It’s all about the green.

[November 14th, 2007]

Winners

1 Portland’s LEED consultants are smelling green after Commissioner Dan Saltzman proposed a city-wide environmental building code penalizing buildings that aren’t certified energy efficient. Nothing’s more sustainable than a good racket.

2 If you’re a cigarette-smoking land-use lawyer , last week’s election was all about you. Voters’ rejection of Measure 50 means no 85-cent increase in taxes on a pack of smokes. And voters’ approval of Measure 49 means lawyers will be flush with clients trying to sort through what the measure means for their property-development claims.

3Lincoln High kids may get a new school if developers Homer Williams and Mark Edlen get their wish. The pair floated a plan to replace overcrowded, aging Lincoln with high-end condos and move the school that serves some of Portland’s wealthiest kids to a bigger site. And the new school would be enviro-friendly: LEED consultants win again!!

Losers

1 National media may kiss our ass for being perfect (see “PDX Inked,” WW , Oct. 24, 2007), but the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t share the love. The feds’ court victory last week over the city Water Bureau means Portland water customers will pay for a cleanup to filter out cryptosporidium, a parasite the city swears isn’t a threat in our pure Bull Run goodness.

2 Portland taxpayers are also out $500,000, after the city agreed to pay the family of a suicidal man who was fatally shot in 2005 by Officer Leo Besner. Raymond Gwerder was on the phone with a police negotiator when Besner, a police sniper, shot him in the back. We’re all for the payout; we just wish the cops would save the bullets for when they’re needed.

3Gov. Ted Kulongoski ’s judgement suffered a potential embarrassment with the re-arrest of one of the half-dozen people he’s pardoned in the past five years (“Jackpot,” WW , Aug. 8. 2007). The Eugene Register-Guard reported last week that Springfield police arrested Kelly Lee and her husband Stace Lee last week on charges of meth possession and child endangerment.