Murmurs: News That Doesn't Know When To Quit.

1. Tigard police have long ex-pended unusual efforts on prostitution stings (“To Catch a Stoner,” WW, Aug. 5, 2009). Their penchant for busting johns has netted one of Oregon’s top Republican political contributors. James Bisenius, founder of Portland-based Common Sense Investment Management, which has managed as much as $4 billion, was arrested Aug. 30. He has given millions to Christian charities and $116,000 to GOP candidates in Oregon races since 2010. Common Sense president Dean Derrah issued a statement to Bloomberg supporting Bisenius: “He will deal with this recent event as the personal matter that it is.”

1. Portland officials are in talks to reopen in November a women’s winter warming shelter in Old Town—one floor below housing for predatory sex offenders. Portland’s Housing Bureau funded the warming shelter in the Medford Building at 506 NW 5th Ave. last year, and one client says men would try to talk to the homeless women while they were waiting to get inside. “To know they’re present in the building, even though they are in a separate part of the building, should make any homeless woman feel uncomfortable,” says the client, who asked not to be named because she expects to return to the shelter this fall. Six predatory sex offenders list the Medford Building as their current address. The Housing Bureau says it believes in the building’s safety.

1. Prospects for the long-discussed James Beard Market—Portland’s version of Seattle’s Pike Place Market—are improving. Salem lawmakers appropriated $250,000 for the market in July. Now Ron Paul, the impresario behind the market, has hired former Portland Art Museum development director Lucy Buchanan to raise more money for the project. Buchanan earned a rep as a phenomenal fundraiser when her late husband, John, directed the Art Museum from 1994 through 2005. Another member of Team Beard: ad whiz Jelly Helm, who designed the Portland Timbers’ branding.

1. A major theme in the 2012 mayoral race was how City Hall ignores the city’s outer east side, depriving it of resources. But WW’s news partner KATU reported Sept. 9 that the city’s new Emergency Coordination Center at 3732 SE 99th Ave. will include a $220,333 pulsing blue egg called the Heart Beacon, sculpted by Blessing Hancock and Joe O’Connell. The funding comes from the city’s “Percent for Art” ordinance—which reserves 2 percent of all budgets for capital building projects to buy and install public art. It’s a stainless steel and acrylic sculpture the artists describe as an “interactive enclosure of light, color and sound.” Resources delivered, problem solved.

WWeek 2015