It should be said that the Merc's (Sarah) Mirk was on this two months ago, and she also makes the salient point that the Blazers are not granted first dibs on the Rose Quarter, although I'm sure their submission will get plenty the look-see....
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Your reporter is not paid well, especially if one agrees nothing is not "well." There are, however, myriad minor perks and fringes that have come up now and again, that offered at least something out of the ordinary if not a keepsake thrill. I got to ask Nancy Pelosi a question at a press conference in Portland in 2008. I've drunk free beer at an environmental coalition party, and I was able to meet Dan Savage while working last year's Rebooting Democracy. The Attorney General even stops by to chat when he sees me typing downtown at lunch. And I have two highly official-looking Obama visit press passes, complete with lanyard, that did indeed get me into media-restricted areas and past long lines--and to meet Colin Meloy of the Decemberists while waiting for the Senator/President.
As noted, your mileage may vary as to the interest level or brush with greatness any of these opportunities represent. And I'm shamelessly name dropping, but in order to make a point: in four years Loaded Orygun has been to some interesting places, usually as a skeptical observer who invariably takes more than their fair share of strawberries from the cheese tray. But until last night, your reporter had never actually been schmoozed as, quote, "an opinion leader."
And yet there in Suite 33 of the Rose Garden, a half hour before the Blazers would squeak by the Denver Nuggets before a packed house sounding ready for the real games, were Larry Miller and J Isaac, President and VP of the team respectively. Also in attendance were several other "opinion leaders," all assuredly more legitimately so than I, including a friendly group representing the effort to get the USS Ranger carrier decommissioned on the Willamette downtown.
And sitting in a plush chair, drinking a Jones root beer, was your reporter. Supposed to be there, in fact. Invited, even. Came up via the special elevator and everything. The invitation was to hear one of the first outreach presentations of the crystallizing plans for redevelopment in the Rose Quarter, to be retro-trendily named Jumptown.
{A little on the presentation, some on the game, and a passel of photos below the jump...}
I finally managed to catch up with Portland Commissioner Randy Leonard, the tip of the spear when it comes to the MLS deal that has apparently precipiated the awarding of an expansion franchise to Portland beginning in 2011. However, we pretended that the news of yesterday wasn't official, formal or obvious--and in any case, we talked mostly about other issues surrounding the process, including his ongoing debate with Ted Wheeler about City and County finance, why he thinks the Blazers did an about face, and what should go into the proposed entertainment district for the Rose Quarter.
The whole audio file of our 39-minute interview is available here, so that you can hear precisely the questions asked, and Leonard's full responses. Be warned that it's a 20MB .mp3 file, and as such may put a strain on your PC if you are using older equipment. But it's worth the full listen.
However, so that you don't HAVE to listen to it, I've transcribed readable versions of some of the questions and answers that yielded the most interesting parts of the conversation. I would call the transcript "close to verbatim;" while I've edited some things out for readability and length, the edits do not change the meaning of the responses, and once he gets into the meat of his answer his words are almost 100% as he said them. And of course if you're skeptical about that, listen to the audio for yourself.
So with that, let's hear what Randy had to say on the eve of what shapes up to be an historic announcement in Portland tomorrow!
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What do you think Chair Wheeler is expecting from the "new covenant" suggested to bring the County and Portland Public Schools more closely to the table in the Urban Renewal District (URD) discussions for the PGE Park area?
He was referencing a broader conversation he and I have had with reference to Measure A, a resolution adopted by the county in 1984, that was a document that reflected the division of responsibilities between the City of Portland and County of Multnomah. Basically what Resolution A said was the county will do jails, the county will do human services, and the city will do police, fire, parks, infrastructure services because up until 1984, there really was no core delineation who did what, who was responsible for what.
Since 1990 and the passage of Ballot Measure 5 the County has had diminishing resources, then they've had administrations in the White House who've cut various funding for human resource programs, aging programs--that money has diminished at the state, and the state has diminished it to the counties. The County has found itself in the position of having all these responsibilities stay and even increase as we've had a growing aging population and in some case a growing poverty population where the resources have diminished.
What Ted was talking about yes, I think let's talk about URAs and the impact on us, but also this broader discussion--should Multnomah County really be saddled with repairing all the bridges anymore? Shouldn't they be the City's responsibility? Should we be funding Hooper Detox anymore, when really primarily the people that are being served by that are Portland people? I know that's what he was saying, because he and I have had that discussion before.
I'm crossing lines with Commissioner Randy Leonard the last couple of days, getting his messages to late to respond to them, missing him by phone. I promise you I'll nail him down some time this week to answer questions on the MLS deal, particularly looking forward as the PGE Park Urban Renewal Area question looms, or in its place the search for alternate financing and how this affects Merritt Paulson's bid before MLS, or even Paulson's own desire to push forward with the gap unaddressed.
All of which is I suppose an ironic prelude to the point of this piece, which was to highlight how well Leonard is culling the reportage and opinion on the Council's approval of the agreement in principle last week, at his new website, http://www.commissionerleonard.typepad.com/..
Hey, that's off the venerated PortlandOnline gulag...er, centralized portal! Commissioner Randy doesn't mean to be impolite about his "employer supplied" website, but no sooner is "Welcome!" out of his virtual lips than you're urged not to hang out too long--look, Randy's got a new website, off the grid as it were! And while it's no marvel of flash animation and Randy-themed games or downloadable Randy Ringtone quotes (use that, Commissioner, and this is my record of the claim for 50%), it's pretty informative and transparent, even of reportage that's not necessarily flattering.
The most important document at the moment is undoubtedly the description of the terms of the agreement reached with Paulson, which you can read in detail here. For more of the info on the way the numbers were compiled, in that piece there's the link to the Task Force analysis as well.
But be sure to read through the links he provides; he captures a lot of the discussion from the big three papers plus the Business Journal, some of the TV coverage, etc. But you can get the gamut just from one source...The O. There's the laudatory (back page lead editorial), the critical (news analysis), the neutral but visceral (City Hall blog), and the sidebars, like Canzano's WTF about the sudden Blazers flip on the idea of a baseball park in the Quarter.
One thing that's original is a set of responses to some additional questioning from commenters at the site, written by Chief of Staff Ty Kovatch. And when I can stop Leonard's motor for 20-30 minutes and get him to answer even more questions (take a mile!), I'll report back. The FAQ-plus for the MLS deal is below the fold.
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