'Mercury' On ONI, Leonard, And So-Called Mini City Halls
Last week's Portland Mercury had a look at the differences of opinion over the Office of Neighborhood Involvement under the stewardship of Commissioner Randy Leonard. For what it's worth, I was contacted for an opinion while this story was being written, but I hadn't checked my voicemail in time.
At the heart of the debate is a pilot program introduced by council member Randy Leonard. Designed to be a one-stop shop for neighborhood support services--like crime prevention, fire inspectors, and general complaints--the plan is to create mini-city halls that serve as satellites in various communities. By placing offices in neighborhoods, the idea is to bring city services to the people who use them.
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But neighborhood activists are saying they don't want anything to do with the new project. They claim that neighborhood centers will effectively gut the Office of Neighborhood Involvement from its original, power-to-the-people purpose.
Point/counterpoint is provided mainly by Leonard on the one hand, and Charles Heying (who readers here will recognize from various items related to Friends of the Reservoirs) on the other.
While these neighborhood service centers have certainly become contentious with many neighborhood activists, I'm not sure I would describe them as the "heart of the debate." Tensions between neighborhoods and City Hall have been simmering for quite some time, most often boiling over when it comes to big ticket projects such as the aerial tram to OHSU and the open reservoir replacement project at Mt. Tabor.
Unfortunately, much of the criticisms being aimed at these neighborhood service centers stems from misinformation about them -- some of it perpetuated by neighborhood activists who should know better.
To dispel just one of the myths: These centers are not going to force staff and volunteers at neighborhood coalitions to do more work, nor are they going to take over coalition facilities. These centers are intended to be staffed by City staffers already responsible for neighborhood services, who currently operate out of downtown rather than out in the geographic areas of Portland which they serve. And while it would make sense from an efficiency standpoint to house these centers in existing neighborhood association or coalition offices, this is not a given -- and even if so, at least as Commissioner Leonard has told me, they would pay rent to those groups in order to have such space.
This is not to say there aren't reasons to keep a watchful eye on how the neighborhood service center concept plays out during its pilot phase. Clearly, it is important to make sure that ONI (and whichever Commissioner is in charge of that bureau) doesn't devote so much time, energy, and resources to the services part of its revamped mission that it neglects the involvement aspect -- which was, after all, the entire reason for ONI's existence in the first place.
But to argue that we must be watchful shouldn't be to argue that the idea itself is somehow unsound, or that a deliberate dismantling of neighborhood involvement is the aim. Nor should neighborhood activists resort to seemingly deliberate misinformation about the project as a way to drum up public opposition.
None of this should suggest that ONI under Leonard is immune from criticism, any more than the attitudes and actions of City Hall as a whole when it comes to public and neighborhood involvement are immune (they're not).
But if activists and watchers of City Hall when it comes to neighborhoods don't get their facts straight -- or, worse, misrepresent them intentionally -- their opinion just isn't going to matter very much.