of times he made noises that the reservoir issue would be reconsidered, Commissioner Saltzman denied it, and then Mayor Katz, in her regular online chat with OregonLive, said that the issue was "resolved as far as the Council is concerned."
Which doesn't dispute what Stanford says today. In fact, it would seem that it was clear the Mayor might be open to taking another look at least as far back as October 21 when she said this. But that sort of makes it less than an insider "word around City Hall" sort of thing, don't you think?
And over in today's "City Matters" column in The Oregonian, Henry Stern has this related item:
The group catching City Hall's ear includes historian Chet Orloff and 1000 Friends of Oregon's Bob Stacey. The pitch to Mayor Vera Katz and commissioners: Redo the public process because it was rushed in reaction to Sept. 11, 2001. Says Orloff, who led a committee looking at what could go atop the reservoirs: "In the final analysis, we may end up doing the same thing . . . but people will at least say it's been done in a way we all feel is constructive." Saltzman remains committed to reservoir burial, but seemed Thursday to open the intake valves a bit. He's thinking about the criticism of the process at Mount Tabor and elsewhere. If he went the committee route, it would be strictly "informational," not advisory to the council.
Someone will argue that this vindicates Stanford's repeated attempts at claiming the Council is going to take up the issue again. But that's not how this reads to me at all. Rather, I suspect it more likely that the above would simply be a move by Saltzman to try to make the community feel like it had been taken into consideration. It's not like he sounds very excited about the idea, after all. Whether such a committee would be informational or advisory is irrelevant if the Council isn't going to budge on the project.
Update
Speaking of Katz on OregonLive, in this week's chat the reservoir issue came up again:
OregonLive: And you've also still got at the back of the burner, so to speak, but actually its a front burner issue, whether or not the city will go ahead in covering the reservoirs.
Katz: That's correct. There is a lot of pushback, and I raise the question of the lack of trust by the community. I'm concerned about the loss of that trust by a large segment of the population, but I'm more concerned about process. And those are issues that are coming up and going to need to be discussed further with each individual member of the Council.
So, clearly Stanford is right that the Mayor is considering some sort of action. But he's at least a little disingenuous in presenting it as some sort of City Hall scuttlebutt, since the Mayor herself is saying as much publicly.
Comments (2)
Jack Bog on 21 Nov 2003
When the Chet Orloffs and Bob Staceys of the world join the rest of us in saying "The process was inadequate," Vera knows she should listen.
Could Saltzman find that he doesn't have the Water Bureau after the mayor reshuffles the commission assignments again?
The One True b!X on 21 Nov 2003
That last is interesting, and should have occurred to me. I'd bet that you are right.