A group of water activists and big ratepayers who want to wrest control of water and sewer bills from city council hands continues to haul in big donations.
In transactions posted to the Secretary of State’s ORESTAR website earlier today, the group Portlanders for Water Reform reported $42,100 in new money to play with as it mounts its effort. The group took in five donations since mid-September, but the bulk of the money comes from three big cash infusions:
Portland property management firm Commerce Properties kicked in $10,000. American Property Management, another Portland company, kicked in $20,000. And the Portland wing of Siltronic—a German semiconductor firm—donated another $10,000.
That last one is no surprise. Siltronic and other industrial interests have backed this effort since the beginning. Portland Bottling Company gave the water reform group its only other contribution to date—$25,000—in early September. But this is the first time we’ve seen robust support from property management folks. American Property Management, it should be noted, is Portland Bottling’s landlord.
As the Mercury first reported, the effort’s backers have hired a professional fundraiser to coax cash.
The proposal, which Portlanders for Water Reform is working to get on the May 2014 ballot, is to establish a seven-member elected board that would take control of the Portland Water Bureau and Bureau of Environmental Services. Board members would be beholden only to the electorate.
Proponents say the body would be less prone to abuses of ratepayer money and setting exorbitant rates. Their detractors—city officials and environmental groups, largely—paint the effort as a takeover attempt in order to score rate decreases for big water users.
Portlanders for Water Reform needs to collect almost 30,000 signatures by January 21 in order to land the measure on the May ballot. Before it can collect signatures, though, two challenges to the initiative’s ballot language need to work their way through Multnomah County Circuit Court.
Attorneys are scheduled to meet in court to argue that matter tomorrow morning .
I’m glad to see that the electoral process is so transparently for sale. No subterfuge here at all.
I will say it was rather interesting while having guests this past weekend to compare our water bills, with viewpoints from LA, Seattle and Vegas to join my own from here in PDX.
We are getting screwed royally.
” take control of the Portland Water Bureau and Bureau of Development Services” =
” take control of the Portland Water Bureau and Bureau of _Environmental_ Services”
Yes. Damn it. Thanks, R. Fixed.
Oh noes! Teh businesses are expressing interest in the government that taxes and charges them! It must be some kind of conspiracy! A conspiracy to use the same ballot process as everyone else to ask voters what they prefer! Eeeeeeeek!
Politics makes strange bedfellows? I support this initiative.
So soon we could have representatives of big property owners and businesses screwing us for water rates instead of the government. Right. Sounds like a flawless plan.
Finally, we can open up the Bull Run to clear cutting!
Our rates will never be like those in Phoenix until that wasted space starts earning its fucking keep!
People supporting the concrete-pouring, water-degrading Portland Water Bureau are on by themselves on KBOO coming up soon. Makes me feel bad that I supported KBOO. Three apologists for local politicians and nobody representing those who have had our labor and transportation money stolen by Portland City Council over years and years. It took a while for local labor and local business to figure out how federal cronies have been putting Portland people into debt to the Too-Bigs, to hurt us. All this loaded-on debt for pouring stupid amounts of concrete, making a gravity-fed system less so, and degrading the water by burying it with crazy homeland-screwing schemes to get mold and other bad stuff in our water. And it didn’t take that many or that much in city grants to get people to go against the stated missions of their alleged non-profits. I used to think I was as jaded as I could get. Then I watched city council. And I grew up near D.C. I know from corruption.
Geez Rilly,
There won’t be any opening up Bull Run to logging.
The PPWD initiative ensconces in the City Charter Bull Run protections that preclude logging and other activities that would degrade water quality.
Other initiative provisions include prohibiting the regionalization or relinquishing of Portland’s sole ownership of Bull Run, prohibits privatization and commingling of Bull Run water with other lower quality sources such as the Willamette or the Columbia.