Skip to main content* After months of negotiations, the city has finally struck a deal that will keep the AAA Beavers and the Portland Timbers at PGE Park. Metropolitan Sports, owned by Peter Stott, Scott Thomason and Rite Aid CEO Bob Miller, three of the original limited partners in Portland Family Entertainment, has acquired PFE and renegotiated PFE's debt with pension fund TIAA-CREF down from about $24 million to about $11 million. Beavers general manager Mark Schuster will continue to run daily operations. The city will receive $982,000 in rent annually for PGE Park, a decrease of about $120,000. Metropolitan's partners have personally guaranteed repayment of the $864,000 PFE owed the city. Bottom line: Baseball and soccer teams are the big winners, and the city got a far better deal than did PFE's lender.
* The kids didn't bother getting a permit for their rally-turned-march last week, but as Student Activist Alliance member Erin Jones observed, they didn't need one, either. "The police don't really like beating up high-schoolers," laughed the Lincoln High senior. Still, the protesters didn't forget their manners. As the group marched up West Burnside Street, students passed out fliers thanking waylaid drivers and pedestrians for their patience, drawing honks of solidarity and looks of bemusement.
* Sarah Bott, the mayor's communication director, was downstairs getting a bagel at Tully's when the students stormed into City Hall, carrying a coffin aloft to symbolize the death of education. She said the demonstration wasn't on Vera Katz's schedule but wasn't exactly a shock: "Nothing at City Hall surprises us anymore." Katz came out of her office and deftly fielded questions for about 20 minutes.
* Think things aren't tense in Salem? Just get a load of this testy response from state Sen. Tony Corcoran, a Cottage Grove Democrat, to a very polite inquiry from a Portlander about why the Democrats opposed restoring funds cut from programs for some of the most needy:
"The real questions are:
1. what are you going to cut to restore these programs?
2. how are you going to pay for them next biennium if you commit money from the next biennium to pay for this biennium's services? I guess I'm okay with you not being my constituent, the training needs are too cumbersome."
* More hijinks at the local NAACP office: Portland Tribune columnist Promise King reports that a year after a major leadership battle nearly killed the venerable civil-rights outpost, the local chapter is still trying to pick a branch president. Robert Larry seems to have won the post, but former president Skip Osbourne is claiming the election was flawed.
* As predicted by WW's very own Nose ("The view from a not-so-golden Pond," Dec. 11, 2002), Ashley Pond's mother has officially pointed the finger of blame for her daughter's death at the Oregon Department of Human Services, who bungled a 2001 investigation of Ward Weaver. Lori Pond's attorneys put a letter in the mail last Wednesday, letting the state know she intends to file a wrongful-death suit seeking damages for her family's grief over Ashley's death and the physical and emotional pain her daughter suffered.
WWeek 2015