Portland’s Champagne Tastes Slam Into Our Beer Sized Wallets

November 10, 2010

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And it’s only getting worse. Future Library taxing zones,  Historical Society bail outs, Fire Engine Funds, leaf taxes, the last legislature’s $1.6 billion in tax increases along with piling $1.2 billion in more bond debt on top of a $3.3 billion (if not larger) budget hole. California here we come! 
Who’s going to pay for all that? You are. Sucker.
And what ho! now the Portland Public Schools have their collective hand out for more than a half a billion in bonds (the first of several “sustainable” ones we’re warned) to REBUILD 8 schools. Property owners will, as usual, bear the brunt of it.  School officials are octupling (?)-down on 19th century education styles consisting of bricks and mortar buildings equipped with smart boards and theater upgrades, while the rest of the world ops for virtual schooling. But I digress because the real purpose of this post is the show you what will be happening to the property owners who will get the $300/year bill.    
See that graph over there? Yeah, that one. That’s the graph pointing to 12 metropolitan areas  whose housing values have been tanking and will continue to tank well into the foreseeable future. 
Holy Michael Mann, batman, now THAT’S a GENUINE hockey stick!
And whaddaya know? 
Portland’s on the list! 
How do you ask people whose main asset is their home to shoulder even more debt from the moronic choices of our “leaders?” When these electeds should have been saving they were spending. If you could spend your way out of this depression like malaise from which we’re suffering we’d been well shod of it by now. We ain’t. And THIS report says it will get even worse. Here’s an excerpt:

While not unexpected, the unceasing declines in home values signal that we’re in for a long, bleak winter of continued troubles for the housing market. The length and depth of the current housing recession is rivaling the Great Depression’s real estate downturn, and, with encouraging signs fading, will easily eclipse it in the coming months.”

The President and his advisers like to talk about the ‘new normal.’ The new normal exists for everyone but the government/planning class. Here’s another example.Yesterday I spent four hours of my four hour program highlighting the amount of money schools (and fire and police for that matter) are deprived of because of Portland’s obsession with planning and “paying” for it with “Tax Increment Financing” under Urban Renewal. The long and short of it is this: The government declares a place “blighted” (even if it’s not such as south water front, the airport, GOVERNMENT CAMP) and declares it an urban renewal area and begins skimming off the top any “more” property taxes that may come in because the area is nicer. Sometimes it’s nice if the government steps in and starts the ball rolling but they’ve abused the process routinely. Under normal circumstances, that money should go to public safety (cops and fire) and schools. But the money is stolen and given to the planning class to design their utopias complete with silver unicorns and pink ponies. 

The city’s planning and over use of urban renewal starve the very things government is supposed to be used for. 
In the next five years, schools will be deprived of the use of an estimated $163,000,000 according to figures given PPS by the Portland Development Commission. Untold hundreds of millions of dollars have already gone into bike paths, projects and street cars that SHOULD have gone to the core functions of government. When they run out of money because they spent it on their favorite projects—not the core functions of government— they come to you for more. It’s like your layabout brother who lives in the basement chain smoking pot and playing video games all day who only emerges when he wants you to give him a little scratch for a carton of milk.
It’s not just unfair,  it’s unethical bordering on criminal.
We need to stop it.
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com