Your weekly aerial photograph

1) HOPE springs eternal, as proven last week when the group Help Out Public Education convinced City Council to raise business license fees to fund Portland Public Schools (an idea first pushed by City Commissioner Dan Saltzman), thus avoiding a five-week cut in class time. The temporary four-year tax will raise $20 million, with $6 million going to Portland's other school districts.

2) Teachers in Beaverton will once again be permitted to display posters advertising a support group for gay teenagers, after acting superintendent James Carnes acknowledged that a ban on "non-classroom-related posters" may not have been fairly applied.

3) When the Grand Ronde Tribe offered to finance
a Major League Baseball stadium in Portland, it couldn't lose. If they got a Portland casino, they'd cash in; and if, as happened last week, Gov. Ted Kulongoski blocked the deal, they'd have a strong precedent for blocking the Warm Springs tribe from a competing off-reservation site in Cascade Locks.

LOSERS

1) Who needs the draconian U.S.A. Patriot Act when broadcasters practice censorship voluntarily? Following other stations around the country, KUPL Radio (98.7 FM) yanked the Dixie Chicks off the air after Chick Natalie Maines dissed President Bush during a U.K.
concert.

2) Port of Portland officials inked a deal with Mexicana last week. But like an earlier deal with German carrier Lufthansa, the subsidies that lured the airline will come from the empty coffers of struggling domestic airlines, which will now pay higher rents at PDX.

3) Three years ago, Crown Pacific stock traded at over $20 per share. But today the 4.5 million shares controlled by CEO Peter Stott are worth less than 20 cents per share. Last week, the New York Stock Exchange announced that it was delisting the company's shares.

WWeek 2015