Not an old boys club tonight

“Sometimes it’s said politics is a good old boys’ club!” With four elected women beside her, Rep Carolyn Tomei did not need to say anything further to make her point. Men may often seem to dominate politics, but last night in Sellwood it was the Ladies Night. Not only five women from five different areas of state and local government, but former Gov Barbara Roberts, in the audience as a constituent and neighborhood resident.

The occasion was a town hall at Sellwood’s SMILE Center on SE 13th Avenue, just a short distance from the Sellwood Bridge, the main feature of the evening’s meeting. For Sellwood, the bridge looms as the defining feature of its present and future; for surrounding areas, it presents a more basic transportation need.

Joining Rep Tomei were State Senator Diane Rosenbaum, who also represents the neighborhood; Metro Councilor Carlotta Collette, from Clackamas County; Clackamas County Chair Lynn Peterson; and Multnomah County Commissioner and former state Representative Deb Kafoury. Among those in attendance were a group of elected officials from Japan, in Portland for training sponsored by the Tokyo Foundation. It’s unlikely they would get the chance to see grassroots democracy in practice in quite this way, something special to the Metro region, with so many governments and, as important as any institution of governance, the nature of Portland’s neighborhoods, especially on the east side of the city.

In kicking off discussion of the Sellwood Bridge, Tomei noted that the 2009 Legislature not only provided $30 million for construction on the west side of the bridge, but they opened the way for Multnomah and Clackamas county to raise vehicle registration license fees to raise money for the bridge. Clackamas County, as Chair Peterson noted later, not only was going to use the fee for the bridge, but to provide for future road paving projects, something they would not have been able to pursue because of the high number of non-urban residents in the county. Deb Kafoury pointed out Portland, which would receive funds from a statewide increase in fees, had made a commitment of $8 million per year for twenty years as part of its contribution towards the bridge. She also told the audience that Sen Jeff Merkley was leading an effort to secure the remaining $40 million through federal funds.

More important to those who came to the town hall than the money being spent on the bridge was what would happen to the unique nature of Sellwood. One person, active in local politics, stated a fear that with a rebuilt Sellwood Bridge and the Milwaukie light rail line, many of the open or industrial areas would be developed with high rise apartments; her fear was that Sellwood would be walled in by development. (Collette assured her that not only was this concern shared by Clackamas County and Metro officials, but that the current industrial zoning was unlikely to change as the goal was to have jobs and housing in close proximity, something development would undermine.)

The size of the bridge and the amount of traffic was the major concern. Several people expressed concern not only about what might happen to Tacoma Street but how the proposed 1,000-car park-and-ride facility for the Tacoma Street Station would affect local traffic. A lack of understanding about the place of a street car was echoed by Kafoury, who then assured people that while tracks were likely to be built into the roadway (at the insistence of Sam Adams and the City of Portland), before any street car line was approved it would have to go through the normal approval process.

In short, all the speakers did their best to assure those present that the quality of life in Sellwood was as important as simply rebuilding the bridge. The Tacoma Mainstreet Plan, said Kafoury, could not be left of any bridge or streetcar discussions. Even a matter as mundane as crosswalks — even Gov Roberts, who lives on 13th, agreed they were too few and too far apart — needed to be addressed in order to ensure that the neighborhood’s unique and special character was maintained.

Peterson, a transportation specialist and former TriMet staffer, made the point that simply increasing capacity north and south of Sellwood would not change demand for use of the bridge. To reduce that demand required not merely more car capacity elsewhere — larger roads, bigger bridges — but the means to get people out of cars and off the bridge. The goal, she said, was to keep peak-time congestion at the engineers’ goal of 15 minutes and not at the usual two-three hours.

“Every time we add non-car capacity in an existing corridor, we increase choice and save money.” That was why bike, pedestrian and rail were so important: to provide a multi-modal transportation system that relieved pressure on the roads.

On other topics, Gov Roberts warned about attempting to deal with tax issues with a focus on business. Measure 5, she noted, brought great property tax relief to business and very little to homeowners. Rosenbaum, agreeing with the person who had asked the question, said that corporations were able to avoid most of their income taxes, but said the Legislature was unlikely to repeal the increase in the February “special” session because of the economy’s problems: “but in 2011, we need to discuss more of our tax system, including the kicker.”

Asked twice if they would support a change from an appointed to an elected body, none of the speakers would answer. Peterson did respond to my charge that TriMet had demonstrated poor business sense over the years (cutting service and raising fares in a manner that would have driven any business into bankruptcy) by pointing to a late-80s program by TriMet to implement cost-savings ideas from employees that allowed TriMet to avoid services cuts in the economic downturn of the early 90s. Cuts made since were, she asserted, inevitable but had been avoided for years. (I stand by my assertion: TriMet has lousy business practices and is rescued by having access to vast tax resources.)

The most thoughtful and interesting contribution from the audience was near the end when a young man suggested that what was needed was to manage people’s expectations. He noted that when driving through one area of his own commute, he expected to slow down: there were signs and other cues and enforcements that made slowing down not an irritation but what he expected — and, therefore, accepted.

Collette agreed with his surmission, noting that drivers on 99E knew that, because of photoradar and the county’s zero tolerance for speeding, that they had to slow down. Enforcement of the behavior that was trying to be adopted — the expectation of what was acceptable and the consequences for acting otherwise — was critical. Rather than simply presenting a plan for a new bridge, light rail and other changes, if government were to work with communities to guide what people expected, be it more bikes or staying off side-streets or whatever changes were desired, then buy-in, and a positive cooperation were more likely.