Introduction and Debunking Some Pearl Myths


We welcome Mike Feldman as a new contributor! – Chris

Hi all,

Since Chris was kind enough to make me a contributor, I figure it’s time to introduce myself and contribute. My wife and I moved to Portland about 18 months ago. I’m a just-retired Computer Science professor; my wife is a writer. I like this blog and the other Portland transport sites on the Net. I have no stake in any of these discussions, I’m just a resident who’s interested in this stuff.

I plan to write here now and then. I try to do my homework and write intelligently and civilly. If you think I’ve got my facts wrong, I’m glad to stand corrected as long as you correct me with intelligence and civility. I have better ways to spend my time than to get into rants and shouting matches on a blog. I’ve been there and done that, and have no interest in doing it here.

OK, here’s what got me interested in writing today. Over on the recent streetcar thread, GTinSalem said,

I think they have it all wrong. They shouldn’t be giving abatements or incentives but it should be just the opposite. Make the condo developments pay for the streetcar, include a special tax for condo developments to fund the streetcar. If you want to live in a shoebox, then pay for everything yourself, why should the public at large be forced to give welfare to yuppies living in the Pearl District who have more than enough money to spend on this crap anyway?

Sigh… OK, I want to set the record straight on a couple of things. I wonder how much you really know about the Pearl. Since you and a few others on this blog like to engage in Pearl-bashing, let’s put some facts out for you to work with. Maybe I can debunk a stereotype or two.

It’s been at least 30 years since I was a yuppie, and I’m not rich. I do live in the Pearl, where I could afford this nice condo because I was lucky enough to sell my suburban house in Maryland at the top of the boom. For 32 years I lived on a college teacher’s salary that barely kept up with inflation.

There are some yuppies in the Pearl, but there are also a lot of 60-something geezers like me who like living on one level (no more climbing stairs!) and walking — or taking the Streetcar or a bus — to shops and entertainment. You’d better be ready for a lot more of us, because AARP lists Portland — and the Pearl in particular — as their #2 best place to live. See http://www.aarpmagazine.org/lifestyle/best_places_2007.html. (I moved here before AARP’s report came out.:-)

As it happens, my condo has about the same number of square feet as that house I sold. It’s not a mansion, but it’s no shoebox either.

My property tax bill was about $10,000. and I have about 1/80 of my building’s residential square footage. Assuming everyone in my building is paying taxes at about the same rate per square foot, my building’s residence owners sent about $800,000. this year to the county and the other taxing entities. (And that’s not counting the stores and offices on the bottom floors.) I have no idea how much my building is getting from the county in services. Is it anywhere near $800k?

And that’s just one of many buildings here. So I don’t think anyone’s giving us welfare. Indeed, according to last year’s State tax report, the River District Urban Renewal Area generated about $18,000,000 in property tax revenue on the excess value (that is — as I understand it — value in excess of what it was expected to be when the URA was established). This is the “increment” in tax-increment financing.

About 30% of my property taxes are going to schools, according to my county tax bill. I have no school-age kids; as far as I know neither does anyone else in my building. So I suppose you could say my building is contributing about $240,000. a year in “welfare” to people who choose to send their kids to Portland public schools. Right?

Not really — part of my taxes pays for your benefits, and part of your taxes pay for mine. That’s how taxes work.

There are some young families in the Pearl, but my guess is they won’t stay very long because there are no schools here for their kids. It’s been proposed to build a school here — that would be great, as it would make the neighborhood family-friendly, which would bridge the gap between the yuppies and the geezers. Of course, the school idea is controversial, and schools cost money to build, so maybe it’ll happen, maybe not.

You may be aware that Erik Sten has proposed sending some of that $18,000,000 excess out to the David Douglas district, in far Southeast where the school population is growing with kids whose families are getting squeezed out of the inner districts by gentrification. (This is obviously a controversial idea, but I support it and I’m amazed that it would even be proposed!)

By the way, no families got squeezed out of the Pearl. There were no residents here, just light industry and an abandoned railroad yard. On the other hand, of about 5000 housing units in the district, about 1000 or 20% — all new — are designated as affordable housing. I wish the percentage were higher, but 1000 units is still 1000 units.

So who’s giving welfare to whom? Nobody, not in my opinion. Let’s see if we can discuss the virtues of the different transport modes without bashing neighborhoods or perpetuating stereotypes or acting belligerent. What do you think?

I know, I know, it’s a blog. But there’s no law against it being a civil and intelligent one.

Mike


189 responses to “Introduction and Debunking Some Pearl Myths”

  1. Welcome Mike. Unfortunately I must add a little perspective to your comments,
    Mike Feldman: There are some yuppies in the Pearl, but there are also a lot of 60-something geezers like me who like living on one level (no more climbing stairs!) and walking — or taking the Streetcar or a bus — to shops and entertainment.
    JK: Do live the ground floor? I thought that was mostly for shops ands parking, with people on the upper floors. (There is actually one TOD in the twin cities, on a bus mall, with the lower 10, or so, floors dedicated to parking.)

    Mike Feldman: My property tax bill was about $10,000.
    JK: That suggests that you property is valued at around ½ MILLION at that you should be able to pay for all of your actual burden on others.

    Mike Feldman: and I have about 1/80 of my building’s residential square footage. Assuming everyone in my building is paying taxes at about the same rate per square foot, my building’s residence owners sent about $800,000. this year to the county and the other taxing entities.
    JK: Actually your are in an urban renewal district, so every dollar over the frozen value goes to pay off the bonds that the city floated to build your “bricks and mortar” infrastructure – parks, streets etc. Last I heard the city spent around $100 million with another $100+ million to come for your neighborhood, while the rest of the county has to pay higher taxes to provide your basic services. People who live in ½ million dollar properties really should be contributing to their portion of basic city services, not just paying off the bonds that built their yuppie/geezer playground.

    Mike Feldman: Indeed, according to last year’s State tax report, the River District Urban Renewal Area generated about $18,000,000 in property tax revenue on the excess value (that is — as I understand it — value in excess of what it was expected to be when the URA was established). This is the “increment” in tax-increment financing.
    JK: Right. And this is the amount that goes to repay the bonds, not to general city services. Your city services are paid by the rest of the city including those barely able to afford their tax bills. The urban renewal taxes can be found at: co.multnomah.or.us/orgs/tscc/graphics/06-07annualreport.pdf page 52.

    Mike Feldman: On the other hand, of about 5000 housing units in the district, about 1000 or 20% — all new — are designated as affordable housing. I wish the percentage were higher, but 1000 units is still 1000 units.
    JK: How does the monthly payments of the residents of those “affordable” units compare to the cost of similar units, just a short MAX ride away in the Beaverton-to-Hillsboro area?

    Mike Feldman: So who’s giving welfare to whom? Nobody, not in my opinion.
    JK: Sure looks to me like your taxes are going to pay for your nice new infrastructure, while the rest of the city has to pay extra (or suffer a reduction in services) to make up for the money that you pay that stays in your neighborhood. (Sure would be nice if all the money my neighbors pay in property tax could go to fixing up our streets and building a million dollar park, complete with water feature!)

    Mike Feldman: Let’s see if we can discuss the virtues of the different transport modes without bashing neighborhoods or perpetuating stereotypes or acting belligerent. What do you think?
    JK: Ok lets start with actual costs.
    Cost per passenger mile of various transportation modes(see PortlandFacts.com):
    Private car:…..$0.25……(Includes cost of road building and maintenance)
    Bus (best):…..$0.43…….(relies on roads paid for by other road users.)
    MAX:……….. $0.34……(Does not include cost of construction)
    Streetcar: …….$1.67……(Does not include cost of construction)

    The simple fact it that the private car is cheaper than any of the local mass transit systems, with the streetcar being over SIX times as expensive as a car. That is BEFORE you account for its construction cost of the mass transit options.

    Thanks
    JK

  2. JK, I’ve got a few for you too:

    JK: Do live the ground floor? I thought that was mostly for shops ands parking, with people on the upper floors. (There is actually one TOD in the twin cities, on a bus mall, with the lower 10, or so, floors dedicated to parking.)
    Me: Elevators.

    JK: That suggests that you property is valued at around ½ MILLION at that you should be able to pay for all of your actual burden on others.
    Me: This sentence means nothing. Define “actual burden on others” and explain “should be able to pay”. What I think you’re hinting at is that since suburban developments don’t get any subsidy of any kind (right), then neither should inner city developments.

    JK: How does the monthly payments of the residents of those “affordable” units compare to the cost of similar units, just a short MAX ride away in the Beaverton-to-Hillsboro area?
    Me: Choosing to spend possibly a bit more for rent in order to live in a neighborhood near transit and amenities is not illogical or unethical. Perhaps a low income person does not have a car, can’t drive, or doesn’t want to drive. With TOD people with low incomes, and others, have more choices. And I won’t even get into carbon footprints and the real costs of “free” parking . . .

    JK: Sure looks to me like your taxes are going to pay for your nice new infrastructure, while the rest of the city has to pay extra (or suffer a reduction in services) to make up for the money that you pay that stays in your neighborhood. (Sure would be nice if all the money my neighbors pay in property tax could go to fixing up our streets and building a million dollar park, complete with water feature!)
    Me: I agree to some extent with this, but we have politicians such as Sten investigating other possibilities. Suburban developers and road builders also get a lot of our tax money. That’s how it works.

    JK: Ok lets start with actual costs.
    Cost per passenger mile of various transportation modes(see PortlandFacts.com):
    Private car:…..$0.25……(Includes cost of road building and maintenance)
    Bus (best):…..$0.43…….(relies on roads paid for by other road users.)
    MAX:……….. $0.34……(Does not include cost of construction)
    Streetcar: …….$1.67……(Does not include cost of construction)
    Me: You forgot one:
    Foot:…………………………………………………
    There are various ways to estimate the cost of the private car, yours being a particularly low one. Certainly good public transit needs subsidies, and gets it. Private transit (your car, airlines) gets huge subsidies too. Low income people, who you seemed concerned about earlier, are well served by bus, max, streetcar, and TOD.

    For the record I don’t live in the Pearl, could never afford to live in there, and would rather die than live there. Nevertheless I’d rather some small amount of my tax money go to developments like that than a lot more suburban subdivisions. I grew up in one of those and will never go back (except to visit my mom occasionally).

  3. Very nice article Mike. The only thing that is getting ‘bashed’ in the pearl is the free streetcar service.

    As far as all the tax subsidies provided developers, I just don’t know enough about any of that to comment intelligently. What I understand is that the developers really made a bundle because of Portland’s subsidies.

    Of course, the pearl being an ‘upper class’ sort of place, leaves it open for some class bashing.

    Hell, one of the posts said ‘I wish I was forced to live in the pearl!’

    As a matter of fact, is it now the most exclusive neighborhood in Portland?

    It’s surpassed nob hill for status, that’s for sure.

    Mike, if your gonna live in the swankiest neighborhood your going to get bashed a little!

  4. Private car:…..$0.25 per mile?

    That is an impossibly low number, especially asserting that it includes the cost of road construction and maintenance. That would not even cover the cost of purchasing and fueling the vehicle, let alone be all inclusive. For most vehicles that number will range from 40 to 60 cents per mile and this number will not include the cost of roads not covered through gasoline taxes or tolls.

    Good data is the foundation of good decision making!

  5. As usual not the River District tab or debt is not mentioned by the Urban Renewal defenders.

    The $18 million is not a surplus. It is of course the large slice of property taxes which must go towards retiring that unstated Urban renewal debt.

    Since there has been no mention of the debt or how long before it is fully retired I must assume it is still very large and will take many years before it is retired. And that Sten is merely proposing to extend the payoff period by diverting some of the increment, or borrowing capacity, to other parts of the city.
    Rather than pay off the debt and return the
    increment to the various city and county taxing jurisdictions which have been shorted these general fund dollars for decades. Requiring other means of adequately funding basic services.
    Along with the other 11 Urban Renewal Districts some $64 million per year is being diverted from basic services, This and more and will be for decades to comes as SoWa and other districts spend like it’s free money.

    Contrary to frequently used false claim Dave makes, suburban developers are required to pay for all of their infrastructure, roads and development along with huge fees for the greater systems development. With the exception of the typical government subsidized Beaverton Round and other Pearl like Urban Renewal plans suburban municipalities undertake.

  6. Contrary to frequently used false claim Dave makes, suburban developers are required to pay for all of their infrastructure, roads and development along with huge fees for the greater systems development.

    Super…good to know. Now we have the majority funding source for the CRC project. Since the majority of traffic in this project area is suburban Clark Co. commuters, the developers will pay to build a new bridge based on the amount of traffic they’ve created.

    Of course, the reality is that this will never happen, thus disposing of this fallacy that developers pay for ALL the road costs associated with the homes they build. They build local streets within the development that connect to the main street and highway system, which places a greater traffic impact on the system as a whole. But they don’t pay much or anything to offset that. The suburbs have gotten billions of dollars of subsidies throughout the years.

  7. Welcome Mike, to PortlandTransport and to Portland….the Worlds biggest small town.
    And we have our share of small town minds. The Pearl bashing, not just here but around in various media, is part “city bashing,” part class resentment and part ignorance.
    Streetcar was not funded from URA $, but from LIDs…you may be part of one; so in this case developers paid a fair piece of the capital costs. The City hopes to use URA $ for the Eastside Streetcar loop. Chris knows all the details of this.
    TIF…Tax Increment Funding…is the growth above the base tax year for a given URA. So the level of taxes paid to City/County/Schools when the RiverDistrict was created continue to flow as before. The new taxes paid by new residents like yourself go to pay off bonds floated for streets, sewers, parks and the like. RD URA is so successful that it is now viewed as a cash cow for other areas in need of investment…Old Town, Park Rose, etc.
    When RD URA is closed, all the taxes, new and old, will flow to the City/County/Schools. Naturally project lists are infinite, but at 20 years URAs need to be closed.

  8. This was from Today’s Willamette Week….

    In 1999, Sten inherited responsibility for the city’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development after Kafoury retired.

    He insisted that urban renewal projects, the city’s largest form of discretionary spending, include affordable housing. One notable result is that the Pearl District, better known for glitzy condos, now includes 1,600 units of city-subsidized affordable housing.

  9. This was from this week’s Willamette Week online….

    In 1999, Sten inherited responsibility for the city’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development after Kafoury retired.

    He insisted that urban renewal projects, the city’s largest form of discretionary spending, include affordable housing. One notable result is that the Pearl District, better known for glitzy condos, now includes 1,600 units of city-subsidized affordable housing.

  10. “One notable result is that the Pearl District, better known for glitzy condos, now includes 1,600 units of city-subsidized affordable housing.”

    I’d like to know more about that?

    Anybody got any links handily available?

  11. Glitzy new condos. while many historic buildings downtown are all boarded up. If they could spruce up these buildings with the same zeal they have for flashy condos in the Pearl Portland might be a worthwhile place for me to live in. I am considering moving back when I finish my MBA/JD at Willamette. Salem’s boring.

  12. Hi everyone,

    I was delighted to see that by noon, my post had generated an interesting flock of comments. It looks like I succeeded in one of my goals, namely to stir the kettle a bit while keeping the discussion at a reasonable level of civility.

    I’ll respond as I have a chance to digest all of this — I’m learning a lot from the responses.

    I said I’d be glad to stand corrected if the corrections are intelligent and civil. I do not intend to respond to Jim Karlock, as he could not resist a couple of slurs like “yuppie/geezer playground”. If Jim is willing to stick to facts and refrain from epithets, I’ll consider having a dialog with him.

    Meanwhile, the rest of you can take him on, if you so desire, but I wish you wouldn’t. Let’s see if we can get Jim to act like an adult here. Libertarians like Jim often have good stuff to offer the rest of us, but his kind of angriness gets in the way — it turns me off and ought to turn you off too.

    Let me follow up on Al’s question re: affordable housing that include a WW quote:

    WW: “One notable result is that the Pearl District, better known for glitzy condos, now includes 1,600 units of city-subsidized affordable housing.”

    Al: I’d like to know more about that? Anybody got any links handily available?

    Here are my numbers:

    180 danmoore
    176 station place
    210 sitka
    199 pearl court
    181 lovejoy station
    535 yards at union station
    1481 Total

    I didn’t include the last item in my 1000 total, because at the time I wrote the piece, I wasn’t sure how much of Yards has been completed or how many affordable units are in it. It looks like WW and I are in substantial agreement. I’d like to know where they got the 1600 number — I presume it’s more authoritative than mine.

    My list was not so easy to come by — bits and pieces, but I couldn’t find any one place on the web that summarized all the affordable housing sites. I think it took me about an hour of surfing to develop this list. Here are some links:

    http://www.pdc.us/pdf/newsroom/story-ideas/affordable-pearl-housing_7-16-04.pdf

    http://www.pdc.us/pdf/dev_serv/pubs/dev_proj_fs_yards.pdf

    http://www.hapdx.org/About/pdfs/PR100901.pdf

    I think that covers all the affordable sites.

    Mike

  13. Boy, the misrepresetning beat goes on and on.

    It isn’t a fallacy that nearly all suburban developers pay for ALL the road costs associated with the homes they build. In addition to all of the road infrastructure within the subdivisions and the System Development Charges they pay, they also are required to improve the frontage streets and extend all systems to and through their development to accomodate future growth.

    Attributing greater impacts that they don’t pay for is a shady way of pretending all development is subsidize like Urban Renewal areas are.
    That’s the real fallacy.
    The favored developers who join with the city often have much of their immedaite infrastucture paid for with tax dollars as well as fees waved. AND that would be in addition to not funding the greater impacts so often attributed to suburban, non-Urban Renewal projects. With Urban Renewal diverting proerty taxes for decades these favorite public private partnerships involving Urban Renewal or TOD projects don’t even fund their share of basic services like everyone else.

    Of course every new house has a new resident who pays gas taxes and registration/title fees for offsetting the supposed greater traffic impact on the system as a whole.

    But if one wants to make the case that NO development pays enough that’s hardly some justification or rationale for Urban Renewal to further subsidize the chosen few.

    The suburbs have paid billions of dollars throughout the years fior roads just like everyone else.
    That is outside the debate on Urban Renewal and other subsidies.

    For someone who is such a frequent participation in Urban Renewal, even serving on a URAC for North Interstate, Lenny sure continues to misunderstand and misrepresent Tax Increment Financing.
    Lenny Says:
    it’s “city bashing,” part class resentment and part ignorance”
    then proceeds to display his own ignorance of Urban Renewal.
    Lenny you are misleading people.
    Absolutely some of the streetcars were and are being paid for with UR and PDOT money both.
    One recent line item alone in SoWa directs $5.25 million in UR funds to a portion of streetcars extension debt.
    On the MAX side, Interstate MAX will devour at least $60 million in Urban renewal property taxes by the time the debt is retired.
    As Lenny states the City hopes to use URA $ for the Eastside Streetcar loop. So the diverting of
    general fund property taxes away from arriving at basic services will continue.

    Lenny further misrepresents TIF…Tax Increment Funding…claiming the “level of taxes paid to City/County/Schools when the RiverDistrict was created continue to flow as before”.
    That is COMPLETELY FALSE in the most purest of falshoods.
    The tax revenue DID NOT continue to flow as before at all. Before TIF, property taxes flowing to City/County/Schools rose every year at an minimum of 3% and much more with every new traditional and routine development.

    With TIF ALL property taxes are frozen for basic services and every yearly increase for any reason is used to repay UR debt.
    When I say ALL property I mean thousands of parcels having nothing to do with the UR project but included within the particular District in order to divert larger sums.
    In the case of Lenny’s North Interstate UR district 3744 acres were included and every one of those taxed parcels are still funding basic services as they were back in 2000 when the district was created.
    In North Macadam/SoWa 409 acres were swept up that UR district to fund 130 acres of the “plan” and Tram with only 50 acres now spending the entire budget. All of the property taxes
    from the entire 409 acres is funding basic services at 1999 levels.
    Far from “continueing to flow as before”.

    The River District URA is 310 acres, diverting all increasaes since 1998.
    There is no “cash cow” Lenny.
    Any new borrowing capacity or extension of the UR district is simiply more added debt and a delaying the payment for another decade or so. Basic services will wait longer.
    Only when RD URA debt is paid will taxes, new and old, flow to the City/County/Schools.
    Yes project lists are infinite, but URAs are frequently extended with retiring the debt always delayed.

    1,600 units of city-subsidized affordable housing?
    Given the level of subsidy and what many of them are I wouldn’t be touting that at all.

