Check out Mayor-elect Sam Adams’ and the rest of the council’s city reorganization memo to all Portlanders (“RE: Improving ‘The City that Works’”) right here. Now is our time to build upon the City of Portland’s successes with an intensified focus in key areas through strategic planning, structural reform, and establishment of clear roles for […]
City Hall
Posted inCity Hall
Meet Your New City Government
The Oregonian has the scoop on Mayor-elect Sam Adam’s shakeup of city bureaus. As long rumored, the Bureau of Planning’s Gil Kelley is out, because his bureau’s merging with the Office of Sustainable Development (OSD) to make a super-bureau, the Bureau of Sustainable Planning & Development. It’s a smart move—I’ve often asked city staffers why […]
Posted inCity Hall
Bureau Assignments!
Mayor-elect Sam Adams will announce bureau assignments tomorrow at 1 pm. What will Commissioner-elect Amanda Fritz get? What will incoming police-commissioner Dan Saltzman lose to clear his plate? Tune into Blogtown for the news as it happens.
Posted inNews
Breaking News: Union Urges Cops To Stop Showing Up For “Nuremberg Trial” Review Boards
Portland’s police union has filed a formal grievance alleging the police bureau’s use of force and performance review boards are humiliating to its officers, and is urging all union members to not show up for the review boards until its humiliation issues are resolved. COP UNION CONTRACT: Contains discipline clause on officer “embarrassment”… The grievance […]
Posted inPortland
Breaking News: Class Action Lawsuit To Be Filed Against City’s Anti-Camping Ordinance
Attorneys working on behalf of Portland’s homeless plan to file a federal class action lawsuit against the city of Portland’s controversial anti-camping ordinance tomorrow. The suit, prepared by the Oregon Law Center in Portland, challenges the constitutionality of the anti-camping ordinance—alleging that in enforcing the ordinance against people who have nowhere else to sleep than […]
Posted inCops
A Progress Report on the Citizen Review Committee
The city council spent the afternoon hearing a progress report on the Independent Police Review Citizen Review Committee, from IPR Director Mary-Beth Baptista and Joann Jackson, of the CRC IPR Structure Review Workgroup. You can check out the progress report here. This all goes back to 2007, when Mayor Tom Potter commissioned a report on […]
Posted inCity Hall
Council Creates the “82nd Avenue Prostitution Advisory Committee”
We’ve been covering the prostitution-on-82nd issue for quite some time, and it hit city council today. On the agenda? The creation of the 82nd Avenue Prostitution Advisory Committee, to oversee “City anti-prostitution efforts on 82nd Ave and to advise the Police Bureau and City Council.” Commander Mike Crebs of the Portland Police East Precinct is […]
Posted inCity Hall
Thank You, Mayor Potter
Dr. Herman Frankel is at city council today, handing out homemade signs to thank Mayor Tom Potter. Why? Because Potter proclaimed today as Human Rights Day in Portland. From the back of Frankel’s signs: This formal proclamation provides us with an opportunity to honor Mayor Potter for his courage and actions during the past four […]
Posted inCity Hall
Holy Hell, What a Day
My day in a nutshell: The oatmeal cookie I just snagged at tonight’s Bicycle Advisory Committee/Pedestrian Advisory Committee joint meeting was lunch. Thankfully, it was a substantial cookie. Here’s a download of the action. First up, the council work session on the Portland Plan. As a work session, the council didn’t decide anything—they got a […]
Posted inPortland
Human Rights Commission ‘Hasn’t Decided How [it’s] Going To Decide Yet…’
Buried in the cavernous depths of the Portland Building on SW 5th, the human rights commission is meeting to agree on its bylaws this afternoon: Mayor-elect Sam Adams walked in at around 4:50, just as committee chair, Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogen was asking members to take a quick vote on whether to remove the […]
Posted inCity Hall
Mayor-elect Sam Adams Names Dan Saltzman as Police Commissioner
UPDATE: Commissioner Dan Saltzman will be the next police commissioner. “I arrive at this decision after careful consideration and have determined this action to be in the best interest of the city,” Mayor-elect Sam Adams says. Letting Saltzman’s “steady hand” lead the police bureau will allow Adams to focus on high school drop outs and […]
Posted inPolitics
The Next Police Commissioner Is…
… “definitely” not going to be Amanda Fritz or Charles Lewis. That’s about all the news coming out of Mayor-elect Sam Adams’ office on the who’s-it-gonna-be drama. Which makes sense: With a decision on the matter expected by the 31st–but probably sooner–the outcome of the Fritz-Lewis runoff won’t even be known.