1998 State of the City Address
Delivered by Mayor Vera Katz before the Portland City Club
February 13, 1998
Members of the City Club and guests, members of the Portland City Council, citizens of Portland, thank you for giving me the opportunity to report again on the state of our city and a special thanks to Commissioner Jim Francesconi who allowed me to take his scheduled time today before the City Club. I also want to thank Portland State University’s Center for Population Research and Census who provided much of the census data mentioned in my remarks today. State of the city speeches are usually about reflecting on the past year's significant accomplishments. But, I have come to learn that the passage of only a year is not long enough for us to see what one poet calls "the ever whirling wheels of change." Cities only reveal themselves over time. For example, over time, one downtown Portland block was first a school building, then the Portland Hotel, later the Meier and Frank parking structure, and today, Pioneer Courthouse Square. Over time, a city can deteriorate or continue to improve. But it can never stand still. I was first inspired to enter politics by Robert F. Kennedy, who looked at America and said simply, "We can do better." In Portland in the early '70s, you and I, and many others like us who love our city, took a hard look around us and said, "We have to do better." Back then, the New York Times described Portland as "a city in the act of destroying itself." A HUD report on the nation's cities calls this time "the decades of decline." Portland was no different than the rest of the nation. Yes, Portland could have gone the way of Newark or Detroit. But our commitment to sound planning, to SB 100, to metropolitan regional government and to the urban growth boundary sent us down a different path. One that reversed the loss of city residents, contained growth, avoided sprawl, and stopped the decline. Local efforts helped us along the way: the Downtown Plan 25 years ago; the Central City Plan a decade ago; the Portland Future Focus Strategic Plan nearly a decade old; Prosperous Portland and Central City 2000 just a few years ago. As a result of our efforts, by the late '80s and early '90s, what we now call Portland began to recapture the population it lost in the '70s. It was twenty-six years later that we finally realized a three percent increase in the number of city residents. After two decades of hard work by the people of this community, the state of the city is better and stronger than it was 25 years ago. In many ways, Portland today is a vision made real. We are truly a "renaissance" city. But a great city is never frozen in amber. And resting on our laurels is not an option I will accept as mayor. Nor should you. In the face of rapid change and growth, now more than ever, we must protect and improve our quality of life -- for those of us who live and work here today and those who will follow us tomorrow. I believe a great city begins as an act of the imagination. What I imagine for our future is a more prosperous city for all our citizens; with better jobs that support our families; affordable housing that shelters us; public schools that educate our children to the highest standards; safer neighborhoods; more parks, natural areas and open space that nourish our souls; and a transportation system that serves the entire state and gets us where we need to go, safely and efficiently. It has been said that "Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. But vision with action can change the world." Portland's vision must be shared by its people and its government. There are danger signs that we are losing the public's confidence in our ability to manage the pace of growth and change. Portlanders are anxious about our growing, changing city. Neighbors say they are nervous about traffic congestion and speeding cars as the number of houses sprout-up in their neighborhoods. They fear that we have lost the ability to maintain and improve our streets and roads, build neighborhood parks, and protect our rivers and streams as growth begins to impact their community. I believe we can meet our obligations to the regional 2040 growth management plan and accommodate our fair share of the population growth for the city, including targets for new housing and jobs. And, I believe we can do it while preserving the livability of our neighborhoods and protecting the qualities that make Portland a special place to live. When I say we can meet the challenges of change and growth and protect and improve Portland's quality of life, I make one important assumption. An assumption learned as a lesson from 25 years' experience. The City of Portland and the surrounding communities of this region are in this together as partners. There is no other way. We are regional partners in creating and sustaining jobs, in providing affordable housing, and in supporting a workable transportation system. Because of the importance of this regional partnership, we must soundly reject the Sizemore initiative to abolish Metro. Passage of this initiative would be a step backwards. It would deny us the ability to take the future into our own hands as we did 25 years ago and shape it to our will as we must do for the next century. I