Commissioner Steve Novick has been tooling around town in the last two weeks, making his best pitch for an $8 or $12 monthly fee that could give a financial boost to his Bureau of Transportation. Usually, Mayor Charlie Hales has come along to give the hard sell, too.
Hales had a scheduling conflict last night, leaving Novick and PBOT Director Leah Treat to spar with a fairly acrimonious crowd of 60 or so in SE Portland’s Woodstock neighborhood. These people were not afraid to jeer—particularly early on in the meeting.
There were fans of a new fee in the audience, as well. Thanks to a call to arms earlier in the week that quickly made its way to the city’s cyclists, attendees were as likely to carry a pannier and sweated-out shirt back (it was hot) as they were to harbor a grudge against any—ANY—attempt to better fund Portland’s streets (if there was anyone with both, they didn’t speak up).
Under the proposal Novick is floating, households would pay a monthly fee of either $8 or $12 per month. Businesses would be assessed a fee depending on their square footage, and an approximation of the “trips” they create on Portland’s worn out byways. The fee would raise between $34 million and $52 million a year, according to PBOT estimates.
At this point, more about the street fee is up in the air than settled. PBOT says it’s taking the feedback from the four town halls, and will bring a proposal before city council in June. Some things worth noting from last night’s meeting, though.
•Novick appears to be leaning against a public vote. The commissioner was asked repeatedly last night to put the street fee on the November ballot—something favored by two of his city council colleagues. “If we decided to punt every tough decision to voters, there really wouldn’t be such thing as political leadership,” Novick said at one point.
There are good reasons most proponents of a street fee want to avoid a vote. The city’s own polling data suggests the fee has a bare majority of voters behind it, at best. That lead could be washed away amid the rhetoric of campaign season.
•Even the people who most want new funding for streets, sidewalks, bike lanes, etc., sort of hate the fee idea. It’s regressive, slapping the same bill on households whether they make $30,000 or $300,000. Aaron Brown, president of pedestrian advocacy group Oregon Walks, spoke out in favor of the fee during last night’s town hall, but afterward voiced his reservations.
“Why would we support this horrible regressive thing?” he said, making a rhetorical point more than being 100 percent sincere.
But that sentiment holds with a lot of people who really, really want better transportation funding. Even Novick has bemoaned the fee model, saying he’d much rather support an income tax, but that survey participants hated that proposal.
•The pitch from PBOT is that the street fee will hit residents and businesses about equally, with households pitching in a flat fee that will account for half the revenue, and businesses putting in the other half. In practice, it’s likely to be more-reliant on residents than that. PBOT manager Mark Lear said after the meeting it’s likely businesses—some, at least—will shift costs onto consumers via price increases.
PBOT hasn’t looked into how that might play out. Nearly 30 Oregon cities have instituted street fees, but PBOT staff wasn’t sure last night if studies had been done around costs. Lear noted, though, that almost 70 percent of Portland businesses are small enough they’d pay less than $700 a year in street fees. Larger businesses would see yearly fees well into the thousands.
“I’m gonna be charged in trips nobody’s making,” said Ann Sanderson, who owns Odango! Hair Studio, a Woodstock salon. Sanderson says she’s pro-tax, but the street fee seems unfair. The majority of her customers are Woodstock residents, she says, who drive minuscule distances for appointments at Odango! if they drive at all.
Sanderson is president of the Woodstock Community Business Association, but made clear she was only speaking as a small-business owner. She’d consider raising her rates if a street fee was implemented, she said. “But you can’t in certain economies.”
•There’s no indication how the city would collect the street fees, though including them with Portlanders’ water and sewer bills is clearly out. Novick did indicate the city might give scofflaws some slack. He told the audience it’s inefficient to attempt to collect money from people who owe less than $100. So if the city get’s a street fee, you may have months of leeway if you need to make some sort of statement, or whatever.
•Novick’s favorite comment of the night, from a worked up guy in a pink tie-dye shirt: “This is nothing but taking YOUR money to pave OTHER PEOPLE’S streets, and it is nothing but graft and corruption.”
Novick, at the meeting’s end, said it was his first time being accused of graft and corruption in office, and thanked the man, who had already left.
UPDATE, 10:32 am: Novick called to re-iterate his point on that last bit. “I think I said: ‘I don’t think there’s any point to being in city government unless you’re being accused of graft and corruption,” he says.
Fair enough.
The business part seems very poorly thought through. They need to get more input from experts in public finance or economics.
The square footage of a business doesn’t have to be correlated with the amount of traffic it generates at all. You could have a large warehouse with three employees and a couple of deliveries a day. Or Salt n Straw with a relatively small store and people lined up down the block.