  14. GTinSalem Says:

    Glitzy new condos. while many historic buildings downtown are all boarded up. If they could spruce up these buildings with the same zeal they have for flashy condos in the Pearl Portland might be a worthwhile place for me to live in. I am considering moving back when I finish my MBA/JD at Willamette. Salem’s boring.

    Well, some of the Pearl condos are new buildings, but in fact many others are “spruced-up” old buildings. (I must say, the sprucing-up is pretty lavish in some cases.:-))

    Most of the iconic Pearl photos are of the new neighborhood between 9th and 12th, north of Hoyt. That’s where the old railyard was. Good people can disagree on the merits of turning abandoned railyards into nice new buildings, but I think it’s terrific.

    I suggest you come up here on a nice day and take a stroll around the rectangle bounded by Burnside, Pettygrove, the mall, and 405. There are lots of old empty buildings, but as far as I can tell, they’re not “boarded-up” but being cared for pending redevelopment. Look closely, you’ll see what I mean.

    Much of the “sprucing-up” is adding new construction — typically, additional floors — to old buildings. There are several very interesting examples of this on the North Park Blocks. I just received a notice of another proposal like this, on 8th between Hoyt and Glisan, that will be a nice blend of old and new buildings.

    Some “sprucing-up” is happening in Old Town (between Broadway and the river). For example, the White Stag building is becoming an OSU center.

    RE: downtown — If by “downtown” you mean south of Burnside, I haven’t done a careful observation of redeveloped or “boarded-up” buildings, so I can’t comment. I do know the Pearl area, though, and figure if you take the time to observe carefully, you’ll be surprised at what’s going on.

    Oh — let me challenge you to walk around without a list (like the one I just posted) of the affordable buildings, and try to guess which ones they are. I couldn’t. You may disagree with me, but I think a mix of economic levels is generally a Good Thing in a neighborhood.

    Maybe we could meet for coffee when you come here — I may have time to show you around. Meanwhile, when do you finish your MBA/JD? Nice pair of degrees, for sure.

    Mike

  15. It isn’t a fallacy that nearly all suburban developers pay for ALL the road costs associated with the homes they build. In addition to all of the road infrastructure within the subdivisions and the System Development Charges they pay, they also are required to improve the frontage streets and extend all systems to and through their development to accomodate future growth.

    Really? So why are Clackamas and Washington counties both furiously trying to widen their roads? With all of the subdivisions being built in those two counties, you’re telling me that the developers are paying for the roads?

    Of course every new house has a new resident who pays gas taxes and registration/title fees for offsetting the supposed greater traffic impact on the system as a whole.

    Supposed greater traffic impact??? There is most definitely a greater traffic impact. And, given that the federal and state transportation funding mechanisms are failing, there’s no question that people don’t pay enough to maintain and build the transportation system.

    There are subsidies aplenty given to suburban development, just as there are in the Pearl.

  16. Clearly the gamble of urban renewal is that when property goes back on the tax rolls at full value, that its taxes will be substantially greater than without the URA. I would guess that given the choice between abandoned rail yards or underused industrial areas and thriving neighborhoods, most Portlanders would choose the latter and take the tax hit for a limited number of years. It looks like South Park Blocks and Downtown Waterfront URAs will be dissloving beginning in 2008. Note as well that any juridiction is limited to 15% of taxable value or land area, so schools, counties, etc. are protected to some extent.
    Clearly if you do not like the public investments that are funded with URA $…i.e MAX or Streetcar…you are going to scream and yell. But public investment policies are set by City Council, so throw your name into the ring if you don’t like what those elected to represent us have chosen to do.
    Last, taxes from the base year continue to flow to the City/County/Schools, the increase whether due to investments or to the 3% statutory increase go to the URA for projects.
    Its interesting to recall that the reconstruction of Paris in the 19th Century with the boulevards that are legend was done with bonds sold against the expected tax increases along those grand avenues. Sound familiar?

  17. You may disagree with me, but I think a mix of economic levels is generally a Good Thing in a neighborhood

    Actually, I do agree with you so long as there aren’t vagrants roaming around freely (which I think it a HUGE problem in Portland). I am troubled that you have to be absolutely destitute or of more than “modest” means to be able to afford some of these places in the Pearl.

    Maybe we could meet for coffee when you come here

    That would be really nice. If all goes as planned I’ll be finished with school in two years. I am also working for the Supreme Court down here in Salem but could easily get a transfer to Multnomah County Circuit Court once I am finished with school. And I actually do know the entire Portland Metro area very well. I lived up there for almost 15 years (two of which was near downtown in the Lloyd District). I consider Portland “home” as much as I consider Salem and Yamhill County “home” and my parents own several properties throughout the downtown area. I come up to downtown nearly every weekend to visit friends. Hope to meet you soon!

  18. “It isn’t a fallacy that nearly all suburban developers pay for ALL the road costs associated with the homes they build. In addition to all of the road infrastructure within the subdivisions and the System Development Charges they pay, they also are required to improve the frontage streets and extend all systems to and through their development to accommodate future growth.”

    A big box store can generate traffic in the 800 vph range, which is about half a freeway lane. If we look at a recent project, like the Delta Park I-5 widening, we see that 1.2 miles of freeway lane is $60M… (The average trip to the big box store is probably longer than 1.2 miles, but we’ll ignore that for now.) So the developer owes at least $30M for their freeway related impacts alone, plus a whole bunch more for the arteries that connect to the freeway. How much money do we typically charge the builder of a big box store?

    http://www.portlandonline.com/TRANSPORTATION/index.cfm?c=36168&a=66817

    $6.47/sq ft.

    So the very biggest big box stores (at 200,000 sq feet) pay a little more than a million dollars. That might pay for reconstructing the intersection in front of the store, which is hardly paying their own way…

  19. GTinSalem

    Actually, I do agree with you so long as there aren’t vagrants roaming around freely (which I think it a HUGE problem in Portland).

    Well, I wouldn’t characterize it as “HUGE”. If you mean homeless “street people”, homelessness is a fact of life in cities, especially cities like Portland with relatively mild climates. It’s not a crime to be homeless, and homelessness has been with us forever, and it’s not going away.

    We do have street people sitting on the park benches during the day, and sometimes sleeping at night in the doorways. (I think it’s unlawful to sleep on the public sidewalks, but the doorways are private property.)

    The problem of homelessness troubles me (as it should all of us), but the homeless people don’t bother me. I say hi to them, they say hi back. Sometimes they ask politely for money; I usually respond in the negative and that ends the discussion.

    In 18 months in the Pearl I have sometimes encountered inebriated street people, but also met inebriated young people who obviously aren’t homeless. I have never encountered any aggressive drunks, or aggressive street people in general.

    I think a lot of us — myself included — would prefer to deny that homelessness exists, but if you live in the heart of the city (any large city), you’d best get used to it. As you point out, living in the city has its drawbacks, but it has its compensations too.

    I am troubled that you have to be absolutely destitute or of more than “modest” means to be able to afford some of these places in the Pearl.

    I don’t know. I’ve heard that some of those affordable units are occupied by students who are temporarily strapped for money, and sometimes see people who look like students going in and out. I’m ambivalent about that because I’d rather see those places go to people who genuinely need them. I really don’t know enough about the rules for these places, or the demographics of their occupants, to comment further.

    Many of the Pearl condos are owned by investors who rent them out. There are some in my building (though not my unit, whose ownership is shared by me and my mortgage company:-)). If “yuppy” means “young urban professional”, I figure some of these rented units are inhabited by yuppies. I don’t know how much the rents are, but I figure a couple of yuppies could share a place and afford the rent.

    I come up to downtown nearly every weekend to visit friends. Hope to meet you soon!

    Lookin’ forward to it.

    Mike

  20. Hi Mike. Wasn’t there a Feldman who played one of the parts in the TV series, “Get Smart”? Agent 99, maybe?

    Well, anyway, I’m a low-income and over 55, rent subsidized resident in the Pearl, and I like it a lot, especially since I’ve put an immeasurable amount of sweat and carpentry-derived splinter blood into Portland’s housing. I consider the Pearl an outstanding well built neighborhood worth repeating as an ideal model.

    I’d like to read your opinion on streetcar expansion to the eastside. I am all for it, to influence development of the Rose Quarter, the west side of Lloyd District, the Burnside Bridgehead, and along East Burnside to Sandy Blvd.

    I support these developments because they represent an important challenge that should spur innovation and new ways to restore and make more functional similar situations in other cities. I also support Portland’s 2040 Regional Plan and believe it recommends and encourages this development as much as (or more than) on the west side of central city.

    The Eastside Streetcar is a current project that needs to overcome many sorts of opposition if it is to become another important example of innovative urban planning.

  21. A lot of the affordable units in the Pearl District are targeted not towards the destitute, but merely have income caps of around those who make $15 an hour or so. They also exclude students – I barely qualified for one income-wise but as a student at PSU they wouldn’t let me move in. The Sitka apartments typically run under WAY under a grand for a 2-bedroom unit.

    http://www.thesitka.com/index-Plans.html

    We need more Sitkas. If we built 10 more of them in the Pearl District, I guarantee they’d all be full up within a year.

  22. It isn’t a fallacy that nearly all suburban developers pay for ALL the road costs associated with the homes they build. In addition to all of the road infrastructure within the subdivisions and the System Development Charges they pay, they also are required to improve the frontage streets and extend all systems to and through their development to accomodate future growth.

    I only have experience with one suburban development, so I will mention it here. I am by no means an expert…

    We owned a house in a small subdivision in Aloha, near the intersection of Cornelius Pass and Baseline. (Well, the bank owned it, we simply rented-to-own :) )

    The subdivision had 14 houses built by the developer, and all 14 houses were in two cul-de-sacs. The two streets merged and dumped into 215th. 215th existed before the development. The developer built the two streets, and the houses. They made zero changes to 215th or Baseline. Virtually 100% of the traffic ingress/egress was onto Baseline via 215th (although you could drive through the neighborhoods the other way and eventually end up on TV Highway…)

    The developer made zero changes to 215th, or Baseline. And since it was in unincorporated Washington County I am pretty sure they paid no SDCs.

    So for all 14 houses that the developer sold (at a nice profit I am well aware) they spent ZERO dollars building up local infrastructure to help accommodate the additional vehicular trips per day, and there were no bus routes that came anywhere near there.

    (Although I would walk to MAX occasionally at Quatama. This was before the new Baseline improvements so it was putting my life at risk to do so…)

    And the whole neighborhood was FULL of these kinds of developments, developers who bought an acre or two and filled them with houses.

    The developers did not pay for the local parks either, that was built by Tualatin Valley Parks and Recreation…

    So those suburban developers got loads of subsidies. I do not know of any others however, they may all be different.

  23. Oh the never ending rose colorer theorizing of Urban Renewal.
    The “gamble” is reckless and without any attempt to genuinely track public benefit.
    Many of the UR districts in Portland will take 30, 40 or more years to pay off with proerty taxes. The presumptions about taxes being being substantially greater than without the URA is a very loose and self serving presumption. Taking credit and attributing any and all development to the UR investment while ignoring the tremendous costs and traditional private growth that occurs without it. It’s almost like officials believe nothing can happen without the big public investment. Even when it’s prime property they dream up way to cast it as blight or even block development till they get their way.
    Many of the sites, such as Cascade Station and SoWa could have been developed long ago without UR had the city not mandated a particular TOD or other Mixed-use model. Cascade Station is devouring 100s of millions in property taxes only to end up the very big box cluster that it was to prohibit. And without any consideration or contributing to the traffic impact at all.
    SoWa is turning out to be the same only worse.
    It was prime river front property that property owners attempted to develope years ago. Now the city will be diverting many 100s of millions in property taxes and other money, to subsidize another TOD model and smart growth high density. And again traffic impact is being completely ignored. That comes from ODOT.
    So here you have the Pearl, Cascade Station SoWa and other UR districts who are not only getting huge on site direct subsidies but also the same subsidies by associaton to the greater infrastructe which you keep attributing to non UR development.
    And you call it a wash?
    Geeze what spin.
    And these false choices between the blight of a abandoned rail yards or underused industrial areas and thriving neighborhoods only to be provided by reckless and excessive diverting of property taxes is disingenuous.
    Portlanders were never given the opportunity to choose the “latter” and have their basic services raided for lavish condos and isolated makeovers.
    Your views on UR theories ignore the many failures in application and outcomes.

    Around $65 million per year is now being diverted away from City/County/Schools, and it’s only getting worse.
    With UR district having been drawn to sweep up revenue from large tracks of property surrounding the targetted projects many developments and their tax growth having nothing to do with Urban Renewal “investment”, get diverted right along with the planned UR development.
    What’s missing is the legitimacy of UR and TIF as it has been abused and moneies wasted far beyond any genuine public benefit.
    Compounding this scenario is the fatc that there is no effort by anyone involved to track and account for the public investments.

    It’s viewed as free money by our local politicians and supported by activists enamoured with the development it subsidizes. While never concerned when severe misjudgments and failed outcomes occur. INfact they seem to go out of their way to paint failure as a success.
    And at the same time clammoring on about other private development needing to pay more.
    Clearly folks here have no idea of the true costs of private development. Lost in the activists rhetoric and locked into opinions there’s little chance of them understanding the severity of Urban Renewal Boondoggles.
    Instead it’s gee whiz look at Paris.
    I believe I have read Lenny declare SoWa a success on several occasions. Always the reassuring loyalist echoing that OHSU is “Portland’s biggest employer” so anything goes, regardless if mismanagement places at risk that status.
    As far as the example of 14 lot subdivision, every home in that development will be paying property taxes, gas taxes and other local taxes to fund government and infrstructue. The idea that the developer should have to add to the cost of the homes an endless stream of System Development Charges ignores government mission creep. Creep which has them recklessly wasting endless millions on the Beaverton Round and SoWa like misadventures while at the same time crying for more money to replace it.
    General Fund millions have already been raided from Portland Parks and PDOT to bail out the early fiscal calamity at SoWa. The Tram was only the tip of the iceberg.

  24. John, any chance you could add your last name or use a different moniker? I would rather people not get us mixed up, especially since I disagree with you, and I don’t want your comments attributed to me…

    John is far to common to be used by itself.

    And I have to state that I pretty much 100% disagree with you.

    For the record, I will always use my full name…

  25. “The Eastside Streetcar is a current project that needs to overcome many sorts of opposition if it is to become another important example of innovative urban planning.”

    >>>> Innovative???? The streetcar is outright REACTIONARY–a 1900 mode of transit that will only get clogged up on MLK & Grand.

    It has a lot of opposition because a lot of the opposition is justified, including from me, a lifetime carless transit user.

  26. The streetcar is outright REACTIONARY–a 1900 mode of transit

    By your standards, the automobile is as much a 1900’s mode of transit, and so are buses.

    (Tip: All of those modes have been refined and improved over the last century.)

  27. Mike and Portland Transport, I think you both should be ashamed. You put up a new blog on Portland Transport, and dedicate it to rational and cordial discussion and the debunking of myths, but it starts out with a package of factual inaccuracies favored developers wish we’d believe, then responds to those who offer more correct information with the direction that they need to discuss more.

    Would Portland Transport add a blog which started out by “debunking the myth” that bicyclists pay gas taxes? Would it then invite posters who point out that the statistics show otherwise to further discussion?

    Favored developers have gotten a tremendous free ride, that others elsewhere don’t, and it is paid for by thinning the soup of services elsewhere in the city. The amounts on your yellow sheet from the county are generated pro-forma. People who live elsewhere in the city are covering those costs for you. They are also waiting longer for police and fire response, getting less maintenance of their parks, and so forth, so that the developer of your building wouldn’t have to pay fees and impact charges.

    Mike, if you want to argue that the soup isn’t too thin yet, and say why you think so, that would be a reasonable topic for further discussion. If you want to argue that the extent and pace of TIF projects isn’t already over-reaching, and say why you think so, that’s a reasonable topic for further discussion. Posting disinformation about how TIF works in your blog isn’t fostering discussion, it’s just dishonorable, whether cordial or not.

  28. Sidenote in case my example was too convoluted — Yes, I know most bicyclists pay at least their fair share of gas taxes!

  29. Posting disinformation about how TIF works in your blog isn’t fostering discussion, it’s just dishonorable, whether cordial or not.

    Care to identify the specific disinformation that you allege Mike provided, and give us links to your sources for the correct information? After all, if you’re going to lay shame upon the author (and by extension, in your own accusation, the blog), isn’t it the “honorable” thing to do?

  30. Katie said,
    Mike and Portland Transport, I think you both should be ashamed. You put up a new blog on Portland Transport, and dedicate it to rational and cordial discussion and the debunking of myths, but it starts out with a package of factual inaccuracies favored developers wish we’d believe, then responds to those who offer more correct information with the direction that they need to discuss more.

    Whoops, I guess I wasn’t too clear on which myths I was debunking. I apologize for any misunderstanding.

    I am no expert on Pearl or Urban Renewal funding, and I moved here 18 months ago after the Pearl was a reality and so did not read any discussions that led up to it. That said, I’ve seen, on this blog and elsewhere, several stereotypes promulgated. Like most stereotypes, these are half-truths, and it was these I set out to debunk.

    (1) Pearl residences are all glitzy condos. Nope, they’re not all condos and they’re not all glitzy.

    (2) Pearl residents are all rich. Nope, I don’t know my neighbors’ incomes, so I don’t know whether they’re rich. I know I’m not rich, and there are at least 1000 units of affordable housing here.

    (3) Pearl residents are all yuppies. Nope, I’m not a yuppie and there are a lot more like me.

    I’ve done my best to get my facts right, such as:

    (1) my property-tax bill — I just paid it

    (2) my best estimate of the total property tax paid by condo owners in my building — I know my square-footage as a fraction of the total, and just extrapolated on the assumption that all the units have about the same value per square foot. I think that’s a reasonably good assumption because the building is just a few years old and all the units are the same age.

    (3) my list of affordable buildings in the Pearl — I cited my sources and stand corrected if my sources are wrong.

    If I misunderstand the “excess” notion, I think I’m in good company. Certainly on this blog there is no general agreement on this. There is much dispute about the costs and benefits of urban renewal — we wouldn’t be having this discussion if the facts were clear enough for all to agree.

    I do not believe we are receiving “welfare” from other parts of the city — the “welfare for yuppies” rhetoric is what started me on this. None of the discussion here so far has convinced me that we’re not paying our share.

    Sorry if you think I’m wrong in my interpretation, and sorry if you think that error is dishonorable, but I had no intention of misleading anyone.

    Katie, if you’ll say clearly just which of my “package of facts” are inaccurate, and how you know they’re inaccurate, I’ll read your arguments carefully.

    Mike

  31. John Reinhold,

    OK on the different moniker.

    And it’s fine to disagree with me on interpretation of Urban Renewal but I beleive many of you here are flat out misrepresenting much about the use, or rather abuse of TIF.

    By way of the usual superficial theories of UR and typical routine UR supporters use to defend it.
    There is much, the bulk of it, about UR and the Pearl which never seems to be discussed.

    The actual cost and what it provides the city is no where to be found.

    John R 100% disagrees with me, but seemingly trusts accepts Mike’s narrow perception even when he admits he knows little about the Pearl and Urban Renewal.

    There is no question the Pearl has involved many millions in public funds and bot the cost and the outcome forever obscured.
    But even as one looks at the housing targets there’s trouble. http://www.pdc.us/pdf/ura/river_district/housing/housing-implementation-strategy.pdf
    ? Production of units by income has been uneven.
    ? Development exceeded the target in the upper (over 120% MFI) income category by 1,324 units.
    ? Development fell short in the extremely low income range (0-30% MFI) by 253 units, and in the low income range (31-50%) by 67 units, and in the moderate income range (51-80% MFI) by 246 units.
    ? The income category in which production is severely lagging behind the goal is the middle income range (81-120%) falling short by 759 units.

    But the bottom line is wouldn’t eveyone like to use their neighborhood’s own property taxes to fix up their own neighborhood? For 20 or 30 years?
    The notion that the Pearl, or any other UR district is paying taxes to basic services like everyone else is just plain false.

    And any honest accounting show that millions upon millions have gone towards subsidizing the affluent and lining the pockets of property owners and developers who the city partners with. There no question the Pearl is a pretty place with bussling activity.
    But the “pretty” cannot be the sole benchmark of success and legitimacy without any consideration of the many millions in public funds spent and where they ended up.
    A recent Portland City Club report that PDC accounting has been regularly using preliminary estimates in place of monies spent.
    So lax, irresponsible and without oversight is the PDC and Urban Renewal that it’s fan club should be rejected every time it echoes praises.

