News The developer of a controversial 81-unit apartment building on Southeast Division Street is hiring 24-hour security after three trespassers started a small fire inside the building early this morning. The 37th Street Apartments has become a symbol for citywide ire toward large apartments without on-site parking—especially after the city halted construction and Mayor Charlie Hales ordered a new permit ...   More

News Mayor Charlie Hales is responding to pressure over a controversial 81-unit apartment complex on Southeast Division Street, forcing the developer to apply for a new permit next month.The apartment complex has drawn fire from neighbors since last summer because of its size and lack of on-site parking.Two days ago, the city announced it was reviewing a revised permit for the half-completed building without ...   More

News Seth Woolley, a Green Party activist and two-time candidate for Secretary of State, has filed suit (PDF) in Marion County Court against Secretary of State Kate Brown alleging that the elections division, which Brown controls, failed to properly investigate an earlier elections complaint Woolley filed against then-mayoral candidate Charlie Hales.Woolley had maintained that Hales was not a legally registered ...   More

News The Portland Bureau of Transportation has been chewing up directors lately.Tom Miller, a protege of former Mayor Sam Adams, was undone by reports about the city's backlog of unpaved roads and media donnybrooks over bicycle projects. Mayor Charlie Hales fired him and told interim Toby Widmer to find money for road paving—but when Widmer cut a sidewalk project on Southeast 136th Avenue, he was caught ...   More

News  Mayor Charlie Hales is reversing a controversial decision to cut a city grant to fund summer teen internships.Hales will restore a $194,000 grant for nonprofit Worksystems Inc. to fund 97 summer internships in city bureaus for low-income teenagers—a grant created by former Mayor Sam Adams. The mayor's office and Multnomah County have also recruited TriMet, the Oregon Department of Human Services ...   More

Murmurs Political pressure has been increasing on Mayor Charlie Hales to restore $1.2 million for sidewalk construction on Southeast 136th Avenue, after a 5-year-old girl, Morgan Maynard-Cook, was struck an   More

News Neighborhood activists will hold a memorial ceremony in on Sunday, March 3, for the giant sequoia that the city chopped down last week in Pier Park in St. Johns to make way for a pedestrian and bicycle bridge.The memorial is being organized by Chris Fountain, the woman arrested last week for crossing police lines to save the sequoia. She says the ceremony, which starts at 3 pm Sunday, is "kind of a ...   More

News  Mayor Charlie Hales says he supports the Bureau of Development Services' decision to issue a stop-work order on a controversial Southeast Division Street apartment complex after a state land-use board revoked the building permit on the project. "I think the stop-work order was appropriate," Hales told WW on Tuesday. "The right thing to do in this case—sort of the land-use version of the Hippocratic ...   More

News Jim Baker wants the City of Portland to repair the roads near his Hillsdale house. He just doesn’t like the one the city is choosing to fix. “I’m really happy to hear they’re patching    More

News A small but vehement protest over cutting down a sequoia tree to build a bicycle and pedestrian bridge has drawn a large contingent of City Hall to St. Johns' Pier Park this afternoon. Mayor Charlie Hales' office has been barraged with phone calls since television news stations broke the story that a handful of neighborhood activists are refusing to let the tree be cut down.More than a dozen city employees ...   More