Stop Eating and Read This

[November 21st, 2007]

The City of Portland is on track to pay $150,000 to a 58-year-old woman who had her arm broken by a traffic cop. Portland Police Officer Gregory Adrian pulled Barbara Weich over on May 29, 2005, in Southeast Portland near the Hawthorne Bridge for not wearing her seat belt . According to her attorney, Greg Kafoury, Weich was angry about the $100 ticket and called the cop an “asshole. ” Adrian then allegedly followed Weich across the bridge and pulled her over again, hitting her in the face and twisting her left arm until it broke at the elbow . Weich, a painter and gallery owner, has moved to rural Idaho. The settlement must still be approved by the City Council, which has not yet scheduled the deal for a vote.

More questions for Gov. Ted Kulongoski . The guv, who’s a lawyer, now faces a third complaint to the Oregon State Bar in the wake of two other recent bar complaints alleging he knew about ex-Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s sexual abuse of a teenage girl. The newest complaint comes from elections and immigration activist Ruth Bendl. Citing bar rules prohibiting “dishonesty,” Bendl alleges in a Nov. 17 letter that Kulongoski’s claim in a 2006 gubernatorial candidate debate that Oregon was further ahead than any other state in terms of compliance with the Federal Real ID Act of 2005 was “a blatant misrepresentation .” Kulongoski spokeswoman Patty Wentz has not seen Bendl’s complaint, but says “citizens are entitled to their opinions.”

The marvels of modern bureaucracy: Commuters crossing the Morrison Bridge into downtown may soon see a newfangled sign that lists, in real time, the number of available spaces at three downtown parking garages. The Portland Office of Transportation had hoped to get the futuristic but incredibly non-essential system running by now, but a wi-fi security snag will delay the rollout for several weeks, at least. Roland Chlapowski, an adviser to Commissioner Sam Adams, says the new sign isn’t just an ad for city-owned garages, despite stagnating parking-garage revenues in recent years. Rather, he says, it’s a way to “inform people that there’s way more parking downtown than they realize.” Remember that next time you’re circling a downtown block for the 20th time.

While news of private discussions to move Lincoln High School from its downtown campus to Northwest Portland spreads among parents like gossip among teenagers, here’s a shaky detail to consider . The proposed new Lincoln site, owned by the freight company Con-way, sits on a liquefaction zone where Multnomah County Geographic Information Services rates the earthquake hazard as “moderate.” That’s worse than the “low-moderate” threat posed by the current site. If and when the Big One hits, we’re all screwed, though. “If there were a major earthquake, regardless of these zones, everyone would be affected,” says Kerry Dugan, spokesman for the city Office of Emergency Management. “An earthquake is not going to stop at the color-coded lines.”

Stumped how to spend your kicker check ? Let us be your guide, as in our annual Give!Guide . WW is raising money (as of Tuesday, the total after less than a week surpassed $41,000—already more than was raised in all of the 2004 version) throughout the holiday season for 49 local nonprofits. And it couldn’t be easier to donate: Go to wweek.com/giveguide and learn about all the worthy causes you can benefit, as well as the prizes you could win, by spreading a little cash around.

Look who’s got green fever. Perhaps no Portland company has benefited more from the car culture than the powerful Goodman family’s City Center Parking, which controls most of downtown’s parking lots. But City Center president Greg Goodman now wants the City of Portland to replace its often overflowing trash cans with “Bigbelly” solar-powered compactors (seahorsepower.com). The devices used in Boston, Vancouver, B.C., and other cities hold about five times as much trash as the average municipal can. And that saves a lot of diesel fuel by allowing garbage trucks to drive shorter distances to collect the same size load. Goodman says he’d chip in to sponsor a few of the cans, which cost about $4,000 each.

Westside Portland’s man in the House, U.S. Rep. David Wu, got slapped last week by the D.C.-based Citizens Against Government Waste for his “outrageous...pork.” This summer, Wu, the only Chinese-American in Congress, arranged a $150,000 appropriation to build a Chinese Heritage Park in Astoria (see “Putting the OR in Pork,’’ WW, Aug. 15, 2007). The Oregon Democrat’s idea? To honor the Chinese cannery workers who were nearly a third of Astoria’s population in the late 19th century. Wu’s earmark was included in a totally unrelated, multibillion-dollar transportation and housing bill, which has yet to be signed by President Bush, who is also fond of pork, especially rinds. Wu’s office says the funding request came from the city, and that the park will help revitalize the downtown area where the canneries once stood.