  32. my personal bottom line is that i want to see my taxes going to making portland a better place to live.

    i very much appreciated the long creepy walk under the lovejoy ramp. and i loved mountain biking around the piles of crap in the abandoned train yard.

    however, the pearl contributes far more to the portland experience then having a wasteland so close to the center of the city.

    why should development only occur when it brings the most profit to a developer? is that a good way to build a city? is that a good way to guide our settlement patterns?

    most people do not think so (just ask the hundreds of kids with asthma in my neighborhood due to I-5 traffic). thats why portland has subsidies that help certain types of projects pencil out.

    since we are a city that is near universally considered one of the nation’s best, i think the basic idea of subsidizing growth one we should stick with. even though there is a degree of corruption with the process (as there is with all development all over the world).

  33. George, I think you hit on the key point.

    “We, the people” through our elected officials have determined how we want our city and region to develop, and how our public dollars are to be spent to bring that about.

    Portland’s not perfect, but most people (living here or not) seem to like it pretty well and think it’s generally going in the right direction. I’m not making excuses for corruption and malfeasance, to whatever degree those things exist in Portland. But it seems that those issues get brought up by people whose real issue is that they are fundamentally opposed to high-density urban development and public transportation.

  34. [Moderator note: The datestamp on this comment was adjusted in error while trying to retrieve another comment from the junk folder. The comment has been moved to just below the comment which it quotes, but this may not reflect the actual time when it was originally posted.]

    nuovorecord said:

    Portland’s not perfect, but most people (living here or not) seem to like it pretty well and think it’s generally going in the right direction. I’m not making excuses for corruption and malfeasance, to whatever degree those things exist in Portland. But it seems that those issues get brought up by people whose real issue is that they are fundamentally opposed to high-density urban development and public transportation.

    I couldn’t agree more. I moved here 18 months ago after 30 years in a region (DC) where the local and state governance is, for the most part, really dysfunctional. I appreciated before moving here that Portland seems to work much better, and I haven’t been disappointed yet (well, except for the Chavez/Interstate mess…). I made my choice, and I’m not planning to leave. As my wife says, “nirvana it ain’t, but it beats the alternatives hands-down.”

    I like public transportation and high-density development. Obviously I’m not the only one who does.

    It’s clear there are many who do not, who are “fundamentally opposed”. Fine, that’s their right. On the other hand, they choose to live here, and can make their disagreement known through advocacy groups, the electoral process, and, yes, the blogosphere.

    My issue with John, and Katie, and Jim Karlock, and Randall O’Toole, is that they can’t resist lacing their analyses with slurs and angry rhetoric, as though they have a monopoly on truth.

    Differences of opinion with them are “dishonorable” (Katie) and “flat out misrepresenting” (John). Someone yesterday described “disinformation”, which they must know means deliberate misinformation, not just disagreement or difference of interpretation. John tells us that “any honest accounting” will support his case, implying, apparently, that any other accounting is dishonest.

    Yeah, I’m probably naive and maybe misinformed, and certainly no economist. On the other hand, I’m intelligent and well educated, and pretty openminded. I’d love to engage with people who are willing to make their case in a civil and intelligent manner. Even in the blogosphere, I’m free to choose those with whom I’ll converse and those I’ll ignore or boycott.

    This is overall a pretty intelligent blog; that’s why I’m spending my time in this corner of the blogosphere. You can bet I’ll turn my back on those who insist on slurring those who disagree with them. Curb your anger and you might find a bigger audience.

    Mike

  35. I’m sitting here in the Interstate URA on Swan Island. Not sure Freightliner’s property taxes have gone up in the last half dozen years, but most likely not by much. Commercial property does not have the 3% automatic increase that residential does. Anyway the level of taxes that they paid in ’99 prior to the formation of Interstate URA are still going to schools/city and county. The increment (TIF) goes to projects inside the Interstate URA.
    Who decided to divert the increase of the last few years to public capital investment within the URA boundary? Portland City Council. One of their motivations was funding Interstate MAX…the city’s share of the local match was about $30 million (plus interest) against a project cost of $350, most of which was picked up by the federal government. So it leveraged some serious money.
    Was it a good investment? I believe is was; if you don’t, well then its a waste of money that should have gone to schools, etc.. But most of the people in the URA as well as those elected to guide this City would differ with you. Indeed in the ’98 vote on light rail…which lost in the region…nearly 2/3s of Portlanders voted “Yes” including all but two precincts in N Portland (and that was for a $400Million property tax).
    Its called the “peoples will,” and if you don’t like it, throw your hat into the ring for a Council seat and good luck to you. But mind your manners around here.

  36. Lenny said,

    Its called the “peoples will,” and if you don’t like it, throw your hat into the ring for a Council seat and good luck to you. But mind your manners around here.

    Right-o, well put. And 3 seats will be filled this year, since Sten’s announcement that he’s quitting. So the election(s) will fill Potter’s and Adams’s and Sten’s seats. Plus Randy Leonard is up for reelection.

    So if you live in Portland and think the Council and PDC are making bad choices for the people, run for office or support candidates who share your views.

    And Lenny, thanks for the support on the mind-your-manners issue.

    Mike

  37. Mike;

    Unfortunately, you ‘can’t just run for office.

    You have to be ‘connected’ to even have a whisper of a chance of getting elected.

  38. Please don’t count me among the anti-density, anti-transit crowd. I am anti-corporatist and pro-transparency, and certainly pro-transit. That said, I consider the soup way too thin where I am, and the public finances being way over-used to benefit people who don’t need it at the expense of people who do.

    The disinformation that pictures TIF as free money appears above and elsewhere in Portland media is intentional misinformation that the beneficiaries of it want circulated. It is only free if the newly developed areas create zero demand in basic services — no police calls, no fire calls, no kids needing school — over what was there before. The local blogs, I think including this one, are full of “astroturfing” on this.

    Here is some background on TIF, in the links below. You will notice from these sources that over-use and mis-use of TIF has progressive critics elsewhere in the US, not just in Portland. The depiction of all TIF overuse critics as anti-progress is a slur. I might care about being called impolite if the call wasn’t accompanied by that slur.

    “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_increment_financing”

    “http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles/2006/tax_increment_financing.php”

    The idea that it is all good because Portland’s quality of life is highly rated is anti-democratic. A majority of people who live here do have a problem with how things are going, and very specifically with the gap between haves and have-nots and how public finances aggravate rather than ameliorate that. That is why Potter’s big conversation with Portland project didn’t and never will release a final report.

    Here’s a bit from the Reclaim Democracy site’s article on TIF linked above that I think everyone involved in this debate should read carefully:

    “There is always this expectation with TIFs that the economic growth is a way to create jobs and grow the economy, but then push the costs across the public spectrum,” says Greg LeRoy, author of The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation. “But what is missing here is that the cost of developing private business has some public costs. Road and sewers and schools are public costs that come from growth.” Unless spending is cut—and if a TIF really does generate economic growth, spending is likely to rise, as the local population grows—the burden of paying for these services will be shifted to other taxpayers. Adding insult to injury, those taxpayers may include small businesses facing competition from well-connected chains that enjoy TIF-related tax breaks. In effect, a TIF subsidizes big businesses at the expense of less politically influential competitors and ordinary citizens.

  39. Yes, you have to be connected to 1000 people who have $5. A not insurmountable hurdle. But its easier to just shoot your mouth off on the web.

  40. Good greif Lenny and Mike, the “people’s will” was the no vote in the election. Excerpting out the Portland portion is ridiculous. Especially when it wasn’t those Portlanders who were to pay fo it. Had you ran a new “people’s will” vote byb Portlander’s only with them footing the bill I suspect the same outcome would have occured.
    But then we don’t get to vote on Light Rail anymore.
    As far as the increment (TIF) goes. With interest over 20 or 30 years Interstate MAX will devour at least $60 million in property taxes.

    The details and accounting in TIF matter.

    Mike you appear to be confusing opinion with accounting.
    Accounting is math. There’s only one version.

    So I’ll say again any honest “accounting” will support my opinion that much of the use of TIF has been reckless mismanagement, resulting in waste, fraud and abuse at the expence of basic services for decades to come. There are other opinions but not “other accounting”.

    Lenny’s attempt to minimize the cost and adverse effects on basic services is without recongition of the true TIF accounting.
    He is misrepresenting.

    Back to the Pearl, the Meier and Frank building makeover with a luxury hotel on top is getting millions from the Pearl/River UR District.
    Another example of nonvoter approved diverting of property taxes which would otherwise go to basic services.
    Why does Lenny use “the last few years” when the diverting is for decades? To give a false impression. That’s the lifeblood of perpetuating Urban Renewal abuse.
    And that’s hardly being mannerly.

  41. Katie wrote: The disinformation that pictures TIF as free money appears above and elsewhere in Portland media is intentional misinformation that the beneficiaries of it want circulated.

    Who here claimed that TIF was “free money”? Are you sure you’re not misrepresenting the argument?

  42. “Yes, you have to be connected to 1000 people who have $5. A not insurmountable hurdle. But its easier to just shoot your mouth off on the web.”

    1000 people with 5 still doesn’t mean you can get elected!

    I’ll refer you to my standard response to your insults. Luckily I have this prepared for you guys when you start your abusive behaviour towards those of us you do not like or agree with.

    http://amargul.blogspot.com/2007/12/pin-heads-of-portland-transportcom.html

  43. Katie:

    So if the Pearl, SoWa, and any other TIF developments weren’t built, how would that increase significantly the amount of funding available to provide services elsewhere? In other words, how much money in public services does the Pearl siphon off from say, Lents?

    Further, say we don’t provide TIF to incent high-density development. How then, do you propose to develop Portland, keeping the city’s planning and development goals intact?

    These are critical questions. I don’t think it’s fair to criticize a strategy without offering an alternative solution that meets the goals and objectives of the region.

  44. Mike: “About 30% of my property taxes are going to schools, according to my county tax bill. I have no school-age kids; as far as I know neither does anyone else in my building. So I suppose you could say my building is contributing about $240,000. a year in “welfare” to people who choose to send their kids to Portland public schools. Right?”

    Wrong.

    It would be interesting to know where it really does go, but that would require honest and transparent accounting by the PDC, something about which we can only dream.

  45. nuovorecord, The strategy choices have been made in the back room for decades, and you know mere mortals haven’t a voice there. Nor do the goals get debated in an honest way with the public at large. Portland has been operating on a nearly pure technocratic model in this regard. The lack of democracy involved is the problem. You are only challenging me to substitute my personal technocratic scheme for that of the current crop of back-roomers. Not taking the bait!

    Show me a well democratized decision-making process, put that in place, and then I’ll be happy to mix it up about goals and strategies.

  46. Katie writes: Wrong.

    Are you saying Mike is wrong when he says what it says on his property tax bill, or are you saying his simple extrapolation to his entire building is flat-out wrong (why?), or are you saying that on the Multnomah County property tax form where it clearly subtotals “Education Taxes”, that those taxes aren’t actually being spent for education purposes, at least when paid by Pearl District residents?

  47. Katie Says:

    Mike: “About 30% of my property taxes are going to schools, according to my county tax bill. I have no school-age kids; as far as I know neither does anyone else in my building. So I suppose you could say my building is contributing about $240,000. a year in “welfare” to people who choose to send their kids to Portland public schools. Right?”

    Katie: Wrong.

    It would be interesting to know where it really does go, but that would require honest and transparent accounting by the PDC, something about which we can only dream.

    Hmmm. Your comment sent me back to the flip side of my county tax bill, “How Your Property Tax Dollars Are Spent”. To summarize, from each dollar:

    — 40 cents to cities for police/fire/parks/”other services”

    — 35 cents to public schools, community colleges, and special districts such as Metro and TriMet

    — 25 cents to the county, with a further breakout into
    —- 11.1 cents public safety
    —- 4.9 cents library
    —- 4.1 cents community services
    —- 2.5 cents health/disability/seniors
    —- 2.4 cents services for families/children

    I stand corrected on the schools question — possibly those “special districts” eat up a lot of that 35 cents, though there’s no further breakout from the tax bill. Where does PDC fit in? Is it hidden as one of those “special districts”? If not, where does PDC’s money come from?

    Yes, transparency would be a Good Thing. No quarrel with that. Do you think the passage of 26-92 last May will contribute to that?

    Mike

  48. Katie said:

    Please don’t count me among the anti-density, anti-transit crowd. I am anti-corporatist and pro-transparency, and certainly pro-transit.

    Sorry, Katie. I think your post yesterday was the first I’ve ever seen from you. You sounded like those guys (using hot-button polemical terms like “disinformation”, etc.) so I lumped you in with them. I didn’t mean to slur you.

    That said, you may have experience I lack with “disinformation” in this town. As a new guy on the block, I’m well aware that I lack some useful information. That’s one of the reasons I hang out on this blog — to get better educated on the information sources. I’ll have a look at the ones you cited here.

    The blogosphere is full of assertions and cherry-picked numbers on any given issue. But primary-source information, especially quantitative information, is harder to find (at least on the web) than I expected it to be in Portland. Then again, in my former life I had a day job and some extracurricular interests, and spent little time on civic stuff. Maybe it was even worse back in the East; that would not surprise me.

    Finally, I appreciate (and share) your sentiments about corporatism. On the other hand, my tendency is to treat differences of interpretation between pro- and anti- people (on any issue) as, well, differences of interpretation. Call me naive, but generally I’m pretty slow to accuse people of lies or disinformation. I prefer the “let us reason together” approach — much less stressful:-).

    Mike

  49. OK. Should have at least said, “Welcome to Portland!” in there somewhere. Sorry for that.

    For the record… The amounts shown on the yellow tax bill are where the $$ would be going if no $$ were being raked off to the development projects. That data is generated pro-forma and isn’t accurate for taxpayers in urban renewal districts. How the payments actually get distributed and even what they amount to is still behind the green curtain waiting for transparency to be required.

    I think we can all look forward to lots of public discussion of these issues in the upcoming mayor and council races. I hope there will be consensus for getting all of this out in the sunshine.

  50. Katie et al,

    RE: (dis)information and transparency —

    (1) the “urban renewal” line item on my tax bill is just under 10% of the total.

    (2) the Portland School Dist #1 line item, and the schools local option levy, total just over 27% of the bill. These are line item dollar amounts, not vague pie-chart slices. So when I asserted that 30% of my property tax bill went to the schools, I was off by 3%. Katie, did I miss something important?

    OK, now I’m starting to surf around the PDC site. Katie et al, on this page:
    http://www.pdc.us/about_pdc/pdcfunding.asp
    is there anything specific I should look for that indicates PDC isn’t being transparent?

    Any other PDC pages I should look at?

    Please don’t send me to advocacy blogs — I’m determined to dig out as much first-hand data as I can find on the web. I want the government reports, not just bloggers’ opinions of those reports.

    Mike

    PS — I have an uneasy feeling this is going off-topic from the transport issue, but OTOH, in this town transit funding seems to be so intimately tied up in urban renewal and land use that I find it hard to discuss one without understandng the other.

  51. Katie said,

    For the record… The amounts shown on the yellow tax bill are where the $$ would be going if no $$ were being raked off to the development projects. That data is generated pro-forma and isn’t accurate for taxpayers in urban renewal districts. How the payments actually get distributed and even what they amount to is still behind the green curtain waiting for transparency to be required.

    Not to be too argumentative, but how do you know that? What sources do you have to support that statement?

    I think we can all look forward to lots of public discussion of these issues in the upcoming mayor and council races. I hope there will be consensus for getting all of this out in the sunshine.

    I couldn’t agree more. With 3 open seats and a 4th up for re-election, we do need to pin the candidates down as best we can. I will certainly cast my votes very carefully.

    Full disclosure: my wife and I sent Chris $5 each. I think public funding is fundamentally a Good Thing and want to support it. But I’m not supporting any particular candidate (yet).

    I was rather disappointed to read yesterday (or in today’s Trib) that only Amanda has qualified so far. I may send some $5 checks to the others.

    For all the imperfections in a public-funding system, it beats the alternatives, certainly at the municipal level. I guess most people disagree, and would rather see back-room funding. That’s a cryin’ shame, as public funding is one important way to get candidates out of the back rooms and into the light.

    Mike

  52. Mike said: PS — I have an uneasy feeling this is going off-topic from the transport issue, but OTOH, in this town transit funding seems to be so intimately tied up in urban renewal and land use that I find it hard to discuss one without understandng the other.

    I think it’s entire germane to the discussion, simply because that seems to be the basis of the arguments used by those who oppose Portland’s planning decisions in general.

    Katie said: The lack of democracy involved is the problem. You are only challenging me to substitute my personal technocratic scheme for that of the current crop of back-roomers. Not taking the bait!

    Katie – I wasn’t trying to bait you. Sorry if it came across that way. I just get weary of reading all the posts on this blog that have no purpose other than to criticize. It’s easy to point out problems; it’s difficult to propose solutions and get people to buy into those.

    If you think that Portland is developing without the benefit of public involvement, that’s your prerogative. You may very well be right. But that’s different from discussing the merits of those decisions. Are you saying that you are in favor of the outcomes, not the process?

  53. “By your standards, the automobile is as much a 1900’s mode of transit, and so are buses.”

    >>>> But contemporary streetcars are still slow with almost no operational flexibilty. A GOOD modern bus, and not the spartan ‘tanks’ that Trimet uses, is MUCH better in flexibility and variety of tailored service one can offer.

  54. I suspect Katie is correct that your property tax bill does not reflect the amount going to TIF. The line item for Urban Renewal is probably the portion that is due to the way Measure 47/50 “refinanced” certain Urban Renewal revenue streams – everyone sees that on their bill city wide, whether they are in a district or not.

    TIF is incredibly complicated. I took a semester-long course at PSU for citizen activists and it only made me smart enough to know what I don’t know.

    One way that ‘frozen’ tax rates ‘siphon off’ dollars is that the new districts use City services (police, fire, etc.) but don’t fund them at sustainable levels until the district expires. I’m not saying that TIF isn’t useful, but everyone needs to go in with their eyes open and the complexity tends to cloud things.

    The County and School District have gotten better about making sure they get offsetting value out of projects in districts that are diverting their revenues.

    In the long term I’d rather see TIF replaced with some kind of capital budgeting system for the City (because we DO need to make investments), but the district concept creates some weird effects and there are genuine concerns about equity.

  55. Chris, Thanks for chiming in on the tax bill. You are correct.

    As far as giving citations for these details, such as how the increment is calculated, exactly how much was claimed under it for each project and what those funds have been spent on, the Council demanded affirmative answers to these questions from the PDC during the year just closed, and never got them. For what it is worth, my own knowledge comes from having labored as a “bean counter” or “sharp pencil expert” in those dungeons, myself. My idea of the reason you won’t find anything in print that answers these questions is that the process is, to use the genteel euphemism, “non-compliant”.

    I’m hoping that after the dust settles on the upcoming local races, we’ll get a clean sweep, audits that are worth the paper they are printed on, with everything brought into compliance with GAAP, and Oregon Budget Law, etc. One can look at those if you want to see how it is supposed to work. The Multnomah County Tax Supervising and Conservation Commission is another place where you should be able to find detailed information.

    The blogger Jack Bogdanski, an economist himself, has taken a run at accumulating and parsing all the print documents that exist. These are not comprehensive, but there are certain official print representations that governments can’t avoid having to make. He’s documented how little real information can be gleaned from it all on his blog. He was able to get a handle on the total debt, which by itself is an impressive accomplishment. The figure is pretty impressive, too.

    In the interest of disclosure, I am an Amada Fritz supporter and gave her my $5. She reliably stands for the medicinal value of sunlight. I urge anyone who agrees to support her in return.

  56. TIF is not nearly as complicated as proponents claim it is.
    The biggest problem is the enormity of missing documentation by the PDC.

    Katie mentioned,
    “The Council demanded affirmative answers to these questions from the PDC during the year just closed, and never got them”

    That is rampant and standard operating procedure at the PDC.
    Having eyewitnessed this scenario over and over again at SoWa it’s a staggering problem rendering the Urban Renewal thoroughly corrupted by a combination of incompetence, near total lack of genuine oversight, self preservation and conflict of interest.
    And their are many deliberate misrepresentations all along the way. Phony numbers,line items, estimates and revenue projections in continual morphing to fit the play of the day makes it impossible to either follow the money or anticipate where it will be going, or how much, or where it will come from.
    The PDC uses preliminary “estimates” in accounting for money spent, fails to file state mandated yearly reports on impacts to basic services and many other shady practices to cover over the money trails.

