Betraying our city’s legacy of public involvement, and our values in grass-roots democracy

An editorial

A Portland City Council meeting from September 2018.

Those of us who work professionally in public involvement (including this author) know that people can be a real pain in the rear.  They can be selfish, short-sighted, unreasonable, even hostile.  We can react to them in one of two ways.  We can stiff-arm them, marginalize them, attack them for their behavior, and replace them with more pliant tokens of representation.

Or we can treat them as fellow citizens.

For that is what they are – citizens, with democratic rights to participate in the shaping of their public realm, their neighborhood, and their city.

We can remind them civilly too of their responsibilities, to engage pro-actively and not just reactively, to consider other points of view, and to participate in a constructive conversation and a civic process.  We can also do our own level best to maintain such a process, and engage them in it. We might all then learn something from one another, and accomplish something together. That would be democracy at its best.

But democracy at its worst is still democracy – still “the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

Disturbingly, some people in Portland have made it pretty clear recently that they don’t have much stomach for democracy.  They’d rather impose their own ideas about social justice and how to achieve it, for example. Their methods include shouting down their opponents, bullying, threatening and suing.  They seem only too happy to become little dictators of their own opinions, and to hell with the rights of other citizens in this city – others who might happen to disagree with them.

Incredibly, some of these people are in government – and today they are engaged in the systematic dismantling of Portland’s vaunted public involvement system, based in neighborhood-scale, grass-roots democracy.

Take Jamey Duhamel, policy director for Commissioner Chloe Eudaly.  After recent citizen testimony by members of southwest neighborhood associations who were upset about the City’s unilateral change of their addresses, she expressed her true attitude to public involvement in text messages obtained by The Oregonian newspaper.

It is especially notable that Eudaly is the commissioner in charge of the City’s public involvement system, and her office has long denied that it is hostile to neighborhood associations.  But Duhamel’s emails reveal a different story.

“Why is this taking so long, ffs? Like WE GET IT ALREADY!! Who are they trying to convince?” she texted to Mustafa Washington, Mayor Ted Wheeler’s operations manager.

“How you like that ‘high income, high caliber’ bullshit. This is why we need our neighborhood associations in their place. They get too much power and voice….they are white and ‘high caliber’ soooooooo … any inconvenience is a big deal to their cozy lives. HOW DARE WE STRESS THEM OUT!!!… So. Much. Privilege.”

But is it privilege for citizens to complain to government about unilateral actions that affect those citizens’ lives?  Or is it the responsibility of government to listen to citizens, whatever their backgrounds or identities (certainly non-white but also white), and try to involve them respectfully in decision-making?  The City of Portland claims that is the case – but its actions here and elsewhere betray those claims.

It is a common narrative that neighborhood association members are white, wealthy, exclusionary, even oppressors of minority voices. It is a broad brush and often flat out untrue.  Worse, it is a pretense to deny an entire class of citizens their democratic rights – no less offensive than denials to other classes of citizens, in a democratic society in which all are supposed to be equal under the law. Injustice spread around is not justice.

Let’s be more specific. This narrative is also too often a mere cover story, providing the convenient pretext by which to bully citizens into submission in order to get pet projects through city approvals.  This is straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook, formerly as a developer, and now, as president: attack, insult, divide. Launch Twitter tirades. Harass, bully, and file lawsuits.

It is not a coincidence – though it is certainly an irony – that one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in the Northwest is allied with some of these same aggressors, these same promoters of pet projects. This Trump supporter is himself a major developer, so his own interests are obvious.  The interests of other allies who act like Trump, but fly the flag of social justice in order to promote a “build, baby build’ agenda, is more confused — to put it mildly.  What they have in common with Trump is an apparent disdain for democracy.  (Trumpism in a blue flavor, perhaps?)

What is going on? At best they are being manipulated, encouraged to be divisive, and playing into the hands of those who have the real power — those who are smiling all the way to the bank.  This is certainly not promoting constructive engagement and problem-solving, which is the public sector’s primary responsibility. Nor is it promoting real social justice — or real affordability, or real sustainability. It is simply allowing the city to be divided and conquered – and in some cases, doing it from City Hall.

