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 Remember the whole "contract savings" debacle at City Hall after Mayor Sam Adams jumpstarted the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030 with $20 million from the Bureau of Environmental Services? How could you not? The bioswales-for-bicycle-boulevards funding scheme generated confusion among city employees and some residents, who railed against the mayor's plan in letters-to-the-editor in The Oregonian ...   More

News Public outcry over the $800,000 paid to the city manager in tiny Bell, Calif., is prompting greater scrutiny of city employees' wages across the country. The good news is no such extraordinary excess exists in the mayor's office of Portland City Hall. But despite shedding several jobs in his office this summer, Mayor Sam Adams has 25 employees and one vacancy for a full-time police liaison. ...   More

News Yesterday, one day after the Portland Beavers played at PGE Park for the last time, Mayor Sam Adams went on John Canzano's radio program to defend himself against the sports commentator's attacks. "Do you feel like you're an empty suit?" Canzano asks Adams at one point during the testy 13-minute exchange. The mayor doesn't hold back. "You're beginning to sound like the tea party spokesman," ...   More

News This morning's news in The Oregonian that Mayor Sam Adams and Police Chief Mike Reese have decided to reconstitute the volunteer-led budget advisory group for the Portland Police Bureau has one immediate side-effect: It expands the pool of Portlanders calling Adams "vindictive." T. J. Browning, who as of this morning is still listed online as the budget group's chairwoman, says the budget group ...   More

News Last year, WW took a look at how City Hall was spending Portland taxpayers' money by poring over expense-account reports from Mayor Sam Adams and city commissioners. In what became a semi-regular tradition, WW took another look at City Hall's expense reports in March and found Adams' expense account had an $18.90 charge at Spartacus Leathers. The charge was for a Halloween-style mask for a masquerade ...   More

News Any Portland resident expecting either a raging, out-of-control party or a quiet evening last night on Northeast Alberta Street would have been pretty disappointed. It was August's installment of Last Thursday, the art show and 20-block-long social gathering held at the end of every month. Currently planned by Friends of Last Thursday and other informal organizers, the event has become the subject ...   More

News When was the last time you saw a horse-drawn carriage in Portland? Yeah, I know, me neither. Nonetheless, Mayor Sam Adams yesterday unveiled his proposal for regulating horse-drawn carriages in Portland. The news comes 13 months after a 23-year-old horse died while pulling a newlywed couple downtown. The proposed regulations stop short of the outright ban that PETA, the animal-rights group, ...   More

News Reporting our story today about former mayoral spokesman Wade Nkrumah's lawsuit against the City of Portland revealed some interesting items and new information within the hundreds of pages of court documents in the case. Nkrumah's lawsuit alleges that his duty to provide open government as the mayor's spokesman in January 2009 was compromised by repeated lies told to him by Adams and his staff. ...   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