Silver Lining in the clouds - Analysis of Central City Task Force docs
Forecast still calls for the apocalypse.
I think everyone expected Kotek’s Central City Task Force to be a farce. The notion of Portland’s bureaucrats proposing a committee to solve obvious problems is a meme at this point. When Kotek’s team announced it would be 40 people and a bunch of subcommittees we entered into full on Clown World.
In this article we’ll look at the obvious simple fixes first, the bad ideas second, and the few good ideas last.
There’s been very little public dialog about the recommendations of the task force, and the media moved on from the story already. This is the largest assembly of politicos and business leaders given carte blanche options to set a new political course for the city in recent memory. In many ways it’s not all that different than the 1972 Downtown Plan, covering many of the same themes of public safety, business investment, new tax-break district, cleaning up the vagrants and graffiti.
Overall, I think this Task Force is only half way in the right direction, as it’s scope seems to be limited to the problems that developed in 2020, and seems to ignore the clear fact that our city has been going on a downward trajectory since 2014. There’s a lot of elements needed to save this sinking ship of a city, much less actually right the ship and get her sailing at speed. If a magic wand was waived and we implemented these changes we’re just right back the problems that faced our city in 2017.
As an example, consider that the Task Force addressed virtually nothing about the traffic and parking problems that have plagued this city. There’s some vague language eluding to “infrastructure” but this city needs to unfuck our dumb perspective on cars - particularly with road optimization and downtown parking. The city desperately wants people to go downtown, but to “recover” and hit 2019 levels of activity downtown it means parking garages are full at 10am. Until then we need to ease up on the aggressive parking enforcement. We ought to reduce downtown street parking fees and return to free parking on the weekend. These policies were enacted in the last 20 years on the premise of encouraging more commerce, and now they need to be repealed for the same reason. The document calls out that money was spent to improve city parking garage safety (which happened in August), and yet in that same time period we’ve had to close city-run parking garages due to lack of demand. Even after we spent a few million on parking garage safety there’s no improvement. Just ask Alasdair Fraser. Very clearly this document doesn’t take transportation infrastructure problems seriously, even though this was a top 5 problem in public surveys from 2016 and onward. The broken ideology of “just build another light rail line” is still so pervasive, even though it’s abundantly clear TriMet is mismanaged and lacks cohesive strategy. Even PBOT’s best shot at the “Transportation Wallet” app fell apart this year in spectacular fashion, but the whole program is such a disaster that PBOT was hiding the results from the public. Let’s just be real clear: these idiots don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to civic transportation - there is no competent adults in the room.
The obvious fixes that didn’t need a committee
Most of the Task Force recommendations were simple common sense stuff that any 40 random people picked from the phonebook could have come up with. This includes:
Declare a tri-government fentanyl emergency.
Ban the public use of controlled substances and reduce barriers to prosecuting drug delivery.
Adopt Seattle's LEAD treatment program
Focus peer delivered services and street outreach workers in the Central City.
Increase safe and accessible options for unsheltered people.
Further elevate law enforcement response in the Central City.
Clean up the city.
Bring down the 2020-era fences and plywood.
That last one about fences and plywood is just terrible timing. I guess the committee did not realize it’s an election year next year? Kotek, JVP, Wheeler aren’t even going to try and control the law and order situation when they believe smashy-smashy keeps Trump out of office. I’ll be shocked if there’s not a window smashing riot by July next year. There will probably be at least 10 next summer. What’s more important: hitting the public safety goals in this document or keeping Trump out of office? Genuine question, comment below.
The bullet about “elevate law enforcement response” is lacking the substance to understand why cops are burnt out, why they’re not doing their jobs, why it doesn’t matter if we arrest people. PPB is so broken that it’s pathetic people think it’s salvageable. I’m still a proponent of declaring a state of emergency, shutting down PPB (firing everyone), signing a contract with Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office to provide immediate services across the city, and issuing emergency funding to rehire 75% of the sworn officers as contractors at MCSO for 2 years. Then we start a brand new police agency, new values, new retirement plan, new comp structure, new management. I call this the “nuke it from orbit” strategy. PPB is a big part of the problem, this committee of experts should have recognized that. Even if you think PPB as an agency still has an ounce of integrity, we still need to nuke it because of labor problems. This would also serve as a shot across the bow to the criminals at BOEC and anyone committing timecard fraud at Fire & Rescue. These agencies are so tiny in the grand scheme and yet they’re a constant source of financial stress and emergency response incompetence.
