A distant vision

[May 2nd, 2007] Does Mayor Tom Potter walk his own talk?

In a March 5 letter to Portland voters asking them to approve four proposed changes to the city's governing charter, Potter wrote that the measures on the May 15 ballot are "intended to achieve more efficiency and accountability in city government."

The measures would change Portland's commission form of government to a "stronger mayor" system; increase City Council oversight over the Portland Development Commission; streamline Civil Service rules; and require review of the charter at least every decade. (See "Vote, Dammit," WW, April 25, 2007, for our endorsement recommendations.)

But applying the criteria of efficiency and accountability to Potter's top objective—the Community Vision Project—finds it failing both measurements.

In his annual State of the City address in January 2006, Potter provided one of his term's few measurable goals. "I have launched the Community Vision Project, which I believe will be the most important thing I do as mayor," he said. "I want to hear the voices of 100,000 Portlanders in the next year."

City Council approved the project—which promised to use that input from 100,000 Portlanders to form a vision for the city's future—that same month by a 4-1 vote (Commissioner Randy Leonard voted "no").

The plan was to spend $1.1 million and provide a visioning document to City Council by April 2007.

So as the calendar turns to May 2007, how has the mayor fared in achieving his top priority, "visionPDX"?

Well, based on objective criteria, the visioning project appears to need a thick pair of glasses.

The project's revised timetable now calls for the visioning team to present its results to City Council in September, says Liesl Wendt, who oversees visionPDX as Potter's neighborhood engagement director.

Wendt blames the tardiness on a couple of causes: first, staff and volunteers were overwhelmed by the volume of written responses: more than 21,000 pages from about 13,000 people. Second, in order to make sure the responses are representative and reliable, the visioning team will go back again into the community to make sure they've correctly understood the input.

They will also pay to engage pollster Adam Davis to conduct a statistically valid survey of Portlanders to verify the results.

Critics, including Leonard, have noted that the number of responses is a tiny fraction of the mayor's expected 100,000 and that a pollster such as Davis could have provided such information faster, cheaper and more accurately if he'd been engaged at the start.

Wendt says such criticism misses the point. "I think the mayor's point was we wanted to hear from enough people to get good information," she says. "We heard from many groups that have never been asked their opinions or been involved in the political process," she says. "There's a lot of value in that."

Of course, the City Council knows full well that ignored or underserved groups like East Portlanders want more parks, and ethnic groups from Azerbaijanis to Zimbabweans want attention. And in the real world of political tradeoffs, it often ignores those groups because they lack the heft or savvy to get noticed. Wendt acknowledges there is a risk of raising the expectations of such underserved groups but says they have benefited from exposure to the process.

In addition to being late, Potter's vision is over budget. Originally the project was slated to cost $1.1 million. So far, Wendt says, it has cost $1.2 million, and she asked for another $549,000 to finish up and set an implementation plan. Potter's colleagues trimmed the request to $219,000.

"One of the messages we got from the commissioners is they wanted to see the vision before putting more money in," Wendt says.

So in September, almost three years after he took office, Potter will finally have a vision to share with his councilmates, none of whom has ever expressed much enthusiasm for the project.

"The folks who work at City Hall are good at coming up with all kinds of plans," says mayoral spokesman John Doussard. "Tom is trying to make sure the people who actually have to live with those plans have a chance to be heard. He thinks that's worth the time and money."