  57. I’m not sure I can add to this discussion but here’s an observation from a lurker (and a Pearl resident). Too often statements are made with out any facts or support given. People simply say something without any support and we are expected to believe that it is a fact. And, in my opinion, its very often those who “oppose” the perceived view of this blog, though not limited to them.

    Absolute statement without anything to support the position does nothing to further the discussion or sway people’s opinions. Personally, I’m still learning about URAs and TIF, its still acronym greek to me. But I have a hard time taking your positions seriously if there is nothing but an absolute statement with no supporting rationale.

    I love where I live, I think the development is successful, and I’m very aware its controversial. I would love to become more educated about it all, that’s why I bring this point up. I’ve read BoJacks blog and really find it useless. While there are often good points of view discussed, the rhetoric the points are buried in are tiresome. So when you respond with a different point of view or want to correct someone that their “facts” are wrong, please provide the supporting facts.

    I’m not trying to slam or discredit anyone, I just want to know why it is you believe something.

    Thanks

    PS even with my comment, this discussion is so much more informative than most anything I’ve read on many other blogs.

  58. kdaphoto, glad you’re getting value out of the site!

    Referencing data to back up views/opinions is of course a matter of having enough time, and we try our best, but there’s never enough time in the day…

  59. This probably too long and against rules about posting stories but it isn’t available to link.

    Pondering horse barns, horse laughs
    08/12/03
    ROBERT LANDAUER
    My grandchildren never tire of visiting the police horse barn and paddock on Northwest Naito Parkway in Portland. Somehow, the horses fascinate the kids more than do my lectures on the project’s urban-renewal tax-increment financing.

    I like the horse paddock, too, but a national report released Monday suggests that we also need to keep an eye peeled on whether we get fair value for such projects and whether those who get tax breaks keep their promises.
    The study (“Straying From Good Intentions: How States Are Weakening Enterprise Zone and Tax Increment Financing Programs”) comes from Good Jobs First (www.goodjobsfirst.org ), which says it seeks “to ensure that subsidized businesses are held accountable for . . . effective results.”
    In urban-renewal areas, the authors explain, property taxes are redistributed. When districts begin, the value of property is frozen at the existing level, and taxes collected on that base go to the city, county, schools and other taxing bodies as before.
    As projects are completed and property values rise, the extra taxes from them — the tax increment — are used to pay off loans that fund the renewal.
    One typical effect of this diversion of new tax money is that successful projects create demand for more local services — schools, for example. But those services must be provided without new taxes from the urban renewal until the project’s bonds are paid off, often seven to 30 years in the future.
    We are not talking about chump change. Seventy-one urban-renewal tax-increment-financing plan areas operated in Oregon during fiscal-year 2002-03. Their total frozen property-tax value was $6.36 billion, according to the state Department of Revenue. Above this frozen base, projects that could raise new tax revenue were valued at $5.95 billion. The property-tax increment raised from the “excess value” produced in the urban-renewal areas (and diverted from services) was $102 million in 2002-03, up from $95.7 million a year earlier.
    Enterprise zones may also have job-generating and anti-blight goals, but they go about their work differently. The idea behind enterprise zones is to provide property-tax exemptions for businesses locating or expanding in selected economically distressed areas. This can encourage businesses to invest where people need it most.
    In Portland, “E-zone” tax exemptions (now a total of $10,000 per full-time hire spread over a maximum of five years) helped create or save many hundreds of jobs at the Nabisco bakery, at silicon wafer maker Wacker Siltronic and at Oregon Steel Mills.
    Statewide in 2001-02, the assessed value of property exempted from property taxes in 48 standard enterprise zones was $1 billion. This produced a loss of $28 million in the 2001-03 biennium for direct government services. Exemptions of $47.9 million of property in long-term rural enterprise zones produced another $1 million loss of property taxes in 2001-03.
    Authors of the national report include Oregon among states that have loosened eligibility criteria for these programs or added factors unrelated to blight or poverty, or established new types of districts with weaker criteria.
    I take a compelling message from the study:
    If we are going to divert large amounts of tax revenue to economic development and away from public services for lengthy periods, shifting the burden of paying for local government to homeowners and other businesses, we must install monitoring systems that work well. And compliance rules must be able to adjust, revoke and recapture tax breaks for cause.
    Oregon voters and officials need to know whether jobs are created and sustained. (“Of the 136 Fort Wayne [Ind.] companies with abatements, 89 employ fewer than they said they would,” the Journal Gazette newspaper reported July 20.)
    Oregonians need to be sure that tax breaks don’t just shift jobs from nearby locations, yielding a definite tax loss but no net employment gain.
    We must be able to judge whether we are paying fair prices for public benefits that truly are delivered — or whether our gullibility raises horse laughs from those who get tax breaks.
    Reach Robert Landauer, editorial columnist, at 503-221-8157, or 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 or robertlandauer@news.oregonian.com

  60. “This probably too long and against rules about posting stories but it isn’t available to link.”

    That was a great post, and completely within boundaries of the rules here, imo.

  61. John E. Pondering horse barns, horse laughs
    JK: A few additional points:
    The frozen base value is not indexed for inflation, so the UR district gets to capture inflation on the pre existing properties.

    UR districts can last 20-30 years and issue 20-30(?) year bonds on their last day, so it can be 40-60(?) years from inception to paying the last bond.

    All of the UR districts have a citizen advisory board. The citizens are the local neighborhood people and property owners who will profit from the spending of government money. They get to advise the PDC on spending city money improving their own neighborhood and increasing their property values. They also influence whose property gets zoned to higher value.

    Another thing that can happen is a developer buys a lot of worthless land, say in the Pearl or South Waterfront before the UR district is formed, then the developer presents a vision to the elected officials (and a few campaign donations). When the UR district is formed, the developer gets to capture the huge increase in land value that results from the UR district putting in all those new streets and parks, where there was only polluted waste land, so to speak. Sweet – somewhat like having the power to tax.

    Of course it is not just the greedy developers. There is plenty of greed to go around: land investors (speculators) PDC employees keeping their jobs, city planners keeping their jobs, banks selling the bonds, engineering firms designing and building this stuff, consultants and construction unions.

    Bet you all can’t guess how many of these people just happen to be big campaign donors?
    (hint: its like looking at the donors in favor of light rail the last time that it was on the ballot – most were going to make lots of $$$ off of the project.)

    Thanks
    JK

  62. OK then try this one on for size.

    This is routine Urban Renewal. Not Portland but it demonstrates the mindset and how emboldened the purveyors of Urban Renewal TIF have become. Do a google search for this consultant Tashman as see how often this dishonest hit man is the go to guy for Municipal Urban Renewal consulting.

    “He said he didn’t think the city council or Troutdale’s citizens
    would understand the complexities of tax increment financing, so he withheld
    the tax increase impact information”

    From below:
    “urban renewal consultant Jeff Tashman admitted he intentionally withheld information about
    the property tax increase until sending an e-mail to the city on January 9, 2006.”

    During questioning at the public hearing, I asked Tashman why he intentionally deceived us. …..

    Tashman has been involved in just about every recent urban renewal district in the state, so he knew exactly what he was doing.

    BlogThis!
    Troutdale Councilor Canfield

    I’m Robert Canfield. I’m a Troutdale City Councilor. You can reach me at
    robert@robertcanfield.com, or post comments on this blog. This is the place for
    a great discussion of Troutdale issues! (Disclaimer: my posts are my own opinion
    and not necessarily those of the Troutdale City Council)

    More blogs about Troutdale.
    Monday, August 14, 2006
    Hey, OREGONIAN: $20 Million Isn’t A Molehill

    I take exception to Eric Mortenson’s article, “Citizens passion spent on
    molehills of public policy” in the August 13, 2006 Sunday Oregonian. The basic
    tone of the article suggested that small town city councils and staff spend too
    much time spinning their wheels on trivial matters. As examples of public policy
    molehills, the article cited an endless public debate about streetlamp colors in
    Sherwood, a public catfight about whether cats should be licensed in Albany, and
    in Troutdale, in Mortenson’s words, “city councilors backpedaled from supporting
    a $15 million urban renewal plan after critics assailed a belated revelation
    that the proposal would increase property taxes — by $7 a year.”

    The “critic” who initially assailed the “belated revelation” was yours truly.
    Belated revelation? No way. It was an outright deception by our urban renewal
    consultant.

    Troutdale’s $7 per year tax increase wasn’t a molehill. According to city staff,
    over the fourteen years of the project’s life this increase will collect
    $577,000 in tax dollars for the urban renewal district. But the tax itself
    wasn’t the most controversial topic. As described earlier here, during a public
    hearing at the January 24, 2006 Troutdale city council meeting, urban renewal
    consultant Jeff Tashman admitted he intentionally withheld information about
    the property tax increase until sending an e-mail to the city on January 9,
    2006.

    During questioning at the public hearing, I asked Tashman why he intentionally
    deceived us. He said he didn’t think the city council or Troutdale’s citizens
    would understand the complexities of tax increment financing, so he withheld
    the tax increase impact information. (In spite of this deception, city staff
    decided to continue using Tashman’s services. Tashman has been involved in just
    about every recent urban renewal district in the state, so he knew exactly what
    he was doing. Unfortunately, Troutdale City Council rules prohibit us from
    using any influence, persuasion or pressure on the city administrator to hire
    or fire city employees, contractors or consultants.)

    By then, though, the damage on the city’s credibility due to Tashman’s deception
    was already done. Prior to January 9, the city already held two public outreach
    meetings in neighborhood schools,several ad-hoc urban renewal committee
    meetings, a combined citizens advisory/parks advisory committee meeting, and
    several city council work sessions to discuss urban renewal. During these
    meetings, Tashman and city staff were asked about the potential property tax
    impact to Troutdale property owners. We were all told there would be none.

    In addition to the unconscionable deception regarding the tax increase, at the
    same public hearing Tashman admitted that construction estimates he provided
    for the urban renewal plan were “soft”. Some of his supporting data was at
    least eight years old. I’m speaking only for myself and not necessarily for the
    rest of the Troutdale city council, but I didn’t consider fantasy construction
    estimates for a $20 million urban renewal project or intentional deceptions
    regarding $577,000 in property tax increases to be “molehills of public
    policy”.

    There was no backpedaling from urban renewal as the Oregonian article suggests.
    Troutdale’s citizenry and the city council were divided on the entire urban
    renewal issue even before the property tax increase became known. A Troutdale
    urban renewal ballot measure failed with a 70% “no” vote in 2002. We’re still
    paying off the bond for the sewer treatment plant demolished to make way for
    the urban renewal project. The tax revenue going to the urban renewal district
    means less money for area schools.

    I stated several times at council meetings and on robertcanfield.com here, here,
    ,and here that I would not support urban renewal without voter approval. Other
    city councilors were against the project for their own reasons. This division
    of opinion was the reason the city council referred urban renewal to
    Troutdale’s voters, who gave their approval this time.

    Finally, I have to comment on a quote in Mortenson’s article from Ethan Seltzer,
    director of the School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State
    University. Seltzer thinks elected officials and professional staff of small
    cities are too easily distracted by citizen input at public meetings. “It
    doesn’t take a lot of people to make it feel like you have to respond to them”,
    he said.

    With elitist attitudes like this being fed to newly minted urban planners and
    government wonks, it’s no wonder that certain cities and counties in Oregon
    have ignored their constituent’s wishes about light rail, urban renewal, tax
    abatements for million dollar condos, trams, business taxes, publicly financed
    local elections, property rights, I could go on and on. . .

    Troutdale may be a small town, but we listen very closely to our citizens’
    mountains as well as molehills. $20 million isn’t a molehill, and last time I
    checked, we all agree on the color of our light poles. But if the color bugs
    you, come on down. We’ll be glad to talk with you.

    posted by Troutdale Councilor Canfield | 7:30 AM | 0 comments links to this post

  63. JP Says: Private car:…..$0.25 per mile?
    That is an impossibly low number, especially asserting that it includes the cost of road construction and maintenance. That would not even cover the cost of purchasing and fueling the vehicle, let alone be all inclusive. For most vehicles that number will range from 40 to 60 cents per mile and this number will not include the cost of roads not covered through gasoline taxes or tolls.

    JK: Oops, I forgot the reference. But first a little background.

    *The cost of driving per passenger-mile is the cost per vehicle-mile divided by the average number of passengers. Nationally that number is usually given as 1.6, locally it is around 1.2.

    * the common cost you hear, of around $0.5 per mile, is usually the AAA number (that is what the IRS uses) which is cost per vehicle-mile, so that would be $0.31 per passenger-mile at 1.6 passengers, or $0.42 at 1.2 passengers. (See we are already close to my $0.25)

    * there are several interesting things about the AAA calculation. It is tailored to the AAA member’s habits, so the cars are assumed to be bought new and traded in when paid off, for another new car. This makes the depreciation quit a bit more than the average car in the USA. AAA depreciation is $2500-$4200, while the average car is around $1100. On a per mile basis, the cost of ownership (depreciation, license, insurance) can easily be over double the operating cost (maintenance, replaceables, fuel). This is all laid out at: PortlandFacts.com/Transit/AAA_method.htm This uses 2005 data, so the fuel is a bit more, but it is not the biggest expense, so the overall result will change a bit, but not dramatically.

    BTW, the fact that the cost of fuel is only about 1/4 of the total cost, explains why people don’t drive a lot less as fuel prices go up – the total cost changes at about 1/4 the rate of the cost of fuel change on a percentage basis. If gas doubles, the cost of driving will go up by 25%. (I’ll bet a lot of car haters really don’t like this little inconvenient truth.)

    * The $0.25 I gave is the actual cost per passenger-mile ($0.33 per vehicle-mile), using national data of actual usage, not AAA theoretical, adjusted for Portland’s average vehicle occupancy. Its derivation is fully explained at PortlandFacts.com/Transit/Cost-Cars-Transit(2005).htm. One in-accuracy is using two different data sources that have slightly different compositions. This has little practical effect because these sorts of things are not hard numbers anyway, being subject to a lot of real world data problems.

    * Federal highways are entirely paid for out of user fees and 24% of those fees are siphoned off for mass transit. Much federal money also goes to local projects. Put back that 25% (and some other diversions) an it is likely that ALL roads in the whole country would be paid out of user fees. In Portland all roads are paid out of user fees on cars and trucks, while bicycles, pedestrians and trimet buses pay nothing. The exceptions being UR distracts and street lighting.
    See: PortlandFacts.com//Roads/Docs/Delucchi_Chart.htm

    Hope this clears up any mis-understanding.

    JP Says: Good data is the foundation of good decision making!
    JK: You bet it is – glad for the opportunity to shed some light on all of the bad data and bad assumptions out there. Be sure to see the cost of transit based on TriMet’s own data, on that same page. Appalling.

    Thanks
    JK

  64. Regarding JK’s reposted cost-per-passenger-mile of driving figures, here’s a summary of criticisms I’ve made regarding those figures in the past, culled and edited from other posts:

    1. Your $0.25 per passenger mile figure comes from dividing the results of two different values published by two different agencies. You divide the BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) User-operated transportation cost by the FHA (Federal Highway Administration) Person Miles of Travel and then by ODOT figures for Portland-area cities’ rates of passenger occupancy. (I do acknowledge that you are now using the ODOT figures, which is an improvement over past errors.) There is NO indication as to why it is appropriate to divide these two figures to get your result, and to what underlying data may be omitted or duplicative or unresolved. I’ve done a fair number of Google searches trying to find any serious article or study (peer-reviewed or otherwise) that uses those two values like you have, and I can’t find one.

    2. A serious flaw: You are using the FHA value of 2,989,807e6 vehicle miles as your denominator. That is the total miles of “All Motor Vehicles”, including “PASSENGER CARS MOTOR- CYCLES BUSES OTHER 2-AXLE 4-TIRE VEHICLES 2/ SINGLE-UNIT 2-AXLE 6-TIRE OR MORE TRUCKS 3/ COMBINATION TRUCKS” — this is not reflective of a comparison between cars and transit. There is also no proof that this large total including all motor vehicle types in any way relates to the BEA cost figures that you use as your numerator.

    3. Your figures represent all types of miles travelled, including both Urban and Rural. Rural mileage tends to have higher vehicle occupancies and lower costs per vehicle mile. You can’t take a total figure with all mileage types like that and then simply divide it by the Portland Metro area’s vehicle occupancy and get a true reflection of the type of driving done here.

    4. Somewhat related to the above: Most transit miles are urban miles. You cannot compare totals which include a significant number of rural miles directly to transit, which is inherently urban/suburban nature.

    5. TriMet’s transit trips in this region are on average 5.42 miles per originating ride. Short trips like this are inherently higher-cost for autos, because the starting and warm-up wear and tear are spread over fewer miles. They are also lower MPG and higher pollution. Even highly-tuned, highly efficient cars like the Toyota Prius get their worst MPG (sometimes 25% or more below average) in the first 5 minutes of travel due to high idle and emissions warm-up, time spent in the driveway, etc.

    The items above aren’t just nit-picking, they represent fundamental flaws in the presentation:

    If you exclude “SINGLE-UNIT 2-AXLE 6-TIRE OR MORE AND COMBINATION TRUCKS”, that increases the cost per passenger mile by 8 to 9%, and still included within the remaining total are buses, which (according to your own table) have an average occupancy of 21 passengers.

    In other words, you are using totals WHICH INCLUDE TRANSIT FIGURES to arrive at a cost figure which you then use to argue against transit. That’s double-counting.

    On the other side of the equation, the BEA numbers you reference explicitly do NOT include the purchase of buses, trucks, etc. So the BEA figure is low-balled compared to the FHA mileage you are using.

    If you are so certain of your numbers, why can’t you produce a report from a single agency, university, or peer-reviewed journal that divides the figures as you do?

    Finally, and this is very important, if you want to make comparisons to transit, you must do so for the kinds of trips transit serves. I don’t run around comparing a light rail trip from Sunset Transit Center to downtown to a trip from, say, Eugene to Ashland, but you are using numbers that include those kinds of long-distance trips in the total.

    I suggest you check out the extensive study of transportation costs (focusing on a variety of modes, not just autos) done by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute.

    In the study, they go to great effort to identify various cost factors, fixed, variable, and external, and apply them to all modes. Further, they separate out Urban Peak miles from Urban Off-Peak and Rural miles.

    You can see a lot of the cost conclusions in Chapter 6.

    Now, your figures don’t include external costs, so I’ll show the study’s costs both excluding and including external costs for a more direct comparison…

    I believe these figures are in 1996 US dollars.

    They show that average Urban Peak car costs per passenger mile are in the 60+ cent range (close to $1.20 including external costs), while Rural costs per passenger mile are closer to 40+ cents (50+ cents with external costs.)

    Transit, by the way, doesn’t receive glowing cost treatment… they include all subsidies as external costs, so the average passenger-mile cost of transit is very close to automobile. (Although I don’t see if this compares to average miles or urban miles at first glance.)

    JK has previously described the Victoria Transport Policy Institute as a “highly distorted source of mis-information”, but when repeatedly pressed for clarification did not provide references which showed who was leveling that accusation or the basis for that accusation.

  65. [Moderator Note: This comment was retrieved from the junk folder and the timestamp adjusted at the time of retrieval, and again later to correct an error. The time does not reflect when the original comment was made.]

    Hi everyone,

    I want to sincerely thank everyone who’s put useful information out here the last few days. I really appreciate it; it has given me a lot of insight and a lot of homework to do.

    So I have a few questions about the urban renewal issue, specifically about the River District (which is the urban renewal area (URA) that includes the Pearl). First, here’s the homework I’ve done:

    The site http://www.oregon.gov/DOR/STATS contains annual reports titled Oregon Property Tax Statistics. One useful section in these tables shows the excess value for each URA. This is defined as the value that exceeds the “frozen value” at the start of the URA life. The table does not give the base tax, but does shows the tax on the excess. Amounts (rounded to nearest million dollars) are:

    frozen base (from 2003-2004 table) 358; tax 7
    02-03 excess value 360; tax 7
    03-04 excess value 460; tax 9
    05-06 excess value 745; tax 14 or roughly 2% of value
    06-07 excess value 940; tax 18 or roughly 2% of value

    For the first 3 lines, the tax wasn’t in the tables, so I estimated it based on the tax in the last two tables being roughly 2% of value.

