Street roots., July 01, 2016, Page 5, Image 5

Street Roots • July 1-7, 2016
News
Page 5
COMMISSION, from page 4
designed for the people, for the masses,” he
says. “It was designed for the elite, for the
special interests, if you will. We need a
system that represents the people - all of
the people, not just a certain number of
people.”
One doesn’t have to look too hard to see
that Portland’s system of city government
contradicts one of the core tenets of
democracy, says McCoy, who runs a
company called Marathon Courier.
“It’s really taxation without
representation,” he says. “It has never made
sense. The façade is that Portland is this
bastion of liberalism; that it’s very
progressive. But in reality, Portland has
always been solidly conservative in its
politics. It had a very white population to
begin with, and it has become more and
more white.”
Reform drive
It is that desire to elect regional
representatives - not so much the strong
mayor feature - that is driving the latest
reform movement in Portland.
A group of east-side activists is gathering
signatures for a ballot measure it calls the
Portland Community Equality Act, which
would change the commission system to a
nine-member City Council, with seven
members representing geographic districts
in which they must live, and two members
elected at large. The group has until July 8
to collect 31,345 signatures from city voters
in order to get it on the November ballot.
“I don’t need a government if they’re not
going to represent me,” said Collene
Swenson, a resident of the city’s far east
side who is leading the PCEA charge.
Swenson, who works as an insurance
adjuster, and a group of her neighbors are
optimistic that a reform vote could succeed
this year for several reasons, the strongest
of which is the large number of people in all
parts of the city who are feeling the
economic pinch of rapid growth.
“It is absolutely a power grab for the
voters,” Swenson said. “It’s a power grab for
you and for me to have direct
representation.”
The possibility that voters who once
played into the “tyranny” cited by Abrams
are now feeling the negative effects of the
commission form of government might
PHOTO BY JOE GLODE
result in the strongest challenge yet
That irony is not lost on Richard Florida,
an urban development expert who teaches
at the University of Toronto. Toronto is the
only other major city in North America to
employ the weak-mayor form of
government
“The real issue is not gentrification
displacing the poor,” said Florida, author of
numerous academic papers and books on
the subject, including “The Rise of the
Creative Class.” “The bigger issue is that
housing prices rise more generally in a
metro, making it harder for just about
everyone, except for the relatively
privileged, to make ends meet«
“We find that while the creative class and
knowledge workers benefit from locating in
cities like Portland or San Francisco or New
York, it is the working people and the
service people that tend to be hit hard.”
For Bo Neill, who has rim an auto repair
shop in Southeast Portland for more than
30 years, the reality of change plays out
every day on the streets around him.
“There’s not one available lot around
here that isn’t being dug up or developed,”
he said over the clatter of tools at TVG
Volvo Specialists, bemoaning an uncertain
future for him and three other small­
business owners on his block.
“We need density, which I would prefer to
sprawl, but we’re being forced out by
gentrification, and no, I don’t feel like
there’s somebody in City Hall that I can call.
It feels like a very westside-centric
government. It kind of makes me feel like a
weak sister. I think a representative system
would be a good way for us to have a say in
what’s going on.”
The face of change
If the ballot measure were to pass, what
would change look like, and would it address
the needs of the African-American
community?
The experience of Austin, Texas, a city to
which Portland is often compared for its
progressive attitudes, may provide a
cautionary tale.
In 2012, Austin voters approved a change
from a system under which all six City
Council members were elected at large to a
10-member district representation system
with the mayor elected by a citywide vote.
Ten was the minimum number needed at
the time to draw a district in which black
voters would have an opportunity to elect an
African-American council member,
according to a recent analysis of the Austin
vote by Eric Tang, a professor of African
and African diaspora studies at the
University of Texas.
Austin, like Portland, has seen a decline
in the percentage of African-American
residents even as the cities have grown.
That decline may leave that city’s voters
with another tough choice, the Austin
American-Statesman’s Jody Seaborn wrote
in a May op-ed.
“It’s also conceivable Austin’s African-
American population will have shrunk so
much the city will have to consider a
different question,” Seaborn wrote. “At what
low percentage point does a group’s
numbers no longer justify gerrymandering a
district to give them an opportunity to elect
their own council representative?”
Opposition to previous reform efforts has
focused on the negatives of the strong
mayor system. Arguments by church and
labor groups against changing to a district
system were summarized by the Rev. Chuck
Currie of Northeast Portland in a letter to
The Oregonian.
“Replacing our commission form of
government with a ward or district system
would disempower voters and, instead of
forcing elected officials to create citywide
coalitions, would be filled with individuals
with more narrow agendas,” Currie said in
the November letter. “This would not
benefit the common good of Portland and,
at the same time, would funnel all real
power into a mayor dependent on corporate
donations to govern — while dismantling the
checks and balances in our city that keep
such a good lid on corruption.”
The -way Harris sees it, district
representation is an essential next step for
Portland.
“It strengthens citizen involvement,” said
Harris, who lives in the Rose City Park
neighborhood in Northeast Portland. “It
gives communities more voice in decisions.
Yes, all communities and all neighborhoods
have commonalities, yet each has unique
issues that need to be addressed specifically
for that district”
Direct representation in government
would improve quality of life and create a
sense of well-being for everyone, Harris
said.
“Having the ability to elect a person
within the community,” she said, “one the
citizens know can and who will carry their
voices to city government with intellect and
high standards of ethics, give citizens a
feeling of equity and inclusion.”