The Street Fee Live Blog! The Street Fee Live Blog! EEEeeeeeeEEEEEE!

• ILLUSTRATION BY FRANCOIS VIGNEAULT

It’s been a brisk 175 days—just under half a year—since Portland City Council last gathered for a public hearing on Commissioner Steve Novick and Mayor Charlie Hales’ intensely controversial push to raise millions in new revenue for street maintenance and safety projects.

It was a five-hour-plus ordeal. It started out with a now-familiar recitation of the city’s transportation-funding woes (namely, that no matter why and how we’ve wound up here, we need at least $91 million a year to erase a billion-dollar maintenance backlog—never mind what else we need to grow a transportation system that works even better). It was then filled with confusion, outrage, and, notably, tepid support from advocates who should have been allies. At the end of it all, bitterness and questions from city commissioners who wanted a public vote, not something passed by the council, hovered like a dismal coda.

The next weekend, Hales and Novick decided to pull the plug and pull the thing back for more work. Much has changed in the months that have elapsed—changes finally unveiled anew on November 10.

What was called the “Transportation User Fee” is now called the “Portland Street Fund.” It will raise just $46 million, not $50 million. It will tilt more toward paving than toward projects in places like East Portland. And instead of flat fees for residents and large fees for businesses, Hales and Novick now want an income tax and a modest business fee.

The threat of a ballot referral still looms. Many in the business community still can’t support the new idea, even after working to shape it. And advocates have lined up, given that entrenched opposition, to urge city hall to make whatever emerges even more progressive. Essentially: Why play ball if the naysayers won’t play fair?

Hales started today’s hearing, a little after 2, by talking about his original attempt to raise this cash, back in 2001, a familiar dirge. Then he mentioned Sam Adams’ attempt in 2008. And business opposition—and continued struggles in Washington DC and Salem to do their part to raise cash.

“Here we area gain,” Hales said, not mentioning his formerly brown hair like he sometimes does when launching into those remarks. “The same three options are before us today. Those are: to do this, to do nothing, or to do something else.”

Leah Treat, the city’s transportation director is starting to speak. Hit the jump for updates!

2:15 Treat’s acknowledging that many people may not like what’s on the table. But she says it’s vital. Because it will double the city’s paving budget—getting two-thirds of ours streets in fair or better condition in 10 years. Not fixing streets is “extremely costly,” she says—true. Which is why we’re where we are now.

Treat points to $650 million in savings on paving. She also says bridges, traffic signals, and street signs all would be funded—to a degree they aren’t right now. And then there’s the crossing and sidewalk improvements, the work around schools. The message, in talking about things like rumble strips on dangerous Marine Drive and improved crossings, is that saying yes to funding will save lives. And saying no… well… yeah.

Much of this stuff is over on the Bureau of Transportation’s website.

“For many of us this work is deeply personal,” Treat says.

2:23 Novick has conspicuously name-checked the Portland Business Alliance, which has emerged alongside Paul Romain as a foe of the revised plan, in thanking all of the advocacy organizations who worked on making all those changes over the summer and fall.

He’s touting those changes. Nonprofits have a discount now. Businesses won’t pay more than $144 a month, per location. Many will pay just $3 a month. He says the business fee satisifed the “comfort level” of the PBA and small business supporters Venture Portland.

On the residential side, he’s recounting the distaste for the $11.56 flat fee. So now it’s based, slightly more, on what people will pay. Low income people, singles making less than $25,000 and couples earning less than $35,000, would be exempt. He gets that exempting 40 percent of tax filers is an awful lot.

Novick says he’s “personally more worried” that so many Portlanders make so little money. He also says he wants to ask Salem to undo a rule that exempts government pensions from paying taxes, unlike others.

“This is a compromise proposal,” Novick says. “This does not meet the individual requests of any group I’m aware of.”

He’s also highlighting his favorite project on a new list of projects: work on SE 122nd that will give Trimet impetus to add frequent north-south bus service. Also? The residential tax is DEDUCTIBLE. So super-wealthy people paying $75 a month (down from a proposed $200; that money has been made up for by hiking what middle income folks pay) will pay a bit less.

