Skip to main content- Mountain bike advocates who hope to open Forest Park to more cycling face a contentious meeting with critics this week at City Hall. That’s because, in advance of the meeting Feb. 25, one member of the citizen group assigned to study the issue found an unsanctioned bike path that appears to have damaged an otherwise pristine part of the park. “In order to turn what was previously a well-vegetated, stable, meandering deer and elk trail into a mountain bike trail, mountain bikers cut live Western red cedar trees, pushed over snags, cut or otherwise destroyed significant ground cover and thereby created a wide, muddy, rutted, eroded mess that is approximately one mile long,” committee member John Deshler wrote in a recent email to other members.
- Maybe they should have offered to take him food carting? Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine was due in Portland for a breakfast this week with the Democratic Party of Oregon’s President’s Club, a group of leading donors. But last week, the DNC canceled Kaine’s Feb. 26 visit because club members failed to raise enough money. “We’re hoping to reschedule for April,” says Democratic Party of Oregon’s Trent Lutz. “That will give us more time to meet targets.”
- The local battle over cell towers is ramping up: Last weekend, the Hollywood Theatre showed Full Signal, a documentary about the towers’ potential dangers. Next week, City Council will consider a resolution that would let Portland intervene in a pending Federal Communications Commission effort to cut local jurisdictions out of cell tower siting decisions. “Portland and communities throughout the country should have more authority on siting decisions, not less,” says City Commissioner Nick Fish, who’s sponsoring the resolution coming before council February 24. (For more on a Northeast Portland cell tower battle, see respectpdx.org)
- Beau Breedlove is back in Portland after a brief relocation to the East Coast. He’s talking—see the interview at justout.com and the March 5 print edition of that publication. He’s also organizing on Facebook. Breedlove has started what he’s calling “The New Movement” (383 members at press time) based on what he calls the harsh experiences he’s had since Mayor Sam Adams admitted to WW in January 2009 that he and Breedlove had a sexual relationship in 2005. “I was drug through the mud because of classic stereotypes about young gay men,” Breedlove writes on the Facebook page. “I was disposed of with the morning’s trash. ”
- City Commissioner Randy Leonard is proposing temporarily suspending fees collected by Portland on homeowners who build on additions or refinish their basements to make new accessory dwellings. The fees, called system development charges, on accessory dwelling units help pay for city parks, water, transportation and sewer infrastructure in the city. They can range from $7,000 to $12,000 per unit. But only about 20 to 30 Portlanders a year pay them, says Leonard’s office, which wants to waive the fees to get more people to build the additions. City Council will vote March 3 on suspending the fees for three years.
WWeek 2015