It's been a circus year at City Council. From the hearings on the
Sunnyside Church feeding program to the Portland Police Bureau's May Day report,
at times it seemed that all that was missing from the council chambers was a
cadre of clowns pouring from a Honda Civic.
But all that may seem tame after this week, when a simple ordinance to decriminalize
skateboarding, in-line skating and Razor scooters threatens to turn City Hall
into Circus Maximus.
"What I see here is a intergenerational dynamic," says Commis-sioner Dan Saltzman
, the swing vote on Charlie Hales' proposal to make nice with the skaters.
It's a bit more complex than that, but not much. The clash boils down to political
power. Hales realizes skating isn't for society's presumed castoffs anymore.
It's a mainstream activity--with all the T-shirts, sneakers and merchandising
that implies--and middle-class parents are sick of the city slapping their kids
with $297 tickets.
Down in sleepy Sellwood, for example, a quartet of 14-year-olds--Greg Fisk,
Brandan Baylor, Jev Asher and Joshua Springer--spend their afternoons doing
"aggressive" in-line skating, jumping on rails and benches and treating every
obstacle in their paths as a challenge.
One night two years ago, Fisk was skating on the sidewalk in front of his own
house in Sellwood when Officer Fred Wiechmann swung by in his police cruiser.
Wiechmann flipped on his light bar, toggled the siren and over the loud hailer
said, "You on the skates: Get over here." Fisk complied and had his butt royally
chewed out by the 6-foot-3-inch, 275-pound officer. Skating on sidewalks isn't
legal, even on seldom-used slivers of Sellwood concrete.
Then last summer, these ruffians were performing skate tricks on a Tri-Met
bench in front of a US Bank branch. Along came Wiechmann, who, according to
the kids, threatened them with tickets and an exclusion from Tri-Met. Feeling
targeted, their parents complained to Southeast Precinct.
Cmdr. Stan Grubbs says the officer did nothing wrong and accuses the parents
of overreacting. Grubbs' problem is that Joshua Springer's parents are County
Commissioner Diane Linn and former state Sen. Dick Springer. Linn will testify
with Joshua at the Dec. 20 evening council meeting.
For Hales, the script couldn't have been written any better. To be sure, the
43-year-old mass-transit booster believes in the religion of multi-modal transportation.
But that's almost beside the point. These parents have money, they vote, and,
come 2004, Hales will run for mayor. And ever since Mayor Vera Katz yanked the
Planning Bureau from him in 1999, she and Hales have been feuding.
If this fact isn't on Katz's frontal lobe, then it's surely in her 68-year-old
cerebellum. That's why, when Hales first introduced the ordinance Nov. 22, she
opposed it on public-safety grounds and followed her vote with a post-council
tirade. What lit her fuse was Hales' refusal to "process" the proposal through
her office, as her police liaison Elise Marshall puts it, and his promise to
pack council chambers Dec. 20 with enough testifying skaters to make it look
like the X Games has set up shop on Southwest 5th Avenue.
Hales seems to welcome the chaos and his role as ringmaster. "We have too much
process," he says. "Every so often a decision needs to break out."
But Katz has some potent allies of her own.
The Association for Portland Progress and its downtown business pals will couch
their argument in the rhetoric of public safety, but many suspect their real
motive is to keep skating youth, who might seem aggressive to the average shopper,
out of the downtown shopping district.
"We brag a lot about Portland as the best European city in America," says Hales.
"But one difference is the heart of the city where teens fit in--and not as
occasional shoppers or event attendees."
With Erik Sten solidly in Hales' camp and Jim Francesconi allied with Katz,
passage of the ordinance depends on Saltzman's vote.
While "sympathetic to decriminalizing skateboarding," Saltzman says he'd like
Hales to strike a better balance between skaters' rights and public safety,
especially downtown. "I'm going to listen to what gets said and see what further
amendments Charlie proposes and make my decision then," he says.
Veteran skaters, such as Howard Weiner, are hoping Saltzman goes their way.
Weiner, owner of Cal Skate in Old Town, has been skating since the 1950s and
says he's never seen so many people so worked up. "If you don't pass this,"
he says, "where does all the energy go that's been stirred up?"
The Sellwood Sidewalk Terrors: (from left) Jev Asher, Joshua Springer,
Greg Fisk and Brandan Baylor.