2:31 Commissioner Amanda Fritz, the likely third vote in May and June, hasn’t reaffirmed her status. She’s saying her emails show many of the folks upset in May are still upset. And that some folks upset in May are less upset now.

She’s going to key in on the details—not the philosophy or process that leads to passage. Previously, she was okay with not going to the public.

“It’s very clear to me having been in six budget sessions with the city council… that we do need more funding for transportation,” she says. “For me, doing nothing is not an option.”

She’s also heard a call to let the public vote on “it.” So, she says, let’s define “it.” The proposal. What do people like? What do they hate? She says that kind of testimony will be most valuable.

Further, she says she’s heard from Novick that he’s working up a guarantee that the new money won’t be a means for the council, in future budgets, to back money currently being spent on transportation into other spending needs—leaving the city precisely where it is now.

A sunset, she says, is a “reasonable” request. Fritz mentioned six years and wants a future council to have a conversation again. “We’ll have that accountability.” Hales and Novick have been adamantly opposed—but they might have to budge if that’s the price of obtaining Fritz’s swing vote.

2:34 She closed with an intensely personal point. Her husband’s death on Interstate 5 happened because ODOT didn’t fund a median barrier. She’s determined that the city must do “something” and she won’t support amendments that further soften the amount of funding in this, 44 percent, that will be spent on safety projects.

“I don’t want to be the person talking to a family member who’s bereft because we didn’t do those safety projects.”

I don’t know how the PBA, which wants just 25 percent spent on safety, can argue with that or follow that.

2:42 Invited speakers are now taking the microphone, led by an AARP representative. AARP has emerged as a staunch supporter, in light of the changes, after expressing reservations in May about the flatness of the original.

“Implement this plan that will literally save lives,” she says.

The AARP rep mentioned the death of a child. Again… hard for the PBA to argue.

Which they’re now doing.

Marion Haynes, the top lobbyist for the PBA, says the group gets that there’s a need for new revenue—except that details matter. They want a sunset. And promises that backsliding won’t happen. They don’t hate the business fee.

They think “repaving of streets will need to be a priority.”

Mostly, they hate the income tax. “The voters should have the opportunity” to pass one, she says.

Hales encouraged the PBA to float a competing proposal, genially.

Novick then asked two questions. One was about the PBA’s stance on the tax and asked what numbers they might cook up for tax brackets. “We don’t have a proposal,” Haynes told her.

Then he asked about chambers of commerce in other cities fighting income taxes—and then invoked Columbus, Ohio, which supported an income tax increase so long as the new money went to transportation. He suggested she call her counterparts in Columbus to ask why.

2:49 Eighty people have asked to talk. Hales is limiting testimony to two minutes per speaker.

Frequent council visitor Joe Walsh won applause when he told the room how amazing it was that he’s been forced onto the same side of an issue as the petroleum industry and the PBA. All of the TV stations are mugging him, happy they’ve got fireworks for their afternoon broadcasts.

“Three people are making a decision for 600,000 people,” he said. “You’re afraid to fail. That’s democracy.”

He put some words into the commissioners’ mouths: “I can’t sell this piece of crap.”

Then he made a beautiful point. These meetings shouldn’t be at 2 in the afternoon. Walsh says they should be held at 6 at night, “so working people can attend.”

2:59 Woody Broadnax, saying he represents the African American community, worries the new tax would accelerate gentrification that’s pushed African Americans out of inner neighborhoods and into East Portland. Why not add a sunset—vs. a “blank check”?

“We’re not fools in this community,” he said. “We need to vote on this.”

Craig Rogers, who’s been to every work group meeting this summer, follows by noting that this would be the first income tax in Portland approved without a vote—unlike the arts tax, which was embraced in 2012 by a large majority of voters.

“It’s made to look okay,” he says. “But it’s all subject to change…. How do we really know that this money’s going to go to what it’s allocated for…. I think we can do better.”

Hales addressed Rogers, asking him to look at oversight provisions in the proposal and to float specific improvements. He also asked him something more pointed

“If this goes to a vote and it fails, which is I think what you would want,” Hales says, “what’s the measure we could send to the voters that you would campaign for, that you would come out with me in the rain for and go door to door?”