    OK, now my questions.

    (1) I think these numbers mean that the value has grown from $358 million to $1.3 billion since the value was frozen (which I think was 1999). Is that correct?

    (2) Someone pointed out here that the tax on the frozen base is itself frozen. It continues to flow but doesn’t increase with inflation or whatever. So am I correct in assuming that in each year, $7 million flowed in from the base value?

    (3) Am I correct in assuming that the tax on the excess has pretty much been used to pay off UR bonds?

    (4) Can someone point me to a source that would show the amount of bonds that have been floated for the River District?

    (5) Can someone point me to a source that would show the amount of public money that’s been invested in the River District, and for what purposes? (That is, what were the bonds used for?)

    I can say for sure that no new police, fire, school, library, or recreation, facilities have been built in the River District. OTOH, streets and sidewalks, and presumably sewers, have been built on those blocks where the railyards were, and not much elsewhere in the district. We also have the two 1-block parks, Jamison and Tanner.

    Thanks again for your help and your politeness!

    Mike

  66. Mike, in most blogs from John, Katie, Karlock and O’Tool, I find it hard to read “anger” in their comments. I find sometimes frustration. And sometimes I see this in other bloggers you are condoning. Telling someone to “mind their manners” or “give your full name” isn’t necessarily a pleasant instigator for dialogue. Maybe the blogger is a PDC employee.

    Some bloggers asking for “verification” for points made is desirable, but blogging is customarily also for giving opinions. Also some bloggers are not adept at conveniently using computers to provide sources. Like myself. But I have years of experience in the world of urban renewal, neighborhood politics; and of course opinions based on factual knowledge. We need to have an opinion mind to both opinions and so-called facts given. As we know, citing a website doesn’t make an opinion the real truth.

  67. Lee Says:

    Mike, in most blogs from John, Katie, Karlock and O’Tool, I find it hard to read “anger” in their comments. I find sometimes frustration. And sometimes I see this in other bloggers you are condoning. Telling someone to “mind their manners” or “give your full name” isn’t necessarily a pleasant instigator for dialogue. Maybe the blogger is a PDC employee.

    Somehow one of my old(er) posts got re-posted with a 2:30 PM timestamp. We’ve long since gone beyond the points I made there, and I’ve asked Chris and Bob to either put the timestamp back where it was (a few days ago) or delete the post altogether. Also, “mind your manners” and “give your full name” didn’t come from me, it came from Chris, and is also included in the rules page, which is linked from the bottom-line menu.

    The moderators, and I, fully understand that not everyone can, or wants to, use their full, real name. The rules do ask, though, that if you use a pseudonym, use the same one consistently — it’s only fair that the rest of us know we’re dealing with one person and not several.

    Some bloggers asking for “verification” for points made is desirable, but blogging is customarily also for giving opinions.

    I fully understand — I’ve been participating in Net communities for roughly 25 years, some more productive than others.

    Mostly I’m put off by name-calling and vituperation. I know people are frustrated, but blogs can serve a positive purpose, not just be an outlet for venting. “It’s a free country” in the sense that I can choose to ignore, or actively boycott, those who (by my standards) are not being constructive. It’s their right to rant; it’s my right to rant about their rant:-).

    We need to have an opinion [I think you meant “open”] mind to both opinions and so-called facts given. As we know, citing a website doesn’t make an opinion the real truth.

    Of course not. But I like to start with facts and (where possible) numbers, then draw my own conclusions. Maybe government documents lie, but at least we can all read the same docs and assess the truth of the assertions in them.

    Also, you can call me naive, but I’ve lived a reasonably happy life by assuming that people are telling the truth unless I have hard evidence they’re lying. Much of the world is open to varying interpretations, and I prefer to acknowledge the differences. In most things, nobody has a monopoly on truth.

    Mike

  68. Important note: During an attempt today to retrieve one of Mike’s comments from the spam filter, I accidentally adjusted the datestamps incorrectly on that post and one older post from a few days ago. My apologies to Mike and anyone who was confused by comments shifting around.

  69. “I accidentally adjusted the datestamps incorrectly on that post and one older post from a few days ago.”

    WTF? How dare you!

    I can never trust anything you do again!

    :-O

  70. I was at a Willamette presentation on Saturday. A couple different students from the Portland class commented how great it is to live in the Pearl in tax abated condos. One said her annual tax bill was only $200 a year. I asked “well what happens when the abatement ends and your tax bill skyrockets?” Her response: “I’ll just move somewhere else where there is another abatement”. Like do these people really think there will be demand for their condos when the abatements all expire on various properties? Can people really go condo apatement hopping like this? Also there was quite a writeup in the Oregonian today about the pitfalls of condo. living I thought was interesting.

  71. A couple years ago,

    More taxes from the districts go to repay the Urban Renewal debt than go to basic services.

    1) Portland has 12,000 acres within 11 Urban Renewal districts.

    2) The total assessed value for the property within these districts is $7.5 Billion.

    3) Property taxes from $3.5 Billion go to basic services: Schools, Parks,
    Libraries, Police & Fire.

    4) Property taxes from the other $4 Billion, now $62 million per year,
    DO NOT. Instead they go to pay, with interest, the debt incurred by
    spending on light rail and subsidizing private development.

    5) Well over $4 BILLION in property value is NOT supporting schools, parks, police fire and libraries and other basic services.

    http://www.pdc.us/pdf/pubs_general/ura-rpt_02-03_03-04.pdf

    FY 03-04 Urban Renewal property taxes NOT going to city coffers

    Airport Way Created 1986 2780 acres $6.9 million
    Interstate 2000 3744 $2.8 million
    Central Eastside 1986 681 $4.2 million
    Convention Center 1989 601 $6.5 million
    Downtown Waterfront 1974 309 $13.3million
    Gateway Regional Center 2001 653 $0.9 million
    Lents Town Center 1998 2472 $4 million
    North Macadam (SoWa) 1999 409 $1.3 million
    River District 1998 310 $7.9 million
    South Park Blocks 1985 161 $6.4 million
    Willamette Industrial 2004 751

  72. Urban Renewal districts and basic services are further undermined when tax exemptions (among other giveaways) are handed out.
    Which throws off the plan, extends the debt and payoff period and reduces the revenue available for the planned projects by reducing the borrowing capacity.

    Changes to the City’s TOD Tax Exemption Program
    http://www.pdc.us/pubs/inv_detail.asp?id=643&ty=48

    http://www.pdc.us/pubs/inv_detail.asp?id=643&ty=48
    “Projects that have applied for the TOD tax exemption have had values as high as $19
    million and it is not desirable to exclude large projects from the program.
    The TOD program boundaries are proposed for expansion so it is possible that the number
    of applications will increase.
    The foregone revenue all 15 projects is estimated by Office of Management and Finance to
    be $1.024 to $1.057 million foregone to all taxing jurisdictions for tax year 2005-2006.”

  73. Mike, I did not mean to infer that you stated to “mind your manners”, that was a quote from another blogger. My point is that other bloggers, than the four you chastised, have shown manners that may be questionable from your initial blog of how you wanted to engage. I am only asking if there is fairness in your selective list, and I stated that I don’t necessarily sense “anger” from the four.

  74. Lee Says:

    Mike, I did not mean to infer that you stated to “mind your manners”, that was a quote from another blogger. My point is that other bloggers, than the four you chastised, have shown manners that may be questionable from your initial blog of how you wanted to engage. I am only asking if there is fairness in your selective list, and I stated that I don’t necessarily sense “anger” from the four.

    Well, I may have missed some; I wasn’t trying to write an exhaustive list, or even to be fair. The 4 I put down were just examples that I had seen recently in response to my original post. My point remains — each one of us has the right to choose our conversation partners. I will engage with those who don’t throw angry rhetoric at me.

    For example, there’s no need to describe my neighborhood as a “yuppie/geezer playground”, as someone did the other day here. It’s far more productive to lay off the insulting stereotypes.

    People can say what they want on a blog, at least till the moderator cuts them off. I’m not out to chastise them, just to let them know I don’t like shouting matches and won’t participate in them. On the issues, I’m new in town and openminded to many viewpoints, but people who are interested in trying to sway me over to their viewpoint will get much further with me by being polite about it.

    Mike

  75. John E. said

    4) Property taxes from the other $4 Billion, now $62 million per year,
    DO NOT. Instead they go to pay, with interest, the debt incurred by
    spending on light rail and subsidizing private development.

    Is there a useful primary source for data on this? We know the city floated bonds which are being paid off by those diverted taxes. But lots of cities (probably all cities) float bonds to make capital investment of various kinds. Where can I see firsthand what these bonds were used for?

    5) Well over $4 BILLION in property value is NOT supporting schools, parks, police fire and libraries and other basic services.

    I understand that, but I still haven’t seen any specifics on what investments those bonds have purchased.

    http://www.pdc.us/pdf/pubs_general/ura-rpt_02-03_03-04.pdf

    Just tried this — it’s a dead link at PDC. Got one that works?

    Mike

  76. John E. said

    Changes to the City’s TOD Tax Exemption Program
    http://www.pdc.us/pubs/inv_detail.asp?id=643&ty=48

    Thanks for this tip — it’s a very interesting report. I’ll have to learn more about the original program in order to see the impact of the changes. Were those changes approved by the Council?

    I do want to say a word about TOD and affordable housing. I haven’t been here long enough to have an informed opinion on whether Portland is going too far with this, as some here have implied.

    On the other hand, I do have the perspective of 30 years of life around Washington DC. Most of you probably know DC as the Nation’s Capital, but I know it as a city of about 550,000 people and 61 square miles, roughly the same population as Portland, but half the geographic area. OTOH, the suburbs are much larger, in both area and population.

    DC (the city) has a very serious shortage of affordable housing, and a far higher degree of real poverty than Portland. Developers build like crazy, and promise central-city housing and TOD along the subway lines, but somehow they usually end up just building more office buildings. And the housing they do build is rarely affordable. It is really out of control and the city government seems pretty helpless. (Comparing the two city governments would be fun, but too off-topic for this venue.)

    The DC subway system is great — fast and clean and generally more expensive to ride than TriMet. If you’re going where it goes — suburbs to city and back — it’s wonderful. If you’re not, you may think the billions spent to build it were a waste of tax dollars.

    Most of the car traffic now is suburb-to-suburb, because of lack of coordination of suburban housing, suburban workplaces, and transit lines. So the traffic is horrible, much worse than anything here in Portland. Think of a Vancouver-to-Intel commute, on steroids.

    So here in Portland, where I see actual TOD being done, and actual affordable housing being built, I haven’t gotten too upset about some of my tax money — maybe even a lot of my tax money — going to support that.

    So it’s all relative. In November I went back to the DC area for a convention and immediately remembered why we moved to Portland.

    Mike

  77. Bob R. Says: Regarding JK’s reposted cost-per-passenger-mile of driving figures, here’s a summary of criticisms I’ve made regarding those figures in the past, culled and edited from other posts:
    JK: Bob, we have been over this before. It is always possible to criticize just about any real word data – the issue is are the criticisms beyond petty nit picking that make no difference to the final result? I have asked for you to show that your objections would give a significantly different result. I am still waiting for your calculations.

    But it would be useful to verify my conclusions by coming at it from another direction. Lets start with the AAA data which, I think I recall you citing. I am also going to rely on the page I laid out at PortlandFacts.com/Transit/AAA_method.htm. The AAA columns are from the AAA and the last column labeled USA Average is, well the USA average data. Recognizing that Bob objects to some of this data, I will use only the average car age and depreciation datapoints. (You can click on these numbers and see where they came from.)

    AAA average cost per mile: $0.522 per vehicle mile.

    Now, lets do something unusual – look at where the number came from. You can see that the AAA used three different classes of cars and three different annual milages. They averaged the three classes of cars at the 15,000 annual mile mark to get the $0.522 figure.

    Instead of getting bogged down in irrelevant little details, lets just look at the big items:
    AAA average depreciation = $3,392
    Actual USA average depreciation = $1100
    Difference = $2292. Now pay attention because I am going to use a little grade school arithmetic here:
    $2292 / 15,000 miles = 0.15 per vehicle mile.

    Now lets subtract that from AAA average number to adjust it for the difference in car depreciation, nothing else:

    $0.522 – $0.15 = $0.372. Notice how close this is to my national number of $0.331, even without adjusting for any other AAA high ball assumptions. At 1.2 people per car we are now at $0.31 per passenger-mile.

    Bob, you like the AAA number, so you must still agree with this simple adjustment for car age.

    But we can do better: Finance costs! They are lower for a 9 year old car than for a new car.
    AAA average finance cost = $716. National average = $387. Subtracting = $329.

    $329 / 15,000 = $0.02 per vehicle mile.
    That brings that $0.37 down to $0.35. Using your 1.2 occupants, we get $0.29 per passenger mile.

    Again, Bob this is just your AAA number adjusted for vehicle age, so I assume that you consider it credible.

    We could go for lower insurance costs for an older car ands probably gain another $0.01 per mile or so.

    But lets quit wasting time. No amount of data manipulation will bring car costs up to anywhere close to the cost of transit, not even $10/gal gas. (hint: transit cost will go up too)

    Bob R. Says: 5. TriMet’s transit trips in this region are on average 5.42 miles per originating ride. Short trips like this are inherently higher-cost for autos, because the starting and warm-up wear and tear are spread over fewer miles . They are also lower MPG and higher pollution. Even highly-tuned, highly efficient cars like the Toyota Prius get their worst MPG (sometimes 25% or more below average) in the first 5 minutes of travel due to high idle and emissions warm-up, time spent in the driveway, etc.
    JK: Again you deal in irrelevant nits. The major car costs are NOT STARTING AND WARMUP – they are fixed costs. Try something new: LOOK AT THE DATA – the ownership costs are about 70% of the total costs and you are nit picking the 30% leftover. So what if you get 25% worse milage – AAA fuel is 9.5¢ out of 52¢ If you are right about that 25% you get to take the 9.5¢ all the way up to 11.8¢ and increase the 52.2¢ to 54.6¢ an increase of 5% – laughable that you would even mention it.

    Bob R. Says: I suggest you check out the extensive study of transportation costs (focusing on a variety of modes, not just autos) done by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute.
    JK: I suggest you check out something credible. Perhaps the ACCESS article I referenced.

    Bob R. Says: Now, your figures don’t include external costs, so I’ll show the study’s costs both excluding and including external costs for a more direct comparison…
    JK: Give us a break from that garbage. Try a quality journal out of a California University. I already mentioned it, but you chose to ignore it in preference to crap. Here it is again:
    ACCESS NUMBER 16 • SPRING 2000, page 12, External costs per passenger mile:

    GASOLINE AUTO……5 to 28.4 [6.9] (numbers in brackets are author’s best estimate)
    ELECTRIC AUTO….8.8 to 24.8 [16.8]
    TRANSIT BUS………..33 to 57 [40]
    LIGHT RAIL…………..27 to 109
    HEAVY RAIL…………17 to 53
    Bottom line: Cars have only 17% the external cost of Transit bus. Even less external costs compared to rail.
    (see PortlandFacts.com/Roads/Docs/Delucchi_Chart.htm for the chart & link to original article)

    Lets recap the above:
    When you adjust AAA’s cost per mile for vehicle age, their 52.2¢ becomes around 34¢ per vehicle mile. Adjust for average number of passengers in Portland and you get 28.3¢ per passenger mile. About 22¢ using the national vehicle occupancy.

    Cars cost about:
    1/3 the cost of bus
    1/6 the cost of streetcar
    1/4 the cost of toy trains when you include construction.

    Thanks
    JK

  78. Mike Feldman Says: Is there a useful primary source for data on this?
    JK: Not a primary source, but damn useful. They produce an annual report including every agency that has taxing authority:

    co.multnomah.or.us/orgs/tscc/financialinfo.html

    Thanks
    JK

  79. Mike Feldman Says: I do not intend to respond to Jim Karlock, as he could not resist a couple of slurs like “yuppie/geezer playground”. If Jim is willing to stick to facts and refrain from epithets, I’ll consider having a dialog with him.
    JK: Gee, I was just modifying a term used earlier:
    “We need to move the freeway, but not for another yuppie playground,” Gilman said. Bold added, The Oregonian, March 24, 1989 (I just added the geezer based on your comments.)

    Mike Feldman Says: Meanwhile, the rest of you can take him on, if you so desire, but I wish you wouldn’t. Let’s see if we can get Jim to act like an adult here.
    Libertarians like Jim often have good stuff to offer the rest of us, but his kind of angriness gets in the way — it turns me off and ought to turn you off too.
    JK: Sorry, but it just gets so frustrating correcting planner lies time after time. For instance, contrary to what planner’s claim:
    Transit DOES NOT save money. (see above)
    High density DOES NOT SAVE MONEY.
    High density DOES NOT reduce congestion.
    TODs INCREASE congestion (although they may reduce driving)
    Light rail DOES NOT REDUCE congestion.
    Urban renewal districts MAY NEVER repay their initial incentives.

    See debunkingPortland.com for more.
    See SavePortland.com for more about the tax breaks.
    See StopMetro.com for Metro’s lie.

    As time goes on, you will find that Portland is basically run by developers getting millions in profit from urban renewal projects. A few little known facts:

    * The Oregonian is associated, by high up personal relationship, with OHSU
    * Serena Cruse is a member of the Walsh construction family. ( Serena Cruz Walsh)
    * Maria Rojo de Steffey “while overseeing the disposition of the Martha Washington building. Her husband, J. Daniel Steffey, is director of affordable housing for Guardian Management, which quickly expressed interest in buying the downtown Portland property.” Oregonian, November 18, 2006
    * Some of the Goldschmidt gang: portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=24429
    * Streetcar non-profit “award large contracts to its director’s firm.” See wweek.com/editorial/3345/9589
    * People who profit form city spending are big campaign donors. See: DebunkingPortland.com/Owns/CE-041003-LargeAmounts-ByAmount(over$1000).htm

    I suggest you browse the three above web sites. They are well documented, with links to original sources in most cases. That they debunk many popular delusions, draws a lot of flack.

    Thanks
    JK

  80. JK: I just found a nice argument about the fuel efficiency of cars vs. mass transit.

    It seems that the just passed increase in CAFÉ standards for cars from 27.5 to 35 MPG will make cars more energy efficient than even light rail. (Already you can buy cars that are more energy efficient if you care to.)

    See ti.org/antiplanner/?p=330#more-330

    Note to PDC zombies: the above site may accept money from groups you consider undesirable. Please try to concentrate on the facts of the argument, if you are capable.

    Thanks
    JK

  81. Note to PDC zombies: the above site may accept money from groups you consider undesirable. Please try to concentrate on the facts of the argument, if you are capable.

    It’s this kind of seething negativity that puts people off of your posts, JK.

  82. JK wrote: No amount of data manipulation will bring car costs up to anywhere close to the cost of transit,

    No amount of posting national data which includes all trip types and a significant component of rural miles, will provide an accurate assessment of urban short-trip costs. We’re looking for Apples-to-Apples here.

    Regarding the VTPI study: Give us a break from that garbage.

    Thanks for rebutting the VTPI study so thoroughly yet again.

    Try a quality journal out of a California University. I already mentioned it, but you chose to ignore it in preference to crap. Here it is again: (JK doesn’t post a direct link, but here it is for those playing along: http://americandreamcoalition.org/transit/Delucchi.pdf )

    JK, the study author has selected a “best guess” for external costs for unpriced automobile parking of ZERO. Do you really believe that parking is absolutely zero external cost? How are we supposed to take a short paper like that seriously when the author concludes that unpriced parking isn’t an external cost of automobile use?

    The major car costs are NOT STARTING AND WARMUP – they are fixed costs.

    It’s not just about starting and warm-up, JK, it’s about short trips in an urbanized area. All else being equal, would you rather buy a used car with 50,000 city miles, or 50,000 rural miles? The nature of the miles travelled makes a big difference.

  83. Bob R. said,

    JK said: “Note to PDC zombies: the above site may accept money from groups you consider undesirable. Please try to concentrate on the facts of the argument, if you are capable.”

    It’s this kind of seething negativity that puts people off of your posts, JK.

    Thank you, Bob. I was just about to say something very similar, but you’ve done it much better.

    To take a slightly more charitable view, I think perhaps some bloggers have gotten so accustomed to reading and writing venom that they don’t even notice anymore how venomous it is. To them, perhaps it looks like normal speech. But it’s off-putting and unproductive.