A lot of really bad ideas got thrown around
For example, “Expand Central City’s homeless shelter capacity.” Yet we don’t have a shelter capacity problem. Did they not know this, did they not care to know this?
thirteen shelters in Multnomah County had occupancy rates below 75%. Walnut Park had an occupancy of 55%, which means on average 27 of 60 available beds were not used on any given night at the Northeast Portland shelter.
Kenton Women’s Village offers small sleeping pods — each is roughly the size of a household shed …. offers a kitchen and shower facilities, water delivery and garbage pick-up, access to legal and financial services, along with mental health and physical healthcare ….. Kenton Women’s Village had 4 of 16 units utilized, or 25% occupancy.
….
A KGW survey of 100 people living in tents in Portland found 89% would rather stay in a tent over a shelter.
Almost every aspect of recommendations within this to deal with homelessness and drug treatment abuse is flat nonsense. In big part because this Task Force is unable/unwilling to reconcile that the real problem people downtown are a criminal class of vagrants that have been arrested a dozen times before. That these individuals are being recycled in the catch-and-release of “being too crazy to stand trial” and the legal system has no place to put the crazy people.
If the city/county/state wasn’t lead by corrupt morons we’d have an earnest conversation about expanding the Oregon State Hospital to construct new regional facilities. Instead, as The Oregonian recently described “Oregon has long pursued a policy of “deinstitutionalizing” mental health care, moving patients out of large psychiatric hospitals and into treatment in their own communities. [Oregon] largely failed to provide those local treatment facilities. As a result, the Oregon State Hospital, the state’s largest psychiatric facility, is at capacity.” We should be working in parrallel to hit at least 5,000 beds across 2 dozen facilities for long- & short-term care of involuntarily confined drug addicts and mentally ill criminals - this would cover our needs now and for the next two decades. This ought to be the biggest investment of this century - but we’re going to pretend we need Albina Vision Trust more than we need psychopathic drug-induced serial rapists off the streets? Let’s remember that we have the highest rate of mental illness in the whole country. Yet the Oregon State Hospital system has the capacity to assist just 700 in Salem, and 175 in Junction City. Meanwhile, were imminently going to lose federal certification and $14 million in revenue from the feds. Across Oregon Health Authority they’re trying to increase crisis bed capacity from 2,101 units and to add another 1,120 - and it should be Oregon State Hospital filling the gaps. This scale of this crisis and the resolution seem to be lost on the political class, even though we can all visibly see (just on appearance alone) a significant portion of our political representatives are milquetoast ninnies dealing with crippling neurotic disorders.
Many of the Task Force’s recommendations got real stupid:
“Recommendation: Align the County-City vision on a homelessness response strategy and set a timetable for reductions in street and total homelessness.” The problem here is that JOHS is a broken, useless, corrupt organization. Shannon Singleton took a bribe last year to drop out of the County Chair race and take an interim director position at JOHS, then left her position the day after the election was over, to land private contracting with the government. JOHS is nothing more than a place to stick someone you’re trying to bribe. It’s not going to be reconciled, it’s not going to be fixed, there should NOT be a “joint vision” - instead there should be a Federal DOJ investigation into financial embezzlement and fraud at JOHS. This agency is the problem, not the solution - and it’s absolutely exclusively on the County to solve homeless issues. The idea that the City ought to be involved is a dumb relic of a bygone era that came out of Bud Clark’s administration. I’m holding my breath on an update to that 12 point plan.