said that a great city was an act of the imagination. Imagine where we would be today -- as a city, a region, a state -- if Bill Sizemore's "community-be-damned" thinking had prevailed in 1973. The eyes of the nation are on us, for we are engaged in a noble experiment. We have the best tools in the country for well-managed growth and for shaping our quality of life -- we have nothing to fear if we use them wisely. * * * * * What I would like to do this afternoon is to cover some problems that pose the greatest risks and challenges to us in the next 25 years: in jobs, transportation, public safety, education, and neighborhood livability. All five are interrelated, interconnected and interdependent. First, I want to focus on creating family wage jobs. Current economic trends are favorable. Over the last four years, unemployment has dropped from seven to four percent. While most cities have lost jobs, Portland has enjoyed 14 years of annual employment growth. In fact, the Portland area this year ranks third in the country for generating new manufacturing jobs. Not only that, but Portland was named as the best city for small business in the nation by Entrepreneur Magazine three years in a row. And Portland's downtown ranks fourth in the nation as a prime area for investment, ahead of Seattle and San Francisco. However, economic prosperity comes with no guarantee of either longevity or equity. We must take steps now to make sure the good times reach well into the future, and include those people who may be left out. As we deal with change and growth in a healthy economic climate, one trend is of special concern to me. Our median household income adjusted for inflation fell between 1989 and 1996. Real per capita income also fell. We must not become a city of rich and poor, privileged and dependent, comfortable and insecure. We cannot survive as a great city if a few are doing very well, while most are scraping by. To address this problem, the city's economic development efforts must be very strategic, closely tied to education, transportation and land use. One of the best ways to diversify our local economy as we seek to meet Metro's 2040 goals to create over 150,000 new jobs in Portland by 2015, is to aggressively pursue our "target industry strategy." Our target industries -- high technology, biotechnology, health and professional services, the metals and transportation equipment industries and the creative services -- thrive in Portland and provide well-paying jobs because of our location, because we have the vendors, services and institutions that support these industries, and we have the ability to train and educate a workforce to meet their needs. We are proud of firms like Oregon Steel, Precision Castparts, ESCO, Gunderson and Freightliner in metals and transportation equipment; OHSU in biotechnology; and Portland Software and Will Vinton studios in the creative services industry. Availability of office space is key in our ability to attract jobs to the Central City. Last year was a blockbuster for Portland area office space construction with 1.2 million square feet of new space completed. And vacancy rates are close to a ten-year low. For the first time this decade, work began on two downtown office buildings -- the Fox and ODS Towers. Other proposed developments include the Third and Oak Office building, Paramount Hotel, Westin Hotel, another Marriott Hotel and Pioneer Place 2. Retailers such as FAO Schwartz, Eddie Bauer, Crate & Barrel, and Virgin Records are showing interest in downtown. As well they should. Portland is a great place to work, shop and live. This past year, we also kept two major employers in the central city -- Standard Insurance and Liberty Northwest, and successfully wooed Kindercare to move its corporate headquarters here from Alabama. We should continue to expand that downtown and central city job base. The biotechnology industry and the creative services industry, along with retail and professional service jobs, and expansion of the Convention Center, are key components to implementing recommendations of the Central City 2000 report. But all these employers need one thing -- skilled workers. Improving worker skills will raise their wages and median household incomes to match those of the region. In a fast-breaking economy, 60 percent of manufacturing revenues are from products developed every two years. The cities with the smartest workers win. That is our competitive edge, not cheap wages. That's why I am working with Multnomah County Chair Bev Stein and Washington County Chair Linda Peters, to create a state-of-the-art, regional workforce training system. The need to build school-to-work, welfare-to-work, work-to-work systems is more critical now than ever. The fact that Intel imports half of its new workforce from out-of-state should be a wake up call for us all. One final note on the issue of jobs -- in Portland, 50 percent of single mothers with children under five have incomes below the poverty level. To lift these children out of poverty, their mothers must receive training while they work and their child care needs must be attended to. As we work to create family-wage jobs, we must continue to address and eradicate any vestiges of unfairness or discrimination. Ethnic