News Portland City Council tomorrow morning will consider whether to change the zoning code to allow limited office space at PGE Park. The proposed change is part of an effort to bring a sports medicine clinic, sponsored by Providence Health & Services, to the stadium to support Merritt Paulson's new Major League Soccer team when it begins play in 2011. Here's the ordinance [PDF]. Updated on ...   More

News Mayor Sam Adams is weighing in on Portland Public Schools' high school redesign process. Judging from the emails I'm now getting from anxious parents about the upcoming changes, he may want to be careful what he Tweets. Here's the mayor's latest: David Wynde is a two-term school board member. Dick Spies is a former Lincoln High parent from Group Mackenzie Architects. Lincoln, Portland's ...   More

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News The City Council agenda for Jan. 6 now lists Mayor Sam Adams' resolution to allow Merritt Paulson's company to begin tearing out turf at PGE Park. The surprise resolution would allow Paulson to begin renovating the city-owned PGE Park for Major League Soccer — without a final financial agreement in place with the city. Or, as the resolution says: "to execute a Revocable Permit of Entry ...   More

News Just before City Council voted 3-2 today to let Merritt Paulson begin some construction work at PGE Park, city commissioners considered a separate ordinance related to the publicly owned stadium: the thrice-delayed zoning code change to allow limited office space at PGE Park. (They'll vote next week on that proposal.) Both agreements gave Commissioners Nick Fish and Amanda Fritz, who voted against ...   More

News Mayor Sam Adams met Sunday with a few Grant High School parents who are concerned about Portland Public Schools' high-school redesign. Technically speaking, the mayor has absolutely no control over Portland Public Schools. (Then again, neither does Bill Gates, and he's managed to exert plenty of influence at Jefferson, Roosevelt, Madison and Marshall High in recent years.) Two days after the ...   More

News The City of Portland won't give a new office-space lease to the campaign that wants to force a recall vote on Mayor Sam Adams. In a strange twist of geographic fate, the recall campaign had been using city-owned retail space on the corner of Southwest 10th Avenue and Morrison Street as the home base for the campaign since Feb. 1. That will end officially on March 10. Recall volunteer Teresa McGuire ...   More

News Last week, KATU had about as much luck as WW with its search for Mayor Sam Adams' "Mike" and "Jean," the Portlanders he talked about in his State of the City address on Feb. 5. Here's the station's story from Friday -- "Who are Mike and Jean? Mayor mum on further details" -- which includes footage of Adams walking away from KATU's Anita Kissée without so much as a single comment. Click ...   More

News The budget-strapped City of Portland has implemented a hiring freeze, effective March 8, and the only Portland employees excluded from the freeze are certain public safety officers. But that exemption could create a problem for the city's general fund because the freeze won't apply fully to the one bureau that has exceeded its personnel budget the most this year, the Portland Police Bureau. "[V]acancies ...   More

News The campaign to recall Mayor Sam Adams says it started using paid signature gatherers on Sunday, about one month before the final deadline to submit the necessary signatures to the Portland auditor's office. But the mostly volunteer-led campaign still faces several challenges. The campaign has until April 20 to collect 32,183 valid signatures. So far, volunteers have collected 10,000, the campaign ...   More