    Being naive and idealistic, I haven’t given up yet on trying to change the tone of American debate, at least in the little corners of the landscape I inhabit. Been at it 25 years, still at it.:-)

    Mike

  84. Chris is right, TIF is complicated, in part due to state tax code changes that came with measures 5 and 50. State law limites URAs to 15% of land area and/or tax base, so the maximum diverted from regular tax receipts to URA projects is the increment on that 15%…Portland has about 12% in URAs. I’ll take John E’s numbers, so his $60 Million would be about 7% of total tax bite is being used for capital projects in the various URAs around the City.
    The real question is “what do you get for that 7%?” Was Waterfront Park and Pioneer Courthouse Sq. worth it? Interstate MAX? Eastbank Esplanade? The Tram? Some here will reject all these, but not I. What about affordable housing which is now to receive 30% of all TIF from here on out. Worthwhile? Housing affordable to families has benefits for the school district just a housing for those with little or no income benefits the county human services effort.
    When push comes to shove, there are just two ways to fund any public investment…a bond measure, which increases property taxes, or TIF which diverts a portion of existing taxes, with the promise of a handsome payoff in 20-30 years. As a believer in public investments, I’m frankly happy with either or both.
    I do think that URAs need to be held to their shutdown dates, and it looks like both Downtown Waterfront and South Park Blocks will quite issuing debt this year. As that debt is paid off, taxes return to the City/County/School coffers. Airport is currently paying off debt.
    Another point that appears in John E’s numbers…some URAs generate a lot more TIF than others. River District has exceeded the City’s wildest hopes, while Gateway, Lents and the Central Eastside struggle to generate much at all. Willamette Industrial has generated no TIF whatsoever! The difference is the level of private investment that the public investments attract. The Pearl is Hot, Lents is Not. In fairness, each URA is different, has different goals, different prospects, different needs and different reasons for being.

  85. Thank you Lenny, for putting URA/TIF so succinctly and clearly. I think I’m starting to understand it now.:-)

    Some may oppose all those projects, others support them. As it happens, I support them, though (I’m sure you’re tired of hearing this) I wasn’t here when they started.

    Going forward, finding the balance between traditional bond measures and URAs is an important public-policy issue. And it’s up to elected officials and often — in this state — the direct democracy of ballot measures to sort it out.

    Call me naive, but I hope the sorting-out process will be more civil, less toxic. Where opinions or priorities differ, too many bloggers, talk-show people, and politicians aren’t satisfied to assert a mere difference. No, they must claim that their numbers, their facts, their opinions or priorities, are the true ones, and those who differ with them are lying, deceiving, promulgating disinformation.

    I just missed the fun of the May 2006 council elections. I’m really looking forward to the 2008 campaigns — with so many seats up for grabs, there’s a lot at stake. I hope this town can keep it civil. (This blog, too!)

    I’m glad the Portland council is nonpartisan, because at least then, the national parties don’t meddle as much and we can keep local issues on a local level. At least I think that’s the case — we’ll see as the year goes on.

    Mike

  86. The only comment I can make about all this is that alot of us, myself included, do not understand all the ‘buzz words’ that are being thrown around here.

    Why would anybody who is working for 10 bucks an hour or less, or even 15 bucks an hour give a damn about anybody who happens to be as lucky as Mike to live in Portland’s Pearl District?

    We don’t give a hoot about all this bureaucratic mumbo jumbo being thrown around here.

    People that are living in the pearl don’t deserve subsidies anymore than the farmers that get paid NOT TO GROW THEIR CROPS DO!

  87. AL M Says:

    The only comment I can make about all this is that alot of us, myself included, do not understand all the ‘buzz words’ that are being thrown around here.

    You’re in good company, but see below.

    Why would anybody who is working for 10 bucks an hour or less, or even 15 bucks an hour give a damn about anybody who happens to be as lucky as Mike to live in Portland’s Pearl District?

    I don’t expect them to.

    We don’t give a hoot about all this bureaucratic mumbo jumbo being thrown around here.

    Well, I’m trying to learn it because I think people (like me) who want to try to influence public policy need to understand the jargon, otherwise it’s too easy for those who do understand it to pull the wool over our eyes.

    People that are living in the pearl don’t deserve subsidies anymore than the farmers that get paid NOT TO GROW THEIR CROPS DO!

    I agree with you, though I think you’re stereotyping “people who live in the Pearl” — don’t forget, a lot of Pearl residents are renters, and many of them live in the “affordable” buildings.

    As for me, yeah, I own a condo, and I am lucky. I paid for it with proceeds from the close-to-the-city suburban house I sold in Maryland, at the top of the real estate boom. (Literally — it started falling only a few weeks after we sold…)

    I paid the tax bill that came through my mail slot. I didn’t ask for any subsidies, and I don’t think I’m getting any. I now understand that my tax on the excess is going to pay off bonds. I don’t object because overall, I think those bonds bought stuff that’s good for this city.

    If others think I’m getting a subsidy, and present a clear and understandable case (say, in a council election or ballot measure) for raising my tax, I’d probably vote for it, then pay that bill too.

    Mike

  88. What about tax abatements? In URAs these come out of TIF. The City offers them for affordable housing, historic preservation, underground parking among other things. Are these worthy?
    Despite all the older buildings in Portland, my German wife thinks it looks like we lost the war. We all gain something when historic structures are reused; how I long for the Hoyt Hotel and the Oriental Theatre, now long gone.
    Enterprise zone abatements are to encourage preservation and creation of jobs, primarily in NW/N and NE Portland, where historically unemployment has been high. UPS just got one on Swan Island for their new expanded hub which will double in size and hire a lot more people. Fed Ex Ground, on the other hand, is moving its hub to Troutdale, but I would guess they are getting some kind of deal as well. You can image the deals that N & S Carolina are offering to Freigtliner (now Daimler Trucks NA) to get the corporate HQ moved there from Portland. Its the way the game is played. If they succeed there will be hell to pay here in Portland.

  89. Mike, your a hell of a nice guy, and a terrific blogger, I would be happy to have you for a pal,

    BUT;

    Why would a working class stiff care about abstract concepts like ‘bonds’.

    I don’t know enough about this subject to make intelligent comments, which is why I have mostly refrained from the discussion.

    Bureaucrats are like accountants, take the simple and make it complex, that’s how they keep their jobs.

    Pearl is a swanky exclusive place to live. If the migrant worker in Hillsboro has to pay $4.10 to get to Portland and back, how do you figure you have the right to FREE transit services?

    If residents of Pearl are reaping any sort of benefits, which many of these posts have alluded to, and the majority of working stiffs get nothing, how do you figure that is right?

    I sure as hell don’t see it.

  90. Lenny can talk about “zones’ “abatements” “utf’s”, “tif’s” etc etc etc.

    WORKING CLASS STIFFS DON’T GIVE A CRAP!
    (in caps!)

  91. How do you think people like BUSH get elected?

    Becaue people like Lenny keep talking about

    “zones’ “abatements” “utf’s”, “tif’s”

    And the working class guy sees nothing coming his way and says “screw those bureaucrat’s” and votes for BUSH!

  92. Al –

    I don’t understand why you have complained (multiple times in one day, now) that you don’t want to talk about this stuff.

    This topic was created specifically to talk about this stuff. It’s what it’s here fore, it’s what people are _supposed_ to be talking about in this thread. It’s relevant to the streetcar and to future transportation plans in Portland. I can’t think of any other way to put it: This topic and these terms belong here.

    If you don’t like it, by all means don’t read it!

  93. AL M Says:

    Mike, your a hell of a nice guy, and a terrific blogger, I would be happy to have you for a pal,

    Thanks — the feeling’s mutual.

    BUT;

    Why would a working class stiff care about abstract concepts like ‘bonds’.

    I’m not suggesting he should, but politicians and business people certainly do, and some of us ought to be able to speak their language.

    I don’t know enough about this subject to make intelligent comments, which is why I have mostly refrained from the discussion.

    Bureaucrats are like accountants, take the simple and make it complex, that’s how they keep their jobs.

    I agree, but let me know if you figure out a way to make them stop. Till you do, I figure I ought to learn some of their jargon, just enough to be dangerous.:-)

    Pearl is a swanky exclusive place to live. If the migrant worker in Hillsboro has to pay $4.10 to get to Portland and back, how do you figure you have the right to FREE transit services?

    Well, we’ve been around this loop before — it’s wrapped up in the Fareless Square discussion. Pearl residents — including the working-class renters in the Sitka and the other affordable buildings — are getting the free services by accident. It wasn’t designed that way — the Square boundaries were in place in 1975, 25 years before there was a Pearl, and hasn’t been changed since then (except for the 2001 extension to Lloyd Center, which has nothing to do with the Pearl).

    There are lots of inequities in the fare structure — till we get that sorted out, the Hillsboro guy will be paying too much and I will be paying too little. That’s why the broader fare discussion is important.

    I’m working on a proposal for that — stay tuned in the next few days. Hopefully this group will provide good feedback and I’ll send it in to the TriMet public-comment address before the deadline.

    If residents of Pearl are reaping any sort of benefits, which many of these posts have alluded to, and the majority of working stiffs get nothing, how do you figure that is right?

    I don’t figure it’s right. On the other hand, other than the accidental free transit, specifically what other benefits are we getting?

    — There are no public schools here. Without schools, there won’t be many families here.
    — The police and fire and ambulance folks don’t get here any faster, as far as I can tell. We’re covered by the same fire trucks that cover downtown and NW Portland. Those firehouses were built many decades before the Pearl. And I have no idea where the AMR (privatized!) medic unit lives. It sure as heck isn’t in the Pearl.
    — As far as I know, our water, sewer, gas, and electric rates are the same as everyone else’s.
    — Heaven knows, Qwest and Comcast aren’t cutting us any slack because we live in the Pearl.

    It’s claimed that we’re getting “subsidies” because our property taxes are getting raked off for bonds, etc., but that’s a rather indirect, hard-to-understand benefit that gets us back into the mumbo-jumbo. In terms of actual day-to-day services, I don’t see more than anyone else gets.

    I sure as hell don’t see it.

    Well, other than the Fareless Square issue (which is a valid one), what else is bothering you?

    Mike

  94. The Pearl is Hot, Lents is Not.

    It’s easier to generate a lot of increment if the frozen base is relatively nil, and the improvements financed are dense and valuable.

    While the Pearl is generating historically ridiculous amounts of increment, Lents is also generating more than the amount forecasted when the URA was originally established. It’s apples and oranges to compare a large residential neighborhood URA to an area like the Pearl, in terms of new money added to the tax roles and TIF generation. Lents will always have proportionally less growth in increment, because that growth is highly dependent on increase in existing property values. There’s a lot of empty space in the town center and industrial areas, but that’s only a small portion of the URA, so the overall increase is usually very dilute.

    We just completed a plan amendment study that, if put into effect will generate an additional 170 million dollars of capacity for investment in Lents. So, with light rail coming and a number of catalyst projects nearing completion and lined up Lents is balmy, and likely to be roasting.

  95. Bob R. (JK doesn’t post a direct link, but here it is for those playing along: americandreamcoalition.org/transit/Delucchi.pdf )
    JK: Ahhhh!, the Dreaded Americamn Dream Coalition that exposes the lies behind smart growth and toy trains. (No wonder the PDC crowd doesn’t like them.)

    But Bob, you left out a little detail:

    That link is to a single article in ACCESS. ACCESS is the official magazine of the University of California Transportation Center . It is a heck of a lot more credible than the trash Bob uses to support his case.

    If you want that article direct from the source here it is: uctc.net/access/access16.shtml.
    Of course you get the whole issue and that was the point of the other link – to save you downloading the whole article.

    Thanks
    JK

  96. Mike;

    I dunno, just adding my 2 cents, which is about what its worth!

    What I know is that developers made a killing, and condo owners made a killing with deferred prop taxes.

    Are your property taxes lower than other portland home owners?

    :-)

  97. Ahhhh!, the Dreaded Americamn Dream Coalition that exposes the lies behind smart growth and toy trains. (No wonder the PDC crowd doesn’t like them.)

    What on earth is your problem, JK? The link I posted was taken from YOUR web site. You linked to your own web site from here and stated that there a link could be found for the original article. I simply copied/pasted that link directly into my comment. I made no pronouncements about the veracity of the source whatsoever.

    It is a heck of a lot more credible than the trash Bob uses to support his case.

    If you are referring to VTPI, this is probably the 5th time I’ve asked you to provide a reason why you consider the VTPI study invalid.

    Please see the earlier comments about negativity and needless invective putting people off of your posts.

  98. Al said

    What I know is that developers made a killing, and condo owners made a killing with deferred prop taxes.

    Are your property taxes lower than other portland home owners?

    I don’t know, but I’d be interested in finding out.

    In my original post on this thread, I wrote that the bottom line on my 2007-08 tax bill is about $10,000; JK then estimated an assessed value of around $500,000. Yes, JK’s number is correct. So my tax bill is about 2% of assessed value. I have no idea how typical that is of Portland.

    I used to live in Montgomery County, Maryland. That’s comparable to Washington County here, but much higher in population. It is not known as a low-tax county. I don’t have the papers handy, but as I recall, my home’s assessed value was roughly the same as this condo, and my tax bill was roughly half as much. So my Oregon bill looked, well, kinda high.

    (Assessed values usually run behind market values — they did in Maryland and I think they do here, too.)

    [Aside: My income tax rate in Maryland was about 7.5%: 5% to the state, plus the county piggybacks another 2.5% (that’s how they do it there). That’s lower than Oregon’s income tax rate (9%), but Maryland has a 5% sales tax and (as we know) Oregon has none.]

    Before we moved here, I recall hearing about property tax waiver or reduction for condo developers who renovated old buildings like the first Meier & Frank warehouse. Of course that lower tax was passed on to the condo owners, for X number of years. Is my recollection correct?

    (I don’t object to giving builders an incentive to work with old buildings rather than tear them down, but that’s for another discussion.)

    Maybe that’s what Al is referring to, and maybe they “made a killing”.

    Perhaps that would apply to me if I lived in a renovated old building, but my building is a new building, and as far as I know, I’m paying normal property taxes. As I walk around this neighborhood, I’d estimate that there is significantly more new construction than renovated old construction.

    What’s different here in a URA, I guess, is the TIF excess, which is (if I understand correctly) paying off UR bonds rather than going in general funds.

    Dunno — can anyone help me answer Al’s question?

    Mike

  99. Mike Feldman Says: Bob R. said,

    JK said: “Note to PDC zombies: the above site may accept money from groups you consider undesirable. Please try to concentrate on the facts of the argument, if you are capable.”
    It’s this kind of seething negativity that puts people off of your posts, JK.

    Thank you, Bob. I was just about to say something very similar, but you’ve done it much better.
    JK: Mike, I have just about had it with people like Bob. This battle has been going on for over a year. I post a rebuttal to some erroneous claim about transit and he pops up with totally irrelevant little nits to pick. The sort of thing that you just saw. That even if he was correct, it could not possible affect the conclusion that cars are far cheaper than mass transit.

    He just threw out another one about city vs country driving:
    1. It is totally irrelevant to the value of the car because it is not recorded, so it cannot affect the resale value.

    2. As to its possible affect on the cost of driving by using data that mixes town and country miles, again the potentially affected costs are 8¢ for gas and 5¢ for maintenance – there is no reasonable increase in these two minor components of the total cost that would affect the basic conclusion that driving costs just a fraction of what mass transit costs. (Suppose both go up by 20% and 50% of driving is short city trips, then that 13¢ (8+5) goes up to 14.3¢ and the total of 28.3¢ goes up to 29.4¢, an increase of only 4%. Totality irrelevant, just like most of Bob’s arguments.)

    See why I get frustrated with him?

    Mike Feldman Says: To take a slightly more charitable view, I think perhaps some bloggers have gotten so accustomed to reading and writing venom that they don’t even notice anymore how venomous it is. To them, perhaps it looks like normal speech. But it’s off-putting and unproductive.
    JK: These blogs have a long history of city employees blogging in favor of city policies and only Jack’s blog has shown any interest in exposing them. My working assumption is that over ½ of the smart growth advocates on the local blogs are city employees, developers and consultants. So, interpret my PDC zombies comment to mean employees of the city, PDC, developers and consultants.

    Thanks
    JK

  100. Al,

    What URA/PDC funding accomplishes is meeting financing gaps for projects. Banks have conservative estimates for lending, which means that only conservative projects get financed. If Home Williams didn’t have support from the PDC, the Pearl may have been developed, but it would have been a lot less dense, and likely mostly uninspiring townhouses. What PDC did was meet the financing gap for riskier projects and also completed some needed public works investments that help the projects succeed. Riskier projects have the potential for better returns, for both the developers from a profit/sales standpoint and for the city/county from a potential property tax generation standpoint.

    There’s also the more esoteric benefits from well planned and implemented (even visionary) projects, like “livability”, aesthetics and place-making.

    As far as condo owners profiting from tax abatements, the developers need to sell units at a price that is usually higher than the market will support at first. What tax abatements do is make the higher price pencil out for the buyer. Again, it’s about making a risky proposition more attractive in order to generate a desired market. Any market has to reach a sort of critical mass to start functioning on its own. Tax abatements just add a little push in the right direction.

  101. These blogs have a long history of city employees blogging in favor of city policies and only Jack’s blog has shown any interest in exposing them.

    JK, we haven’t made a habit of doing background checks on the people who post here. Pseudonymity is allowed, and sincerity is assumed. Nobody’s made a big deal over your political activism, for example, or the politics of other posters on either side of the debate. Among our posters and viewers are citizen activists of all persuasions, political party activists, self-styled think-tank directors, some actual office-holders, and a few candidates (past and present), including some candidates who ran against status-quo transit policies.

    If you want to get into games of “exposure”, be careful what you wish for.

    I think I’ve been quite mellow about “exposure” antics … even though two people (including you) have posted details from and commented about my résumé (and the other guy, who I’m still on speaking terms with, even called one of my past employers and put the unsuccessful call on YouTube), and you’ve personally videotaped me at various public meetings.

    All this, apparently, because what I post here about transit and transportation, and the decisions I make as a moderator, rubs some critics the wrong way.

    I have just about had it with people like Bob.

    I can’t imagine why.

  102. Mike said: So my tax bill is about 2% of assessed value. I have no idea how typical that is of Portland.

    My tax bill is almost exactly 2% of assessed value, and just under 1% of “real market value”. My property, to my knowledge, receives no abatements and was unsubsidized. It is an older single-family home in NE Portland.

  103. I called LATE on a Sunday night to make sure NOBODY would answer!

    I kinda figured. Although it is a small company and people do work round-the-clock there pretty often. Still, it was very surreal to hear my own voice on the company voicemail menu even though I’ve been gone over 5 1/2 years.

  104. Bob R. Says:

    Mike said: “So my tax bill is about 2% of assessed value. I have no idea how typical that is of Portland.”

    My tax bill is almost exactly 2% of assessed value, and just under 1% of “real market value”. My property, to my knowledge, receives no abatements and was unsubsidized. It is an older single-family home in NE Portland.

    I rest my case.:-)

    Seriously, is it the condo owners in the renovated buildings that are getting the subsidies? Someone posted yesterday that their own taxes were only a couple hundred.

    Mike

  105. Bob, JK attacks you because you frustrate his attempts to brainwash the masses. It is obvious to most readers where JK’s ideology lies. Less obvious to me why he lives (if he does) in Portland.

  106. “and the other guy, who I’m still on speaking terms with, even called one of my past employers and put the unsuccessful call on YouTube”

    Uhmm, am I the only one that thinks this is VERY inappropriate?

  107. Yeah – I watched Al’s YouTube thing in disbelief. That goes way past the line of appropriate behavior. Al, you owe an apology at the very least. Were it my blog I probably would have permanently banned you.

  108. Unit, Matthew –

    I don’t really want to get into it here but Al gave me a bit of a heads-up on what he was going to do (sort of), and we’ve had some private email discussions since then, so _this_ time around I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. This time.

  109. “Yeah – I watched Al’s YouTube thing in disbelief.”

    Well, I’ve already put all of my “paranoid” filters up around him, so I don’t even click on his links because I think it is likely that he is tracking IPs and it just isn’t worth the trouble.

    And you wonder why a lot of people here, (and other places too,) only post under their first name…

  110. I don’t have much to add, but I wanted it on the record that I appreciate that “John E” was willing to add the “E” to the “John” so that we don’t get mixed up when we comment.