Hales said he’d go door to door for a one-cent sales tax, for example, even though he thinks it would fail. “But would you?”

3:07 Robert McCullough, the accomplished president of SE Uplift, the super influential umbrella group representing Southeast Portland neighborhood benefits, complains that PBOT didn’t obtain the best data and analysis when crafting their proposal.

He also says his members are uncomfortable with the allocations as devised right now, even though some of those neighborhoods would benefit. And he complains that Trimet and railroads and other big road users have been left out. “It’s a problem of not thinking it through.”

What’s to be done? A nine-cent gas tax across gasoline and diesel. “It is a real proposal. It’s not perfect… but we are bringing real numbers and real proposals to the table.”

Hales told him to meet with Paul Romain, who reps the petroleum industry in Salem, and might have some thoughts about a proposal like that.

3:13 Tom Chamberlain, boss of the AFL-CIO, was invited up. He arrived late. He says labor’s silence on the fee isn’t because they oppose it. It’s because they haven’t gotten to figuring that out yet. “Election hangover,” he joked.

They do know one thing: They support a progressive income tax—unlike the PBA—that targets the wealthy.

He correctly notes that much of the income gained in Oregon and the United States over the past several years gone to the top 10 percent of earners. and really actually the top 1 percent.

Regular Oregonians “are willing to pay their fair share,” Chamberlain says, to applause. “As long as wealthy Oregonians are willing to pay their fair share.”

Don Gardner, vice chair of SE Uplift, comes up next and cops to being a retired PBOT employee (he’s the retired head of engineering, in fact). Yes, he says, transportation’s long been underfunded. But he still sees “fatal flaws”—the tax won’t be collected equitably he says, the money won’t be divvied equitably… and the process hasn’t been ideal. He laments that neighborhood associations weren’t solicited for feedback or invited to the summertime working groups that shaped the revised proposal.

He turned Hales’ request for ideas back on him: “When exactly were we supposed to do that?

Hales mentioned a community forum in Sunnyside six months ago, but made sure to add that “now would be fine, too.”

Novick hammers back that “There’s been nothing preventing anyone from contacting us” since the summer.

And finally, we’ve heard a shout from the peanut gallery: “We’re not in Russia.”

3:25 Fritz asks for the current maintenance budget. Novick says “it’s in the neighborhood of $14 million” for paving, plus what we spend on signals and bridges. She suggests the full number would be helpful. And Hales agrees that’s a “good idea.”

Novick’s left the dais to check in with the coterie of PBOT staffers filling one side of the room.

While he’s doing that, someone suggests a Chicagoland-style parking permit “cling” sticker that Portlanders put in their windshields. You’d have to have one, even if you lived far away to park here, without getting a ticket. Mostly, I remember buying those and never thinking about them—they weren’t expensive, partly because Chicago and its suburbs rely heavily on property and sales taxes to pay their bills in a way we decidedly don’t.

(He’s a Portland native who lived in Chicago who “didn’t like the way they ran that city, that’s for sure.” “Except for this,” Hales joked.)

3:31 Finally, a business person commenting—although the point was made on Twitter that they’re all at work right now. A member of the Hollywood business district says his group officially opposes the street fee, but really that they want to see a public vote if the council continues.

A sunset would be nice, but the structure is lacking. “It’s not there yet.” He’s not sure what else to do. Not a lot of people are. He says he’d help campaign for Hales and Novick if they come up with an alternative, like maybe on bicycle registration fees and an increased gas tax. “But before that happens,” he wants more transparency and a “reduction in waste.” No one ever says what that waste is, or what’s deserving of the ax.

Fritz asks what’s the hitch in the current plan. He says his group hasn’t actually discussed the current iteration. But they still want a vote.

Hales gets groans and boos when he says someone emailed and mentioned that he would be “outsourcing” his job if he referred this. “How should I respond?” he asks the room. “Delete,” the room answers back.

3:40 A very vocal critic says “You ought to tighten your belt before asking us to tighten ours.”

