Attention homeless people of Portland: All of your problems are
now solved!
Nobody thought it would be that easy to turn your lack of a home
into just a minor inconvenience but, with the stroke of a pen, we did
it. And by “we,” I mean “Mayor Tom Potter,” and by “solved all your
problems,” I mean “gave you a couple extra places to go
poop.”
Hooray! Now, if you could just disappear from downtown so the rest
of us could forget that you exist, everything will finally be in
order.
Late last week, Potter began crowing about the completion of the
final provisions of his “Street Access for Everyone”
project—specifically, that he got some benches installed and
opened up the first-floor restrooms at city hall between 11 pm and 7
am. Because of a daring 3-2 vote in June, Potter needed to get these
last promised amenities in place in order to enforce his and the
Portland Business Alliance’s (PBA) sit-lie ordinance, which bans
sitting or lying on downtown streets. With another vote scheduled for
Wednesday, August 15, he’ll be able to waltz back into city council and
demand his draconian rule be approved. And since the ordinance is tied
to increased funding for a permanent day center for the
homeless—and money from the PBA—it’s almost guaranteed to
pass.
That loud sucking sound you hear? That’s Portland’s conscience
disappearing into a PBA-funded black hole.
But don’t despair! While the city may have sold out the homeless for
30 pieces of silver, it’s more than willing to step up to help
underpaid factory workers around the globe. On August 29, city
council will finally discuss a sweat-free ordinance, which would
require the city and its contractors to purchase goods (like uniforms)
from places that don’t use sweatshop labor.
For more than a year, the city and labor activists have negotiated
the one sticking point in the ordinance: Who is going to enforce the
rule? The city wants to handle it, essentially, in-house, while the
activists want Portland to join a nationwide consortium that monitors
similar ordinances around the country. If they can’t resolve the
dispute, Portland could be in the sticky position of approving an
ordinance the sweat-free activists hate.
In other bodily fluid news! During last week’s annual “Hermiston
Mayor’s Tailgate Party” in Pioneer Square, Commissioner Dan
Saltzman competed, unsuccessfully, in a watermelon-seed spitting
contest. His distance: 17 feet.
But, irony of ironies—spitting isn’t allowed in city parks.
Saltzman’s office responded that he was within the law because the
square was officially sanctioned for seed spitting. Isn’t that the
excuse George Michael used?