Water Torture
A brand-new $8 million computer system that was supposed
to drag the Water Bureau out of the dark ages is such a
mess that new sewer and water rates will be delayed until
mid-August.
The new rate structure, which slashes water rates by 9.5
percent and hikes sewer rates by 3 percent, was supposed
to take effect July 1. Residential and commercial customers
will receive no credit for the delay, says Mike Rosenberger,
the Water Bureau's director, who sent city commissioners
a June 27 memo describing "a computer programming problem"
in the new Severn Trent System, installed in February.
City Commissioner Dan Saltzman is livid. His Bureau of
Environmental Services handles both sewer and stormwater
services for the city, which are both billed through the
Water Bureau. "We're getting a memo three days before the
new rate structure takes effect?" says Saltzman, who plans
to ask pointed questions when the council considers the
computer problems July 5.
"There's not a thing on this piece of crap that works,"
says Drew Taylor, a Water Bureau customer service representative.
Taylor and other bureau employees say the new system is
so cumbersome that they leave customers on hold for as long
as 30 minutes. Worse still, they say, the system miscalculates
the amount due, leaving them with growing stacks of disputed
water and sewer bills.
So FUBAR is the system software, they say, that bureau
employees are calculating some large commercial customers'
bills by hand.
Commissioner Erik Sten, who oversees the Water Bureau,
was unavailable for comment. But in a June 19 memo to Rosenberger,
the commissioner made it clear that the problem needed to
be fixed; he asked for a report by July 1. As WW
went to press, Sten's staff was unable to say whether their
office had received such a report.
For his part, Rosenberger says he notified commissioners
of problems as soon as Severn Trent informed him that implementing
the new rates by July 1 was an impossible dream.
Rosenberger says Water Bureau staff are in the process
of "going through the contract with a fine-toothed comb"
to determine if the city can demand some of its money back.
--Philip Dawdy
Watchdog Independence
Day?
A group appointed by Mayor Vera Katz to revamp Portland's
police oversight board is about to dump a hot potato on
her lap.
Six weeks ago, in the wake of controversy over police handling
of the May Day protest, Katz named a work group to examine
the question: Should the city buy a Cadillac of a system,
called "independent review," that uses civilian sleuths
to probe alleged police wrongdoing? Or should we keep driving
the Hyundai we have now, with citizens reviewing completed
police investigations to ensure quality?
Katz had historically preferred the Hyundai. But she appointed
a committee in which 12 of 20 members clearly leaned toward
the Caddy.
On a tight schedule, the committee wasted no time in voting
for the independent-review model, leaving a minority to
complain that there has been little objective analysis of
Portland's current system. "They're ready to come up with
solutions," said Lisa Botsko, who formerly staffed the city's
police review board. "But they haven't even determined what
the problem is."
The work group will present specific proposals at a public
hearing at 6 pm Tuesday, July 11, in the Portland Building
auditorium, 1120 SW 5th Ave. A final recommendation to the
City Council is due Aug. 8.
--Nick Budnick
In a Silent
Way
Tom Mack didn't say a word June 28 as scores of police
brass and May Day marchers spelled out their conflicting
versions of the ill-starred event before Portland City Council.
The secretary-treasurer of the Portland Police Association
didn't need to.
In his 45-minute presentation, police chief Mark Kroeker
admitted to serious lapses in police management, planning,
communication and officer training, as well as instances
of excessive force (see "May Day Maneuvering," page 15).
Kroeker, in short, ate serious crow--and endorsed everything
Mack told both WW and The Oregonian soon after
May 1.
For his forthrightness, the chief is hailed in some quarters
as a healing force in the community.
For his forthrightness, Mack is fighting to keep
his job. (See "Cracks in the Thin Blue Line," WW,
May 17, 2000.)
That's because enough union members recently signed a petition
to force a recall election. The recall effort is pegged
to seven specific charges against Mack, but it's clearly
payback for his willingness to go public on May Day. (WW
has learned that last week Mack was cleared of one of those
charges--financial mismanagement--by the union's executive
board.)
When he spoke to WW in a May 5 interview, Mack was
careful to note that he was going public only because he
feared that officers featured in news footage and accused
of improper use of force might face severe discipline when
in fact, based upon what many officers told him, responsibility
for May Day's problems rested with training and police higher-ups.
He expressed similar sentiments to The Oregonian.
Mack, one of the few Portland cops to win the Medal of
Valor twice, has declined to comment on the recall or Kroeker's
report, and Mack's critics are similarly quiet about him.
But Patricia McCaig, the PPA's media consultant, advised
the union that booting Mack from office would raise public
questions about what the union was hiding.
Clearly, though, not everyone at the PPA thinks the public
has a right to know about problems at a key city bureau
even when their chief is being praised for discussing them
in front of the entire city.
Results will be tallied July 10.
--Philip Dawdy
Getting the
Run-Around-and-Round...