minorities have increased threefold in the city since 1970. This diversity is healthy for Portland but it challenges us to ensure equal access to economic opportunities. City government must lead by example. That is why I have pushed to implement the Fair Contracting and Employment Strategy -- a national model that provides opportunities for our emerging-, minority-, and women-owned businesses to prosper and flourish. That is also why I will continue to defend Portland's civil rights ordinance that ensures equal treatment of gays and lesbians in employment and housing. * * * * * Everything else that we do to protect and improve our quality of life gets stuck in a traffic jam if we don't have a transportation system that connects our communities, reduces our reliance on the automobile and increases our travel by bus, light rail, bicycle or by foot. How are we doing? Not good enough. Portland has set two transportation goals for the next 20 years: a 10% reduction in vehicle miles traveled and a 10% reduction in parking spaces per capita. But the number of automobiles in the tri-county region grew 36 percent in the last 10 years, outstripping population growth. And, in the four-county area, the number of people driving alone to work increased 80 percent from 1970 to 1990 -- that means 227,000 more cars on the road. 23,000 of those additional cars were driven by Portlanders on their way to work and many through our neighborhoods. Our transportation challenge in the years ahead is threefold. The first challenge is to develop the region's transportation infrastructure as an interrelated system and get people to use it. When I say system, I mean just that -- not a jumble of independent components. How kids walk to school is part of it; so is how 1,000 containers leave the Portland docks bound for Chicago. Connecting downtown to the Lloyd District should be part of the same system that connects Portland to Tokyo. It is essential that we complete the south/north light rail line, complementing it with close-by opportunities for people to live and work and providing more bus connections between its spokes. I will continue to push forward our unique public/private partnership to get light rail to the airport. This will become a national model for building an important leg of the light rail system without federal funds or new local tax dollars. And, we will build the streetcar line -- first for the central city, to connect Northwest Portland to the River District, PSU and North Macadam, then over the river to our eastside neighborhoods. We can implement this transportation strategy and still be stalled in traffic congestion, unless people use transit. To encourage that use, transit stops must not only be safe, but should become transit service destination stops for riders to pick up groceries, drop off clothes to the dry cleaners and their children to child care centers. To also encourage transit use, the time has come to not only expand Fareless Square, but also to seriously consider a totally fareless transit system, paid for by a regional tax on parking lots. Tolling our roads and bridges should also be part of a new revenue mix. Our second transportation challenge is to ease the nightmare restrictions on transportation funding. For example, interstate money cannot pay for patching potholes or enforcing traffic laws, light rail money cannot help transport the elderly and disabled, airport revenues cannot be used to get people downtown. And the third challenge is to fund the system at the level we need to make it work. When it comes to transportation funding, legislative sessions are starting to resemble giant panda matings in a zoo -- expectations are high, but the results are always disappointing. Our streets and highways are suffering from years of investment postponed and maintenance delayed. To the next legislature I say, A don't leave this state a legacy of potholes, crumbling bridges, and traffic jams. Do your job -- raise the gas tax and eliminate restrictions on its use. * * * * * Peace in the streets is part of anyone's definition of quality of life. As Mayor and Police Commissioner, public safety remains my greatest responsibility, and my third area of focus. Violent crime in Portland -- murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault -- was down again this year, and I'm proud to add, the lowest in 26 years. Unfortunately, property crime increased, due to more auto thefts. Over the last five years, I worked to increase the number of police officers from 800 to 1,026 to keep up with our expanded city boundaries and population increases. The City Auditor's annual survey shows that from 1991 to 1997 the number of people who feel safe walking alone in their neighborhoods increased from 77 to 85 percent. The fact that we are safer and feel safer is the good news. But the brutality of two weeks ago shows painfully we must never let up -- never, not as long as there are those among us who hold no regard for human life, or arm themselves with weapons only soldiers are expected to carry. As Police Commissioner, I have spent many privileged hours in the presence of Portland's police officers. I have never known a more dedicated or courageous group of men and women. On behalf of the citizens of Portland, I