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About The Southwest Portland Post. (Portland, Oregon) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (July 1, 2014)
July 2014 FEATURES The Southwest Portland Post • 7 Potholes and other miserable road maintenance issues, Part III By Lee Braymen-Cleary The Southwest Portland Post If you’ve read the last few issues of The Post you know I’ve gone fish- ing, angling for answers to explain which Southwest Portland residents can and cannot expect their streets to receive street maintenance services from Portland’s Bureau of Trans- portation. Chasing local annexation rules, I have cast a wide net, a nar- row net, and even a net with a few unexpected holes in search of the answer. I’ve trawled unproductive enough waters by contacting the Multnomah County Archives, Portland Bureau of Transportation’s veteran employ- ees, and some of its maintenance staff, not to mention its current me- dia relation director, Diane Dulken. Savvy neighborhood reader Larry Sloan once responded to my query by telling me that roads already paved and maintained would re- ceive services. Yet he also believes some roads in lackluster condition are “grandfathered in” (my term). There’s a question: What substanti- ates a “grandfathered in” byway, if there is such a thing. How does one fish for the answer? Dulken, tied up by her reasonably short history at the transportation bureau and not interested in my speaking to longtime maintenance workers, managed to point me in a different, useful direction. “So why don’t you go through the City of Portland Archives?” she asked, sup- plying me with their phone number. I took her advice. And what a fishing expedition it was! Located on the fifth floor of Portland State University’s Academic and Student Recreation Center, the Portland Ar- chives & Records Center guards the old bones of Portland. For starters, the archives’ glass front doors are locked until a librarian lets you in. Once I’d turned in my driver’s license for collateral and planted myself at a clean table flooded with sunlight, I leafed first through a six-inch tome cross referencing mul- titudes of city ordinances. “This sys- tem works well,” said my librarian. “You just need to understand it.” I did not let her see me roll or cross my eyes. She was like a fishing guide taking me out beyond the bar in a foreign country. It was a matter of personal courage to keep reading and then start in on microfiche. Just about the time my dry, tired peepers were spent, Madame Li- brarian presented me with a thin, 1961 document spelling out services provided to annexed Southwest Portland as of 1960. Aha! and eureka! What a huge nibble on my fish- ing line. Fish on! Fish on! I thought. Page 12 of the document, probably typed originally on an IBM Selectric typewriter predating computer pub- lications, listed “Street & Sidewalk Design and Maintenance.” But did the booklet mean that all Southwest Portland areas annexed before 1961 received these services, or was there an unnamed start day, say 1950, 1940 or…? We might even ask when Southwest annexations actually began. Although I’ve never fished at a dinner party, for anything but the odd compliment, perhaps, I did last Sunday. I’ve known Ken Martin, father, husband, grandfather, and gourmet for 17 years. There this for- mer Multnomah Vil- lage resident stood, swirling a glass of 2011 Teutonic Silvaner and giving it his nose, when I asked, “Before you retired, Ken, what did you do?” His deep set and kind blue eyes game me a cool glance. “I worked for the Port- land Boundary Com- mission.” “You what?” I asked. “How did I never know that? You’re just the person I need.” “Because why?” he A rutted view of Southwest 42nd Avenue in Multnomah asked. Village. (Post photo by Lee Braymen-Cleary) “Because you must know which Southwest Portland “That’s it?” I asked. “Do you sup- annexed areas are supposed to re- pose you’d email me a paragraph ceive street maintenance and which tomorrow that explains that?” I aren’t,” I choked. “I’ve been trying begged. to find out for over two months.” “Nope,” he said, “I’m going fish- “Difficult getting through the city ing.” system, huh?” May Ken Martin land the catch of “Don’t even ask me,” I breathed. a lifetime. But when he gets home “It’s pretty simple, really,” Martin I’ve got another question for him explained. “City by city there’s a since resident Larry Sloan says there rule of thumb: Streets and roads al- were some exceptions to the mainte- ready maintained before annexation nance rule. “Ken, tell me the which continue to receive maintenance. roads got the maintenance even if The others don’t but they can pony they weren’t in good shape,” I’ll say. up their own funds to have a road If he tells me, I’ll buy him a new paved.” fishing pole. POST A TO Z BUSINESS CARD DIRECTORY 503-244-6933 PRECISION HOME REPAIR & DRYWALL JON A. GOSCH Phone: 503-643-3517 E-mail: precision17@frontier.com Quality work at affordable rates! Mention this ad and receive 10% off your next job! 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