Political blogger TA Barnhart from the Oregon News Incubator sits down to discuss his views and picks for this month's races in City Council, County Commission, Metro President and Governor.

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Last Tuesday evening, The Urban League of Portland held two separate candidate forums, one for City candidates and one for County. Entitled “Accountability and Equity,” the questions asked tried to draw out substantive answers aimed at the concerns of activists and leaders in communities served by the Urban League. It was a nice thought, but electoral politics frequently leads to disappointment.

Because of the large number of candidates in both forums — eight in each — I won’t cover the Q&A in detail. Here are some high points and points of interest. No one forum can determine who is the best fit for an office, but, near the end of the campaign, the Urban League event was informative — if not as substantial as organizers might have hoped.

Standouts: Maria Rubio, Jeff Cogen

Maria Rubio, seeking the Multnomah County seat previously held by Jeff Cogen, came across as the most energetic, informed and thoughtful of the candidates of the evening. She is also the candidate who has grown most during the campaign: Her answers are more direct and informed than when I first interviewed her two months ago. She spoke of the fear that occurs when communities change, as is happening in East County, with its in-migration of impoverished people of color. The County, she said, needs to take the lead in establishing a dialog that would remove the barriers between neighbors. When County government works with members of the community, it needs to be on an on-going basis, not through ad hoc committees, stated Rubio. She wants the community involved in making the decisions about the difficult budget cuts ahead — not just advising on these.

“They have the knowledge and experience,” she said, “to make difficult decisions.”

After a visit to the Kenton library, Joey Louis and Rachel Toback gather their things above a ditch filled with sodden dirt and grass. Up the street, at the corner of N Willis St. and N Denver Ave., a similar pit brims with a stagnant pool of rainwater. Toback and Louis — who recently moved to Kenton — notice the water every time it rains.

“At first it looked a little unfinished to me,” Toback says. “Now that I see that these plants are coming up it makes more sense. I like the idea.”

The vegetation Toback likes are rushes and sedges recently planted in a series of bioswales as part of Denver Ave.'s new streetscape. Bioswales are specially designed ditches that help divert runoff from surface streets and storm drains. Their soil slowly collects water and filters out contaminants that might otherwise be washed off impermeable asphalt roads and concrete sidewalks into drains and waterways. The plants help absorb the water, and the extra time during which the bioswales store the water allows debris within it to break down.

“Roosevelt High will survive the cuts”

Sources inside Portland Public Schools say they believe Roosevelt High School will survive the chopping block tonight when School Superintendent Carole Smith presents a plan consolidate and redesign North Portland’s troubled high schools.

For the last two years, North Portland alumni, families and businesses have rallied around the flagging school that sits in both the literal and metaphorical heart of the St. Johns neighborhood.

Over the last three years, a new alumni association has formed, theater program has returned to the school, private investment has brought the school within striking distance of new track and field facilities, and big names in local sports have come to the aid of its football team. 

Sentinel's fancy new website welcomes you (REFRESH YOUR BROWSER AH-LOT!)

What's been going on since the March Street Edition said, "I'm hitting the road!"

The quest for sustainable service model

Welcome to the Sentinel’s new website.
Over the last 6 months we’ve been working hard on launching this new design and platform. All those involved are delighted with how well it’s turned out. Forage around. I hope you find it easier to use and more pleasing to the eye than ever. News and information should flow better, and as always you can post your own news and events by hitting the big blue speech bubble. The user login, though, is now discretely tucked up in the upper right hand corner of the site. Community users, should know that their post will still publish instantly. But it might take a few hours or a day for editors to review the content before a posting them the home page. Go to the RECENT POST page (button on the main navigation bar) for an unfiltered view of all public access and news service postings. Last but not least, if you have problems with site features, remember to refresh your web browser. Refreshing your browser will help your computer to 'learn' how to see the new website design and functions.  It sounds strange, but...yes..it's technical, trust me.

Three years after Northeast Portland residents teamed up for an Earth-Day litter bust on Martin Luther King Boulevard, it seems like something's going right.

Simply put: there's way, way less trash on the streets lately.

"We've gone from 300 volunteers four years ago to 85 this year because we don't have enough work to engage them all," said Gary Marschke of the North Northeast Business Associaton. "That's a great situation to be in."

I am excited that the Oregon News Incubator and the Sentinel are continuing on with their office and content collaboration.

Through this arrangement, experienced writers and media producers can get 24-hour access to the Sentinel’s newsroom, either through direct rent payment — starting at $40 a month — or through taking assignments for the Sentinel’s online news service. The office share provides writers and media producers the resources of a newsroom with the camaraderie, casual peer review and free flow exchange of ideas that can only occur in a real space. For the Sentinel this is an opportunity to continue to deliver news service to one of Portland’s most under-served communities. While this publication continues to look for sustainable models, this partnership is vitally important to the publication’s mission to deliver quality news to a part of town that usually gets ignored.

Communities have a week left to weigh in on plans for “EcoDistricts” throughout Portland, and Northeast Portland's Lloyd District could become the first of five test neighborhoods for the project.