“Recommendation: Accelerate the expansion of substance abuse treatment capacity.” The thing that the State of Oregon is completely unable to figure out with Measure 110, somehow Portland is going to accelerate? Oh, maybe the “fact-finding” vacation is what was needed to unclog the broken system? Maybe we should do a second fact-finding mission, but this time to Singapore. From a big picture level this is all the wrong strategy, the government can throw $250 million at snake oil salesmen promising addiction cures but the efficacy of these programs is NEVER going to materialize at scale. It’s a big ole grand illusion to think we can help, because in reality we don’t have clinical treatments. Consider this interview published last year in which this leading expert explains we don’t have any known clinical treatments for xylazine/tranq problems. They don’t have studies, no one knows what to do. What about meth? “The treatment of methamphetamine use disorder is challenging even in patients who have not presented with psychotic symptoms, as there are currently no US Food and Drug Administration approved medications...” The best treatment is involuntary long-term care where we can provide nonpharmacologic options like mindfulness-based treatments, and even then the effects are questionable compared to just locking people up like they do in China. Most of these folks will be on antipsychotics for the rest of their lives. We need to get out of this fucking fairy tale that recovery is already solved through clinical science and the only thing standing in the way is money and availability.
“Recommendation: Activate public spaces with compelling events throughout Central City.” What could go wrong with a committee of bureaucrats deciding on art performances? I’ve rented multiple public spaces for protests, concerts, and other gatherings. All that needs to happen is to deregulate the permitting process and reduce the cost of Parks spaces. What Parks charges is outrageous. Maybe transform that Art Tax grant funds into a requirement that the performance must be family friendly, in public, and free to attend? I’m just kidding of course, the Arts Tax just needs to die.
“Recommendation: Recruit businesses to office spaces, activate vacant storefronts, and lift up Central City’s small businesses. Prosper Portland should convene property owners, artists, and small, locally-owned businesses to scale up pop-up spaces for retailers and artists while working on longer-term space activations.” Prosper Portland are incapable of managing this. Again, this is solved through deregulation on businesses, not a bureaucrat giving a handout to a company that couldn’t survive on Etsy. Downtown will not be revived on the back of artisan vegan soap that runs $14 bar.
“Recommendation: Make downtown a worthy destination. Downtown Portland does not rank high as a regional tourist destination—because it’s built for office workers. But there is so much potential. A destination-worthy downtown would start with a better activated Tom McCall Waterfront Park that could feature a rethink of the "Concert Bowl," .... architectural gems that could house food and entertainment options.” For those who don't know, a group of dolts proposed about 10 years ago that we transform "the bowl" into an amphitheater that will somehow be a regional attraction, one to rival Red Rocks and The George. One of the most spectacularly stupid ideas ever proposed - an outdoor theater that’s used 3 months out of the year. Maybe we ought to stop tearing down our old charming buildings? Offer some assistance in seismic retrofitting?
They also have a lot to say on the downtown housing and office situation, none of which seems to be cohesive in the overall strategy. What is more important: full office spaces, or office spaces converted to residential?
“Recommendation: Build 20,000 housing units in the Central City by 2035.” Clearly the bureaucrats haven’t learned that their housing policies are making housing more expensive. Remember when we used to build big new apartment/condo complexes? That all died when the city implemented new affordable housing requirements that drove profitability into the trash. Affordable housing regulations is only the tip of the iceberg - we can have retired mentally ill neighborhood association NIMBYs shut down a $100 million dollar housing project because they don’t like the architecture. The real recommendation here ought to be “deregulate residential development to encourage private investment.”
“Recommendation: Aid a sustained, steady office recovery. .... innovation happens best in person.” A city famous for not innovating jack shit (but instead stealing other Austin’s motto and music festival and San Fran’s silicon valley’s concept) is not qualified to opine about these sorts of things. Very much missing from this is an understanding of why workers don’t want to go into the office. The Creative Class is dead, welcome to the world of the Laptop Class. We pick where we work from, and why in the fuck would I want to pay for $20 parking, $9 for coffee, and $28 for a sit down lunch? Besides, what’s more important: climate change-based carbon emission goals or downtown office real estate?