    And John, I don’t disagree 100% of your data that you post – just your opinions.

    But differing opinions are a wonderful thing. Just wish some people weren’t so personal with their attacks some times…

  111. Well, if we’re all going to throw out what we’re frustrated by, I’m in…

    I’m frustrated that PDC hasn’t been required to give any useful accounting for either what it really collects, or what it really spends our money on. Some of us suspect that subsidies were given to new construction that would have made plenty for its developers without. But, neither we nor the elected officials under whose authority these decisions were made get to know any of it. Advocates of business as usual get to say everything is peachy, without having to show why; but those of us who disagree can never give enough information to back up our position. Open the books! Let’s see who got how much of a subsidy for what, who got excused from what fees, and who had to pay.

    One doesn’t have to be particularly sharp to know that the actions of public agencies are rarely hidden from public view when there is nothing remarkable to be exposed. The longer we have to wait, the more certain we can be that there is something ripe and stinky waiting to be exposed.

    Sunshine! Sunshine and democracy! They go together like milk and cookies!

  112. Sidenote to Chris: How about creating a couple of threads to open up these side issues to Mike’s defense of Pearl residents? My suggestions would be…

    Urban Form: Regardless of cost or method of finance…Are we getting what we asked for? Do we, or should we, want what we’re getting? What would be better? What could be worse? Discuss.

    TIF/URA: Overused? Misused? Carefully enough targeted? Is your soup thin enough yet? (i.e. Are city-wide basic services adequately funded?)

  113. Katie Says:

    Sidenote to Chris: How about creating a couple of threads to open up these side issues to Mike’s defense of Pearl residents? My suggestions would be…

    Urban Form: Regardless of cost or method of finance…Are we getting what we asked for? Do we, or should we, want what we’re getting? What would be better? What could be worse? Discuss.

    I’ll second that.

    TIF/URA: Overused? Misused? Carefully enough targeted? Is your soup thin enough yet? (i.e. Are city-wide basic services adequately funded?)

    I’ll second that too. (And thanks for explaining the “thin soup” metaphor, which I didn’t understand.)

    Mike

  114. I aint apologizing to nobody,

    I was kinda hoping that I would get banned forever if the truth be told, I had big plans had that had happened!

    But that Chris Smith is a pretty sharp cookie,, he read the tea leaves!

    And MIKE, your taxes are on the same level as the assessed value of the building I run over here.

    So what is the big deal about the Pearl? Just the dumbass streetcar as far as I am concerned.

  115. Thanks to this group I got up the nerve to start my own

    **VLOG!**

    I concluded that would be the only way to say what I wanted to say without being deleted and/or banned!

    So portland transport pin heads, I thank you!

  116. The extremity of cover and obscurity in terms of Urban Renewal expenditure by the PDC makes any genuine audit, oversight or accountability impossible.
    Which should make the curious wonder why there are regular defenders of this TIF tool.

    Especially when no one, including the PDC Commissioners, City Council or any URAC member, has seen any complete ledger or full accounting for the money.
    Without anyone watching how much is involved, where it comes from or where it ends up makes it a wholy vulnerable system that must result in abuses.
    I mean if a low level manager at some obscure agency or community group can steal 100s of thousands from a small budget imagine the potential for undetected millions misspent or missing from a budget 100s of millios in size.

    A very troubling indication of severe problems is the very common inability of PDC to provide officials and citizen URAC memebers documentation when repeatedly requested.

    Add to that the City Club discovering that PDC Staff regularly uses preliminary estimates in place of actual costs.

    Red flags should be seen by all.

    Instead we get defenders assuming all is well.

    A good example of the likley quagmire is the Port Of Seattle investigations.
    All signs point to the same problems here at several agencies.

  117. Sidenote to Chris: How about creating a couple of threads to open up these side issues to Mike’s defense of Pearl residents?

    Let’s keep in mind this is a transportation blog, not a land use and urban renewal blog. I don’t want to stray too far from the mission.

  118. Add to that the City Club discovering that PDC Staff regularly uses preliminary estimates in place of actual costs.

    As a URAC chair that has participated in the budgeting process for our URA two years in a row, I have to point out that actual costs occur when actual money is spent and that one is pretty much required to use projections and estimates when budgets start being pieced together 8 months before the start of any new fiscal year/cycle. Numerous revisions are made as actual money goes out the door, and PDC staff have never hesitated to provide additional information or answer questions about the budgeting and expenditure process in my experience. So, yes, I’m going to defend their efforts.

    There is no “extreme cover” occurring as far as I’m concerned. The only issues occur when confidentiality is needed to help an important transaction along, and the occasions that I have seen resulted in savings, not additional expenditure.

    Just my two cents from the inside.

  119. Psy,
    I’m sure you were not meaning to suggest I was unaware of the difference between costs and estimates. I mean that’s pretty basic that costs are monies spent.
    That said, let me be clear. The City Club report was not confused either. What they reported was that the PDC was found to being inappropriately using preliminary estimates in accounting for money spent.
    As a URAC member I’m sure you would be concerned about such inappropriateness.
    I am also very familiar with PDC’s use of projections and estimates. At least in terms of SoWa.
    You bet numerous revisions are made. Revisions which do not follow any consistent budget model.
    Line items come and go from cycle to cycle with different labels and missing estimates all too frequent.
    If it is your experience that PDC staff has never hesitated to provide additional information I’ll have to assume you are not the chair of SoWa URAC.
    The SoWa URAC has never been provided any fully updated budget. Not even close. Certainly not with any correlation to the original 1999 approved plan.
    In addition to the obscuring use of 5 year budgets with missing numbers, changing line items, vague dispersments, never any running total of monies spent or fully updated budgets
    staff frequently cannot answer inquiries by members. And not only in regards to the spending and revenue sides on budget matters.
    Local transportation concerns and other inquiries are often shuffled along and never answered.
    I’ll wager you have never seen any genuine accounting for money spent either. That would be entirely contradictory to my experience with SoWa.

    I would be interested to see anything you consider a complete and revealing budget as well.
    Perhaps you do not perceive any “extreme cover” because you are satisfied with what you are provided and require no additional clarity or explanations.
    As for “confidentiality to enable important transactions to save money”?
    That would be an entirely new phenomenon at SoWa. The Tram fiasco pales in comparison to the greater SoWa fiscal mess.

    “additional expenditure” is an gross understatement at this locale.
    We can’t even get an accounting or summary of the effects of the parcles being moved into nonprofit status and reducing the TIF revenues.
    Along with no running total or accounting for money spent there is no current or even recent estimate of SoWa projects costs, revenue projections or source of funding.

    All basic and highly germane to any genuine participation of a citizen advisory committee.

    Don’t you think?

    Also from the inside.

  120. Tax Increment Funding (TIF) and Urban Renewal Areas (URAs) are a key funding mechanism for local match portion of transportation projects in this town. The only other option so far is bond issues, which has its merits. So this discussion has value to transportation matters.
    re property taxes…the real inequity is due to measure 50; the owner of a $ 1/2 Million dollar house in NE Portland is paying half the taxes of our newcomer Mike in the Pearl. Its the 3% limitation which we enjoy.
    re Lents…sorry to pick on you. The situation in Interstate URA is similar, but the same 3% limitation almost guarantees a steady growth of TIF over 20 years. But nothing compares to going from abandoned and contaminated rail yards to 20 story highrise condominiums to increase TIF big time. But there was a lot of risk going into this area; public funds helped to buy down that risk as well as achieve public policy goals. The transformation of the Brewery blocks is probably the most dramatic urban thing to ever happen in Portland…it took some public funds to make it pencil, to get parking underground, to save historic structures, build the Streetcar,etc.
    Al…I ran printing presses for almost 30 years, so you are not the only guy with blue collar cred on this site.
    Last, Urban Renewal is really a state program and is, I assume, overseen by the Revenue Department, so I’m not too concerned with illegal stuff or sloppy bookkeeping. The real issue is how is the money spent, are projects worthwhile. Citizen Advisory Committees (CACs) which most URAs have, spend a lot of time and energy going over annual budgets to set those kind of priorities. Of course they only advise, but they have a lot of input and impact.

  121. Well, I just received our revised budget for FY0708, and yes some line items were combined/recategorized and/or removed. It generally reflected the shift in project assignments and PDC development and ec dev organization. The movement of the monies and rollovers was easy to track. Any shift in items from one line item to another were readily explained. They went to great lengths to explain the three tier cost allocation for services to us. Housing has been excellent at providing actual expenditures vs. needed expenditures for the TIF set aside. We’ve had a major review of capacity vs. expenditures since we’re almost to our debt limit, and we’re planning on amending to increase our maximum indebtedness.

    Perhaps it is because our budget is smaller…but we do have more transactions than larger URAs…maybe it just comes down to talent and communication on the part of the URA manager.

  122. Lenny,

    Excuse me but you are avoiding the problems being voiced here. That being the abuse of TIF and lack of oversight and accountability.

    Not whether or not TIF should be used at all.

    Prudent use of Tax Increment Funding (TIF) and Urban Renewal Areas matters.

    Regardless that they are a key funding mechanism for transportation or anything else. Any key funding for anything must have responsible management by public officials. Their fiduciary responsibility must be fulfilled.

    And very importantly documented.

    Yes this discussion certainly has value to transportation matters.

    But the discussion cannot and should not be blind to red flags and avoid reasonable scrutinizing. Certain parameters must be utilized to make sure fiscal prudence is maintained.
    I contend that TIF in Portland has become a free-for-all with very little oversight or accountability. The perfect recipe for abuse and mismanagement.

    Your vague ideas of inequities due to measure 50 do nothing but ignore the far greater inequities in diverting large sums from city coffers to subsidize private development.
    Sure that 3% limitation almost guarantees a steady growth of TIF over 20 years. Except when TOD and other tax exemptions are then granted in UR districts. But all of that money would be going to basic services if not for UR/TIF.

    Yes it’s swell that abandoned and somewhat contaminated rail yards are turned into 20 story high rise condominiums.
    But let’s get beyond the window dressing.

    There’s nothing in the process right now that determines validity or justifies the level of spending relative to the public benefit.
    It’s all unmonitored presumption.
    Just as Oregonian editorial writer Robert Landauer wrote in the piece I posted above.

    At what price did public funds help to buy down risks?
    What exactly were the public policy goals achieved?

    We should not be borrowing and diverting 100s of millions in property taxes to pay it back with only the superficial definition you provide.

    Of course 100s of millions can and does result in pretty things. It better. But again that’s not the point.

    And if anyone thinks simple promotion, hype and celebration are a substitute for genuine management and accountability they are sadly mistaken. It’s public money in huge amounts being doled out recklessly by the current methods and absence of oversight.

    As for the role the State has in Urban Renewal, state law requires yearly reports on the effects on basic services budgets.
    The PDC does not comply.
    If you are assuming, or misrepresenting that the State Revenue Department audits UR/TIF you could not be more wrong.

    So while you “are not too concerned with illegal stuff or sloppy bookkeeping” there is no one watching how the money is spent or if projects are indeed worthwhile.

    Despite your suggesting that Citizen Advisory Committees “setting of priorities” in an advisory capacity is somehow enough oversight.

    Besides the BIG RED flag in misusing estimates in accounting for costs, The City Club report also mentioned the lack of responsiveness by PDC staff in providing requested documentation. Another BIG RED FLAG. The PDC staff said they couldn’t find the documentation and/or it didn’t exist. Redder yet.

    In the real world of responsible management and accounting if you can’t document it it doesn’t exist.

    So while all the spending makes pretty stuff, it aint good enough to simply spend it.
    Without adequate oversight and legitimate accounting taxpayers will never know what they actually paid for or what they got.

    As Robert Landauer said,
    “If we are going to divert large amounts of tax revenue away from public services for lengthy periods, shifting the burden of paying for local government to homeowners and other businesses, we must install monitoring systems that work well.
    We must be able to judge whether we are paying fair prices for public benefits that truly are delivered — or whether our gullibility raises horse laughs from those who get [subsidies] tax breaks.”

  123. John E –

    Lenny was primarily responding to Chris regarding the relevance of starting up new discussion threads. I don’t see why you’re criticising him in this instance … he’s in favor of opening up the debate in this forum to the topic you’re trying to address.

  124. Lenny-

    I didn’t say I was the only blue collar person here!

    I don’t know what’s going on at the Pearl with all this government buzz word crappola.

    John E makes very good sense and if I had to take sides on the issue put me on his side.

    Portland city government as a rule has been reckless in handling funds hence we now have city streets in ruins because they are too busy funding other projects.

    I have no faith in the city of Portland or the County of Multnomah.

    Even that useless bag of protoplasm called the governor decided to hand out fat raises to all the top staff because he knew that kicker check was coming back.

    One of these days the public will say ENOUGH!

    And then there will be real trouble on the streets of America!

  125. Ok Bob, but I did get that,

    “Tax Increment Funding (TIF) and Urban Renewal Areas (URAs) are a key funding mechanism for local match portion of transportation projects in this town.”

    It was the stuff that followed I was commenting on.

    Psy,
    I’m not sure there is much in common between SoWa and Lents.
    What you are describing is foreign to SoWa.

  126. John,

    No there isn’t much in common between SoWa and Lents…or the River District and Lents etc. That’s why I’m always apprehensive and probably a little defensive when people try to dismiss urban renewal as a tool, or broad brush the activities of the PDC in a negative light based on their mistrust (some justified, some not) of private developers and public private partnerships.

    I’ve often dealt with those sentiments being imported into Lents. Because of the size of our urban renewal area and the market obstacles we have to overcome, constantly fighting that misdirected sentiment often kills catalyst projects and momentum, and basically leaves our blighted low-income neighborhood without the ability to use our TIF effectively and in a timely manner.

    Each scenario and project management style is different. Concerns in one URA don’t always translate in to agency wide or cultural problems at the PDC…sometimes they do. Sometimes…it’s just sour grapes instead of entrepreneurial vision on the part of other developers and business people that missed opportunities. One thing that is absolute is it’s a heck of a lot more complicated and human than the WW/Tribune/Oregonian infotainment version of events.

  127. I’d also like to point out to the paranoid among you that;

    **NOT ONE**

    of my little spoofs on members of this group attacked anybody personally!

    All three ‘profiles’ were harmless little spoofs, intentionally so!

    (The ross spoof wasn’t a profile)

    I reserve the right to continue to make whatever

    “VLOGS”

    I feel appropriate, not just about this group but all the issues that I blog about!

  128. Psy,
    Most absolute is abhorant management, massive misspending and continual evasion by the PDC. Despite your observations and perception of Lents Urban Renewal implementation.
    Certainly there are some honorable staff in the agency but there are far more shady practices than they can ever hope to avert or remedy.

    Full, independent audit NOW.

    Katie,
    When I read that Landauer piece back when it came out I almost fell out off my kitchen island stool where I read the paper every morning.
    I remember thinking, what the heck got into Bob? ‘He’ is calling for monitoring whether we are paying fair prices for public benefits?
    That wasn’t the Landauer I knew.

  129. Honestly John, when I hear things like that they tend to come from the kind of people that ask questions, get an answer that is not the answer they wanted to hear, then they claim their question was evaded.

  130. Psy,

    Well that’s different.

    What is it you didn’t like?

    I don’t have a problem with your observations about Lents at all.
    However, your extended perception of the PDC could not be more rose colored and false as it applies to greater agency and bigger schemes.
    The extremity of shady practices involving many millions, without accountability, in SoWa is bad news for the rest of the city including Lents.

  131. John, what I’m trying to say is that your “shady” vision of the PDC is just as true as a “rosey” vision of it. I have neither. I talk about my positive experiences working with staff in my URA, because that has been what has occurred in my trope.

    Agency wide, there are far to many aspects to color the whole agency, let alone the whole concept of Urban Renewal in a negative light. To say that it is mismanaged as a whole is really not accurate. To say some projects and administrative tasks aren’t managed perfectly is accurate. To say that at a large agency with purchasing cards, some transactions will require explanations (and are explained) is accurate.

    My local experience in Lents is pretty rosey. We have a good team. My opinion on public administration is that it’s very very very gray and that negative (usually political) statements about public agencies just create “dealing with it” reactions rather than positive and collaborative change.

  132. Psy,

    Sorry but you obviously haven’t enough awareness of what goes on at the PDC.
    You take on Lents may be rosy but it aint so with SoWa and their bigger activities.
    I have not overstated the severity of problems at all. And it aint grey and it aint political.
    It’s malfeacence on a grand scale with 100s of millions being wasted and misappropriated under false pretenses, then covered up with agency public relations spin.

    If you are not up to speed on the issue it’s because too many people are not wanting the curtain pulled back.
    The fact is the PDC long ago became emboldened from lack of oversight on previous adventures and have since swayed far from anything resembling fiduciary responsibility. Conflicts of interest run amoke with millions flowing, without constraint or consequence, to interests other than the public’s.
    If you don’t see that out Lents way that’s a good thing.
    But you probably ought not be extending accalades beyond your neighborhood. Lest you in advertantly become a defender of some pretty ugly stuff.

  133. Well, I just received the SoWa revised budget for FY0708, draft pre-budget and forecast FY 08/09-FY 12/13 and future projects list.

    Tidy it’s not.

    Obscured, yet apparent, projects are further over budget, no additional TIF is available and no other funding has been identified, and line itmes show many millions going to non project line items.

  134. Bob R. Says: and you’ve personally videotaped me at various public meetings.
    JK: Just to be clear, the only time that I am aware of taping you was incidental to my taping of public meetings. You never were and never will be a target personally.

    Actually the only meeting that I recall seeing you at was the Streetcar Citizen’s Advisory Committee. Although I think you introduced yourself as you walked by me on your way out of another, earlier meeting.

    Thanks
    JK

  135. Psy, It isn’t in the eye of the beholder at all. There are professionally accepted objective standards of good government transparency, and good government accounting and public agency accountability. PDC can’t even pretend to meet them.

    I’m glad you’ve had a good experience with your involvement in Lents. However, your case against the nay-sayers can only progress if those objective standards of good government are indeed being met. They plainly and obviously aren’t.

    Once they are, we’ll be able to have a reasonable debate about whether the resources are being targeted to best effect.

  136. Katie,

    The reason why the PDC and agencies like the Portland Family of Funds exist is because they need more flexibility to facilitate transactions with private entities than your standard government or public agency.

    Again, in my experience, I’ve never had any problems getting information on actual expenditures/transactions that are complete. That has all been very transparent. It also becomes quite clear when you view the transaction and leveraged investment as a whole that the small amount of funds expended generate a great deal of private investment that would otherwise never occur. Most people never get past the point of complaining about the amounts of PDCs individual contributions without an understanding of the whole picture.

    To address the “non-project” line item issue…again, that’s a function of maintaining flexibility and also preventing the potential allocations for individual projects from becoming a blank check during negotiations because A. if you’re trying to get the best deal for your investment, you don’t want the person you’re negotiating with to know how much you’ve budgeted and B. if the transaction falls through, you want to be able to use that money for something else before the beginning of the next budget cycle.

    The “value” of projects over budget really depend on the overall value of the project as it fits into the puzzle of the URA, and as it relates to the initial investment. The aerial tram is a prime example of this. And yes Katie, that is very subjective in some ways, and easily justified with quantified results in others.

  137. Psy,

    It’s obvious you haven’t the slightest idea what what is happening with the PDC and other adventures besides Lents.
    Your presumtion that all is rational at the PDC and suggesting “most people” (inferring Katie and I?) don’t understand the whole picture
    is without YOUR understanding of nearly all of the whole picture.
    Repeating your claim that you’ve never “experienced any problems getting information on actual expenditures/transactions that are complete” flies in the face of the PDCs MO elsewhere.
    I wonder to what degree you have requested additional documentation and what exactly you claim is complete accounting.
    In terms of SoWa there has never been anything resembling “complete”, budget or otherwise, and not a single accounting of money spent provided.
    If you have a complete or even a partial spread sheet for actual Lents expeditures to date that would be exceptional.

    Your additional presumption that a “small amount of funds expended generate a great deal of private investment” you are clearly not seeing anything at all beneath the cover of theory and shine the PDC uses to obscure all they do.

    You use of the punchline “that would otherwise never occur” really signals your team player willingness to help with the shine.

    I now serioulsy doubt you even have a genuine grasp of what Lents Urban Renewal involves.

    Whole picture or otherwise.

  138. And if you have some impression that the Tram has now been justified, at whatever the cost, you are surely operating without understanding any of that picture.