Dan Kaufman, a cyclist and ally of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, says he’ll put on his campaign raincoat if the city embraces “Vision Zero” safety standards (design things for no fatalities for any users—including lowering speed limits), more work toward meeting the 25 percent “mode-share” goals the city’s undoubtedly going to miss when 2025 comes around, at this rate.

The petroleum lobby’s going to “oppose everything apparently,” so why not go for things that he and others like him are hungering to see.

He’s followed by Rob Sadowsky, the director of the BTA. Sadowsky mentioned an 11 year old girl from St. Johns who took a bike safety class but still can’t bike to school because there’s not a greenway near hear home (she must attend Sitton). Greenways near St. Johns’ Pier Park are part of the plan.

Sadowsky also echoes what his and other groups told the council in a letter first reported by the Mercury yesterday. He wants the wealthy to pay more, the rest of us to pay less, and more money spent on safety.

“Every penny spent now on safety improvements has the potential to save lives,” he said before telling the council to do things for the girl he mentioned in his opening remarks.

3:57 Ruth Adkins, a Portland Public Schools board member who led the low-income impact work group, praised the new proposals as much improved. She said Hales and Novick were correct to shift to a more progressive income tax—and also in their attempt to site safety projects in underserved neighborhoods. Adkins and her husband would pay only $16 a month.

“My husband and I can afford this amount, and in return we know there would be improvements in every corner of the city,” Adkins says.

Home Forward came up and cheered the fact that many low-income workers won’t pay the tax—but really she was thrilled that the street tax won’t saddle her agency with the big bills it faced previously. In May, Home Forward wouldn’t have said yes to it. That’s not the case right now.

PPS, for the record, also has just pledged its full-fledged support for the proposal on the table. That’s not a surprise, given how many of the safety projects are meant to complement safe access to schools.

Jonathan Ostar of OPAL, who’s been an outspoken critic of the PBA’s intransigence on the income tax in light of the the months of work, had kind things to say about the public process in play and the scope of what’s been proposed. “It’s progressive in the way it raises revenue,” he says.

But he points to a “bellwether moment” in public perception around affordability in Portland. Making this even more progressive “is a fight that we can have and a fight that we can win.”

He says the concessions to the PBA “feel very hollow” right now and that Hales and Novick should yank them back.

4:05 A mom complains about property tax inequities, demanding the city annex more unincorporated residents (never mind that providing services might offset any potential gains in assessed value). She also said Novick and Hales were “beyond disrespectful” in their comments during yesterday’s appearance on OPB when talking to Anne Sanderson of Stop the Street Fee. People clapped like mad for that.

By the way, here’s how much Portland gets from your property tax bill.

Oregon Walks is reminding the room that 70 percent of pedestrian deaths in 2013 came in East Portland, where much of the proposed safety work would be aimed. Oregon Walks is part of the coalition of groups demanding a more progressive version of the proposal.

A campaign theme is definitely emerging. “SAYING NO MIGHT KILL PEOPLE.”

Oh! And BREAKING NEWS: The Taxpayers Association of Oregon really doesn’t like either the income tax or the business fee.

Bob Clark’s saying there might be hope for a statewide gas tax increase—and that six-cent hike might add a few million bucks for PBOT. He and Nick Fish are talking about the likelihood of that happening, with Fish saying gas tax revenue would be a source of income that could used as collateral in the bond market. Fish asked him if he’d support a local gas tax at the ballot box—he demurred and said he doesn’t get his gas in Portland.

He wouldn’t campaign for one, though. (Also… he did vote for Hales in 2012 but says he might not again. The room loved that to pieces.)

4:21 Andy Frazier of the Small Business Advisory Council says splitting the residential and business fees is “cynical” and political—and that he doesn’t support what’s going forward. He’s offended that his retirement income will be taxed and that the commissioners’ incomes won’t be. He also called out the tense city hall dynamics that have seen Hales and Novick court Fritz but not work much with Saltzman and Fish on the proposal.

Hales reminded him that he’s done work with the Portland Business Alliance and that the PBA doesn’t hate the business fee. Hales also asked him what he would do instead of the income tax?

He asked, in reply, whether Hales and Novick would consider something else. Hales said he would. Novick hesitated before also saying he would. But Frazier said it would be a waste of his time to suggest something they wouldn’t do.

