Since launching last summer, a campaign to snatch Portland’s water and sewer systems away from city council has largely targeted Commissioner Nick Fish.
Fish assumed control of the Portland Water Bureau and Bureau of Environmental Services not long before that effort—Portlanders for Water Reform—went to work. He’s since been painted as an “East Coast carpetbagger” complicit in increases in utility rates that the campaign argues are astronomic and unnecessary.
But the commissioner isn’t the only focal point any longer. As the Mercury first reported, it’s not Fish who’ll helm the opposition to the water campaign. It’s Mayor Charlie Hales.
And the water district campaign’s first web video—sent along today by Kent Craford, one of the people leading the effort— doesn’t even mention Fish. It features plenty of the mayor, though. Mainly, the campaign criticizes Hales for increasing water and sewer bills, when as a candidate he advocated flat rates. Here’s the video:
“It was purposeful,” Craford says of the attack on Hales. “We want voters to know that the mayor broke his promise, which was a promise he made in his campaign to lower water and sewer rates.”
Fish recently spoke to that issue, telling Willamette Week: “Charlie Hales the candidate talked about lowering rates. Charlie Hales the mayor, when he got the utilities and ran them for five months, learned that you can’t do so without doing violence to the system.”
So has the water campaign moved on from Fish? Craford laughed at the notion.
“Oh no,” he said. “Oh heavens no.”
Now Craford is running ballot measure campaigns with other peoples’ money just to embarrass politicians he dislikes?
Kent’s becoming the new Bill Sizemore.
Measure 26-156 will: Lead to decreased water quality in our streams and rivers; eliminate the city’s efforts to recover salmon in Johnson Creek, the Willamette River and other city waterways; eliminate fish and wildlife habitat protection and restoration; eliminate the city’s efforts to remove invasive species in Forest Park, Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, Powell Butte, Smith and Bybee Lakes and other city natural areas; and eliminate the city’s tree planting programs
The measure’s language is misleading. BES is no longer a “sewer bureau.” Thanks to the public’s insistence that the city improve environmental quality in the Willamette River and its tributaries, the bureau has transitioned from its former role as the city’s “sewer bureau” to become a broader human health, watershed health, and environmental bureau.
Kent Craford and his backers of Ballot Measure 26-156 have two goals in mind: 1). Reduce utility rates for some of the city’s biggest corporate polluters and shift those costs to individual rate payers; and 2). Eliminate the city’s environmental programs.
Those who care about the city’s environment; support the city’s successful removal of raw sewage from the Willamette River and Columbia Slough; support significant improvements in water quality and flood reduction in Johnson Creek; agree with the city’s efforts to restore salmon habitat in the Willamette and its tributaries; and support the city’s efforts to respond to climate change will vote no and reject Measure 26-156’s attack on the city’s water quality, fish and wildlife habitat and healthy watersheds.
Mike Houck, Executive Director
Urban Greenspaces Institute
This initiative is simply a bad idea. They speak of lowering rates, but there is nothing in this initiative that requires that. They will decrease rates for large customers, and decrease the City of Portland’s environmental programs. Few people even realize that the Bureau of Environmental Services is included in this effort. Their programs are essential to protecting clean water, and public health. Don’t take the bait. The rhetoric from this campaign is right out of Fox news.