Randy Leonard

For weeks, City Commissioner Randy Leonard had the town talking over his grand idea to ban smoking entirely from all city parks—he even casually mentioned he’d be open to extending the ban to sidewalks. Ultimately, though, by the time the discussion got to city council on Thursday, January 11, he’d backed off the strict rule—but […]

If the first couple of weeks of the year have been any indication, 2007 will be the Year of the Ban. Already on the chopping block—trans fats, smoking in parks, and wiping snot on city property. This Thursday, January 11, City Commissioner Dan Saltzman was scheduled to revisit his new proposed parks conduct rules, which […]

A Random Thing Early in the morning on New Year’s Day, 23-year-old Jermaine Davis was shot in the chest at SW 4th and Stark. The next day, commenters on Jack Bogdanski’s blog, bojack.org, weighed in on the homicide, concluding that Davis—who was African American, and had one prior drug conviction—”had it coming.” Bogdanski himself wrote: […]

City council may have taken off for a week (or more, depending on who you ask), but hot city action was still lurking around every corner. For instance! The Portland Development Commission released yet another appraisal of the embattled SW 3rd and Oak property, which it wants to develop into “market rate” housing—AKA condos for […]

Like your grandma after that third box of Franzia, city council is shutting down for Christmas week. Four of the five commissioners are out of town, and Dan Saltzman can’t quite make up a quorum by himself. So guess what, long-suffering readers—I’m treating (?) you to a clip show of sorts. As I rifled through […]

After a couple of weeks of speculation, Mayor Tom Potter’s chief of staff, Nancy Hamilton, announced last Wednesday, December 13, that she was stepping down. The official line from the mayor is that she’s leaving “to pursue other opportunities,” but even Hamilton admits that the mayor’s office needed her to hit the road. Over the […]

If you’ve never seen five members of city council tiptoe around the word “ejaculation,” you’ve never seen true—albeit intensely uncomfortable—hilarity. Bodily functions are not typically fodder for serious policy discussions, and yet that is precisely the predicament City Commissioner Dan Saltzman put the council in last Wednesday, November 29. As I wrote about two weeks […]

As the week began, America hit a pretty ugly milestone—US armed forces have now been in Iraq for a longer amount of time than they were fighting the Axis in World War II. So, with the anniversary of Pearl Harbor looming, City Commissioner Randy Leonard has finally decided to put an end to the occupation. […]