Fish parlayed with him a bit and got him to admit that the “bones are there” on the business side—and that a lack of a sunset, if remedied, would make him feel better. Frazier also said, when pressed by Novick, that he’d “put on his raincoat” and campaign for a gas tax. That was deemed “helpful.”

4:35 Another group reminds the council that the compromise proposal in place here was rejected by some of the business lobby groups it was meant to appease—freeing the council to consider something that more dramatically taxes the wealthy and spends more on safety projects.

Cameron Whitten, a former mayoral candidate and a member of PBOT’s budget advisory committee, has called out, like some other speakers, the “equity lens” that the street fund’s project list was filtered through. He also admitted that one of the loudest critics of the street fee, economist and consultant Eric Fruits, was one of his professors at PSU.

“I hope I’m still getting an A.”

Fruits, who runs the No Street Fee web site, said he’d be getting a C. And then he had his turn at the microphone—just like he did on OPB yesterday.

Fruits is well-armed with specifics, noting that the Port will pay as much as the (discriminatory) Salvation Army under the proposal. He notes that the ranges in taxes for couples and residents might have middle income couples, in some cases, paying a higher rate than wealthy people.

“It’s nothing more than a money grab, and an unfair money grab, at that.”

Novick asked him how the proposal can be worse if it’s more progressive. Fruits said the more tied to the roads the mechanism is, like a fee, the more fair it is. “Then you can use those tools to adjust people’s behavior. … This income tax does nothing.”

Fruits says the trip generation models used in the previous iteration, for the business fee, could have been tweaked to work for Portland instead of tossed out. He complained about the large percentage of overhead costs built into the current plan. He also said a gas tax or congestion charge would work better, despite the infeasibility of passing either.

Fish pointed out that gas taxes are by definition regressive—and asked if there was some way to mitigate that for low income Portlanders.

Fruits said “food prices are regressive” but admitted a refund program or credit could be funded from the tax itself and that it would be, in fact, “a great idea.” Fish asked him to submit some ideas.

“I’d love to. I’ve never had a call,” Fruits bubbled. “I’m one of the easiest people to Google.”

4:36 Someone just called out Hales for his campaign rhetoric, essentially the implication that we could cut our way back to a healthy paving budget. When, in fact, as a former commissioner for 10 years who tried passing a street revenue plain in 2001, Hales ought to have understood the dynamics at play.

“That was naive,” the man told Hales. “You should have known better.”

4:52 Paul Romain himself, the oil lobbyist who wants to refer this to the ballot, takes the mic. He explains why he backed out of the business work group—because their look at finances was limited to PBOT’s budget, not the city’s. It would be about justifying new money without looking for other money.

Let’s note that the city mostly spends cash on cops, firefighters, and parks.

Also?

“This progressive income tax is a joke,” Romain says. Because it’s not based on profits earned in Portland.

He also says he needs a guarantee, a “basic discussion” on how the city spends money, that the city won’t hike the business fee at will. He’d rather have a statewide gas tax increase (which arguably we’d need no matter what.)

He says some emails between the council and staff on the income tax and how it might be more progressive are “sickening,” and accuses Novick of being a socialist, practically.

Hales has mentioned a text message exchange with Romain today in which he was attempting set a meeting to brief Romain’s clients on the city budget. Romain complained Hales waited so long.

Hales asked about a local gas tax, if in fact the city really does need more money, and it can’t come from the general fund. Romain says his clients would never support it locally, because of the patchwork it would create.

Romain says the council made this mess, so he’d also be reticent to see a super large gas tax increase.

“All this money is dedicated to roads, and it disappears,” Romain gripes.

He questioned the city’s decision to spend surplus money on projects that weren’t related to paving. Hales worked out some kind of accord with Romain in which Hales and budget director Andrew Scott would presumably meet soon with Roman’s clients to show them how the cit spends it’s cash.

Novick tells Romain “I realize you haven’t combed through the budget.” Which of those budgets would you want to cut?

Romain says it’s like “when did you stop beating your wife. That is an absolute BS question.”

Novick says he accused Romain of being a socialist in an email, reminding him that fighting this might convince the council to go with a more popular more progressive income tax targeting the wealthy. “We’re trying to avoid that fight,” Novick said.

