This has been a theme, over the past week or so, hasn't it? Mayor Sam Adams and a few city officials spent some time in city council this morning pushing back, once more, against Oregonian coverage.

This time, it was over a story that said the Portland Development Commission, in its latest budget proposal, is sidestepping the city's affordable housing mandate in the Convention Center Urban Renewal Area to pour $20 million into Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

"This budget does not make a decision about that. We do not want to make a decision about that right now, because we're still at the table with private investors," Mayor Adams said in council. "I don't want anyone to assume at this point that public money will go to the coliseum. The headline and other coverage today would lead an average reader to believe otherwise."

But, now, I'd say the complaints ring a little more hollow. Prepare for some minor wonkery. And a trip up onto the soapbox.

The discussion came during the PDC's budget presentation, about when officials were detailing how they would spend some $17 million in redevelopment money on various projects in the urban renewal area. The PDC is proposing just $1.9 million for affordable housing—a far smaller share than the 26 percent city guidelines require—and then nothing in future years.

At the same time, the PDC wants to spend $9 million this year on "Rose Quarter revitalization," followed by $11 million more spread over the next two years.

That vagueness, of course, was what Adams and others seized on when disputing the Oregonian. Votes on how to proceed in the Rose Quarter—and on Memorial Coliseum—are due in the next few months, they argued. Maybe only some of that money might be spent.

As Nick Fish, the city's housing commissioner, asked PDC's boss, Patrick Quinton: "We do not currently have a plan before us that would allocate any money for any particular project involving the coliseum?"

"Correct," Quinton replied.

But that doesn't mean there isn't the intent. As the O notes:

"There's deferred maintenance on the Memorial Coliseum, and the city is asking us to get involved," Julie Cody, the PDC's chief financial officer, said Tuesday. "We have made it very clear to assist with this level of rehabilitation, there would not be money available" for affordable housing. "City Hall is cognizant of that."

Also, what other kinds of capital projects in the Rose Quarter, after all, could reasonably command that kind of investment?

No one, of course, disputed the notion the PDC's budget would dramatically reduce affordable housing spending in the urban renewal area, and that money for "revitalization," no matter how it's parsed, would also increase dramatically.

The mayor tried to fall back on the notion that the PDC was still spending more than 30 percent of its money on affordable housing across the whole city. He said that's primarily what the URA-specific targets are trying to get the city to do.

Fish, at least, insisted that the council have a substantive discussion about whether it makes sense to change policy in one area and, if so, should the council find $6 million more in another URA to keep the city's spending on housing from slipping even a little.

Here's why even that might not be good enough: Gentrification. By ignoring the district-specific targets, the city could concentrate affordable housing in certain areas and gentrify others. Honoring them means the city must ensure that its renewal efforts don't outprice everyone in a depressed neighborhood.

And if it works once, hell, why not do it again.