infinitesunrise

Alt link https://srslywrong.com/podcast/ep-338-were-joining-the-war-on-cars/

This is not out in some rural town. This is in Portland, OR about 2 miles from downtown. Personal vehicles this large are simply incompatible with urban living and pressure their owners to continually break traffic law. Technically that Miata is parked as close to the stop sign as it can legally be, but as the Denali doesn't fit in many places around here it's owner is compelled to park across both the stop sign and the crosswalk.

Follow up: To whatever bootlicking idiot called PBOT and asked for enforcement on this block, it didn't help. It made things worse just like I cautioned such actions do in the discussion below. They didn't ticket the truck (Which was indeed parking in front of the stop sign this morning) but they did ticket just about every-other car parked on this street for non-street safety related things like parked wrong orientation, literal broken window, expired registration, etc. You probably cost my neighbors a few thousand dollars in combined citations for minor procedural issues, now everybody is miserable and the truck is still parked there. Please, never ever do that again. Your fantasy of calling law enforcement to fix all the problems is not what happens in real life. It doesn't matter who they are, NEVER CALL THE COPS ON YOUR NEIGHBORS.

Last Wednesday night, city council approved the preliminary $8.5 Billion city budget. Controversial from the start, this planned budget from mayor Keith Wilson proposed to slash funding arbitrarily across many city services, while continuing Ted Wheeler's tradition of uncritically lavishing the Portland Police Bureau with tens of millions in budget increases.

However, as this is the first ever Portland city budget that has had to pass the scrutiny of a city council representing and beholden to constituents by geography - If you live in city limits, three of these twelve elected officials now speak on behalf of you in city hall, a representation you did not have prior to last year - The very notion that it's the mayor's privilege to unilaterally present a pre-packaged budget for council to rubber stamp was criticized from the start, and this new city council had been hard at work since then modifying Wilson's proposal.

One cut Wilson made was removing $2 Million in funding for the Parks Department, which would undermine the agency's ability to dependably do things like pick up trash, maintain toilets, fix broken equipment, etc. Hours before council was due to approve the preliminary budget, council member Candace Avalos of District 1 brought a proposal to backfill the hole in Parks created by Wilson by reducing the increase in PPB funding by $2 Million. Not a cut to PPB, just less of a hike. In order to save Parks.

Things got heated. It quickly became apparent where the constituent allegiances of each council member laid. Dan Ryan of District 2 and Eric Zimmerman of District 4 in particular started freaking out. Loretta Smith of District 1 quoted Maya Angelou of all people to back up her support for the police. However all three reps from District 3 - Angelita Morillo, Steve Novick, and Tiffany Koyama Lane - Were unified in supporting the measure when weighing the dire straights for Parks vs the low stakes for PPB. Sameer Kanal of District 2 agreed. His fellow D2 rep Elana Pritle-Guiney feigned a lost spine, claimed that she didn't want to choose between cops and parks, yet voted for cops instead of abstaining. In the end, the measure passed 7 - 5 and Parks was saved. I've collated the votes below. If you're a critic of PPB and the overly privileged political immunity of police and police budgets in the USA, take a good look at here and remember which of your reps, if any, voted nay. Remember where they stand when asked to pit cops against community.

District 1
AYE - Candace Avalos (bill sponsor)
AYE - Jamie Dunphy
NAY - Loretta Smith

District 2
NAY - Dan Ryan
NAY - Elana Pritle-Guiney
AYE - Sameer Kanal

District 3
AYE - Angelita Morillo
AYE - Steve Novick
AYE - Tiffany Koyama Lane

District 4
NAY - Eric Zimmerman
AYE - Mitch Green
NAY - Olivia Clark

If you have 10 minutes to spare, I highly recommend watching the video of council's vote, link to youtube timestamp here

Willamette Week
OPB
Portland Mercury