want to thank them again for their service to this city. In my last state of the city speech I spoke of the "broken windows" approach, by which quality-of-life crimes are enforced before they become problems of crisis proportions for a neighborhood. By keeping an eye on the small as well as large crimes, we can expect to reduce overall criminal activity and remind citizens that the rules of civility apply to us all. In this "zero tolerance" for crime, citizens and police must work together to enforce all laws and prevent all crimes. It means each citizen in this city is personally responsible for keeping our community safe. "Zero tolerance" is reflected in the Gun Violence Strategy I announced recently. We have taken the best ideas from other cities, such as Boston, and added our own, to do three things: 1) target the worst drug traffickers and violent gang members for prosecution; 2) crack down on all violence in neighborhood "hot spots" and; 3) disrupt the flow of illegal guns. And if U.S. Attorney Kris Olson and Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schrunk have their way, criminals in Portland who use a gun in a crime, will forfeit their right to remain in this community, face immediate prosecution, and receive the stiffest sentences under either federal or state statutes. I applaud these efforts. Next month, Commissioner Jim Francesconi will unveil strategies that complement our law enforcement efforts by preventing gang and youth violence through employment opportunities and after-school programs. But, the events of two weeks ago illustrate that we must do even more. Technology now allows us to complete an instantaneous background check on anyone seeking to purchase any kind of gun. It is time to push the state legislature to require it for rifles, shot guns, and assault weapons anywhere they are sold, to prevent the weapons from falling into the wrong hands. The broken window philosophy also means "zero tolerance" of graffiti. Graffiti, such as the recent desecration of the Central Library, degrades urban life and deteriorates our environment as surely as dirty air and water. These are not budding young artists in search of a palette -- they are vandals. Graffiti is not art, it is a scar across the face of our beautiful city. First, I propose we eliminate the current restrictions that require a building owner to give us written permission before we can remove the graffiti. This bureaucratic nightmare can delay action for weeks. Second, we will designate Agraffiti free zones in areas of the city hit hardest by graffiti crime. In each zone, we will provide surveillance, enhanced clean-up and strict prosecution of offenders when they are caught. As we meet success, the zones will expand. A final thought on public safety. Zero tolerance is not achievable until we end overcrowding and matrix releases from the county jail. Police officers must keep prisoners sitting in the back of patrol cars, often waiting for hours because of the lack of booking space in the county jail -- a devastating waste of time and money. Because of overcrowding, we released over 6,000 people last year pending trial. County Chair Bev Stein, District Attorney Mike Schrunk, and Sheriff Dan Noelle are trying very hard to fix this problem. But it needs to be fixed once and for all. * * * * * My fourth area of focus is a red-flag for the future, one of overriding concern for the quality of life for families with children, and for all our citizens. I'm talking about education. Today, we are finally keeping families with children in the city, after seeing a dramatic decline in the 70s. But we cannot sustain the momentum without a quality public education system. As author of the Oregon Education Act for the 21st Century, I believe that public education is not only America's greatest invention, but our most powerful competitive advantage. For we know that for people without education and training, the new century will not be a renaissance but an economic dark age. People without education and without hope will no longer belong to the future. That's why the Education Act embraces the vision that "in Oregon we will have the best educated citizens in the nation by the year 2000 and a workforce equal to any in the world by the year 2010." Yes, we need stable school funding, but I do not believe that the failure of the schools to perform up to expectations can be blamed totally on their funding problem. I believe that in the clamor over funding there appears to be a collective denial about the importance of education reform. About half of our students in the Portland Public School District do not meet state educational standards for math and reading. In one high school, 85% of the sophomores can't meet state standards; 45% of students have grade point averages of Ds or Fs, while 15% have no grade averages at all. This should outrage us even more than the funding crisis. Schools had six years to plan for the Certificate of Mastery. We are beginning to run out of time to effect real and meaningful change. Inevitably, there will be voices clamoring to lower our new state standards if our children fail to meet them. My voice, too, will be loud and clear, saying NO -- we cannot allow lower standards and lower expectations. Our