  139. It’s obvious you haven’t the slightest idea
    your team player willingness to help with the shine.
    I now serioulsy doubt you even have a genuine grasp
    you are surely operating without understanding

    This is straying into getting personal. Please stick to facts, not conjecture about the intelligence or motivations of the commenters.

  140. John E., You’re making a lot of heavy accusations about PDC and sending a lot of venom in Psymonetta’s way.

    As a newcomer who’s just trying to learn more about how things work here, I’m dismayed at the lack of real content in the posts of someone who says he knows the truth. I’d certainly appreciate your posting some facts that would support your accusations, or at least posting a URL where I could look it up.

    I dislike government opacity as much as everyone else, but opacity does not automatically equate to criminality or even to mischief. So I’d be grateful if you toned down your rhetoric and replaced it with a few facts I could use. I — and maybe others — will thank you for it.

    Mike

  141. ” Please stick to facts, not conjecture about the intelligence or motivations of the commenters.”

    You mean like this?

    Psy: “Most people never get past the point of complaining about the amounts of PDCs individual contributions without an understanding of the whole picture.”

  142. This “flexibility” argument has been the PDC party line for a long time. In my view, it is code words for escaping proper standards of transparency and accountability. The funds are public dollars. With that goes a defined set of responsibilities. I think a political fight has already been had over whether PDC should be exempted from them, and PDC lost.

    If you put the question in plain English, it is this: “Should public servants have the ability to dispense unknown amounts of public funds to unknown private parties in secret.”

    The answer is “no”. If it isn’t already illegal, then the law needs fixing.

    Ire about PDC’s evasion of accountability is aggravated by the starvation of basic services city-wide due to the sheer volume of URA/TIF set-asides.

  143. John,

    My understanding of expenditures vs. leveraging private investment come from the last 6 months of participating in an extensive plan amendment study for Lents where PDC made an extra effort to provide as much quantified and qualitative data as possible for projections and hired two consultants to assemble that data. This was for specific individual projects identified by both community stakeholders and agencies like PDOT, BES etc. Likewise, if I ask our project manager how budget items break down after money goes out the door in an actual expenditure, she is able to tell me the amount. She occasionally gives me estimates for pending real estate transactions when it is prudent, as well.

    We were provided with an extensive spread sheet that indicated a projected PDC/URA investment amount, the amount of private funds needed to leverage the project which then equated to the project total cost.

    The comment that I made that riled your defenses was not in reference to you or Katie. It was based on the public comments I hear at numerous events, as well as the commentary I see in places like the Tribune online, the Willamette Week online and other blogs that I dislike mentioning because they really don’t deserve the traffic or attention they get. I suppose I could have been more precise by saying “most people who superficially object to the activities of the PDC as well as public private partnerships facilitated by other city agencies”.

    What I’m trying to point out is that there is a sort of disinformation based public sentiment that exists. I’m sorry that your experience is a negative one for you. If I’m a PDC apologist, so be it. Someone has to point out that they do indeed contribute greatly to the vitality and success of this city despite past and current controversy.

  144. I should also mention that I do occasionally disagree with their approach to some subjects and I definitely have opinions about what their priorities should be on many issues. But, that’s why I serve on one of their advisory committees.

  145. I said to John E: “Please stick to facts, not conjecture about the intelligence or motivations of the commenters.”

    John E said in his defense:

    You mean like this?

    Psy: “Most people never get past the point of complaining about the amounts of PDCs individual contributions without an understanding of the whole picture.”

    The difference, John E., in case you failed to recognize it, is that your comments were directed at a particular individual commenter, right here in the same thread. Psy’s comment that you quoted here was an over-generalization, but not personally-directed.

    People on all sides have frequently used broad generalizations here, such as those who frequently criticize rail supporters in general as “infatuated railfans”. Such practices are seldom useful, frequently tiresome, but they don’t cross the boundary of being personally-directed remarks.

    Now that the difference has been explained, I hope we can move on to a more factual discussion.

    “There are two kinds of people in this world: the kind of people who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.”

    – Most recently attributed to Gloria Steinem, but I’m sure I’ve heard it way before she said it.

  146. Katie,

    I’m sorry to see that is your view of flexibility. I just see it as allowing professional negotiators and project managers the leeway to use the tools available to them to the public benefit. From what I’ve seen in my personal trope, so far, it’s only saved the public money and created more opportunity for the public to make wise investments.

    The boiled down to easy to understand concepts questions really are, do you negotiate with someone holding all of your money up in front of them, and even if you decide not to give them your money, do you then wait a year before trying to find something else to spend you money on?

    I’m not suggesting anything like the “plain English” question you’re asserting. The goals that URA/TIF money is targeted toward must agree with expenditures. So, if you can provide any examples of the PDC staff spending large or even moderate amounts of money on projects that don’t fit the specific, stakeholder defined goals outlined in a URA plan, I’d be happy to hear about them.

    The “starvation” of public services is not solely because of Tax Increment Financing. It also has quite a bit to do with the management of the City’s General Fund as well as the (also often noted as mis-managed and inefficient) management of County Funds…and School District Funds. In fact, URAs do a heck of a lot to make up for the lack of investment in infrastructure and other needed public facilities due to lack of attention from the City and County. In the case of my neighborhood, it was a very positive step toward ensuring that at least some of the tax revenue generated in our area directly benefited our (often ignored) area.

  147. There is an opportunity to witness and participate in the closure of two long time downtown URAs, South Park Blocks and Downtown Waterfront. The Urban Renewal Advisory Committee, whose members include City Commssioners Saltzman and Sten and County Commissioner Cogan, will meet Tuesday, January 15, 2-5pm to make some decisions on the future of those two districts and the proposed expansion of the River District URA. Public comments are welcome.
    go to http://www.pdc.us/four for documents for this meeting or contact PDC at 503-823-6839.
    The trade offs that are part of URAs will be on display for all to see. Example…Cogan wants to see more $ flow into county coffers, but also wants help with a major capital project for county offices. Affordable housing…how to achieve the No Net Loss goal with less URA $.

  148. Lenny; at yesterdays NM URAC meeting the future of the three downtown URAs, all within the boundaries of the Willamette River and 405, were discussed. Please note that these three cover 3/4s of the downtown area. Downtown has been determined to be “blighted” for over 30 years. When will it never be “blighted”?

    The Chamber of Commerce certainly doesn’t advertise Portland’s downtown as “blighted” around the world. All the accolades say differently. Which is it, a planners paradise or “blight”-or is it how we want to play it?

    The PDC presentation yesterday was not to necessarily reduce the “blighted” acreage, but to shift it around. PDC, CoP are proposing to enlarge the RiverDistrict (the Pearl) by 16+ acres; and MAJOR NEWS, the PDC and PSU representatives announced their intention to create a new URA for the only remaining segment of downtown Portland not presently in a URA. The only remaining area is the area around PSU from approximately SW 5th to 405 on the SW quadrant of this geographical area.

    Does this remaining area constitute “blight”? Out of the nine definitions of “blight” in Oregon statutes, the only likely definition that might fit is “does it meet its highest and best use”. That definition can almost be used everywhere, like your neighborhood. If you have a bungalow house next door, then it really should be a McMansion three stories high with minimum setbacks. You need urban renewal. Do you regard PSU surroundings as really blighted?

    If this new configuration of URAs in downtown happens, it actually keeps the the tax dollars generated replowed in the URAs as they are now, and not helping the taxes needed for roads, fire, police, infrastructure, and schools. PDC and CoP are merely keeping the 15% maximum total in the Urban Renewal quagmire.

    Worse yet, since PSU owns most of the land area in this new, proposed URA, the tax dollars that can be generated is less or nil since they pay no taxes. And consider all the tax subsidies that will be coming PSUs’ way.

    Excuse me, I am for education. But is this a rightful means to help education? And the taxpayer becomes even more remote from helping to decide how taxpayer funds are used for education. If we want to help education, lets do it with more responsibility, over-site, and the various means we have, and not a shell game.

  149. Surface parking is blight if you ask me. Its taxable value is considerably lower than a 10 story office or residential building, not to mention aesthetics. My wife often comments that it still looks like we “lost the war” when we are downtown.
    A new URA around PSU? Just about everyone in the world agrees that information, knowledge, innovation…hence universities and research insitutions…will be driving economic growth in the 21st century. Focusing as much public investment as possible on PSU and OHSU just keeps Portland in the game.
    Meanwhile the bulk of South Park Blocks URA and Downtown Waterfront URA will get back on the tax rolls…at a much higher level.

  150. Lenny Anderson Says: A new URA around PSU? Just about everyone in the world agrees that information, knowledge, innovation…hence universities and research insitutions…will be driving economic growth in the 21st century. Focusing as much public investment as possible on PSU and OHSU just keeps Portland in the game.
    JK: OHSU???
    Wednesday, January 09, 2008, TED SICKINGER , The Oregonian:
    Florida has recruited one of Oregon Health & Science University’s research units to expand on that state’s Treasure Coast, lavishing a $118 million incentive package on the institute to recruit 200 staff and occupy a new building amid a rapidly evolving biotechnology research hub there.

    Between 2001 and 2006, OHSU received more than $500 million from private donors and Oregon’s tobacco settlement, based mostly on its heady promises to spin off biotech companies and jobs after recruiting top-shelf scientists and building state-of-the-art research space.

    Those jobs have been slow to materialize, however, and Tuesday’s announcement likely means that the bulk of expansion in at least one of the university’s fast-growing research institutes will take place in another state.

    OHSU used state money to underwrite recruitment of many of the principal scientists at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, the unit that will expand to Port St. Lucie on Florida’s eastern seaboard. The university said no VGTI staff would move from Oregon to Florida for now, though VGTI’s director, Jay Nelson, will serve as co-director of the Florida branch.

    OHSU, facing deep losses from research support and medical education, can’t compete with the kind of expansion subsidies that Florida is throwing at the institute. But OHSU university officials hope that collaboration with top-tier institutions recruited to Florida will spur more growth in Oregon. It also would provide new revenue for OHSU if technology created there ends up producing licensing revenue.

    “Past experience has shown that proximity is one of the main factors in promoting these partnerships,” said Nelson in a news release. “This institute in Florida will allow for unique regional partnerships that will cross-connect with operations in Oregon and benefit us all.”

    Yeah, Lenny all those millions to OHSU really worked. Maybe they would have been better spent on our schools, police and fire departments instead of Homer’s millionaire condos and toy trains.

    Lenny Anderson Says: Meanwhile the bulk of South Park Blocks URA and Downtown Waterfront URA will get back on the tax rolls…at a much higher level.
    JK: Any idea in which century?

    BTY how many Oregonians have you put out of a job this year?

    Thanks
    JK

  151. JK says: BTY how many Oregonians have you put out of a job this year?

    Question for the moderators: Do you consider comments such as this one indicative of the level of discourse you wish to promote on this blog?

    Thanks

  152. The cited article on the research lab’s move suggests we need to spend more not less money on our only research institution. Can’t see how starving it helps it grow, let alone keeps it here. Best to do all we can for our largest employer.
    Downtown URAs should be back on the rolls as debt is paid off, perhaps beginning as early as 2008. Go to the URA Advisory Committee meeting noted above for more details. It is complex.
    Private investors have put a lot of money on the line in SoWa…isn’t that the idea? spend some public money to attract a lot more of the private kind. The Tram is probably one of the best deals ever done in this City.

  153. I’m really surprised OHSU doesn’t just relocate to its property out in Tanasbourne. At what point does the property on pill hill become so valuable that other uses besides hospital would be more appropriate? To me it seems foolish to have a hospital all clustered in an area where an earthquake would send it all sliding down into the Willamette and where noxious fumes from cars below on I-5 waft up into the air all around it.

  154. Evidently OHSU looked at that option and decided that linking to a new riverside campus via the Tram made more sense. Central location close to existing campus, etc. Ride the Tram up there sometime or take an 8 bus; its an amazing place…a city on a hill. Not very realistic to walk away from that.
    There are actually four hospitals up there…Veterans, Shriners, Doernbecker Childrens and University; the latter assumed the duties of the old Multnomah County hospital, caring for those without insurance, etc.
    That plus nationally recognized medical research and education…doctors, nurses, dentists. I fail to understand why some folks like to rag on the place so much.

  155. We’ll see how effective it is when the next earthquake hits and all the buildings go down in a big landslide. The buildings in the Pearl are all sitting on infilled lakebed. Remember the earthquake in Mexico City – a very dense place! All the smart growth and high density means more people crammed into a small area to die in a mass catastrophe.

  156. And of course the next Missoula Flood will bury us all under 400 feet of water…except OHSU!…high and dry.

  157. Gee, seems to me that most of the people in Oregon that have recently been suffering catastrophic losses have live in the more rural areas like Vernonia.

    As far as earthquakes go, there are standards for new construction and Urban Renewal funds also assist with seismic retrofitting of the older buildings as well.

  158. Even though there are some bloggers here (namely Bob R per his post on Mike’s Gas Tax) who do not like to refer back to earlier posts, I’d like to refer back to my 1-11-08 9:17PM post. I stated that 3 URAs in downtown Portland were not being totally eliminated, but reconfigured and added to by a new proposed PSU URA.

    Lenny and others say “NO”, “WRONG”, many millions of tax dollars will be going back into the general fund

    First, where are your numbers and backup basis?

    Secondly, why did todays Tribune article by Chris Lydgate(“Sten tells Old Town: Let’s deal”) differ with Lenny’s claim. Tribune states:

    “…let the city build a new homeless center in Old Town-in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars of development subsidies in a new urban renewal district.” Old Town/China Town is not now in an URD.”

    “Sten chairs a committee that is in the process of redrawing two urban renewal districts that are set to expire.”

    “If Old Town is drawn into the boundary of the prosperous River District, Sten said, somewhere on the order of $300 million to $400 million of urban renewal money would flow to Old Town developers-but only if the neighborhood access center gets built.”

    Now, $300M to $400M (and that is before CoP’s typical 3 times inflation factor) is a sizable chunk to take out of the general fund that could go to street repair, police, fire, jails, etc. In fact, it is the amount Sam is seeking with more taxes for streets, etc.

    Additionally, the portion of taxes that would go back to Multnomah Co. of this portion would exceed $42.4MILLION. More than the matching dollars Ted Wheeler is seeking for the Sellwood Bridge fix.

    And don’t forget the lost general fund tax dollars from the proposed PSU URD. How many could that be -$500 MILLION? (PDC doesn’t have a number yet) That number would not even cover the lost tax dollars because any further expansion of PSU outside their now defined zoning district -PSU District in the Central City Plan-would be a tax loss (they don’t pay taxes-they take them).

    I hope Ted read this, and reconsiders the proposed Mult. Co. road/bridge tax. Sorry, Ted, I think the tax is dead. For Sten, and especially for Sam, Sam doesn’t get it. A new mayor is in order. It is a matter of setting priorities.

  159. Even though there are some bloggers here (namely Bob R per his post on Mike’s Gas Tax) who do not like to refer back to earlier posts

    No, I don’t like it when people try to re-ignite flame wars which the original participants have moved on from. It’s off-topic/irrelevant, and harmful to discussion.

  160. The buildings in the Pearl are all sitting on infilled lakebed. Remember the earthquake in Mexico City – a very dense place!

    Fair enough, was this studied and common knowledge during construction? Is it a red herring, or something ignored? Context matters significantly in this case. Please explain further.

  161. Bob R: The title of this post is “Debunking Some Pearl Myths”. What I just posted is relevant and quite new to the discussion, since it was just reported today, even though I cited PDC staff saying similar comments at the last NM URAC on Thursday. The Pearl is in the RiverDistrict URA and is part of the proposed reorganization that I referred to above. If you could respond to the facts and insinuations in the above post, I think it would help. Or tell us that the Tribune is misreporting, or spin it the way you want.

  162. Jerry –

    Just to be clear: When I said “I don’t like it when people try to re-ignite flame wars which the original participants have moved on from”, I was referring to LW’s little questioning of Mike’s consistency in another thread, as were you. I neither censored your remarks this evening nor admonished you for them. Can we move on? Or would you rather get bogged down in useless diversions?

  163. GTinSalem said

    The buildings in the Pearl are all sitting on infilled lakebed.

    What’s your source for this information? Can you support your statement? Where was the lakebed and when was it filled in?

    Which buildings? The oldest ones are over 100 years old and still standing. Some of the new ones were built where old ones stood until recently; other new buildings were built on the abandoned railyards. Please provide more details.

    Mike

  164. Mike –

    For some non-specific hints at what lies below the Perl District (and several parts of Portland) and what Greg might be talking about, see a couple of articles about Tanner Creek:

    http://wweek.com/editorial/2744/1941/
    http://www.asla.org/land/032006/landmatters.html

    (The above links are editorials with an occasional fact thrown in, rather than authoritative histories.)

    I don’t know the geology of the Pearl District area in particular, but Greg may be referring to the Tanner Creek delta. But I couldn’t find anything in particular relating specifically to a lake bed. (Greg, can you help us out here?)

    Interestingly, while Googling around, I found a court case from 1893 regarding sewer assessments in that area which went all the way to the supreme court! (I guess nothing ever changes.)

    See:
    http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?friend=nytimes&court=us&vol=149&invol=30

    Doubly interestingly, when I did a search for “lakebed” and “pearl district”, I found a blog entry by our own Garlynn, but it was unrelated. (Garlynn had multiple posts on that page, one about Burning Man on the dry lake bed temporarily called Black Rock City, NV each year, and another referring to the Pearl District.)

    Since I’ve just been rather harsh about keeping on-topic, but keeping in mind I’m deferring a bit to the original author of this thread, if we can’t wrap up this lakebed/earthquake business in a comment or two I’ll stop that tangent and try to get us back on-topic.

  165. Jerry’s post and the Tribune article he cites point to the ongoing discussion by the Urban Renewal Advisory Committee…they met yesterday…on the closing of two downtown URAs AND the expansion of the very successful River District URA.
    There remain many projects that various parties…not just Sten…desire in the Old Town portion of downtown, hence the interest in expanding RD to cover portions of the soon to be closed Downtown Waterfront URA.
    The trade offs are pretty clear…give up some general tax revenue now in exchange for some public capital investment in support of adopted public policy which if done right will encourage private investment in “underperforming” areas of the city as well.

  166. Lenny, the $300 million to $400 million in general tax revenue is not “some”, it is immense as my post points out in comparison to other needs that Sam and others call lacking. It is interesting how you dismiss the amount and not really respond to the information given in the post.

  167. Cities shouldn’t be giving out any kind of abatements to entice developers to build these “livable high density cubicles”. If there were such a market and huge demand for them like they claim, people would shell out a premium for them and the city could collect massive property taxes so they could have nice fancy streets with no potholes. Instead it seems that cities try to encourage such unnatural developments by giving developers free rides and get people into free taxes for several years. Well eventually the free taxes period will end then what happens? People all move out to another free tax zone for another 10 years?

  168. No one is talking about shutting down the River District URA, source of the “$300-$400 Million.” The question is how to distribute these resources to achieve some city AND county policy goals…housing, homelessness, development, etc.
    And remember without the public investment in the River District, there would be considerably less private money flowing in and much lower tax receipts. You got to spend money to make money.

  169. Lenny, your Jan 17, 08 10:00AM comment that “No one is talking about shutting down the River District URA…” is totally contrary to what you have written twice before:

    Jan 11, 08 10:55; “There is an opportunity to witness and participate in the closure of two long time downtown URAs, South Park Blocks and Downtown Waterfront.”

    Jan 14, 08 9:llAM; “Bulk of South Park Blocks URA and Downtown Waterfront URA will bet back on the taxrolls”.

    The only legal means of putting $300M to $400M of TIF dollars back into circulation in the general fund is elimination of the URAs. TIF dollars can only be used within the URA that generates the dollars.

    Besides, you are claiming two opposing things, “potential closure of URAs”, then you say “No one is talking about shutting down the URAs. Which is it?

  170. Jerry –

    Lenny referred specifically to the River District URA as the one not being shut down. When you closed your comment by saying, in quotes, “No one is talking about shutting down the URAs”, you eliminated that important bit of context from what Lenny actually said.

  171. Last time I checked River District URA was not South Park Blocks nor Downtown Waterfront…this is obviously too complicated for some.
    The intention of the URAC’s discussion is to shift a small portion of the latter two into the former which has plenty of dough.
    And don’t forget there is a 15% limit and its only TIF that is diverted to capital projects. Relax.

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