Mayor Sam Adams is taking Occupy's "Move Your Money" message to heart: The mayor's office is looking for public input on a Responsible Banking Resolution that would shift the city's financial stockpiles from banks to credit unions. The city keeps a total $37.4 million in five banks—including $30 million in Umpqua Bank and $7.2 million in Wells Fargo. Under current state law, the city can move only as much as $250,000 into a credit union. But the Legislature changed the law in 2010, so Adams' resolution signals support to move a substantial amount of cash into credit unions as soon as 2013, when the new law takes effect. That is, if all the details pencil out. SARAH MIRK
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On January 26, the city tested its new citywide emergency notification system. It failed. Officials tried again last Thursday, February 9, and this time it worked. Sort of. The test began at 11 am, reaching 328,427 landlines, cell phones, and email inboxes of citizens who signed up for alerts. But the test, which included a prerecorded message from Mayor Sam Adams, took more than twice as long as estimated. It finished by 5:50 pm. According to the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management, the company that ran the test, First Call, had estimated it would only take three hours. NATHAN GILLES
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Mayor Sam Adams and Police Chief Mike Reese on Monday, February 13, released the first-ever public accounting of the city's renewed participation in the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). The mayor delivered on a promise extracted from Portland Copwatch—giving civil liberties advocates ample time to review the report before a hearing on February 29—but that may not matter much. Because the report actually provides few specifics, other than the number of officers who've been assigned to work on terrorism cases as needed: two, from the police bureau's criminal intelligence unit. Reese, worried about jeopardizing investigations, doesn't mention how many hours the officers worked or when in the investigations officers were asked to join in. All were on advocates' wish list. Portland dropped out of the JTTF in 2005 amid civil liberties concerns. DENIS C. THERIAULT
