It would be courageous to refuse to spend money on vanity projects when the city is broke.

It does to take courage to declare bioswales to be a $20 million priority while you lay off hundreds of city employees. Especially when the point of those bioswales is really to benefit bike projects which should be the responsibility of the transportation department.

Being consistently full of shit in public takes a lot of courage indeed.

blabby, until you have something constructive to say, shut the fuck up. We're all tired of hearing about how you hate everything.

Uh, nope - that was a rock solid point, Blabby.

YeahThatsRight, your comment was not particularly constructive either.

Here's my constructive suggestion: Let's vote out all incumbants on the city council and get some fresh blood and ideas in there.

no, it's a pretty crappy point. You can't use sewer payments to pay salary in some other bureau, and the point of the bioswales is to aid sewage runoff. Combining it with bike improvements means we SAVE THE MONEY of having to do two tasks at different times.

And it's incumbent.

yeah right

Too bad Sam didn't have have the courage to resign, and that the commissioners didn't have the courage to call for him to resign. Now that would be TRUE courage. All we've got now is a bunch of suck-ups, covering for each other's lack of ethics.

Suuure this will save $$

-Just like the tram was to finish on budget
-Just like the s. Waterfront was to be a booming area because of all the biotech jobs that would come
-Just like there is no public $$ going to th soccer deal (fee charged on tickets for the spectator fund is a sales tax by any other name).

Ch 9 BK will be fun to watch

torridjoe, still having trouble seeing reality, huh? Still buying the lies/distortions/deceptions that Sam continues to put out... Reality Check - Liar Sam is out for himself only.

torridjoe, I want to thank you for your courage in supporting the mayor on this.

@Blabby

Wouldn't it be simpler if you just posted links to bojack's site to point out your position on everything?

Just sayin'

BlackedOut, how is it any different than you all coming here and sharing the exact same cliche Portland progressive stances on every subject? Without commenters like me, this place would be the biggest circle jerk on the intertubes.

Matt, if there's any one thing that has undermined my trust in your reporting - which has always been my main source for City Hall news - it's your fixation on, and misreporting of this particular issue.

This was never sewage money being used for bike lanes. It was one kind of stormwater infrastructure being redirected to another kind of stormwater infrastructure. The form the latter took was chosen because it resembled bike-friendly infrastructure to enough of a degree that Sam Adams could wave it around his head, and say, "look, my bikey minions! Look at the funding I've secured for you!" Which seems like its own brand of shenanigan, but not the one you claimed happened.

Instead, you're acting like this was money that could have been used for something else, but was instead directed to a Sam Adams pet project. That doesn't seem to be the case, but you're even going one further with the story that the money could have been used for *your* pet project, i.e. mental health. (See: bike lanes, blood in.)

If they could reconfigure stormwater infrastructure to meet the needs of the mentally ill while they were at it, that would be great. But it happens that it's a better fit for simultaneously bolstering the "green streets" concept, which both abates stormwater AND makes calmer streets, for the same amount of money. That's the whole "two-fer" thing. Great, right? But not great enough for you? Ah well.

Then what if the money was just given back to ratepayers? Amanda Fritz covered that:

http://www.portlandonline.com/fritz/index.…

Ninety cents per average ratepayer.

I'm not sure, but it seems like you did not cover that.

I appreciate good muckracking, but there is better muck out there for you to rake.

If it matters, I'm not a huge supporter of Sam Adams. Even putting aside the distastefulness of guy Sam's age chasing after a 17 and/or 18-year-old, I always found him too self-interested a politician. And Saltzman - and I feel compelled to mention Saltzman since I think the race for his council seat plays a big part in all this - just hasn't been on my radar. (So I appreciate what you dig up about him, especially with regards to the police.) I do get around by bike, and I think bike transportation is great for the city. Oh, and my water bill is freaking huge. But I like bioswales, and green streets, and this whole $20 million deal. They can have my ninety cents.

I *was* pretty enthusiastic about Jesse Cornett, and gave him five bucks after I saw him at the event you hosted at the Backspace. But his misrepresentation of this issue has soured me on his campaign to the same degree it has on your reporting.

anylanding, the mayor has explicitly described this as a kick-start to the bike plan. Thus, he's going to open himself up to the charge that this money is being used for the bike plan.

You say the money wasn't going to be used for something else, but in fact it was. It was explicitly shifted from other sewer projects. A large share was from a program to keep basements from flooding. Unless these bike boulevard bioswales happen to coincide with all the flooding trouble spots, then it is in fact taking money from one thing and using it to "kickstart the bike plan" (Adams' words, not mine.)

It doesn't take courage to use sewer money for more sewer projects, but it does take courage to misreport this issue and frame it as a bikes vs. "your project here." Too bad Jesse Cornett took up similar energy with his campaign, which was enough to demonstrate he doesn't have a grasp of the issues, and subsequently lost my vote.

Perhaps council could learn from this lesson: if you're going to take heat for funding bikeways, make sure that's what you're actually doing instead of going for the easy win and calling bioswale money a Bike Master Plan kickstarter.