TREEMAGEDDON 2015: Two sets of SE Portland neighbors came out in force yesterday to stop infill developers from chopping down two sets of old and giant trees. The Douglas firs on SE Clinton are safe—for now (it helped that a woman climbed up into one). So are the Eastmoreland sequoias. Portland, Oregon!
Hey, weird news: You can be pulled over for driving erratically, go after a deputy’s gun, actually fire that gun, and not die in a hail of police gunfire. It happened just yesterday in Clark County.
Mayor Charlie Hales says his “fires are up” a week after State Treasurer Ted Wheeler centered his mayoral bid on what he says is Hales’ bad work. Hales spilled the beans to the O about his coffee meeting with Wheeler last month—which both men had so far declined to provide many details on. “It certainly sounded to me like this was his second choice,” Hales said.
“There’s no, ‘Yippee skippy, I want to be the poster child for this type of debate,'” says the Salem judge who won’t perform same-sex marriages. Also, presumably no yippee skippies involved in the judge’s decision to hang a big old portrait of Hitler (partly covered in other WWII-related items) in the courthouse.
The Trib looks at new mechanisms being considered to raise affordable housing money in this city. One of them: Linkage fees, or assessing a fee per square foot on new buildings, depending on where they’re located.
We’ve been talking about it for a while, now it might actually happen. The city and county are considering divesting from fossil fuel companies. It’s a largely symbolic gesture that nonetheless sets a tone for public policy.
The Oregonian‘s editorial board is psyched for bike share. Just kidding! Of course the Oregonian‘s editorial board isn’t psyched for bike share.
In case you missed it, here are some of the salient tidbits (surge pricing?) from the city’s proposed bike share contract, to be taken up by city council tomorrow. And the O points out what bikeportland.org reported last week: The bike share contract’s for three years, but the city—by virtue of the grant money it’s using to pay for this—is required to run the thing for five years. That’s potentially a problem if we don’t find sponsors.
SPORTS CORNER: We reported on this in Friday’s GMN, so I feel honor-bound to follow up. That big Oregon Ducks football game on Saturday? Michigan State won. (!!!) Ducks are looking to shake it off and have themselves a season.
Bernie Sanders isn’t just talking to commies like you, Portland. He’s also reaching out to conservative Christian university students—a gesture that’s as refreshing as it is probably meaningless for his numbers (remember: the whole abortion thing).
A very, very bad day for a group of Mexican tourists in Egypt: They were fired on, Sunday, by a military helicopter that mistook them for terrorists, an awful blunder that killed more people than an actual terrorist attack has in recent years.
Campus shooting: A Mississippi college professor killed his girlfriend, a colleague, and himself yesterday.
Autumn’s coming!
Cheers to the Oregonian Editorial Board for displaying some common sense, and jeers to the foolish folks getting all up in arms over trees getting chopped down in the city for housing. Non-native tees too.