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Tuesday evening was a busy one for Lake Oswego Public Affairs Director Jane Heisler and Lake Oswego Interceptor System (LOIS) Project Director Joel Komarek. The pair attended the scheduled City Council meeting, and then the first public hearing of the school board regarding the potential lease of Lake Grove Swim Park to the City, as a staging area for the LOIS sewer pipe installation scheduled to begin in September and continue into spring 2010. They updated the Council with what they clearly believed was a a strong compromise and good fath effort to respond to resident concerns, and then quickly packed up to deliver a similar presentation to a waiting school board and cafeteria full of grumpy, hot residents who didn't seem to like the compromise idea as much as Council did.
The Oregonian on Wednesday joined the previous outlets to have covered the story (KGW, LO Review and Loaded Orygun in reverse order) on the controversy surrounding the closure deal, and as the latecomer predictably didn't do all that great a job. For instance:
School and city officials got an earful from residents disgruntled that their play area could be shut down with little say in the matter.
"It's really shocking tonight to see what we missed," said David Miles, during the district's first public presentation on the issue today. "It seems some wool was pulled over our eyes."
While children talked about missing Fourth of July fireworks at the park next summer, some adults suggested the city buy and tear down houses for access rather than close the swim park.
But city and school officials appeared to ease some tensions among the 100 people gathered in a hot school cafeteria by announcing potential plans to keep part of the swim park open. An official decision won't be made until later this month.
The reporter gets the disgruntled part right, and sort of glancingly referred to a heavily repeated point--won't permanent access be necessary for maintenance and tweaking of this first-ever floating pipe of poop?-but I sure didn't hear any tensions eased from where I was sitting, with regards to the compromise. In fact, no one commented favorably on the proposal, either partially or fully closed, and more than one person rejected it as unworkable (like the woman who said there was no way in hell her 13 year old daughter was going to sit in a bikini next to a bunch of workmen 20 feet away).
The Lake O Review did a better job in their weekly edition Thursday, taking my side in terms of how the residents viewed the compromise proposal:
[T]he hearing Tuesday evening was met with little positive response to the new plan to keep about a third to half of the site open for recreation.
“The majority doesn’t want to compromise,” said resident Tia Ross regarding the latest offer to keep half of the park open. “We wouldn’t be here if the communication had happened the way it should have. I’ve heard a lot of things from people.”
Ross insinuated that now many disenfranchised people do not want to support the Lake Oswego School District Foundation or vote in favor of the November local option levy.
But let's back up and talk a little about the Council meeting, and then come back to the definitely more contentious school board hearing.
Just in from Rasmussen Reports Jeff Merkley leads Gordon Smith for the first time, 43% to 41%! To be fair, the lead is well enough within the margin of error of 4.5% as to be almost statistically irrelevant, but let's take a look at the history of this poll:
I'll leave the in depth analysis to the pros but the latest result looks much more in line with the overall trends, suggesting that the previous poll was either an outlier, or just a temporary post primary drop (I know several ardent Novick supporters--including myself--who have started to come around recently). At the very least, any time a challenger leads a well financed incumbent you can be sure it is not the challenger who is sweating the election. So congratulations are in order for team Merkley for great poll results and a great quarter of fundraising to back it up.
Update: Looks like perhaps the biggest reason for Smith's decline is his lowering favorability
Smith has seen his favorability numbers drop this month, too. In June, he was viewed favorably by 58% of Oregon voters and unfavorably by 38%. Now only 53% regard him favorably, and 45% see him unfavorably.
which may be due to problems with the base, and swing Democrats:
In June, 79% of Republican voters favored the GOP incumbent, but now only 72% feel that way. Democrats appear to be coming home to Merkley, who had the support of only 66% of his party’s voters in June, but that number is up now to 75%.
For now it appears Smith's election year swing to the "middle" is not working; it is turning off his base, and not fooling Democrats anymore.
This latest in my continuing series of diaries on Oregon politics will discuss the current status of Oregon's political landscape by using voter registration as a guide. With this model, we can see clearly how strongly the Democratic party is positioned for this fall.