30% of businesses would be paying over $700 a year. Contrary to what Portland City Hall thinks (they do not understand the realities of private business one iota), that is not chump change to many or most businesses.
The PBA is going to be all over this if they aren’t already.
“If we decided to punt every tough decision to voters, there really wouldn’t be such thing as political leadership,” Novick said at one point.
Novick should know that political leadership also means responsible management of city finances. This fee lets city council and PBOT treat the existing transportation budget as a honeypot for whatever pie-in-the-sky idea they want, and if it goes through it will just be a matter of time before they decide that other basic services should be paid for with extra fees.
I went to an earlier town hall (the one at the Kaiser auditorium in N. Portland) and brought up the same issue as Aaron Brown – a fixed fee is a regressive tax that would hit the working poor harder than the rich. Novick did the same dodge (“It polled well”).
I’m also not convinced that Leah Treat knows what she’s doing or has any conception of what the average Portlander’s interests are.
Dirk, where did you get the idea the fee for businesses would based on square footage? Everything I’ve heard says it’s going to be based on trips generated.
http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-31514-p…
I got it from PBOT staff. It’s a mixture of square footage and an approximation of trips generated, as I understand it.
http://bikeportland.org/2014/04/18/busines…
Dirk,
The Reverend was also in attendance. I felt that the neighbors and the “swarm” totally talked past each other. I liked the first few questions the best- the polling does suck, and the photos PBOT chose for the power point were subliminally biased towards the 12 dollar fee.
They saved the worst speakers for last. I resented the nicely dressed young man reading from an old dead lady Jane Jacobs about “sidewalk ballet.” Not everyone wants a reading by a bike evangelist. The swarm seemed to want to build a relationship with Novick and Treat, while the neighbors were have a good ole’ time.
Acrimnious? Two elders really got into it- but we all knew they were blowing smoke.. I liked the strong, middle class dude with aviator glasses talking about taxes. The bikey types testified that they can’t wait to pay the fee despite their poverty and their exceptionally green and awesome lifestyles.
The last speaker was just a sucking up. Amongst the bikey crowd there were some beautiful young women, one of whom needs to remember to wear a bra at a town hall. She was mesmerizing, but for the wrong reasons.
What is up with Leah Treat? She said almost nothing. Novick dominated the discussion. He was surprisingly charming- his skills may be getting better. His temper was good. But he said a bunch of incorrect things.
Right Reverend,
As the resent-worthy but nicely dressed young man who read the Jacobs quote, I’d humbly posit that you’d have enjoyed the reading quite a bit more had I chosen something more in your wheelhouse. Perhaps:
“It is in regard to a free market that the distinction between an intrinsic, subjective, and objective view of values is particularly important to understand. The market value of a product is not an intrinsic value, not a “value in itself” hanging in a vacuum. A free market never loses sight of the question: Of value to whom? And, within the broad field of objectivity, the market value of a product does not reflect its philosophically objective value, but only its socially objective value.
By “philosophically objective,” I mean a value estimated from the standpoint of the best possible to man, i.e., by the criterion of the most rational mind possessing the greatest knowledge, in a given category, in a given period, and in a defined context (nothing can be estimated in an undefined context). For instance, it can be rationally proved that the airplane is objectively of immeasurably greater value to man (to man at his best) than the bicycle — and that the works of Victor Hugo are objectively of immeasurably greater value than true-confession magazines. But if given man’s intellectual potential can barely manage to enjoy true confessions, there is no reason why his meager earnings, the product of his effort, should be spent on books he cannot read — or on subsidizing the airplane industry, if his own transportation needs do not extend beyond the range of a bicycle.”
– Old dead lady Ayn Rand
I’m in favor of a fee, insomuch as there hasn’t been any better alternative brought forward by anyone else. Yes, it’s regressive. But the gas tax has long been woefully inadequate and the proof is clear to see. Unpaved roads, roads in need of repaving, no sidewalks, inadequate bicycle infrastructure, and most of all, unsafe pedestrian crossings. We simply can’t keep kicking the can down the road…’cause it’s just going to wind up stuck in a pothole.
Mr. Davis:
I would have enjoyed the evening more had you read nothing. Sorry you have such a boner for Ayn Rand- I find her unreadable. Good luck with the sidewalk ballet, whatever that is.
I wish someone could find out how much money the State of Oregon makes from semi-trucks every year. Trucks pay through the nose for the privilege of using Oregon roads, and they are not kept up very good. I wonder where all the money goes. I realize this is about Portland, but it seems like the state should be kicking in some money to the city.