Anybody got a vision yet?

[August 22nd, 2007]

Fanning the Flames Dept .: Commissioner Randy Leonard tells Murmurs he had the “worst meeting ever” with an “insanely angry” Mayor Tom Potter last week. Leonard says Potter was upset over an “accurate quote” (yes, there are some) in last week’s WW , in which Leonard accused Potter of being in cahoots with the Portland Business Alliance. “He told me this wasn’t over,” says Leonard. “It rattled my shit a little bit.” Potter is on vacation this week, but his spokesman, John Doussard, says: “I’ve never known Tom to be anything but courtly and respectful with everyone. Tom and Randy had a meeting behind closed doors. Then again, they meet regularly. I have no idea what was said.” That’s probably for the best.

Former Portland Police Commander Mike Garvey got a taste of the old police game last week in his D.C. home when he noticed flies buzzing around the overstuffed mailbox of a neighbor’s house. After Garvey, now a real estate agent, caught a whiff of an all-too-familiar smell last Wednesday, Aug. 15, he called police. Cops discovered the decomposing body of an elderly widow in the house. Police found mail piled up from as far back as Aug. 3 but no evidence of foul play. Garvey says the incident “kinda got things pumping again,” though he mostly just felt sad about the forgotten old woman. “When you’re away from it you kind of become a normal person, I guess,” says Garvey, who moved to D.C. in 2005, nearly a decade after allegations that he’d had sex with male prostitutes. (A grand jury later declined to indict Garvey.)

Peter Cookson , dean of Lewis&Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling, is stepping down after five years in that top post. His decision takes effect at the end of the coming school year, and Cookson says he’ll remain on the faculty after a new dean is hired. The move comes one year after a subordinate, Vanessa Fawbush, filed a Bureau of Labor and Industries complaint against Lewis&Clark College, alleging the college unlawfully discriminated against her because she’d raised sexual harassment allegations against Cookson. The bureau closed the case because it found no substantial evidence to support Fawbush’s complaint against the college, which had taken immediate action, according to the bureau. Cookson is also chairman of the Portland Schools Foundation. Fawbush then filed a civil case against Cookson, which was settled out of court last spring. Neither party is permitted to talk about the settlement. “This has nothing to do with that,” Cookson tells Murmurs of his job change.

The state is scraping the bottom of the barrel in its investigation of Multnomah County Sheriff Bernie Giusto: Officials are turning to reporters for help. Just as we were getting ready for our monthly bath, Murmurs got a letter last week from the state Department of Public Safety Standards and Training asking for names and contact info for sources with “firsthand factual” dirt on Giusto. The state is investigating Giusto’s entire 33-year law enforcement career for alleged ethical lapses. Speaking of ethics, memo to the state: Murmurs does not reveal its sources (for free).

Parent leaders at Jefferson High School are steaming that students in the school’s new single-sex academies must wear school uniforms beginning in September. More than a year ago, opponents of the uniform plan called it discriminatory because it was being proposed at the high-school level only at Jeff, then Portland’s only majority-black high school. The two academies are more racially diverse than Jeff circa 2006. But parent leaders who were miffed about the plan then are fuming now. “The site council knew nothing about this,” says parent Nancy Smith. “We were told there would be no uniforms, and now they’re back again.”