Whether on their own sources or as a result of reportage by Loaded Orygun and the Lake Oswego Review, KGW has caught wind of the swim park story we've been covering for the last few days. They don't offer anything particularly new information (that sound you hear is me patting myself on the back), although they do get some defensive quotes from City engineer Joel Komarek and Mayor Judie Hammerstad. Check it:
“In order to recreate this expanse somewhere else on the lake would require condemnation of homes, tearing homes down and then relocating individuals from their homes,” said Joel Komarek, Director of what’s known as the Interceptor Sewer Project.
Komarek and Mayor Judie Hammerstad say there’s an even larger, public health issue at stake: the current pipe carrying sewage through the lake is too small and outdated. The city has already been fined $54,000 for overflows that violate state clean water standards.
“Do we want to have clean water, or do we want to have sewage?” said Hammerstad.
Those are reasonable responses to why the City might want to avail itself of the swim park site--but don't address the primary complaint of residents, which is the stealth effort and rather condescending way in which responses like Hammerstad's suggest that the sacrifice of the swim park is expected and required of Lake Grove residents, and any fuss over deeds and public notices should be viewed as counterproductive troublemaking.
That sort of "get behind the project or else" mentality is missing real concerns being expressed by parents like this one:
For parent Jane Fendon, there’s another option: find another place to park the materials, because this critical community resource is too important to lose, even for a summer. “It’s very very special. Families meet here, we meet for barbeques, my kids take swimming lessons here. We love this place and it’s heartbreaking.”
Tonight, parents and other interested parties will have the chance to get their say and perhaps threaten legal action if the process isn't opened up and addressed more publicly. The hastily prepared notice from the school district (pdf) suggests that they are ready to move forward with the agreement the very next day:
• The School Board will hold a public meeting in order to provide accurate information regarding theproject, and t o provide patrons with the opportunity to suggest alternatives. Representatives from the City will make a presentation that includes information on how and why the swim park was identified to serve as a staging area.
Lake Oswego School Board Public Meeting: Tuesday, July 15, 7:00 PM Lake Oswego Junior High School Cafeteria 2500 Country Club Road
• The School Board will meet on Wednesday, July 16 at 9:00 a.m., when it is expected that a final agreement regarding the City’s use of the swim park will be presented. [emph mine]
Nothing like a 14-hour public comment period! LO will be there to record the proceedings, of course. Stay tuned...
In order so that those of you who have been reading my Oregon politics diaries can understand who these people are I have been talking about, I present the following entry. For brevity's sake, only statewide and congressional candidates will be discussed.
You can catch up on this building controversy, over an easement to be granted by the Lake Oswego School District to the City which would enable the completion of the City's $100mil sewer replacement project, but shut down the largest resident access point for Oswego Lake in the process, in Parts One and Two...
In the last report on the story that continues to reveal itself, I used the word "flatfooted" to describe Lake Oswego Schools Superindtendent Bill Korach's half-apologetic response to the controversy over use of the swim park. What I also said was that Korach's goal was to win you over by rhetorically sidling up against you, freely admitting mistakes and acknowledging dissent while hoping we can all just work it out together.
Did I buy the excuse that the district was simply ill-prepared for how some might not approve of either the plan or the process? I did at the time, but now I'm not so sure that the benefit of the doubt (by way of general incompetence) was warranted. Maybe someone's still getting duped or is out of the loop--but what Korach told me last Thursday, what he apparently told the Lake Oswego Review, and what City Attorney David Powell intimated in a conversation Thursday as well, do not match what City Public Affairs officer Jane Heisler told me Friday, or for that matter what Linda Brown told a resident (which does match Heisler's story).
What did Heisler say? A number of things, some very reasonable, but most specifically she read to me from the pending agreement and noted the deal called for cash payment to the district, landscaping (presumably as replacement and/or improvement) to be provided by the district. Cash as in $50,000 direct transfer of funds, pursuant to the City's budget for the interceptor system and (being under $100,000) not necessarily subject to Council review.
Oh, the cyclist and the driver should be friends,
Oh, the cyclist and the driver should be friends.
One drives cars that guzzle gas,
One wears spandex on his ass,
But that's no reason why they cain't be friends.
(Apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein)
When the International Herald Tribune notices Oregon's existence, that's always nice--except when the story features phrases like this:
"challenged Yates to get out of the car, asking him 'if he wanted some'" . . .
"McAtee picked up his bike and used it to strike Yates' car" . . .
"someone punched McAtee, knocking him to the ground" . . .
"Another person called 911, reporting that a car had hit a bicycle" . . .
"cyclists who rode by the scene yelled profanities at him and his family" . . .
and:
"One witness, who apparently feared the crowd would turn on him, told police he didn't want to be seen talking to them" . . .
Then you know you're in trouble. Those are all phrases you never really want to read in an article about your town from the international press.
The gist of the story:
It turns out the motorist who yelled at the man on the bike was a longtime cyclist, trying to lecture on bike ethics.
And the cyclist, police say, turned out to be drunk. Reports from the scene say he blew through a red light and then used his bike to assault the driver.
To paraphrase an old rule of journalism: When a driver hits a bike, that's not news; when a cyclist hits a driver with his bike--that's news.
And the part about the driver chasing the cyclist down to give him a talking-to on sharing the road--that's vintage Portland.
The incident--and the Oregonian's front-page coverage of it on Thursday--triggered an outpouring of web traffic from people on both sides of the bike/car divide.
I'm a pretty avid cyclist myself, and even though metro Portland is a fairly enlightened area when it comes to cycling safety standards, I think it's smart to be distrustful of the cars I share the road with. On the other hand, every time I see a cyclist running stop signs in traffic, weaving between cars in traffic, etc., it pisses me off to realize they're just making it that much harder for the rest of us to get home in one piece--every driver who sees that kind of behavior feels just a little bit more justified in disrespecting bikes.
Let's declare a truce for today and Span the State!
I didn't know this was going to be published, I have no idea who the author was, and I first heard about it when it showed up in the Lefty Blogs wire. I don't think there's any new knowledge being dropped since we covered the big exdpenditures from the June report (still waiting on Q2 numbers for the Senate race that I know of; should know after the 15th), and so it's a little apropos of nothing, beyond the diarist's discovery that Chuck Schumer's DSCC laid out a lot of money to beat Jim Neal and Steve Novick with Kay Hagan and Jeff Merkley, respectively. They're not the same kind of candidate, and many consider Neal to have been far less competitive--but their discovery makes the same point we did at the time, and continue to make: why is the DSCC spending so much of our money to defeat other Democrats? For instance, wouldn't that $800,000 dropped on behalf of Merkley be really helpful right now?
In the North Carolina and Oregon Democratic US Senate primaries this year, two great progressive candidates ran for the nomination: Jim Neal (NC) and Steve Novick (OR). The DSCC, who is not supposed to pick sides in a primary, appears to have secretly funded their preferred candidates anyway (Kay Hagan (NC) and Jeff Merkley (OR)).
If the DSCC leaders personally had a preference, that’s fine. BUT IT IS NOT OK TO FUNNEL MONEY TO ONE CANDIDATE OVER ANOTHER IN A DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY!!!! That's unfairly taking sides and deliberately influencing an election, and that is not what the Democratic Party is about.
The diarist, who goes by the poetic handle of spnj889, shows exceptional acumen by quoting my story on the financials from the June reports at length, specifically the part where Chuck Schumer pays Jeff Merkley's light bill so Merkley has the money to buy expensive air time for his commercials attacking Novick.
Again, I don't think they had quite the same race in NC--but the point is that it doesn't matter. It would have been just as wrong for Schumer to funnel a bunch of money to Novick, because they suddenly felt with exposure he could really win. (Oh, to wish). It isn't any more right to spend money to defeat the less progressive Democrat, than it is to spend it defeating a less progressive one. It's using Democratic donor money to beat Democrats. Not good for the party, not good for the movements in each state. Leave them alone.
The anger at Schumer putting his thumb on various scales before primaries is not limited to Oregon, it would appear. I just happened across this diary. Just sayin', is all.
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The Portland DL chapter has its regular meeting at Madison's Grill, at SE 11th and Madison (