The EcoDistricts Initiative was developed by the Portland Sustainability Institute in partnership with the City of Portland. The PSI is a non-profit think tank that was created by Portland Mayor Sam Adams to help establish Portland as a center for ecologically focused practices, industries and commercial design

The EcoDistrict project aims to corral disparate stakeholders in specific neighborhoods and combine efforts to decrease negative environmental impacts from redevelopment. Goals such as energy savings, water conservation, mobility and access would be integrated into plans developed within specific neighborhoods.

“The Oregon Department of Revenue used to be heartless, irrational and even sadistic,” says Michael Redden, a Northeast Portland tax attorney with 30 years experience in local and federal tax law.

The ODR proved so difficult, in fact, that Redden will no longer take on clients with state income tax problems. Part of the reason is that he and others claim the IRS is easier to deal with than the state of Oregon.

As April 15 rolls around again, Oregonians who can't pay their taxes are facing an agency that's more feared than the IRS. Unlike it's federal counterpart, Oregon uses private collection agencies, does not forgive debt and can send a distraint warrant (see sidebar story Distraining to Pay your Taxes) and a sheriff to your house when you owe big bucks.

Using old timetables provided by TriMet, we calculated her trip in early September 2009, when TriMet service levels were at their peak. Then we ran the same trip one year later, using TriMet's projected service levels for September 2010, after two seemingly small cuts to each route. 

In 2009, her trip took 36 minutes, only a bit slower than driving and parking. This fall, it'll take a full hour. 

Here's what her trip looked like in 2009: 

TriMet is preparing bus service cuts this September that will affect North/Northeast Portland residents, and some of the poorest residents citywide. 

According to TriMet's latest proposal, the transit agency will reduce service this September on the 4, 6, 8, 9, 16, 17, 24, 44, 73, 75 and 85 bus lines -- every line serving North and inner Northeast except the No. 72 Killingsworth/82nd. (The 35 Macadam/Greeley is due for a cut in June.) 

The changes will vary from two to 10-minute cuts during the day to six-minute cuts on weekends. Arrival intervals for the No. 24 Fremont bus will increase the most dramatically, by 10 minutes or more. 

Portland's other quadrants will be equally affected. 

It'll be the third service cut in a year for the local transit agency, which is funded mostly by payroll taxes. Only 20 percent of its operating budget comes from fares. 

This is the third installment in T.A. Barnhart's series of Multnomah County Commissioner candidate profiles. Check out the other candidate profiles here and here.

Tom Markgraf’s roots in Northeast Portland go back to the 1920s; his parents were born and raised in the neighborhood, as was he.  After college and graduate school, he returned to Portland where he  worked his entire career.

Markgraf’s professional career includes Central City Concern, where as a project manager he was part of the team that built the downtown homeless shelter.  Most of his career, he has worked as a consultant on transportation issues, with a period of time serving as a senior policy advisor for Rep. Earl Bluemenauer.  Since leaving that position in 2005, he has continued to work on different projects, including both Portland and Lake Oswego streetcar projects.

His interest in mental health issues included serving on the board of Mental Health Services West, at the time the largest mental health organization in Oregon; while there, the board put together a children’s program and Project Respond, a rapid response team for dealing with mentally ill.  He also served as Chair of the Piedmont Neighborhood Assn in the 1990s, a time when street violence and drug problems were causing great difficulties.  He led the seven-year fight to save the Rosemont project for low-income senior housing and affordable homes; he also participated in the work to save the Kennedy School.

“Experience counts,” says Markgraf, “and I have a lifetime of experience working in North/Northeast Portland.”

Now that a new library has opened in downtown Kenton, North Portland residents and community leaders see the page turning to a new chapter for it and surrounding neighborhoods.

“[The new branch] is a magnet for downtown Kenton,” says Mark Kirchmeier, owner of the Krakow Café on N. Interstate. “It enables people to walk and bike to the library. It's nurturing for our children's educational and social development, and it's an economic development tool.”

The closure of North and Southeast Precincts last summer was supposed to save the Portland Police Bureau nearly $3 million and make a significant dent in the Bureau’s spending.

Instead, PPB is the only city bureau in danger of spending its full budget this fiscal year, using $1.6 million more than was budgeted  to pay for overtime and hiring new staff without adequate funds to do so.

Sentinel contributor and Oregon News Incubator member T.A. Barnhart spoke this week with several of the candidates for Multnomah County Commissioner. Below are summaries of these conversations. More candidate interviews here.

Gary Hansen
Gary Hansen has a track record: Metro Councilor (1982-90), Multnomah County Commissioner (1990-1998) and State Representative (1999-2006) where he served on the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee.  He’s back for another crack at the Multnomah County Board: “The county is where my first love is.”

His major priority will be to improve the County’s mental health system. He wants the state to use Tobacco Settlement funds: the bonds, originally used for backfilling education budget gaps, are coming up for renewal.  Hansen wants these re-issued for counties to develop community mental health facilities.  “This is good timing,” he said, “because the new state [mental] hospital is coming online” and
community mental health centers are needed to keep that facility from being overwhelmed.

