It was a blast.

Here are some more pictures, including Henry's pudding encounter: http://www.flickr.com/photos/grat/sets/721…

Also, I'm now highly tempted to head out to Mult. Falls on Saturday.

Mr. Davis is looking quite dapper in his little hat.

Metro Regional council president David Bragdon weighs in:

Lads,

Entertaining mystery show last night but you failed the finger the three main co-conspirators: Measures 5, 47 & 50. With those three state constitutional amendments in 1990, 1996 and 1997, voters ratified Bill Sizemore’s de-rationalization of Oregon’s property tax system and in two key respects changed urban renewal. My ignorant Colombo-like hunch is we have to dust for the fingerprints of those statewide measures to understand how urban renewal has been wounded, or in some instances I would venture to say has been perverted.

The two guilty counts:

One, by limiting local government revenue from property taxes (on a somewhat arbitrary basis when measured jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction, meaning some jurisdictions are frozen at higher levels than others, regardless of need or local preference) these statewide ballot measures have caused local governments to look for unconventional financing mechanisms to fund projects and programs that would previously have been funded by a general fund or some form of property taxes. Limitations on those conventional sources cause those governments look to urban renewal to fund items like school buildings, low-income housing projects, social service facilities, parks, and transportation, many of which would not have been funded by urban renewal under earlier conditions. Also, many of those uses do not generate revenue (or cause private property appreciation) needed to pay back bonds.

Two, the statewide ballot measures severed the link between market appreciation and tax assessment, which to some extent limits the “increment” that urban renewal (officially, “tax increment financing”) is predicated on. The old premise of tax increment financing was that public investment in some piece of public infrastructure would increase the market value of the proximate private property, and that as that value appreciated, so would property tax receipts, the increment of which would be used to pay off the bonds that had been issued to pay for the initial public improvement. After measures 5, 47 & 50, the public investment in some piece of infrastructure may still increase the market value of the proximate private property, but the appreciation in property tax receipts is capped by the state constitution.

These two big changes probably explain the very different characters of the three case studies you used last night. Nobody remarked on how fundamentally different the three cases are, particularly in terms of the role being played by government, but I think it’s an important observation. The use of urban renewal evolves significantly over the years in these three examples. In the Pioneer Courthouse Square example, I think it’s what might be considered classic urban renewal: public funds were used to fund public infrastructure and because of that public infrastructure the surrounding private property became more valuable. Pretty simple paradigm: Nordstrom’s property is more valuable because it is across the street from a vibrant plaza than it would be if it were across the street from a crummy parking lot. By contrast, in the Burnside Bridge example government’s role is more mixed, as PDC was an assembler of previously private (and blighted) property and a participant, to some extent, in a real estate development transaction. It’s a different role and different risk profile than the role government played at Pioneer Courthouse Square. A private party, awarded the opportunity through a competitive process, would ultimately own the development, and ultimately the public ownership and participation would run its course. By further contrast, the current soccer-baseball proposal is even more blurry in terms of defining the public and private spheres, because urban renewal money would have been used to improve non-blighted public property which is not on the tax rolls at all, for the benefit of one specific private party (Timbers/Beavers) who has an exclusive contract to operate in that publicly-owned facility for a set period. So each of these cases is very different from the other two.

Again, good show. It’s unjust to condemn “urban renewal” as a class when those three examples are so utterly different. And it’s important to also indict Bill Sizemore and Measures 5, 47 & 50 as co-culprits in the current capers.

David

Representative Kahl responds:

"David should have been on the panel! And on these points you are most assuredly right.

To add to them just briefly, I am not opposed to Urban Renewal but rather to how it has been utilized. And even projects the predate M5 & 50 are marked with many of the flaws that current projects manifest. One need only look to the coliseum or Keller auditorium to see that urban renewal's long history has been marked by gentrification, if not the outright destruction, of minority/ethnic communities. My issue has been and continues to be that too often urban renewal doesn't benefit the people living in the urban renewal district and often times urban renewal in fact disadvantages them. It is no cure for urban blight to shuffle off those poor wretched souls from one blighted area to another. The amazing thing about MLS is that Portland has quit feigning an interest in curing urban blight and attempted to hand a ton of money over to a multi-millionaire. "