July 06, 2005
New City Code And Standards For ONI Heading Toward Approval
Product Of Four-Year Committee To Be Adopted Next Week
As indicated in advance in Tuesday's edition of the Portland Tribune, today was the day City Council finally took up the end result of a committee working to revise the rules under which the Office of Neighborhood Involvement functions. That committee had been at work for the past four years.
(During this site's first year, we almost religiously followed the activities of one of two major ONI-related committees. It wasn't this one, but instead the Public Involvement Task Force, whose work in essence has been folded into one of the recommendations of the Bureau Innovation Project out of the Mayor's office.)
Today's hearing -- dominated by the staff report with only a smattering of public testimony -- was an uncontentious one, with the only potentially major issue raised focusing on the minimum number of geographically-contiguous neighborhood associations required to form a new district coalition.
That question was brought to Council's attention by Bub Kramer, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association.
"First of all, there are no longer six independent neighborhood associations in Portland," Kramer said. "There are only five and they are non-contiguous, so they could not form a coalition." His point: "If this is adopted, the only way that a current neighborhood could be in a coalition is if they join a current coalition."
That limitation was of concern to him because while he's talked with two existing coalitions who had positive responses to the possibility of bringing in the Downtown association, Kramer beleives "that a joining of our organization with Old Town Chinatown makes much more sense than joining with one of the other current coalitions."
"They're [the two existing coalitions] interests for the most part are in residential neighborhoods," Kramer argued. "Our neighborhoods, which are contiguous, are interested in commercial development and vertical living, and I think the idea of accepting this without having the opportunity for the two of us to join together would be a mistake."
Under questioning from Commissioner Sam Adams, Kramer said that the matter of whether or not such a coalition formed by Downtown and Old Town Chinatown would receive support and/or staffing from the City through ONI was "a separate issue". His suggestion was that the two neighborhoods work together on their own, and the City could answer the question of support if it saw that coalition as successful.
Commissioner Dan Saltzman wondered about including the Lloyd District Community Association (another of the five unaffiliated neighborhood associations) in a coalition with Downtown and Old Town Chinatown. Kramer said it coul be looked at.
"But in terms of synergy," he said, "I still think that the two that are downtown that make up the core of this community make more sense than going across the river and joining with them."
Other than that issue of the rule for forming new district coalitions, the hearing tended towards a collective congratulations to the committee for their four years of work.
Moeshe Lenske, one of two co-chairs of the committee, said of the new Code and Standards document that "they maintain the self-determination and autonomy of heighborhood associations" and that the committee didn't make "fundamental changes" to how ONI, the district coalitions, or the neighborhood associations functioned. "Our goal was clarification," he said.
Left unaddressed in the new Code and Standards, according to Brain Hoop of ONI, was any final determination as to how the bureau, coalitions, and associations should deal with communities without neighborhood boundaries (minority organizations, for example), as well as any resolution to the question of whether or not the thirty-day notice the City if required to give neighborhoods on certain actions impacting neighborhood livability.
Both of these subjects will be addressed in other venues, such as the Bureau Innovation Project (when it comes to the former) or further discussions involving the relevant stakeholders (when it comes to the latter).
Leonard Gard of Southwest Neighborhoods (and member of the committee) testified that the new Standards no longer require neighborhood associations to follow the state's open meeting and records laws. Instead, the committee decided to write their own versions. Gard said that the state laws contain "some burdensome provisions" (although he didn't describe them) and so the committe opted to draft their own.
"The guiding principles," he said, "were to keep these rules simple for the neighborhoods, to have rules that were workable for neighborhoods." He added that the committee "did follow the spirit" of Oregon's public meeting and records provisions.
(An interjection here: Gard's testimony left us wondering what impact having neighborhood-specific meeting and records rules, rather than following the state's as had been the case up until now, will have on Adams' proposal to register lobbying activity, since as we recently reported that proposal as it currently stands exempts organizations which meet three criteria -- one of which is following the state's public meeting and records laws.)
Mark Sieber of Neighbors West/Northwest, and a member of the committee, said that the new grievance procedures would designed to first encourage parties to meet and discuss a resolution before filing an official grievance, provide clear definitions of what constitute a proper grievance, and "dismiss personal animus" from the grievance process.
Further testimony explored the roles of Business District Associations (you can read for yourself the new Code language and Standards documents for the specifics on that and other issues), as well as a disgressional debate over whether or not District Coalitions are merely administrative or something more.
In the end, outside of the aforementioned repeatedly echoed congratulations offered to the members of the four-year committee, Mayor Tom Potter pulled the discussion into his larger framework. "It seems like this is also part of larger issue, in that how do you get more people engaged in the City process," he said.
"One of our goals," he added, "is to begin engaging that larger audience and begin to redefine, in effect, what constitutes civic engagement in the City of Portland, and how that engagement is recognized and supported by the City."
Many of those larger issues (along with the remaining issues left unresolved by the GREAT committee), he said, will "come out over the next twelve months" -- presumably a reference to the recently-launched work of his Bureau Innovation Project, which, as mentioned, includes aspects directly related to the revitalization of ONI, as well as a larger so-called "visioning process" for the City as a whole.
Adoption of the new Code and the Standards document were moved to second readings, and will be approved by City Council next week.