News Among the small-ticket items in the Portland Water Bureau's budget that tick off grumpy ratepayers are the city's many decorative fountains, which the Water Bureau has maintained under a longstanding agreement with city parks officials.That cost to ratepayers is such a frequent source of grumbling, it rated a mention in Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade's recent report on how ratepayer dollars are spent ...   More

News Portland City Council is full this morning with students and education activists to hear Mayor Sam Adams' "State of Education" report.  Also on the council agenda is the city's tree code, a tax-credit program for businesses that create job-shadowing opportunities for teenagers, a scholarship program to send high-school graduates to community college, Commissioner Dan Saltzman's new technology ...   More

News In a 4-0 vote with Commissioner Nick Fish absent on vacation, City Council today approved the parking plan for the streets around Jeld-Wen Field formerly known as PGE Park.That plan, which Mayor Sam Adams introduced as an emergency ordinance, calls for expanding the hours for paid parking around the revamped stadium on Portland Timbers game nights and increasing the hourly rates from $1.60 to $3.50 ...   More

News Old Town's "Made in Oregon" sign, now the "Portland, Oregon" sign, will illuminate downtown once again starting this Friday after a two-year battle between the University of Oregon and the City of Portland for control of the sign. At Friday's ceremony to christen the new version of the old sign, city officials will also turn the white stag's nose red, temporarily turning the deer into "Rudolph" ...   More

News Portland City Council held its "good ol' fashioned town hall" meeting, as Mayor Sam Adams put it, last night to discuss the possibility of Portland renewing its membership with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. "Tonight is not about making decisions," Adams said. "Tonight is about making sure we're asking the right questions." The discussion whether to rejoin was prompted by the alleged ...   More

News The day after a bruising primary election looks and sounds like the debate at City Hall around 10:30 am today. That's when, during a discussion of water and sewer rates for fiscal year 2010, newly re-elected Commissioner Dan Saltzman came out swinging against an idea to use $10 million in water ratepayer money to pay for land in Northwest Portland. That industrial land would then be turned into ...   More

News Commissioner Dan Saltzman is proposing significant changes to Commissioner Randy Leonard's fire bond proposal. Leonard's proposal [PDF] would ask Portland voters in November to approve $72 million for fire and emergency response vehicles, a fire station and emergency response center, and a public safety emergency radio system. City Council is scheduled to discuss the possible fire bond Thursday ...   More

News Three months after Mayor Sam Adams called the proposal for a new westside staging area a top city priority, City Council appeared no closer today to agreeing where on Portland's west side to site that staging area to respond to possible natural disasters. Until that siting decision happens, City Council won't begin to discuss how to pay for the staging area. The funding had been included in ...   More

News City Council this morning voted unanimously 3-0 to approve the 19 members of Portland's new Police Review Board, one outcome of last winter's successful but arduous police-oversight reforms. Neither Mayor Sam Adams nor Commissioner Nick Fish attended today's meeting. Both are on vacation. But all three of the remaining commissioners waxed poetic about the significance of the change, none more ...   More

News Mayor Sam Adams and Commissioner Randy Leonard this morning introduced their deal to bring the Made in Oregon sign under public ownership, more than a year after Leonard put the brakes on a different deal that would have given the University of Oregon the rights to change the sign. Adams described today's deal, a complicated stew of trades among the sign's owner, the building's owner, the City ...   More