November 15, 2003
The Politics Of Neighborhood Involvement
There are any number of things to cover coming out of today's 4th annual neighborhood summit. But before I get into the various discussions, I want to return to the subject of next year's campaigns for Mayor and City Council and the role to be played in them by the question of neighborhood involvement.
Let's start with the obvious. Of the various candidates for various municipal offices, at least the following were present for some or all of today's summit: Tom Potter, James Posey, Nick Fish, and Sam Adams (whose campaign URL, it should be noted, hasn't quite gone live yet). It's likely there were others I simply managed to miss.
Many, if not most, of the candidates for City office have already begun staking their claims when it comes to the Neighborhood Issue, which I've capitalized because I'm going to be using the phrase throughout my coverage of these campaigns.
In material available at today's summit, Tom Potter says, "Tapping the imagination and hard work of its citizens has always been the Portland way. But it has gotten lost in recent years."
"Portland has a world-class neighborhood system," Potter continues, "which some in city hall and the media have declared dead. Our neighborhoods aren't dead. They have simply been ignored. They are a tremendous power that I will unleash as mayor."
On his campaign website (see above), James Posey says, "My administration will work to shift as much as feasible authority and control of programs and resources back to local community organizations."
"Neighborhood associations which have demonstrated high levels of community involvement and citizen participation," he added, "will receive commensurate levels of authority and resources."
Although there's nothing specificly about the Neighborhood Issue on Nick Fish's campaign website, his campaign announcement made some potential allusions to it (although it doesn't yet rise ebyond the level of standard campaign-speak): "Our government is too precious to be left to political insiders. It belongs to each of us. When 'we the people' band together, we can accomplish anything."
On his campaign website, Jason Newell says he "will aggressively work to give neighborhood and business associations more access to the city by providing direct access to crime prevention specialists, district attorneys, mediators, police, and emergency services. Coordination with citizen involvement is key. The City must become a tool box that each community can pull from as needs and planning require."
And in an interview here, Phil Busse said: "The concept of making city services more accessable is important step towards making residents understand and appreciate what the city can do for them. It also has the potential to helps trengthen the core of neighborhoods by creating a nucleus around which each neighborhood can build."
(I'll get to some specific views from the summit of that so-called "mini City Hall" concept in another item.)
Clearly, as I predicted awhile back, the Neighborhood Issue is on the agenda for the forthcoming municipal election cycle -- appropriately so, since 2004 also happens to be the 30th anniversary of Portland's neighborhood system.
But it's not just the candidates beginning to position themselves regarding this issue.
For all intents and purposes anounced today is a new organization called N-PAC, the Neighborhood Political Action Committee. According to its literature, N-PAC will help select Portland candidates who will support the neighborhoods; hold elected officials accountable; reach out to neighbors to get involved and vote; and raise money.
There was at the very least a low buzz around the summit today that Potter could be the so-called neighborhood candidate, although that's not meant to suggest an N-PAC opinion at this stage, if there is one. Expect to see more such buzz as the campaign season ratchets up, if today's murmurs are any indication.
Whose appearance at today's summit was earnest and whose merely politcal (if this was the case for any of them) will become clearer as each candidate has the opportunity to spell out their perspectives on the Neighborhood Issue. But clearly, both the candidates and the neighborhoods themselves expect it to be injected into high visibility for the 2004 campaign season.