Mayor or Monster?

PORTLAND’S VILLAGERS ARE ANGRY AND RESTLESS. They’ve lit the torches, sharpened their pitchforks, and are eagerly
awaiting the verdict of Witchmaster General John Kroger. In the
meantime, Mayor Sam Adams survived his 100th working day in office on
Tuesday, May 26. Back in early January, he set the bar for policy and
governing goals with great fanfare in his “100-Day Action Plan.” This
week we picked the plan over and asked: Is this man really our mayor?
Or is he, as so many seem to be suggesting, our monster?

EDUCATION

It’s been tricky for the mayor to advance his education agenda
personally—like Frankenstein’s monster, it’s awkward for Adams to
be seen in Portland’s schools with the attorney general’s investigation
of the Beau Breedlove scandal hanging over his head.

Many of the people the Mercury spoke with in the education
community seem more anxious to push Adams for improvements, rather than
go on record to discuss the tortuous impact of the Breedlove scandal.
Community and Parents for Public Schools (CPPS) President Doug Wells
says he’s “impressed and pleased” with Adams’ effort on schools
compared to the mayor’s predecessors—even though Adams was
uninvited from speaking at a CPPS conference in late February because
organizers felt the media would be distracted by his presence.

“I have not experienced collaboration with our schools at this level
from city hall in the past,” says Wells.

Adams also successfully appointed an education cabinet co-chaired by
himself and Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler. The shining project of
the cabinet, Portland Youth Corps, promises to target 2,500 incoming
ninth grade students with work experience and college visits this
summer. But more students than expected will get summer jobs in city
bureaus.

“We had hoped for more” work placements in the private sector, Adams
told the Mercury, blaming the recession for decreased summer job
options there. “Anything that relies on a private sector contribution,
our assumptions in those areas were too rosy because the economy has
gotten worse,” Adams explains.

Wheeler agrees that the economic downturn is responsible for the
lower number of private sector work placements, but concedes,
“uncertainty around the mayor doesn’t help.” Adams also admits to
giving Wheeler more of a leadership role in the education cabinet. “The
way we divided it up after the scandal broke is he and I co-chair it,
but while the investigation is on, Ted has taken the lead in terms of
school visits and those kinds of issues,” he says.

MAYOR OR MONSTER VERDICT: Mayor. While Wheeler may be taking
more of a leadership role in education as Adams awaits a lightning bolt
to recharge his public relations batteries, the children of Portland
are more likely to graduate high school than they were under former
Mayor Tom Potter.

JOBS AND BUSINESS

Adams has watched as “lots of neighborhood businesses have closed
because it’s so tight out there,” says Jon Turino, executive director
of the Alliance of Portland Neighborhood Business Associations, who
sits on Adams’ 80-plus person economic cabinet. “But it’s not
Sam’s fault, it’s the economy,” he adds.

Turino says Adams is “certainly putting out the effort that was
promised” in his election campaign, and is pleased that Adams’ office
has listened to the input of small business owners in crafting his
economic plan.

“That’s a big improvement from where it was when we first saw the
plan being developed,” says Eric Fruits, an adjunct professor at
Portland State University who also sits on Adams’ economic cabinet, but
has criticized Adams in the past on other issues like Major League
Soccer. “To begin with, [the plan] was almost exclusively focused on
trying to foster sustainable clusters in Portland, but the newer
versions of the plan seem to represent a bigger mix.

“He’s listened, and if you ignore his distractions, he’s actually
been one of the better pro-business mayors we’ve had,” Fruits
continues.

Adams has also swung a deal with wind energy company
Vestas—the green company has repeatedly assured Adams as recently
as last week that it will locate its North American headquarters in
Portland. It’s difficult to argue with the economic goal setting Adams
has been engaged in, either.

“The city doesn’t have an economic development strategy,” Adams
says. “We go into this recession without one, and there hasn’t been a
lot of interest in it until lately.”