Romain says he’d love that tax—if it targeted earnings in Portland.

5:01 A man who invoked the costs of both lattes and designer jeans just held up a posterboard depicting a stool missing its third leg: a sales tax.

Then he mentioned the overspending years ago on the Tram. And then he mentioned the whole Washingto State thing to Hales.

Paul Cone, repping more than 800 city employees for COPPEA (100 in PBOT), followed by noting that the price of inaction on funding means projects will only grow more expensive as road conditions deteriorate.

COPPEA thinks the new plan is fair and nods to the history of the transportation revenue movement.

“We believe the time has come,” Cone says. “We urge the council to show strong leadership on this matter.”

5:05 Anne Sanderson, who runs the Stop the Portland Street Fee Facebook page, and one Hales’ and Novick’s sparring partners on OPB yesterday, chronicled the tortured history leading to this moment in the debate. (If the previous version, with expensive fees for businesses, had taken effect, businesses would be “bankrupt,” she says, including her hair salon. Now she’ll just pay $3 a month for her salon, in addition to her personal income tax.)

She unfurled a long list of other ideas and said it’s “intellectually disingenuous” to say they weren’t provided. “There just weren’t any you liked.”

Fritz asked for an email copy of her list, and Sanderson says she’s grown it during testimony today.

5:16 Chris Kopca, a VP for the Downtown Development Group LLC, was a member of the business fee working group convened this summer. He said he supports the PBA’s opposition and raises some quibbles.

He complained that a promise from Leah Treat that the current maintenance cash would be kept around with new cash wasn’t repeated in the new ordinance. Novick said he couldn’t promise a precise number or the same number because other revenue sources, like the gas tax, could dip in future years. He could only promise that the revenue stream itself would remain in that pool of cash. (Novick also reminded him that a lousy economy might also send the business fee lower, if businesses lost money or shed employees, two of the factors that determine the fee.)

There was some discussion around the general fund taking on the Streetcar, which is interesting. Kopca then mentioned the disconnect between the extra $15 million that would be spent on paving vs. the $91 milllion it would take to catch up on the city’s backlog over 10 years. Meaning the city wouldn’t be doing much to catch up.

“I just want you to know how far we’re falling short of repairing the roads,” Kopca says. “Road maintenance is a safety issue.”

Kopca suggests pulling more money in for paving, saying the division now is rhetorically harmful. He also suggests hiking the lower end of the tax, $2, so that everyone who’s paying at least is paying their own collection costs. Novick says that cost is actually smaller than that.

Hales cuts him off after giving him some extra time.

5:22 BOMA Oregon has recycled its talking points, in opposition, from the PBA:

Yes, the city needs money for transportation. But…

The proposal has no sunset date. It’s a new tax. More money should be spent on paving. Etc.

What’s BOMA Oregon? “The industry’s leading commercial real estate organization, representing over 40 million square feet of commercial real estate in Oregon.”

There’s a bunch of people who still want to talk—maybe more than a dozen. And timing is getting interesting. One of the commissioners might have to leave if this keeps going along.

Fish just called this “an extraordinary hearing” but urged people to “raise issues they don’t feel have gotten enough ventilation.” He correctly notes that the council tends not to factor in how many people speak on one side of an issue or another.

5:38 A member of PBOT’s budget committee says she knows intimately that PBOT’s struggled because it’s forecasted revenue from the gas tax has fallen short in light of people driving less and using alternative fuel vehicles.

She says she keeps hearing this is “the last straw” after the Children’s Levy, the arts tax, police and fire pensions, the library, etc. “These things do add up,” she said.

That said, we need the money, she says. She also lamented the demise of Mayor Sam Adams’ “budget mapping,” which showed where city money was being spent. She also encouraged robust use of Hales’ newfangled “budget performance dashboards” as a means of giving Romain something he wants: “transparency.”

Members of the East Portland Action Plan also, unsurprisingly, support the plan—and it’s focus on their neighborhood. The representative from EPAP did put in a pitch for a sunset clause after three years.

