Early on Sunday morning, July 15, an Oregon Department of
Transportation crew pulled over on I-5 near Exit 304, and swapped out
the giant Portland Boulevard exit sign with a new one—Rosa Parks
Way. It was the boldest manifestation yet of city council’s vote last
fall to rename Portland Boulevard for the civil rights movement
icon—a vote that sidestepped the usual process for changing a
street name.
The freeway signs capped several months of change, beginning with a
ceremony last December, when a street sign at the corner of Portland
Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was topped with a new,
shiny green NE Rosa Parks Way sign. City Commissioner Dan
Saltzman—flanked by representatives of Portland’s African
American community, including those from the Albina Ministerial
Alliance, which championed the idea—was on hand to talk about why
he led the city council to rename our city’s eponymous street.
Saltzman got the idea to change the street’s name at Cornerstone
Community Church on NE Killingsworth in January 2006. Pastor B.E.
Johnson “admonished me to consider two things,” Saltzman explained at a
April 2006 public hearing about the name change. “One was to make sure
that we were doing right by African American youth in our city… The
other message was we should consider renaming Portland Boulevard in
honor of Rosa Parks.”
Less than a year after Saltzman first heard Johnson’s proposal, the
street was renamed. But the name change—however noble—has
been met with plenty of criticism. Over on Mayor Tom Potter’s blog, all
but one comment questioned the proposal. Tracy Weber, who lives on Rosa
Parks Way, gathered signatures to protest the change this past spring,
after she noticed the new street signs in late January. Protesters
attended the renaming ceremony to complain that they hadn’t been
heard.
Weber, the woman who gathered signatures in protest of the
change—she also happens to be my neighbor, since I moved to NE
Portland a month ago—calls the change tokenism, as part of the
“stampede to honor Rosa Parks” after her death. And the change happened
fast: “Almost no one I knew heard about it,” she says, pointing out
that only 30 to 50 people attended the April 2006 public hearing,
depending on which report you read. Weber didn’t find out about the
swap until she saw the new street signs on her block, this past
January, when it was “over and done with.” Residents got a note on
March 23, 2007 about the change (there was also a letter sent in
December 2006, but Weber says she and several other neighbors didn’t
get it).
It’s no wonder residents were blindsided by the change: Saltzman
circumvented city code to ram the idea through.
The city code has an entire section dedicated to renaming streets.
There are two ways to do it: a long, involved citizen-initiated
process, or a quick city council vote that can only be used in limited
circumstances.
The citizen-initiated process involves filing an application with
the city, gathering 2,500 signatures (or signatures from 75 percent of
the street’s property owners), assembling a biography of the honoree,
paying a fee to notify neighbors, running the idea past a panel of
historians, going before the city’s planning commission,
and—finally—swaying the city council.
Additionally, there are criteria for who a street can be renamed
after. It must be a real, “prominent” person who has made a
“significant, positive contribution to the United States of America
and/or the local community.” The person has to have been deceased for
at least five years.
The other way to change a street name is via a city council vote.
But according to city code, the council is only allowed to change a
street name to “to correct errors in street names, or to eliminate
confusion.” In fact, the city code is very clear that the council
cannot take it upon themselves to rename a street to honor a person:
“Renaming of a street by the city under provisions of this paragraph
shall not be undertaken to rename a street after a person.”
But that’s just what the city council, at Saltzman’s behest, did on
October 25, 2006—the one-year anniversary of Parks’ death.
How did the council circumvent the street renaming process? They
simply voted to waive the “Renaming Street” chapter of city code.
“There are good reasons for making exceptions to the rule,”
Commissioner Sam Adams said at the October 18 city council meeting
where city commissioners initially voted on the proposal, pointing out
that Bill Naito had only been dead for two months when Front Street was
renamed for him in 1996.
At the same meeting, Saltzman made it clear that he wanted to fast
track the Rosa Parks change. “Frankly, I think it would be fitting for
us to act today in time for the one-year anniversary of her death.
“It’s the right location and it’s the right time.”
To be sure, process for process’ sake is pointless. But waiving the
official process entirely has consequences, leaving citizens in the
dark on a change that will impact their lives—whether by
confusing those who try to navigate the street (Google Maps is
currently erroneous) or forcing those who live on the street to change
their address as if they’ve moved.
“I was under the impression that our laws had to be followed by
everyone, especially those that make the laws,” Weber says. “They
honored the mother of civil rights by taking away our rights.”
Saltzman’s chief of staff, Brendan Finn, says residents of Portland
Boulevard were notified of the proposal in time to comment on it. “We
wanted to hear from folks, their questions and concerns,” he says. But
ultimately, the city council made a judgment call. “We could have put
[the Albina Ministerial Alliance] through the formality of having them
collect signatures, but council had to make that call. Do we go through
those procedures or is this just a good idea?” Finn explains. “It was a
no-brainer to honor Rosa Parks in that way. That was the rationale. Is
that right for every other street naming? I think council will have to
decide that on a case-by-case basis.”
At the same meeting where Adams signed off on an “exception,” and
Saltzman called for quick action, Mayor Potter hinted that he would
support future street renaming.
“We’re not done with the naming process in Portland. And we’ve got a
lot of streets that I have no idea, other than perhaps they formed one
of the states of the union, as to why they were named,” he said,
perhaps referring to streets like Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, and
Montana, all near N Mississippi.
Which brings us to N Interstate—a main thoroughfare in North
Portland. A committee of Latino residents would like to have it renamed
for farm labor activist César E. Chávez, and have tapped
Potter’s office for assistance. So far, the committee has called on
local neighborhood associations and businesses, but they haven’t filed
an application with the city to kick off the formal street renaming
process. Will Interstate be renamed in the same way Portland Boulevard
was—by a city council member who wants to make an “exception” to
city code? Or will citizens—the residents around Interstate, and
the city at large—have a meaningful chance to debate the
proposal’s merits?
José Romero, co-chair of the Chávez committee, had
“heard there were some shortcuts taken with the other renaming,” and
stresses that his group wants to “get everybody on board, hopefully. We
want to do it right, and we don’t want to take any shortcuts. We
believe in what we’re doing, and we want to be sure that everyone has a
time to hear and learn and get the information and make an informed
decision.”