MAYOR OR MONSTER VERDICT: Mayor. Though Adams insists that a
sustainable economy is crucial to Portland’s future, his political
weakness has perhaps meant he’s had to stop just yelling “more green
business” at every opportunity and start working more collaboratively
on the city’s economic plan.

TRANSPORTATION

The monstrous part of Adams’ transportation advocacy in the last 100
days has been his support for the 12-lane Columbia River Crossing
(CRC). Adams promised a good-looking bridge with world-class bike
facilities that meets the city’s land-use and transportation
goals—but right now, the bridge fails on all three counts.

“Where we want to be as a community would be served by a much
smaller bridge than the one Adams has endorsed,” says transportation
activist Chris Smith, who says Adams was steamrolled by pro 12-lane
state authorities and council members. Right now the CRC’s bike
facilities are slated to run underneath the bridge like a dank, dark
cave. And even Adams admits the current bridge design is “ugly.”

“I totally understand the skepticism,” says Adams. “I have concerns
about all aspects of it.” But, he promises, “This project doesn’t have
the green light from me or the City of Portland until we sign off on
the [environmental and traffic] performance goals.”

On the other hand, Mayor Adams led the effort to snag federal
dollars for Portland’s streetcar plan and fix street infrastructure,
and he has two fat checks to wave victoriously: $45 million for the
streetcar and $10.6 million for safer streets. Long-term transportation
planning looks good, too: The mayor checked off unveiling broadly
supported streetcar and bike master plans.

Adams also won cyclists’ hearts by following through on promised
bike corrals, choosing cycle track locations, and upping Portland’s
measly bike budget by $500,000. “This is a great start,” says Michelle
Poyourow of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. “Next year we’ll be
asking for more.”

BikePortland.org Editor
Jonathan Maus agrees Adams has done a good job, but laments that the
scandal has kept Adams from pushing innovative ideas and more funding
for bikes. “When you’re a politician having trouble, anything you
support that’s not meat and potatoes gets scorned,” he says.

Adams says he’s pleased with the $500,000 for bikes in a year of
nearly $9 million in cuts to the city’s budget.

MONSTER OR MAYOR VERDICT: Half-mayor/half-monster. While it’s
impossible to ignore those federal transportation or bike dollars, when
it comes to the 12-lane bridge, Adams has betrayed our expectations,
and despite his assurances, we think he’s signed off on too much, too
soon.

PLANNING AND SUSTAINABILITY

Adams points to the creation of the Climate Action Plan as one of
his biggest achievements as mayor so far. He’s right—that plan
spells out how Portland can massively cut its carbon emissions over the
next 40 years despite gaining population.

But other planning efforts are gruesome. Adams cut 10 planning jobs
from the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability in his proposed budget,
and has switched some remaining planners from long-term projects like
the Portland Plan, an overarching vision for the city launched last
spring, to focus on Major League Soccer.

“That’s the mayor’s prerogative,” he says, when asked to confirm
it.

In the 100-day action plan, Adams aimed to create four “eco”
districts around Portland. But the site of the most public planning
effort—the Rose Quarter—involved the not terribly “eco”
plan to tear down Memorial Coliseum to make room for a minor league
baseball stadium and a mall-like “Rose Quarter Live!” district. In a
heated public meeting about the redevelopment, over 200 citizens turned
out to complain about the project’s swift timeline and lack of
community input.

“What you’ve seen in public is a lot of the discussion that takes
place behind closed doors,” Adams says. “I understand it looked messy,
but it was a lot more transparent than many of the decisions we make
here.”

Adams eventually backed away from the coliseum teardown, but now
he’s planning to pay for the baseball stadium in Lents with $42 million
from the neighborhood’s urban renewal fund—dollars originally
slated for business development, affordable housing, and street
improvements. Adams has also taken cues from big developers in pushing
for a convention center hotel in the Lloyd District, ignoring county
and Metro experts who say the project needs to be slowed down.

