If the city council passes the street fee, it will definitely get put on the ballot (as it should) but it won't be the OPA that puts it there. The scary oil lobbyists aren't the only people against it.

Uh oh. We don't want a "corporate polluter" preventing us from being gouged by a city that has no sense of fiscal responsibility.

Portlanders don't realize that votes like the water district vote last night are a green light for the city council to move forward with new fees and taxes.

The message that they got last night is that they can fuck up, make illegal expenditures and double your utility rates over a decade, and insult anyone who points it out, and the voters will reward them. They keep their water money and the two incumbents get re-elected by 70% of the vote.

Why wouldn't they vote in a street fee next week? Portlanders think they are very smart. They may have book smarts, but they actually have very low practical intelligence.

Stu, no matter what the intention was, what the Council hears is an endorsement. People think some nuanced message is getting through. It isn't.

Agree with Stu. Blabby, if the problem is a lack of accountability for water policy, I don't really understand how adding a whole new layer of government and a bunch more elected positions alleviates that problem.

The existing system is fine, and the message you want council to hear is already a fundamental tenet of their political existence. I know you think the council exists in a fantasy world, but tax/rate hikes are always a huge campaign liability for politicians, so they don't do them lightly.

Obviously, if people don't like how someone votes, they can elect someone who promises to vote otherwise. When only 5 people vote, all it takes is one or two new faces to completely change things. With a system as simple as ours, the rules of the game are clear to all who play it for a living.

CC, there are so many problems with your comment.

1) The "new layer of government" would have been directly elected by us for the sole purpose of administering water and sewer. That adds more accountability than a system where the council which is elected on the full spectrum of issues dabbles in water and sewer from time to time.

2) The existing system is fine. No it isn't. It's very expensive and has been horribly and illegally abused. i won't even bother to cite the evidence because we all know it by now.

3) If tax and rate hikes are huge liability why did Fish and Saltzman just get re-elected by 70% of the vote? The fact is that councilors can get re-elected however many times they want on name recognition alone. There is zero price to pay for rate and fee hikes.

4) There are never new faces on council until one of the current ones decides to leave. Incumbents are never defeated in Portland. Ever.

In the system I've just described, the only recourse of the voters is to actually sack up and make tough votes to send a message and change things. The council will not do it themselves. A water rate hike and a new $12 street fee are both on the agenda for tomorrow.

2) The mismanagement of water funds is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive, functionally/legally/environmentally necessary capital projects that are causing rate pain. All the malfeasance in the last decade (charitably) cost less than $10M, when the yearly budget is now $683M. Erasing mismanagement helps, but won't make any meaningful dent in rates.

1/3/4) Because obviously the voters don't feel Portland is being run poorly, and they aren't upset enough with the cost of living here to make a challenger's candidacy viable. You just happen to be in the small minority of people who disagree. It's just the free market applied to politics.