NO INCLUSIONARY ZONING for us this legislative session, Oregonians.
House Bill 2564, which would have lifted the statewide ban on governments' ability to mandate affordable units in new construction, died in the Oregon Senate last week.
The bill had passed the House, and looked like it had a chance at getting through the Senate after Speaker Tina Kotek made some changes—including reducing the potential number of required affordable units in each development and allowing developers to pay into a fund rather than build on site—to appease moderate Democrats who opposed the legislation. It didn't help.
Commissioner Dan Saltzman, whose office is in charge of the Portland Housing Bureau, thanked Kotek and the bill's other advocates for their hard work this session.
"I'm extremely disappointed that the inclusionary zoning bill failed at the Oregon Senate," he wrote. "We have our work cut out for us and we are up for it." SHELBY R. KING
CANNABIS MAY BE LEGAL in Oregon, but the state's colleges and universities are warning it won't fly on campus.
Noting their involvement in federal financial aid and grant programs, schools like Oregon State University, University of Oregon, and Portland State University (PSU) are telling students, visitors, and faculty to leave the pot at home (unless that home is on campus). The federal government still classifies marijuana as a highly illegal drug, on par with heroin.
"In essence nothing has changed on our campus, in our buildings, or in any of our university facilities," PSU spokesman Scott Gallagher tells the Mercury. That means you're prohibited from toting an ounce or less of marijuana on campus, even though Oregon law now says that's perfectly legal. Of course, you're most likely to incur authorities' wrath if you're smoking in public, which is illegal everywhere.
"We can do 'no trespass' rules," Gallagher says. "We can take people to the edge of our campus." DIRK VANDERHART
THE PORTLAND POLICE BUREAU'S fourth and fifth officer-involved shootings of 2015 came just a week apart—a spate of mayhem involving two shot suspects and a stabbed police officer.
The bureau says two officers stopped in the parking lot of the WinCo Foods on NE 122nd, and began speaking with three people who were standing near the trunk of a car on June 28. After roughly 10 minutes, police say one of the men—29-year-old Alan Lee Bellew—reached into the car "without provocation" and brandished what appeared to be a handgun.
Officers Dominic Lovato and Michael Currier both fired at Bellew, killing him. The gun he'd been aiming was a starter pistol, police say.
Then at 1:41 am on July 5, two officers say they spied a man who appeared to be "trying to burglarize" a community policing office near NE 110th and Sandy. An officer named Jose Jimenez began following the suspect, David James Ellis, on foot, while another officer blocked the man with a police cruiser.
Cops say Ellis turned on Jimenez, pulled a knife and stabbed him in the hand. The second officer, Scott Konczal, shot Ellis in the arm. Both men survived, and Ellis faces a charge of attempted aggravated murder.
So far this year, police have killed two people in shootings, and injured two more. In a fifth incident, an officer fired his weapon but missed. DVH
