Mayor Charlie Hales wasn't messing around when he said that Portland city streets are a âcrisis.â Now, theyâll be a bit dirtier as well.
KATU reports the city of Portland is cutting back the number of times it will clean Portland streets each year. Starting July 1, the city will reduce the number of cleanings of neighborhood and side streets—down to one or two times, compared to two to three times currently.
Most
of the money comes out of the Bureau of Transportation's budget, but the Bureau of
Environmental Services, which also pays for the cleaning, is cutting its spending
on the program by half. KATU reports BES had to cut its overall budget by 2.5 percent,
and that "street sweeping doesn't do enough for water quality, one of
the agency's main priorities."
Hales and
Commissioner Steve Novick are pushing a street fee that would raise as much as
$50 million a year from property owners and businesses to pay for road
maintenance. Hales and Novick say the city no longer has enough money to keep
up its maintenance backlog. Check out WW's latest analysis of their financial
claims.
WWeek 2015