In With The New...

[December 31st, 2008]

• Last Friday, responding to the mounds of snow and ice still blocking walkways and storm drains, Mayor-elect Sam Adams asked homeowners to follow city code and clear their sidewalks. Ever the nosy nanny, WW checked on Adams’ Council colleagues—including Commissioner-to-be Amanda Fritz—to see if they complied. We did find one commish who didn’t shovel: Nick Fish, whose sidewalk in Grant Park still had slippery patches on Saturday. “I don’t think we got around to that,” Fish said Tuesday on the phone from Sisters. “I spent the last two weeks working on the winter warming shelters.”

• Antiwar activist Michelle Darr has resumed her vigil and fast at Oregon’s State Capitol. Darr, a mother of six who had gone on a 40-day fast that ended Dec. 10, returned to the Capitol steps on Christmas Eve. She’ll stay there indefinitely in hopes of stopping the spring deployment of Oregon National Guard troops to Iraq and perhaps Afghanistan. Anna Richter Taylor, a spokeswoman for Gov. Ted Kulongoski, says the governor has no legal authority to stop the deployment ordered by the U.S. Defense Department. But Darr insists it’s everybody’s responsibility “to defend the Constitution.”

• In the midst of a long winter, a little sunshine from the state Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel overturned a Marion County judge and ruled unanimously Dec. 24 that state medical examiner Karen Gunson must hand over to Portland lawyer Craig Colby the autopsy report on Dennis Young, who was shot to death by Portland Police Lt. Jeff Kaer (see “Brother in Arms,” WW, April 11, 2007). Colby, who lives a block from where Kaer shot Young in 2006, began investigating the case on his own. The state Attorney General’s Office, which represents Gunson, has long held that autopsy reports should stay secret. Ben Unger, special assistant to AG-elect John Kroger, had no comment on whether Kroger will appeal.

• Say goodbye to one of the Metro area’s longest-festering problems. On Dec. 20, Metro Council voted 7-0 to cancel the contract that let the Lakeside landfill in rural Washington County accept waste, thereby cutting off the facility’s lifeblood. Residents living around the 50-year-old, unlined dump on the banks of the Tualatin River and next to the Ponzi Winery have long clamored for its closure (see “Grapes of Trash,” WW, July 18, 2007). They claim the dump accepted prohibited materials, threatens the watershed and doesn’t comply with DEQ rules. A Lakeside lawyer told Metro that owner Howard Grabhorn, who has denied his neighbors’ claims, may sue to keep the dump open. 

• Multnomah Village business owner James F. Peterson says he’ll keep this sign up for as long as it takes. Since October, Peterson has used his shop site along Southwest Multnomah Boulevard to blast Commissioner Nick Fish’s proposal to make the Jerome F. Sears Army Reserve Center across the street into a 110-unit affordable housing complex. Fish, the city’s housing commissioner, got council approval in July to convert the center to affordable housing in 2011.

• If you’re reading this on Dec. 31, you still have until midnight to go to wweek.com and donate to one of the 55 awesome nonprofits in WW’s Give!Guide. If you’re reading this on Jan. 1, please know that our readers rock: Despite the economic collapse, our annual holiday helper had collected a record $650,000-plus as of press time Dec. 30—a record for the guide, now in its fifth year.