Andrew Hall Photography
While Oregon Democrat legislators are busy trying to get $2751.90 in TAX INCREASES from each and every taxpayer OVER what they already nick you for, let’s go to the latest Portland Follies which Phil Stanford has ably pointed out here.

Here’s the breakdown:
*downtown Portland is torn up from Waterfront to 6th Avenue all the way to the south waterfront CONDO project
*cost overrrrrrrrrrruns of said SOWHAT CONDO project are mounting (see below for more about this)
Here’s the Trib’s Stanford: the taxpayers are on the hook for at least another $100 million in “portal” expenses for South Waterfront. That includes $40 million to $60 million for an intersection at Bancroft and Macadam — the South Portal — which in 1999, when the project was being sold to the public, was estimated to cost $436,000.
*And then there’s the pedestrian-bike bridge, originally billed at $1.6 million. The current estimate is at $11 million and rising.
*$40 million for that promised greenway along the river.
*North Portal. No idea how much that will be. “The streets leading into South Waterfront from that direction already are jammed. Apparently, no one even bothered to budget for that.”
*And as you may know, Sam Adams says he was shocked! SHOCKED! that jobs promised by OHSU (and predicted by people (here) who and (here) make their living from biotech, such as venture capitalist Ralph Shaw and others), were NEVER GOING TO COME TO PASS and now SoWhat has turned into an expensive, publicly financed, CONDO PROJECT. Plus, in the NOW IT CAN BE TOLD department, Adams also acknowledged what has come to be obvious on Kremer and Abrams on Sunday that people who move to SoWhat will not be able to use their cars because there will be no easy way in or out. They’ll have to use street cars and the tram to do their, er, shopping and…stuff.
*$80 mil on a convention center hotel because the inadvisable convention center expansion hasn’t produced the conventions they thought they’d get.
*All this in addition to the half BILLION $$$$$ in subsidies that the taxpayers are on the hook for now (corruption? what corruption?) of course we find out the experts were

Then head to the Portland Tribune’s OTHER story (here) about some niggling maintenance issues that the City That Works is a bit slow on. In other words, the City is down for the big picture stuff, but maintenance? …not so much…

The Mayor’s budget can be found here. I like that he’s amping up money for police and fire, but I’m wondering why only “black parents” need money to help bring up their children, paying poor people to either, a) stay here, or, b) come here, Children’s Bill of Rights (watch out parents), day care for homeless people, mental health staff for cops to hand off mental cases to (but it still doesn’t address how cops are supposed to differentiate between mentally ill and high as a kite perps), a program to reduce our petrol chemical use in Portland by 50% in 25 years (move now), I’m not sure if Randy Leonard will get his city paid Doula program.