Police Use
Excessive Force
Agreement calls for
reforms and oversight
Eastside Connection JJ*
Streetcar loop
opens with weekend
o f free rides
See Local News, page 3
See Metro, page 11
«4
Volume XXXXI
'City o/Roses’
Number 36
Ui3
www.portlandobserver.coni
Wednesday • September 19, 2012
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
■S
/
• 'c o m m u n ity s c rv u
‘I Love This City’
Former city commis
sioner Charlie Hales reaches
out for community support in
his election race for mayor.
Hales says he will put heart
and soul into job as mayor
by M indy C ooper
T he P ortland O bserver
Mayoral candidate Charlie Hales describes his moving to
the city of Portland more than 30-years-ago as a choice that
mattered, much like his current run for mayor. “I love this
city,” he said.
“I know I have the skills, the experience and passion this
city needs right now,” Hales said, in an interview with the
Portland Observer. ‘‘I want to put my heart and soul into this.”
Hales left city government in 2002. He was midway through
his third term and took a job as a streetcar consultant. He said
it was a time where he felt he had accomplished a lot on the
City Council, but also a time of personal change as his kids
were going off the college and he was making plans for a new
marriage.
Hales said he has no political ambitions beyond being the
mayor of Portland.
“The big fall push is on,” he said, less than two months
before the Nov.6 vote-by-mail election.
His number one priority if elected mayor, he said, was to
make the city a place of opportunity for everyone.
“We need a good leader,” he said. “Portland has changed
from a town to a city and demographically in a huge way.”
Nearly half the kids within Portland Public Schools are
minority youth, he said. “And we are a better city because we
are so diverse.”
Hales added, however, that the inequalities minorities
face within the city must become a main priority.
And education, he said, would be his first focal point.
“Adequate stable funding for every school— that is not
too much to ask," said Hales, who said he believes lawmakers
in Salem, including his opponent in the m ayor’s race. State
Rep. Jefferson Smith of East Portland, have failed to uphold
their responsibility to residents.
“If I’m elected mayor, our first job would be adequate school
funding,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s not our department.”
He also said he would give extra attention to those who
need help and inspire good leadership and additional fund
ing, a combination he said can “do great things.”
continued
on page 9