“Recommendation: Remove barriers to office-to-residential conversion to activate underutilized office buildings and grow Central City’s housing supply.” Doesn’t this seem to be in contradiction to the other goal of office space recovery?
“Recommendation: Support Albina Vision Trust, Broadway Corridor, OMSI District.” These are some of the dumbest and most corrupt proposals being tossed around the city. OMSI can’t keep a museum compelling, but we expect them to be landlords? Each of these projects will be a failure on the scale of the South Water Front all over again. And exactly how would these projects be financed without a billion dollars in subsidies and new taxes? We can’t fill out our existing downtown and these dipshits had the balls to propose 3 gargantuan expansions.
With all of these bad ideas, what is salvageable? What’s the silver lining?
One subcommittee, who somehow got listed last in the documents, was focused on Taxes.
I’ve said for a long time that we can’t take anything this city says seriously until there’s a significant and serious reevaluation of our taxation problem. It’s at the core of our cost of living problems, lack of business investment, and just infuriates residents. And even worse than all of that, is how blatantly corrupt some of these tax schemes are. It’s crazy how incompetently written and wholly reckless they are. How much public deception and fraud happens when these proposals are discussed with the public. The high taxes could be hypothetically justifiable if we have spectacular results, but -look around- we don’t.
There’s no public agency or public tax worth defending or supporting in the entire City or County and yet everyone agrees our taxes are some of the highest in the country.
Just to highlight a few of the enormous tax proposals that were based upon fraud:
The Arts Tax was cooked up by the Regional Arts & Cultural Council as a means to fund themselves. It was run through some voter focus groups and RACC discovered that they needed to give a portion of this funding to schools and cap the administrative cost in order to get voters to approve. The RACC decided to fraudulently deceive the public about what the administrative caps would need to be, and a couple years later, city council just bumped up the cap.
The Portland Public Schools board looked at a levy to retrofit schools, they did the math and knew if they took that number to a focus group it was too high and likely wouldn’t pass with voters. So they lowered the number, fraudulently, by $100 million dollars. Naturally they went way over budget.
A couple years ago the Water Bureau went to the City Council and proposed some costs for an extremely expensive water treatment plant. They knew their proposal was too expensive so they cut out aspects of the projects, like the water/sewer lines to the facility, and had to go back to city council to ask for more money. It was intentional to not be up front about the total pricing.
To the kleptocracy, these aren’t problems, they are a precedent. The great majority of proposals enacted in this city come with no real oversight and plenty of gotchas. Beyond taxation, I think few voters would have approved the Burnside Bridge retrofit project if we knew it came with a 5 year closure of the bridge. That wasn’t in the fine print that I ever saw, it was just completely omitted. Or that the police accountability reform package now needs 55 staff members and 33 voting members.
But hey, here’s some recommendations to put us at ease: buried within the appendix document of the tax committee is a whole bunch of sober proposals.
Recommendation 1: Establish a Tax Moratorium
In order for Portland’s Central City to reclaim economic competitiveness and community vitality, tax revenue must be effectively utilized before the public’s perceived value improves.
To manage the impacts to individuals, households, and businesses from the recently enacted and existing regional and local taxes and fees, the Taxes for Services Committee recommends a three-year (2024 – 2026) moratorium on jurisdictions in the Greater Portland region that impact Central City Portland. The tax moratorium would include issuing new tax measures and increases to existing taxes or fees that impact Central City.
Recommendation 2: Convene a Tax Advisory Group
…review and recommend reforms to local, county, and regional taxes, …. The Tax Advisory Group should study tax reform during the recommended three-year tax moratorium period (2024 – 2026).
If just those two things happened it would be a nice win. Even if you’re a “vote blue no matter who” tax & spend Democrat, I think we all recognize that voters and bureaucrats get a little too drunk on good ideas when voting on taxes.
Recommendation 4: Study Priority Concepts
The Committee discussed sixteen different local, county, regional, and state tax incentives, programs, and initiatives. … The Committee members completed surveys identifying which concepts should be explored further, which they felt unsure about, and which should not be explored.
