Murmurs

[October 24th, 2001]

* Need another sign of how bad the local economy is getting? Local parking baron Greg Goodman confirms that sales of monthly parking passes have plummeted.

* Vera Katz recently told Murmurs that the city's projected financial outlook is so bleak--as much as $20 million in budget cuts over the next year--that she is pondering placing an operating funds levy before voters in 2002 just to keep the police, fire and parks bureaus afloat.

* The denizens of Burnside Skatepark have always been a resourceful lot: They built the place in 1990 on unoccupied city land without a dime of public support. Now, just shy of the park's 11th birthday, two of its creators, Mark "Red" Scott and Sage Boulyard, have raised $5,000 from local businesses and last week removed the park's infamous "punk wall " and rebuilt the "hip ." The changes, which include plenty of new cement, will make the park even faster and--just in time for Halloween--even scarier.

* Last Friday, Interior Secretary Gale Norton met her worst nightmare right here in River City: a roomful of reporters who know more about the environment than she does. Norton and EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman were in the hotseat at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference held at PSU over the weekend. Witnesses to Norton's panel discussion say she repeatedly used the S11 attacks to justify the Bush administration's long-held desire to go after oil in the Arctic . The well-informed crowd appeared skeptical, reportedly drilling the secretary for details of about how she planned to protect the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline from terrorist attack and how the minimal reserves would satiate an oil-hungry nation.

* The latest masthead shuffling at the Portland Tribune puts associate publisher Lora Cuykendall back at the top of the newsroom of the twice-weekly paper. In last Friday's staff box, Cuykendall's title was expanded to Associate Publisher/Executive Editor and her name appeared above that of Editor Roger Anthony (probably not a confidence booster for him). Cuykendall had served as the paper's deputy editor until June, when she was given the associate publisher post and told to do civic outreach.