And another fellow comes up and notes a truism at a long, long hearing: Someone’s said what you wanted to say, and probably better. His big point? The Oregonian has been successful in “demonizing” government retirees, whose income would be exempt from this tax under state law. He argues that amounts to a negligible sum of foregone revenue.

“I’m not in my Imperial stormtrooper armor,” he said, “nor do I wear a Darth Vader helmet.”

5:42 “I either read or heard somewhere,” but he didn’t remember where, the same man said later, that the city or PBOT or the council made a “proactive” decision to stop spending on maintenance.

Novick said utility license fees used to be spent on PBOT—but that in the mid to late 1980s, the city started spending that revenue on other things like police, fire, and parks. “It wasn’t like the council announced it didn’t care about streets anymore.”

Fritz wondered if he meant Adams’ decision to focus maintenance on arterial streets, in light of funding challenges, instead of residential streets. That’s been altered more recently, under Hales.

5:46 Testimony from the Northwest Grocers Association veered from the PBA’s testimony. They came out hard against the business fee in May. But they’re grateful for the new business fee—and they actually support it. They didn’t mention the income tax. (But it’s not so far-fetched to posit they probably also don’t support it.)

5:58 Another frequent council visitor, Barry Joe Stull, actually drew mirth from Amanda Fritz when he joked that the PBA uses “the ground up bones of the homeless to fill potholes.” But then he talked about where else the council could pull out some other money: by cutting the police budget.

Worth noting? Novick’s been a vocal proponent of doing just that.

Another man says he spent his lunch watching a crew doing work, invoking Chicago’s waste and bloat: Two of them were working out of the six, and four others were just moving stuff back and forth around their trucks. He claims he talked to a pal in PBOT who blamed the union contract.

Hales said “I”m not sure whose crew you saw that day,” but that the crews he visited worked very efficiently. It gave him an opportunity to tout his fulfilled pledge in 2013: Getting PBOT to pave 100 miles, instead of 35, using its existing budget.

6:13 The East Portland Chamber of Commerce is disappointed in the wholesale distaste for the proposal by the PBA—saying the city needs money and that the business fee is much improved.

Caveat, though: They think the income tax is flawed because too many people who use the roads don’t have to pay. They also want a sunset clause. And, if they can, they’d like to do something about a business owner paying a fee off the top of their business’s revenues, and then paying again, with the income tax, on whatever money they’re lucky enough to take home.

The speaker did support a parking tax, which Hales noted might perturb some his colleagues back on the chamber.

Someone else has a bike helmet on and is holding up Trimet’s number, but mostly missing the TV cameras. He says our buses all have one-pound plates on them that serve no purpose besides wearing on the roads. He also dug out a banana peel and a coffee cup from the garbage, and says garbage writ large is stressing our roads because it’s heavy.

“I’m a socialist, so I do like being perspective,” says a man named Herschel. He’s troubled by the income tax brackets, which are internally regressive given their size.

6:22 I think we’ve about reached the end of public testimony… the final few tireless souls… led off by another former PBOT worker who says the income tax is bad. He worked under Hales, when he was PBOT commissioner long ago, as an environmental engineer guiding the city’s paving work.

He begs for a vote, if the council insists on this, warning that not doing so would “permanently harm” “this body’s integrity.” He demands a sunset. Adding one, annually or semi annually, would bring “respect” from voters.

There’s a call for returning to the city’s old model for running PBOT and the city’s utilities: the historic Public Works Bureau, which, he says, oversaw the Office of Transportation and the water and sewers offices. Back in the old days, he says, they all had to pool money.

Doing that kind of heavy charter lift now? I’d guess it’s politically toxic, because you’d essentially be arguing that sewer and water money, already heavily scrutinized, to subsidize transportation spending, which is also heavily scrutinized.

6:33 Citizen testimony has concluded. A crowded room has dwindled—and now staffers, soon to be inquisitioned by the council, arguably outnumber the public.

6:36 Novick clearly worked up a spiel thanking his staffers and PBOT worker as band members. Hales suggested questions might wait. And they do. Because this week, everyone has to leave early for other engagements.

No cards tipped. No hands slyly shown. And the sausage stays in its opaque casing.

Good night. Sleep tight.