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Yes, there’s an election next month. No, you don’t get to send a message to President Trump. Portland voters face only a single question on the ballot, but it’s an important one. Ballots must be dropped off or mailed by 8 pm Tuesday, Nov. 4.
Measure 26-260
Maintains parks with a five-year levy
YES
There is no civic asset Portlanders cherish more than parks. The city’s flagship parks provide its icons—from the gothic arches of the St. Johns Bridge rising over Cathedral Park to the volcanic cone of Mount Tabor standing guard over the eastside—but perhaps more precious is the everyday respite that can be found in the smaller greenspaces that dot the town, offering an hour’s escape among the firs. Portland Parks & Recreation also provides the programs in these spaces, from outdoor movie nights to summer camps and swim lessons. Parks are where we gather to commune with nature and each other; little wonder that they are a place where we can agree. Polling shows that nearly three-quarters of voters oppose any cuts to Portland Parks & Recreation, a higher loyalty than that given to any other city service.
So the threat that appears on ballots arriving in mailboxes today feels particularly insidious. If voters don’t approve a five-year property tax levy, increasing the rate of taxation from 80 cents to $1.40 per $1,000 of assessed value, the parks will be left to rot. Routine maintenance and trails and railings will be neglected. Pools and community centers will close. The restrooms won’t be cleaned each day, and the trash cans will overflow.
Such a prospect rightly frightens voters, as it does the city’s power brokers, which is why nearly every institution in this town, from the Portland Metro Chamber to the Democratic Socialists of America, has pledged support for the levy increase. But that unanimity threatens to obscure the reality of how the parks got into this mess. The unvarnished truth is that Portland parks have been governed with a toxic blend of good intentions and budgetary recklessness.
That’s not just our opinion. It’s the conclusion of city auditors, who on Oct. 15 released a damning examination of Portland Parks & Recreation’s fiscal management. It found that, instead of dealing with deferred repairs, the parks bureau opened new facilities it couldn’t maintain and offered amenities it couldn’t pay for. “Parks committed to funding the construction of new assets without identifying a funding source for its ongoing maintenance,” auditors wrote. “As a result, the city added assets it cannot afford.”
None of this will be news to longtime readers of WW. Since 2019, this paper has warned that the parks bureau’s ambitious eastward expansion threatened its financial soundness. The profligate spending came from a desire to share: City officials saw, correctly, that neighborhoods east of 82nd Avenue lacked the civic treasures we described above, and delivered long-overdue amenities, via parks like Luuwit View and Kʰunamokwst. But such largesse without careful budgeting pitted equity against responsibility. That’s a false dilemma, and our leaders had a duty to prevent it.
That they didn’t is a failure of which many elected officials, who oversaw parks, own a share. But the audit suggests that the fundamental responsibility lies within a bureau that has never tried to balance its checkbook—and, as a result, presented city officials and the public with an incomplete picture of its condition. Its leaders never considered such basic questions as whether designing parks with larger open spaces and smaller playgrounds might make them less costly to maintain.
The result is that voters must choose between demanding a more rigorous accounting of spending and keeping the gates open.
Portland already has one of the highest marginal tax rates in the U.S. on income over $125,000 for single filers and $200,000 for married couples. The new Parks Levy would add to the overall tax burden: If your house in Southeast Portland is assessed at $675,000, say, you’d have to pay $945 a year starting Jan. 1, 2026, up from $540 now, a 75% increase. And the levy would hit anyone who owns property, wealthy or not, including the elderly and small businesses.
This is the third tax measure Portland voters have considered in a little over a year—all of them after Gov. Tina Kotek called for a moratorium on local taxes. Last year, city transportation officials asked for a renewal of a 10-cent gas tax, while conceding that it would do little to patch a huge pothole in road-paving budgets. Voters consented. In May, Portland Public Schools presented a construction bond for three new high schools that enrollment projections suggest won’t be filled to capacity. Again, voters agreed. On both occasions, they were presented with a nightmare scenario in which assets would crumble if they said no.
We suggested voters reject the school bond. What’s different this time? For one thing, the spending plan. Unlike the school bond or, for that matter, the Parks Levy passed in 2020, this one details exactly how the money will be spent. It also funds a full-time position for a person charged with finding private donors to help pay for care and maintenance, like other cities do.
Better yet, the new levy creates a community oversight committee that reports directly to the City Council, unlike the current Parks Levy Oversight Committee, which reports to Portland Parks & Recreation’s director.
That’s a crucial shift. Portland voters should be able to hold someone accountable for both the spending of this levy and the design of a fiscal sustainability strategy that, if nothing else, stops the growth of the hole our parks are sinking into. The buck now stops with city councilors.
Also, consider the scale of what’s at risk. Some 86% of Portland Parks & Recreation assets are in poor or very bad condition, the bureau reported in September 2024. Some of that decay is due to budgetary sloppiness, yes, but hardly all of it. There’s a macroeconomic phenomenon that remains beyond the city’s control: inflation. Parks require lots of people and supplies to stay green and inviting, and virtually all of the costs of these have gone up. Every Portlander is making hard decisions about how to stretch a dollar. And the measure now on the ballot presents a test of our collective priorities.
There are many perils to making policy via ballot measure. One is that some parts of government get fat while others are left to beg for their lives. But another is the temptation to hamstring our future as a way to punish the failures of the past. You would be right to have a beef with the leaders who placed Portland in this mess. Don’t take it out on the trees. Vote yes.
