"Blight" is whatever our overbearing, nanny-state, government overlords say it is, silly.

We are all socialists now SPK.

The only people who should be allowed to touch MC are avant-garde artists (who are also parents and understand that children, too, are part of the world), and those artists should be under the supervision of the McMenamin brothers. Have a minimalist style celebration and revival with some serious kitsch. QUIRKY CELEBRATION HEAVEN that never stops working and making the city revenue-filled with families with young children and retirees during the day using the pools at 10$/pop, restaurant taking the public's money in exchange for celebrated McMenamin's hospitality,rich businessmen playing racquetball and doing laps in the evening, adults drinking and dancing and using the bar and soaking pools all the night long....have a section dedicatred to teenagers with pooltables, pinball machines, climbing wall, small projection screen for movies. On and on. just make sure that noone except the mcMenamins have creative control, and we'll be good. And don't forget to dedicate one corner to the butterfly garden complete with flamingos and moths the size of dinner plates. I may be wrong, but MC is so HUGE, I think it would all fit...ah, so much imagination, so little money.

"In reality, the city can expand the district wherever its wants."

Not true. The City can try. However, as we just saw in the recent attempt to expand the River Dist. URA in order to use funds in the Pearl District, the State Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) said, "no way." This was in response to the lawsuit by Friends of Urban Renewal which was based in part, on a similar issue of using TIF. Another group is fully prepared to launch another similar lawsuit should Interstate URA funding be used for the Rose Quarter. Keep in mind that this lawsuit is still pending on several other items and that many city URA projects are on hold until LUBA makes their ruling, this is costing the City now and in the long term.

Furthermore, what people fail to realize is that the City is reaching maximum indebtedness for TIF (tax increment financing - the financing used in urban renewal) and we are reaching the maximum geography for URAs as per the State's URA criteria. Restated, there is only so much the City can use for URA funding and we are reaching that limit for a few different reasons: 1) The City keeps extending the life of URAs which are only meant to be for 30 years - the money is not getting paid back it just keeps getting diverted, 2) Several URA districts do not have much funding available since the money has already been spent on expensive capital and other projects such as the Tram, Lightrail, Streets, and Affordable Housing that take a couple of decades to be recapped, if ever. 3) Due to the economy and other factors several URA districts are under performing because all those condos, hotels, etc the city invested in aren't panning out (i.e. the Nines and South Waterfront.). 4) Finally, the City is only allowed to have 15% of total geography within URAs. We are already at something like 13.5%.

Extending Interstate to be used for the Rose Quarter is idiotic and in essence will divert funding from the Interstate URA. I think Sam Adams has lost his mind.

I would have been at that meeting, but instead I was at a meeting about the [lack of] business district along Lombard, which is already in the Interstate URA. Our discussion was that we could and should use that money to clean up actual blighted areas, like stores that can't afford to repaint their signs, or boarded up gas stations. But expanding the URA so we could pay for some rich kid to have a place to put his latest toy seemed like a bad deal. So we're (North Portland Land Use Group) is writing a letter, and probably tonight my neighborhood association will write a letter as well...

"We are all socialists now SPK."

Just now? I've known nothing else in my ferty years.

Yes...ever since we elected the communist fascist libtard super hero Barack Obama to head the politburo.

We weren't communist/socialist/islamo fascists when the great people's hero George W. was battling the dark forces of Satan's liberal army with his giant lightsaber like cock.

The mighty Ron Paul was supposed to save us but he couldn't raise enough money because they're taxing the rich too much.

I'm just trying to get my head around these new fangled socialist programs that happened since Obama was elected:

Social Security
Medicare and the prescription drug benefit
Interstate freeways
Welfare
Publis housing
Unemployment insurance
Food stamps
Public schools
FERS
Income tax

You know, the PDC is an actual Commission of people. Upon it's creation, the idea was you'd have this seperate group somewhat insulated from electoral politics making these decisions on which neighborhoods to mow down, and how to spend hundreds of millions of dollars.

Just in the last couple of years, the Council, led by Sam, decided to significantly erode this seperation so that the Council could start more directly throwing this money around. The pretext was that the PDC wasn't handling affordable housing well, and the Council needed to step in to make sure the public was being taken care of.

Fast forward to now, and the PDC is still in disarray, being chopped into different peices and being rearranged by the politicians. Many many people at the PDC with an ounce of competence or hire-ability have gotten the hell out.

I said at the time, and I still believe, that the Council's recent choice to become more directly involved in these gargantuan projects would bring one or more of them down. If you're the mayor and you push for some wildly over-budget failure like the tram, you don't want it to be "your project" - you want plausible deniability. In other words, you want to blame it on the PDC.

Randy and Sam have now tied their names to an effort to completely redo the Rose Quarter without knowing the true cost or scale. The current budget is around a quarter of a $billion. They think this will bring them glory, but instead they'll find themselves standing with their pants around their ankles.

Then, too late, they'll understand why the PDC was set up the way it was: to protect idiot politicians from themselves.

(There is an excellent recent example of this dynamic. The Council circumvented it's own street-naming procedures and tried to rename Interstate after Chavez with a simple vote, only to have the whole issue explode rather violently in their laps. Too late, they realized "Hey, these street-renaming procedures aren't just here to provide mindless red tape. The process is actually here to cover our stupid asses." It's a lesson they'll have to learn a few times over I guess.)

Hugs to Blabby. You are right on the money. Council's desire to grab the reins of PDC is coming back to bite them on the butt.

Funny, I'd have thought you'd be arguing the complete opposite - that unelected groups such as the PDC shouldn't have so much say over our money, it should be disbanded completely and give the control to the elected members of the council... After all, that's what we elect them for... At least that way, when we don't agree with one of their decisions (in my case, the convention center hotel), we can hold them accountable for it...

The people have no bread to eat, no jobs, and their property taxes are killing them.

Let them eat cake, Sam replied.