With summer not even here yet—and city leaders already wringing their hands over a handful of high-profile gang shootings this year—Portland gang detectives have had a hectic couple of days. From early Saturday, June 4, through early Tuesday, June 7, four shootings with possible gang connections were reported—including one that left a 40-year-old man dead. So far, the shootings have not been contained to one area: Two were a few miles apart in North Portland, with the others in Northeast and far-out Southeast. DENIS C. THERIAULT
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Over the next few weeks, the Portland Development Commission and Portland City Council will consider expanding the city's already-hulking Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area. The district—in which growing tax receipts and other city funds are set aside for redevelopment projects—would swallow large swaths of North and Northeast Portland, including downtown St. Johns, land around the Oregon Convention Center, and strips along Lombard, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and Albina and Killingsworth. Planning officials launched the effort months ago in part to spread out opportunities for city grants. The Daily Journal of Commerce, meanwhile, reports that a citizens advisory committee is opposing the plan, worried that it would dilute city resources and starve projects already in the urban renewal area's current boundaries. DCT
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Portland City Council on Wednesday, June 8, is expected to approve a plan by Mayor Sam Adams adding gender-reassignment benefits to the city's self-funded insurance plan. Approving the extra coverage, which would cost taxpayers just $32,000 more a year, would put the city in line with Multnomah County and the city of San Francisco, but also with big corporations including Google, Kraft Foods, and Bank of America. Gender identity disorder has long been recognized by the medical community, although some critics have attempted to cast sex-change procedures as elective, akin to breast enhancement. Adams, who is overruling a city advisory board to make the change, says the coverage amounts to "simple fairness." DCT
