Street Fight

[October 17th, 2007]

A seemingly routine City Council vote last week illustrates how Portland’s so-called “transportation mafia” (see “Gravy Train,” WW , Sept. 19, 2007) is driving dramatic changes downtown by outpacing and outmaneuvering skeptics.

The item was one of 32 on the council’s weekly consent agenda Oct. 10, a list of ostensibly uncontroversial appointments, contracts and permits that commissioners approve in a single vote without debate.

This unanimous vote, which comes up for final approval Wednesday, Oct. 17, would amend the city Office of Transportation’s contract with the nonprofit Friends of Burnside Couch, adding $25,000 in city money to the original $89,000 agreement and extending its term through December 2009.

The nonprofit plans and promotes one of the most controversial proposals in town: To turn West Burnside and Northwest Couch streets into one-way thoroughfares and add a new streetcar line. Opponents of the Burnside Couch couplet say the plan would choke Couch with traffic, and they fear the city’s “low-confidence” cost estimate of $80 million will only grow with time.

But the city isn’t paying that side.

The new amendment by Sam Adams, the commissioner in charge of transportation and front-runner in the race for mayor, directed Friends of Burnside Couch to come up with a funding strategy for the project. Essentially, that means persuading enough property owners to tax themselves to pay for the development.

The city originally awarded Friends of Burnside Couch the contract in 2005 to help create a design and budget for the couplet, as well as to stage community events aimed in part at securing additional support for the project. The contract was too small to come before council and was sole-source, meaning no one else had a chance to bid on it. The city says Friends of Burnside Couch was the only contractor that would help underwrite the costs of the work.

(Previous amendments to the contract committed another $22,000 in city funds and extended the term through June 2007. All together, the nonprofit will privately raise $28,000 to cover the costs of its own work, while the city is putting up $136,000.)

Despite his skepticism of the couplet plan, Commissioner Dan Saltzman says he was unaware Friends of Burnside Couch even had a contract with the city. “I guess that slipped by me,” he says.

The council unanimously approved the couplet concept in April, after contentious public hearings. Approval came with a caveat, pushed by Saltzman, that city officials work on an alternative plan to improve West Burnside, in case money for the couplet doesn’t come through.

Mark Raggett, an urban designer with the city’s Bureau of Planning, says work hasn’t yet started on the “enhanced Burnside” alternative, which would widen sidewalks, allow left turns and add traffic signals instead of building the couplet.

Transportation project manager Bill Hoffman says work on the alternative is “not under way” but will be finished by February 2009, when the council will be asked to approve the couplet’s initial design.

Hoffman describes the Burnside alternative as merely “an in-house exercise” of the Planning Bureau, which is overseen by Mayor Tom Potter.

That’s unwelcome news to Saltzman, who pushed for the alternative. “Planning should be in the lead and [the Office of Transportation] should be in a supporting role,” says Saltzman. He fears a situation “where we can be dragged along to a point where we’re so far along, we can’t stop” the couplet.

Like other public-private partnerships in Portland, including the streetcar and the Aerial Tram, Friends of Burnside Couch is led by business interests that stand to gain from the project. Its president is Michael Powell, who also heads the nonprofit that runs the streetcar, and would get a second streetcar line by his bookstore. The Burnside group’s board also includes eastside streetcar booster Rick Parker and auto dealer Bob Wentworth.

Friends of Burnside Couch hired former Portland transportation director Vic Rhodes as a consultant. In 2006, Adams asked Rhodes to resign as head of the overbudget tram project, but the commissioner says he’s comfortable with Rhodes’ role in the Burnside project.

Rhodes, who bills an average of $2,069 a month to Friends of Burnside Couch, says the group will now concentrate on building support among property owners to form a “local improvement district,” which would charge adjacent property owners to fund the couplet.

“LID funding is a necessity, and it’s fair,” says Adams. “The property owners who benefit most should pay more.”

Adams says federal funding is also possible. Powell adds “local funding is very thin.”