What got lost in the hubbub over the hotel and the stadiums is a
focus on long-term planning, specifically the Portland Plan. One of
Adams’ first acts in office was to oust Planning Director Gil Kelley
and pile his job onto the already-full plate of Office of Sustainable
Development Director Susan Anderson.

“The Portland Plan absolutely requires three components and they all
have to be working: extensive community engagement, dedicated staff,
and very strong mayoral leadership,” says Kelley. “The staff is working
hard, but I worry about Sam’s ability to provide sustained leadership
given his compromised position.”

Rather than “increasing internal city government and external
community support” for his planning and sustainability agenda as he’d
planned, Adams has pushed for projects that split both council and the
community.

MONSTER OR MAYOR VERDICT: Monster. Adams has behaved like a
vampire, sucking money from Portland’s long-range planning projects to
feed his blood lust for big shiny buildings that aren’t necessarily in
the city’s best long-term interests.

ARTS AND CULTURE

It seems Adams’ legendary love of the arts is paying political
dividends. The arts community is “maybe his strongest base of support
in town at this time,” according to longtime gallery owner and art
curator Mark Woolley.

Artists have also been essential to boosting Adams, the first
Portland mayor in recent memory to manage the city’s arts portfolio,
through a tough first 100 days. After all, it was Pink Martini’s Thomas
Lauderdale, buttressed by Portland authors, arts educators, and
musicians, who organized the city’s first pro-Adams press conference
just days after the Breedlove scandal broke.

Adams, assisted by Arts Policy Director Jennifer Yocom, laid out an
ambitious arts policy agenda for his first 100 days: pump city money
into arts programs (Check! He’s asked for $100,000 in city money for
the “Creative Advocacy Network” and supports city funding for arts
groups like the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center); build a broad
coalition of arts advocates (Check! See, “Creative Advocacy Network”);
promote local arts education and philanthropic initiatives like the
“Work for Art” campaign (Check!); and finish up his sprawling “Creative
Capacity” strategy (a work in progress).

Most arts leaders give Adams high marks. Portland Center Stage
Artistic Director Chris Coleman says Adams gets an “A-plus” in arts
policy. “I have never worked with an elected official who’s so hands-on
in a policy issue,” he says. “I know there were a couple of donors that
we approached about supporting the Creative Advocacy Network, and they
weren’t ready to do that, and part of it was because of Sam’s
situation,” he says. “But it’s been a concern for maybe one or two
people out of maybe 150 people we’ve approached, and we’ve raised
$250,000 this year in the worst fund-raising environment in the last 50
years—and that’s largely been attributable to Sam’s energy.”

But there have been other signs of strain. The mayor’s hugely
popular “First Thursday” arts series at city hall—the very venue
of that famous bathroom smooch between Adams and Breedlove—has
been canned indefinitely, breaking earlier promises to continue the
series through this spring. Lauderdale also said the mayor had “lost
his mind” over plans to demolish Memorial Coliseum, but the rift
appears to have healed since Adams backed down on the idea.

MONSTER OR MAYOR VERDICT: Mayor. While there may be monstrous
symptoms creeping in around the edges, Adams has delivered on his
campaign promise to provide energy for the arts.

EXTINGUISH YOUR TORCHES

To be honest, we are more impressed than we expected to be with
Adams’ first 100 days—especially given the media massacre he’s
chosen to endure. Sure, he may have broken the law and he definitely
lied about past indiscretions, but how he will eventually atone for his
actions will be for Attorney General John Kroger and the moralists to
decide. In the meantime, as mayor, he’s been surprisingly effective on
policy issues.

“Nobody is perfect, God knows, and we didn’t achieve everything we
set out to do,” says Adams. “But by and far, on most of it, I think we
have delivered—and the investigation will be done some day.”

So is Adams our mayor or a monster? His answer: “I’m not even going
to dignify that question with a response.”

Wait. Does that mean he’s got something to (Mister) Hyde?