Ask any current or former insider at City Hall and they’ll tell you the ‘consent agenda’ is where many otherwise unpopular programs are “hidden” on an agenda, funded and passed without much scrutiny.
You can click on the photo there and look at what you can’t really see: The consent agenda. See that little sucker there? That’s an EXPENSIVE dash declaring nobody gets to talk about the city’s latest screw up. And THAT’S where the magic happens!
It’s just a line item without any programs attached. But now look what Willamette Week mentioned in a story about what’s on the consent agenda today:

City Council will vote on its regular consent agenda, and when it does it is expected to approve the addition of $8.6 million [PDF] to the $19.3 million price of the Portsmouth Force Main Segment 2 construction project. 

What is that you ask? That’s the little item where we find out that Sam Adams’ $2.5 mil/mile bike plan has just gone up. It turns out the $20 million ‘jacked from the water and sewer budget to spend on Sam’s bike paths (What recession?) that he claimed was readily available because of  “savings” from current big pipe programs just hit some rubble in the pothole.

The price of the project is expect to increase 45 percent because the contractor recently encountered cobbles and boulders at the site.

Ruh, roh. So certainly NO savings AND, as a lovely parting gift, the cost is going UP! But will he cease his plans for bike paths just because we have no money? What do you think?
WW reports (here) the mayor called to clarify yesterday afternoon and, by my lights, made the situation even worse.

The mayor says his plan for helping to fund the bike plan with sewer money will draw from possible contract savings in fiscal years 2010, 2011 and 2012. “I’m quite confident that based on their estimates there will be $15 million in contract savings over the next three years,” Adams says.

Give that man a crystal ball. Oh, and ask him if he can “save” hypothetical money in the hypothetical plans of the future, why he can’t do it in the real world right now. Worse, if he knows the contracts are for too much money from the outset then what kind of steward is he of our tax dollars? Don’t answer that. We already know Sam’s never really been too good with his own money here and here and we know darned well he’s never been good with our money.