16 different tax ideas were proposed. Many of these were business tax related, like eliminating PL 86-272 - I’m not even sure what this is or how it impacts Oregon businesses.
Among the 16 ideas filed under “CONCEPTS FOR FURTHER STUDY AND ANALYSIS":
Study how to improve the petition process and transparency for tax policy alterations. [A] review should include recommendation for thresholds of analysis such as peer region tax comparison review, intra-regional tax comparison, impacts to the jurisdictions' overall competitiveness, impacts to equity, and consequences of compounded tax implications when multiple jurisdictions are running concurrent petitions. Third party analysis should be undertaken and a required CPA or tax consultant will certify the review. The revenue bureau or tax collection agency must produce a formal memo that documents the administrative cost to collect and administer.
Study incentives based approaches to housing production. In the city of Portland, property taxes account for 61% of the general fund, while the national average is 23%. This contributes to cost-burdening among both owners and renters, effectively driving the cost of housing along with under-production of new units.
Study Preschool for All tax outcomes, collections, and proposed escalation. Preschool for All has resulted in over-collection above initial estimates and voter approved ballot language. In conjunction, there is underspending of available funds, beyond what voters were explicitly informed of. …. Establish a surplus refund program similar to the Oregon surplus refund ("kicker") provisions to refund any collections of Preschool for All taxes to taxpayers.
Study Metro Supportive Housing Services tax outcomes and collections. Metro Supportive Housing Services has resulted in over-collection above initial estimates and voter approved ballot language. In conjunction, there is underspending of available funds, beyond what voters were explicitly informed of. Metro Supportive Housing Services is presently predicted to bring an additional $1 billion more than projected.
Study Clean Energy Surcharge outcomes and collections. Businesses operating in Portland are subject to the City of Portland Business License Tax, the Multnomah County Business Income Tax, the Metro Supportive Housing Services Tax, and the Oregon Corporate Activities Tax. …. Remove the triple taxation of the Portland CES by removing local taxation on it; PCES payments should be excluded from State CAT Tax calculations.
Study how to adjust top income brackets commensurate with inflation. Top tax brackets are currently $125,000 (filing individually) and $250,000 (filing jointly). Top earners were established in 2013 and the range has not been adjusted for inflation so statewide forecasts will continue to generate more revenue than projected.
Evaluate how to improve income tax filing process. Portland income tax payers are the only tax payers in the nation to have to file four separate income tax filings: Federal, State, Metro, County. The city collects the Metro and Multnomah County Income Tax but requires two separate actions.
These are all super reasonable.
But on the flip slide, the jackals also slipped in “introduced but not fully discussed” topics like a statewide sales tax, a local sales tax, and kicker “reform”. They also shot down 3 ideas: reducing the heavy vehicle tax, using homeless money to pay for the cops, and a cap on maximum income tax.
Thank you to Charles Wilhoite for chairing this tax committee.
I’m not trying to be foolishly optimistic that any of this will be advanced into policy, but goddamn am I relieved just to read it in print.
Another really important silver lining: in this entire document there’s almost nothing about “white supremacy” “restorative justice” “systematic inequalities” “equity plans” “transgender rights” or other noxious woke bullshit. There’s a few pieces still, but it’s not COMPETELY dominating this document. When the majority is failing it’s the wrong time to focus on the minority. There’s also not any overt anti-capitalism, no blaming of Republicans, really nothing at all about white people.
It’s almost strikingly missing, as if there was an apostasy, or at least new rhetoric guidelines for 2024 from the DPO.
What’s critically missing from all of this is timing and a road map.
Hopefully in January there’s some political consensus on which of these “recommendations” are going to advance and then unilateral executive action to enact it.
They got a lot to do to achieve these goals in 2024. Right now I’d put 15% odds on the city hitting their 2024 success goals. It all could happen, Xi visiting Newsom proved that, “'Oh they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming to town.' That's true, because it's true.” Obviously we need to do a lot more than just clean up the homeless and do our best to restore law and order, but I really doubt we’ll even be able to do that.
Happy holidays!