The hostile reaction of neighborhood activists to such stiff-arming, tokenism and demonization is all too predictable. For those of us who work in public involvement, it’s a familiar reaction.

But in Portland’s case, we have fallen so far from what we were, and claim to be, as a healthy grass-roots democracy. The good news is that there are already signs of a new awareness — a new willingness to look hard at ourselves, to pick up the pieces of our legacy, and to revive and strengthen a moribund system. It’s high time.

Oregonian: “Eudaly, staffers bungled efforts to change Portland neighborhood association rules”

Eudaly policy director Jamey Duhamiel quoted as saying “we need our neighborhood associations in their place.. any inconvenience is a big deal to their cozy lives.”

Emails and texts obtained by The Oregonian newspaper show an extraordinary “bungled” attack on Portland’s neighborhood associations by self-confessed anti-neighborhood activists — including some of the very officials charged with managing the City’s storied neighborhood involvement system.

While Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and Civic Life bureau Director Suk Rhee deny the current code change effort has been intended as an attack on the system and is only an effort to broaden inclusion, the emails and texts tell a different story.

From the article:

Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly has acknowledged a bureau under her control badly mishandled efforts to change the rules regarding neighborhood associations by failing to consult and involve the groups, newly released emails and text messages show.

The files reveal that the bungled undertaking led to intense pushback from neighborhood leaders and a lack of support by the City Council. That in turn has led Eudaly to delay the change and launch a damage-control campaign.

…the plan has backfired spectacularly, the emails and texts help to show. The communications were released to The Oregonian/OregonLive in response to a public records request.

…Text messages released by Eudaly’s office also show [Jamey] Duhamel, the commissioner’s policy director, expressing open disdain for neighborhood associations.

Duhamel sent those texts to Mustafa Washington, Mayor Ted Wheeler’s operations manager, during a May 2018 City Council meeting at which many addresses in Southwest Portland were changed to new South Portland ones to make the city 911 system more effective.

Though the change was thought to be non-controversial, about a dozen people gave testimony on it at the meeting, which frustrated Duhamel.

…“Why is this taking so long, ffs? Like WE GET IT ALREADY!! Who are they trying to convince?” she said in a message to Washington, using an acronym that includes profanity.

…“How you like that ‘high income, high caliber’ bull—,” Duhamel texted to Washington. “This is why we need our neighborhood associations in their place. They get too much power and voice.”

Washington responded, “I never thought this would be this big of a deal.”

Duhamel: “Well they are white and ‘high caliber’ soooooooo … any inconvenience is a big deal to their cozy lives. HOW DARE WE STRESS THEM OUT!!!”

Washington: “LOL, there are definitely more important issues than this.”

Duhamel: “So. Much. Privilege.”

In an interview, Duhamel said she regretted her words…

Read the entire article here.

West Burnside Car Sewer – Continued

When will PBOT become embarrassed enough at this national disgrace of regressive transportation to take action?

The West Burnside “car sewer,” alive and well in August 2019. Note the extra width of traffic lanes and the tight clearance for pedestrians.

The situation at West Burnside continues to be a model of what NOT to do in transportation planning.  In spite of progressive projects to add pedestrian improvements and bike lanes on SW/NW 18th and 19th, the main passageway of West Burnside continues to be a national embarrassment. Visitors to our urban models of Washington Park, the Japanese Garden, and NW 23rd retail district, might expect to see additional examples of innovative national leadership. Instead they are greeted with a dismal textbook example of regressive transportation policy.   Perhaps they will see it as one more sad piece of evidence that Portland has lost its way.

This ugly, dangerous stretch of street has passages that do not even meet the requirements for disabled access under the Americans for Disabilities Act (ADA). Nor is traffic flow even any kind of model of “level of service” — since buses regularly impede traffic in the outer lanes, and turning cars regularly impede traffic in the inner two lanes.  The street is thus a textbook case of what not to do.

We have written before about alternative approaches, including three-lane options and other solutions.  In any case, action is needed, as time is passing without any movement forward.