children deserve better than that. Local government has not sat on the sidelines. Portland and Multnomah County have given schools $29 million over three years. We also support passage of the business income tax increase on the March ballot. We have the right and the duty to demand both fiscal and academic accountability. Acting Superintendent Diana Snowden confirmed our frustration over the Portland School District's inability to manage itself properly. And she is beginning to tackle some long ignored problems. To assist her efforts, I propose that she consider appointing a Chief Accountability Officer to carry out the school district's own resolution from last May that required schools to develop plans on how they will meet our new state standards. Those plans for each school were due in September of last year. Unfortunately, the timeline has now slipped to sometime later this year. This community deserves to know what our schools are going to do to improve the performance of all students. Schools that are not performing should be placed on probation and made eligible for help from principals of other public and private schools and from our university partners. If performance is still not achieved, these schools should be reconstituted. When I first ran for mayor and mentioned schools, people would ask, "Why? -- that's not the Mayor's responsibility." No one asks that today. In Chicago, the school system's financial crisis and poor academic achievement got so bad that their legislature gave that responsibility to the city and its mayor. We are nowhere near that point yet. But I want to mention it as a possibility to reassure parents that I will not stand idly by as the most successful urban public school system in the United States teeters on the abyss. It will not happen on my watch and I know that the people of Portland will not allow it. * * * * * My fifth area of focus is about improving neighborhood quality of life for the people who live here now and for those in the future. We must approach the task of meeting our housing targets by building and supporting strong, healthy, unique and vibrant neighborhoods. And, we must approach this task maintaining our strong commitment to build affordable housing. But, housing alone does not make a neighborhood. Densification does not create community. Whether we are working downtown in the River District or in the Lents neighborhood in outer Southeast Portland, our efforts to improve neighborhood livability and increase the number of housing units should go hand-in-hand. That means green and open spaces, natural areas; better transit; safe streets; and thriving neighborhood small businesses. Home ownership has increased from 1990 to 1996, reversing a downward trend from 1970. But housing prices have nearly doubled since 1990. We will continue our efforts to invest in affordable housing and promote home ownership. I've outlined an approach to improve neighborhood livability while we meet our housing goals. But where will we fit our new arrivals? Let me walk you through how I think we can do it. First, to improve neighborhood livability while keeping growth pressure off existing neighborhoods to the greatest extent possible, we will focus as much new development as we can in the Central City. That is where we can best accommodate the fastest growing segment of our population: elderly, singles, and couples without children. We will do it in the River District and North Macadam developments. These developments have the added benefit of bringing life back to the banks of the Willamette River, helping us to recapture the river's edge and extend the greenway from Terminal I south to John's Landing. And today I propose we begin planning for two new areas in the Central City for higher use development: the Rose Quarter and the West End-Lower Goose Hollow part of downtown. We sent a letter to the Blazers last week asking them to be a partner with us in developing a master plan for the neighborhood surrounding the Rose Garden Arena and the Memorial Coliseum. The district is ideal for an entertainment and commercial hub with opportunities to build office and hotel developments and improve park access to the river. As for West End-Lower Goose Hollow, it has a huge potential. It is between downtown and Northwest Portland, with light rail running through it, a new park block nearby, easy freeway access, and soon a streetcar to run on 10th and 11th Avenues. In the 1970s, we cut a massive swath through 12 blocks of this neighborhood to build I-405. It was a thriving and prosperous neighborhood of schools, religious institutions, businesses and bookstores near the library. Normally, I would not advocate that we cover up our mistakes, but in this case I would make an exception. I propose that we cover sections of I-405 and bring back a great neighborhood. Above I-405, and in the neighborhoods surrounding it, we have the potential to build parks, design an urban high tech campus, provide parking, create pedestrian walks, build housing, office and retail space. There is no question, this will be a challenging project, but also very exciting for the future of the city. Again, both the Rose Quarter and West End/Lower Goose Hollow projects, along with the River District and North Macadam