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 Mayor Sam Adams appears to be on the verge of making a deft political move as he prepares to unveil Portland's proposed 2010-2011 budget, which promises heavy cuts across the city's bureaus. The move, if he makes it, will allow him to say he's making financial sacrifices in his own office because he's proposing eliminating some of his own staffers. Adams' spokesman, Roy Kaufmann, and his chief ...   More

News Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith announced tonight that district administrators, with the support of the School Board, would suspend all decisions about the high-school redesign until at least September. That means there will be no votes on any aspect of the redesign, which has been in the works for 30 months, until the start of the next school year. The School Board had been ...   More

News Portland City Council cancelled its regular morning session today due to the lack of a quorum. Commissioners Randy Leonard and Amanda Fritz, plus Mayor Sam Adams are out today. On the other side of the river, the Portland School Board has called for an executive session tonight [PDF] to discuss labor negotiations and the 2010-11 budget. Under Oregon's Public Meetings Law, members of the media ...   More

News Proponents of banning single-use plastic bags in Portland will testify in front of City Council Wednesday morning and stage a rally outside City Hall on Wednesday afternoon. Mayor Sam Adams -- who supported a ban or a tax in 2007 as a commissioner, then backed away from the ideas in 2009 amid the recession -- is keeping mum about his latest idea for moving Portlanders away from the petroleum-based ...   More

News City of Portland Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade today issued a status report on Mayor Sam Adams' 2009 stimulus plan designed to fast-track $500 million in local spending and create 4,985 jobs. Her conclusion? That last part of fewer jobs than expected didn't surprise Portland auditors. "Those are not Portland problems," says Drummond Kahn, director of the city's Audit Services Division. ...   More

News As I was walking into work this morning, I got stopped by a wave of green shirts and beer mugs. Actually, that wave was this year's Oregon Brewers Festival starting at 11:30 this morning with a parade led by none other than Mayor Sam Adams. The parade started at the Deschutes Brewery Public House and made its way down to the Tom McCall Waterfront Park for the festival's opening ceremony. And ...   More

News Mayor Sam Adams has backtracked on his pledge to bring an anti-plastic-bag ordinance to City Council, conceding to state lawmakers' wishes that he instead support a non-binding resolution calling first for an Oregon-wide ban. In a memo signed July 22 [PDF], the mayor says he will bring an ordinance banning the petroleum-based bags in Portland only if the proposed state ban fails in the 2011 ...   More

News When Mayor Sam Adams unveiled the initial details of his 2010-11 budget proposal this winter, he said the City of Portland would ask its employees to make wage concessions in the form of zero cost-of-living increases. Now for the first time in recent history, several labor unions, including the one that represents the politically influential Portland firefighters, have agreed to that salary freeze ...   More

News Portland City Commissioners today adopted a compromise resolution in support of a proposed statewide ban on single-use plastic bags [PDF]. The joint effort with the Oregon Legislature follows a recent push by Mayor Sam Adams (who voted on today's resolution via telephone because he was ill) to enact a Portland-specific ban on the petroleum-based bags. In response to Adams' local campaign, ...   More