BETTER START DIGGING under your couch cushions. On June 25, the TriMet Board of Directors is voting on a rate increase—and they might raise fares by up to a quarter. TriMet usually raises fares by five cents each year, to keep pace with inflation. But this year, with diesel prices skyrocketing—according to spokesperson Mary Fetsch, […]
Amy J. Ruiz
Posted inNews
Day Planner
Forget city hall. The real action this week is happening across the river, at the Oregon Convention Center. There, all day on Friday, June 6, at the “Portland Plan Leadership Summit,” city officials will soak up a program that’s so quintessentially Portland, it’s almost laughable: “Keynote speaker and First Vice President of the Danish Parliament […]
Posted inPolitics
Nick Fish’s Door—and S’Mores with Randy Leonard!
Check out this picture, which Matt Davis snapped at city hall today: Outside of that office, which used to say “Erik Sten,” were boxes of discarded office supplies and old books. Sad. Nick Fish’s first day is Friday, June 13—he’ll take the oath of office at Rosa Parks Elementary School in North Portland at 10 […]
Posted inPolitics
Sit-Lie Protesters Return to Council Chambers
“I’m less likely to get sick outside, I’m less likely to get scabies outside,” says Wesley Flowers, one of five people testifying about the sit-lie ordinance at this morning’s city council meeting. He described the conditions at the Salvation Army’s Harbor Lights 90-bed shelter, which the city opened in response to last month’s protest outside […]
Posted inMusic
Rhythm of the Night
The Mercury‘s Dance Party Field Test
We spill a lot of ink on these pages devoted to music, but with bands coming and going through town it’s sometimes easy to forget the resident nights of DJ-ed entertainment that actually get you through the week time and time again. And while it used to be a joke that “Portland doesn’t dance,” the […]
Posted inNews
Then There Were Two
Amanda Fritz and Charles Lewis Enter the Ring
JUST OVER A WEEK AGO, there were 28 people vying for a job at city hall. But the May 20 primary election dashed a lot of dreams, and left three men—Sam Adams, Randy Leonard, and Nick Fish—with secure employment for the next few years. What’s undecided is who will be taking the seat Adams vacates, […]
Posted inNews
The Morning After
It takes an election, apparently, to help the city council pass a budget. Within days of Commissioner Sam Adams‘ victory over Mayor Tom Potter-endorsed Sho Dozono, tensions between Adams and the mayor seem to have melted. While they were on opposite ends of a budget standoff last week, by Friday afternoon, May 23, the two—plus […]
Posted inNews
Doctor’s Orders
Kids’ Health Initiative Gets Closer to Ballot
When Dr. Gregg Coodley saw Measure 50 fail last year—and, with it, hopes for a statewide kids’ health care plan—he decided to do something to fill the gap locally. “There’s no hope nationally, and no hope statewide,” says Coodley, from his desk at Southwest Portland’s Fanno Creek Clinic. “What can we do that has a […]
Posted inNews
Tears, Cheers, and Beers
A Recap of Tuesday Night’s Election Results by the Mercury‘s Election Squad
IT WAS A PRIMARY ELECTION season marked, from the Democratic presidential contest on down, by excruciatingly close races—at least according to the pre-election day polls and punditry. According to poll numbers, Sho Dozono was holding Sam Adams under the 50 percent mark in the race for Portland mayor, and Steve Novick was consistently neck and […]
Posted inNews
Rules of the Game
Homeless Protest Stretches On
TUESDAY AFTERNOON, May 13, with the homeless protesters in front of city hall facing enforcement of the city’s camping ordinance, five representatives sat down with Mayor Tom Potter. The meeting did not go so well. Potter didn’t let the protesters record the conversation. Afterward, protest organizer Arthur Rios Sr. waved the mayor’s prepared statement, and […]
Posted inNews
Shadow Budget
Adams’ and Leonard’s End Run Around Mayor Potter
THE CITY COUNCIL was supposed to vote on Mayor Tom Potter’s proposed budget at their Wednesday morning meeting. But the May 14 meeting may be a showdown, instead. Thanks to a few omissions in Potter’s budget—namely funding for transportation and arts-related projects, and funds to implement a recent council mandate to move the Portland Development […]
Posted inNews
Hall Monitor
Political Prudence
You have to give Commissioner Sam Adams some credit. He sure knows how to turn a politically driven evacuation plan into a chance to be seen as a ballsy leader. Last week, just before the city council was poised to take a final vote on the contentious plan to move the defunct Sauvie Island Bridge […]