Hansen highlighted a number of past accomplishments: the closing of the St John’s landfill (while at Metro), getting the North Portland Health Clinic sited and funded, and transferring Expo, Oxbow and Glendoveer from the County to Metro: “They needed regional services which Metro was able to provide,” as well as helping Metro develop their greenspace program.  Hansen also referred with pride to his work with community members to save the Kennedy School.

A row over plans to integrate part of N. Concord Ave. into Portland's Bike Boulevard plan nearly shut down the Overlook Neighborhood Association's monthly meeting on March 13.

Tempers flared inside a packed meeting room at Kaiser Town Hall, as some neighborhood residents insisted they weren’t adequately informed about plans to convert a stretch of Concord between Humboldt and Blandena streets into a one-way road for automobiles.  According to the Portland Bureau of Transportation, conversion of the thoroughfare — which runs along the east side of Beach Elementary School — was set to begin during the schools’ March 21-28 spring break.  The design – part of a larger plan to place a bike boulevard along the length of Concord – was chosen to ensure the safety of kids being dropped off and picked up at the school. 

John Kitzhaber and Bill Bradbury, vying for the Democratic nomination for governor, met in another debate in Portland on Monday night.  Before a packed house of Multnomah County Democrats and moderated by KPOJ anchor Carl Wolfson, the former Governor and former Secretary of State covered a gamut of issues while avoiding any kind of gaffe.  Kitzhaber’s responses tended towards analytical, systems-oriented solutions (How do we fix these things?) while Bradbury focused on the emotional aspect of the issues almost as much as the policy (How do we feel about these things?).

Jobs, Economy & Taxes
Agreement: Reform the kicker to finance a Rainy Day Fund; do this in 2011.  The lack of credit for small businesses is one of the biggest economic challenges facing Oregon.
Differences: Bradbury advocates creation of a “Bank of Oregon” so the state can deposit its money in-state, not with multi-national banks.  Kitzhaber wants to end the state’s reliance on the income tax, even if that means looking at a sales tax again.

Health Care
Agreement: Single-payer, although Kitzhaber views discussions of it a “distraction” from real issue of health.  Mental health care cannot be left to jails; Oregon needs to provide real mental health care.
Differences: Kitzhaber, a former emergency room physician, noted interactions with medical profession has very little to do with health; life style choices, environment, genetics all play much greater role.  The need isn’t for health insurance reform — it’s for health reform.

As friends and neighbors gather this Friday evening in Alameda to break bread on Shabbat -- the Jewish Sabbath day that begins every Friday at sundown and lasts until Saturday evening -- they will also take on a powerful foe: hunger at home and abroad.

Global Hunger Shabbat, sponsored by American Jewish World Service, will be observed March 19 in Portland and in cities across the United States, Israel and Australia -- with communal dinners, discussions about the causes of hunger and plans to take action on solutions.

According to the Oregon Food Bank, an estimated 86,812 people in metro Portland are served by food boxes each month, with approximately 317,898 food boxes distributed annually -- marking a 14-percent increase just last year that OFB spokesperson Jean Kempe-Ware describes as “pretty scary.”

“What we’re seeing is the effects of the recession,” Kempe-Ware explains. “We saw numbers skyrocket in the last couple of years. We’re at unprecedented, historic levels of need.”

Blessed are you, God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the Earth.
The traditional Shabbat blessing over bread underscores what Noah Barish -- host to the Global Hunger Shabbat gathering in Alameda -- describes as an “appreciation for what we have.”

When a couple of guys on the street called Debby McKnight the "f-ing r-word" on Feb. 22, McKnight knew just how to fix her bruised self-confidence. She headed over to the PHAME Academy, located inside the Community of Christ Church at 4837 NE Couch St.

Back in 1993, she'd enrolled in classes at PHAME, and except for a few years when she was trying her hand at theater elsewhere, she's been there ever since. This year, despite the incident with the men on the street, McKnight has a new sense of self-confidence after landing one of the lead roles in PHAME's theatrical production of Once Upon a Mattress.

PHAME, which used to stand for Pacific Handicapped Aritsts, Musicians and Entertainers, works with adults who have developmental disabilities, with experts running classes in everything from visual arts to dance to what McKnight described as "Greek mythology." The students perform recitals each quarter and put on a full-scale musical once a year.

We the puppies of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Declaration of Indiepuppies. In other words, we want an off-leash area in Columbia Park!

So begins the petition that Portsmouth neighborhood resident Mitch Gould posted to The Sentinel and started circulating last week.

“It's kind of a no-brainer,” says Gould. “There's a lot of people who feel this way. A lot of other parks have dog parks. We should, too.”

Gould is flexible on square footage but proposes that the fir-treed portion of the park near Woolsey be designated as an off-leash dog area -- freeing owners of free ranging dogs from up to a $150 off-leash fine.