will relieve the pressure to build more housing in single family neighborhoods. Second, we also will improve neighborhood livability and meet our housing goals by focusing new development in existing neighborhoods along main streets, town centers and transit lines. The Civic Stadium housing, parking and retail project next to the Westside Max station in the Lower Goose Hollow area is such an example. The Belmont Dairy, a once abandoned eyesore now thriving with its Zupan grocery store and housing perched on top, is another example of a project built along an existing main street. Third, we will also improve neighborhood livability and meet our housing goals by revitalizing disadvantaged neighborhoods. A priority of my first years in office was bringing North and Northeast Portland back to life. It began with the City's purchase of the old Walnut Park Fred Meyer -- now home to the Northeast Police Precinct and retail shops. It has been sustained by the completion of the Albina Community Plan and the MLK Boulevard Revitalization Strategy. Next, with the help of the state and the city, $1 million will be spent to rebuild the Boulevard itself to be more pedestrian friendly, with new lighting, new trees, and on street parking as we remove sections of the MLK median. We began similar efforts in Outer Southeast with the completion of the Outer Southeast Community Plan two years ago. The City Council has committed $1.25 million this year to stimulate development activity in the Lents Town Center, including the purchase of 100,000 square feet in the Lents Business District, engineering work for key transportation improvements and a feasibility study to establish a Lents Town Center Urban Renewal District. Another way we will improve neighborhood livability and meet our housing goals is by addressing the housing needs of families. We must protect and nurture owner-occupied housing. Neighborhoods of single family housing should be the last place we look to accommodate our growth. And when it does happen, it should be in character with the existing neighborhood. That is why design standards and design review are so important. Portland may have to grow, but we don't have to grow ugly. Carl Abbott, an urban historian at PSU, said, "No great city has yet taken Wal Mart as its public symbol or put a factory outlet mall on its municipal letterhead." * * * * * At the beginning of a new year we wish the best for our friends and family. Toward the end of a decade it is appropriate to wish for something larger, particularly when that decade is the last of a century. My wish for Portland is that, together, we once again imagine great things, and continue to build on 25 years of accomplishment. It is within our power to choose the kind of Portland we want. Portland can be known for its art, communications, and technology, while still preserving our industrial sanctuaries. We can be the creative capital of the West, with ties reaching across the Pacific and around the world -- a truly international city. A renaissance city made for original, inventive minds; for people with more and better ideas who want to invest and prosper. A city that welcomes the new while keeping the best of the past: those amenities that are the urban experience -- pedestrian-friendly sidewalks, cafes, pubs, coffee houses, theaters, parks, restaurants, bookstores, libraries, museums and galleries that tie together our past and present. Women and men who see the city as a gateway to economic independence; who see it as the best place to express themselves; to raise a family; to live a good life; and who dare to dream. A city, Margaret Mead wrote, "where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist...a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know." Portland is a great city because we have great people. And great people will continue to move here because we are special. My own story has been one of moving west, always west: from Germany to Paris, over the Pyrenees to Spain, Portugal, New York, stopping finally in Portland. It was not long before I knew that in Portland I had found a home. A home where you can make a difference and see it in your lifetime. (It's a good thing -- because the next move west I would have hit China; so instead, I am bringing a bit of China to Portland when we build the Chinese Classical Garden in Old Town/Chinatown.) James Baldwin wrote, "There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now." You and I have a phenomenal opportunity to once again shape the future of Portland. So in the end, the state of the city changes over time but some things never do -- the hard work, the challenge, the excitement, the fulfillment of participating meaningfully in the life of the community. For all that, I want to thank my colleagues on the City Council, government and business leaders, and my fellow citizens of Portland. And if you are ever asked why we do it, say this: Because quality of life is not just about the place we live; it is about the way we live; To advance the dignity and well-being of all our people; To create more community, more compassion, more peace; To create a city of hope, opportunity and accomplishment; To leave our children a city better and more beautiful than was given to us. Thank you |