How did West Burnside become such a dreadful negative example of multi-modal transportation?

Incredibly, the sidewalks of West Burnside were not always as narrow as they are now.  They were actually narrowed by PBOT in the late 1960s and early 1970s – an era of regressive car-dominated planning.  Here is an oral history by Ogden Beeman, former president of the Northwest District Association and the City Club of Portland, and a pioneer of the neighborhood association system:

Then there was the narrowing-the-sidewalks project. When they widened Burnside, they narrowed the sidewalks, and then when they put this little overpass over I-405 on Everett, they did one full sidewalk and one half sidewalk. So I went to City Council and objected to narrowing the sidewalks…

We made an impassioned plea. I think we lost five-zip in City Council. The classical thing that I always remember about that was Don Bergstrom’s comments. He was City traffic engineer. I walked down to work every day since I worked downtown for the government. I walked down Everett and Burnside both. I knew those streets very, very well.

So I got up and said, “We have a great place here where people can live and walk downtown, and we can’t make it more difficult.”

In Portland, of course, you narrow a sidewalk and the cars come by and splash water on you. Burnside became almost impossible as a walking street, and then everybody shifted to Everett, on which they were narrowing the sidewalks.

I finished my impassioned plea, and Don Bergstrom got up and said, “Well, the Council should know that we did a study up there, and we found that the sidewalks were occupied about 12, 14 percent of the time. The street lanes were occupied about 85 percent, and therefore it makes sense to narrow one and widen the street.” The sidewalks are “underutilized” by 80 percent.

Those were kind of Don Quixote days. I was a lone voice. I don’t think anybody from the neighborhood, or certainly nobody in government even gave us the slightest encouragement at that time.

Have we made enough progress since those dark reactionary days? Are we slipping back into a reactionary approach to city-building, suppressing grass-roots activism — at best, losing our vision and our courage?

Read the full interview here.

 

Oregonian Editorial Board slams OCCL code re-write effort

A flyer for the Goose Hollow neighborhood’s annual street festival, celebrating the neighborhood’s history, diversity and livability.

“You cannot create an inclusive neighborhood spirit if there’s no neighborhood spirit in the first place.”

 

The Oregonian newspaper has published a new editorial taking Portland’s Office of Community and Civic Life to task for its handing of the current City code revision proposal governing the neighborhood association system.  From the editorial:

As The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Gordon Friedman reported, the civic life office is proposing changes to the section of city code that defines what the office does. But in rewriting the code, Eudaly and Rhee want to strip nearly all mention of the office’s existing partnership with Portland’s 95 neighborhood associations, which are the city’s designated organizations for overseeing issues and activities within specific geographic boundaries. The proposal would similarly take out most mentions of district coalitions and business district associations.

…neighborhood associations, as flawed as some might be in representing all voices, provide the services, events and opportunities that connect residents in their communities with one another. These are the groups that organize disaster-response teams, work with city staffers to set up movies in the neighborhood park, advocate for stop signs at dangerous intersections, bring in guest speakers to talk about public transit, set up block watches and work for safe routes for students to get to school. You cannot create an inclusive neighborhood spirit if there’s no neighborhood spirit in the first place.

The proposal only inflames fears and intensifies suspicion among neighborhoods already uncertain about how new density laws will change their communities. The city does not need to give skeptics more reasons to mistrust government or more motivation to put up a fight.

…there’s no reason that the civic life office can’t add more community groups to the list of recognized entities while demanding higher standards from neighborhood associations as well. Some associations have already changed the way they reach out to their community, from where they hold meetings to conducting them in multiple languages. Others are eager for help in attracting more residents and revitalizing their membership – practices that the civic life office should be sharing with neighborhood groups.

…it’s so critical for Portlanders to find the common ground on which to build real solutions and protect it from unnecessary hits like the proposed code change. There’s plenty of time to rework it before going to Council. Eudaly and Rhee should reach out to the longtime volunteers who have powered neighborhood associations for so long to help make that happen.

Read the full editorial here.