City Commissioners Randy Leonard and Dan Saltzman took a moment
during the Wednesday, November 14, city council meeting to stand up for
a marginalized group—one that others have loudly
complained about, a group that the council was poised to vote against,
and push elsewhere.
No, it wasn’t the César E. Chávez Boulevard
Committee.
“My issue isn’t to go after smokers,” Leonard said, during a
discussion of an expanded smoking ban the council will vote on November
21. The ban would bar smoking within 50 feet of city-owned or city
employee-occupied buildings, including covered walkways like the one on
the west side of the Portland Building (even the city’s homeless know
that’s the go-to spot to find discarded, but dry, half-smoked
cigs).
Leonard is one of four co-sponsors of the new ban, but he and
Saltzman don’t want to force nicotine fiends to puff away “out in the
elements,” as Saltzman put it. The pair asked the city’s Senior
Business Operations Manager Tom Feely to find a spot for a sheltered
smokers’ lounge.
Speaking of the Chávez proposal, another street rename is
brewing: Citing his work on global conservation, technology access, and
education, there’s a group hoping to rename 42nd Avenue for Douglas
Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Pick
up a copy of the cult classic to find out why 42nd is so apropos.)
Proponent Aaron Duran concedes that the idea began as a lark, but his
group has serioused-up: He picked up a rename application from the city
on Monday, November 19 and launched rename42nd.org.
“Is this a joke?” NE 42nd Avenue Business Association Chair Clarence
Larkins asked when the Mercury informed him of the campaign. He
isn’t amused by the Adams effort. “[Chávez] was a real person,”
Larkins says. “Here we’re talking about galaxies and
whatever.”
Back at city hall, Saltzman is talking about
parks—specifically, the one-time fee developers pay on their new
projects (called system development charges, or SDCs), to fund
parks that serve the new developments. Saltzman would like to nearly
triple the fees, currently $3,117 for a new single family home, so they
fund 75 percent of the cost of building new parks (currently, park SDCs
only foot 25 percent of the cost of new parks). Jim McCauley, vice
president of government affairs for the Home Builders Association of
Metropolitan Portland, says the increased SDCs are “not something that
is helpful” for developers trying to build in a slower real estate
market, adding that there’s also concern the SDCs will negatively
impact housing affordability.