If Fred Hansen thought he'd quieted his critics, the roomful
of about 50 angry young women quickly taught him otherwise.
As promised, Sisters in Action for Power disrupted Tri-Met's
annual budget meeting June 28 despite a last-minute effort
to appease them.
The upstart activist group is advocating free bus rides
for all students during school hours, framing it as an issue
of equity for low-income and minority residents ("Free Ride,"
WW, June 28, 2000). They thought they had made a
deal with Hansen to present their proposal, but instead
the transit agency's GM proposed a program that gave free
bus passes only to students who qualified for free or reduced
lunches.
That didn't cut it with Terenie Faison, a 16-year-old Sisters
member, who said, "It's not a low-income issue. Everybody
needs to get to school. Some people are low-income but make
over the standards for reduced lunches." Faison said neither
she nor her brother qualify for subsidized meals, but both
have taken jobs to help their mother with the bills.
The young women were similarly unimpressed with Hansen's
vow to put together a special transportation-equity group,
headed by former state
Rep. Margaret Carter.
"We already started this as a community," Lakita Logan
told the board. "We don't need another organization. We
feel like it undermines the community work that we have
done for two years."
The discussion abruptly ended when Logan interrupted one
of the board members, saying she was tired of the excuses
and vowing to return.
To punctuate their point, the women then broke into their
version of the preschool classic, "The Wheels on the Bus
Go 'Round and 'Round," as they left en masse: "The students
on the bus say 'We'll be back.'"
--Walidah Imarisha
Night Cabbie
BY
Willie Milkis
MY CALL is a rarity in the cab world. I pick up a stripper
and take her to work at one of the big clubs on Columbia,
and she doesn't tip me. Strippers' tips range from good
to excellent, depending on how their night went, but they
always tip something. This girl is very young, skinny in
a methy way, and maybe all her money is being spent elsewhere.
Maybe she doesn't know that strippers, bartenders and cab
drivers all work in a tip-driven economy, and we all tip
each other well for karma's sake if nothing else. Maybe
she's sliding down a slippery slope and just doesn't care.
I'll never know, and don't care much either.
Murmurs
TATTOOING
THE BODY POLITIC
Keeping
His Fingers Crossed
* The puzzling absence of police brass at last week's
City Council hearing on the May Day Meltdown was no accident.
Top cops such as Chief Mark Kroeker and assistant chiefs
Lynnae Berg, Mark Paresi and Bruce Prunk were in the house,
but when traffic division Capt. Mike Bell, central precinct
Cmdr. Larry Findling and other command-level officers showed
up in City Hall's lobby, Mayor Vera Katz made it clear she
didn't want to see too many badges inside the demonstrator-packed
chambers. Representatives of the police union threatened
to stage a walkout unless the commanders were allowed in;
eventually Katz's police liaison, Elise Marshall,
arranged for the cops to watch the proceedings from the
third-floor gallery.
* Proponents of an independent police review board
are homing in on their target. Dave Mazza, chief petitioner
of the PAC 2000 campaign, says the group expects to turn
in 27,000 signatures on its July 7 deadline, setting the
stage for a high-stakes November showdown with the police
officers union.
* The Lord's music has taken on a new ring for S.P. Clarke,
co-founding member of Portland's righteous rockers, Jesus
Presley, who suffered a major heart attack last month.
Clarke is in stable condition, but docs say his damaged
pumper will only last two years at the most. So Presley
frontman Tony Hughes and the rest of his divine congregation
are planning a soulful pro-pulmonary shindig (scheduled
for July 25 at the Mount Tabor Theater) to raise funds for
the keyboardist's hospital bills and transplant costs (around
$200,000). For further information, call 539-4914 or 284-5931.
* It's not just the high-tech crowd from Silicon Forest
who have declared war on Bill Sizemore. At a high-level
meeting last week, lumber barons from Oregon's original,
Made-of-Trees Forest signed on to fight Sizemore and Don
McIntire's tax- and government-limiting ballot measures.
The move is a departure for Willamette Industries and gang,
who haven't ventured off the timber track before, and a
slap at the Sizemorons.
* One rap beaten, another to go: Local activist and Earth
Liberation Front spokesman Craig Rosebraugh was found
not guilty last week of disobeying police following an Oct.
15 protest. Videotape of the incident, which showed a police
officer breaking his arm, convinced Multnomah County Circuit
Court Judge William Keys that Rosebraugh had behaved peacefully.
Last month, the future looked bleak for Patrick Moore,
the Gresham cyber-entrepreneur who owns the domain name
OregonLottery.
com. Lottery officials wanted the site--the Oregon Lottery's
official website is at oregonlottery.org--and they unleashed
the AG's office, which threatened immediate legal action
unless Moore gave it up ("Eminent Domain," WW, May
10, 2000).
Now, Moore says, he's in the clear. According to a preliminary
ruling posted on the U.S. Trademark Office's website, the
Lottery is entitled to trademark rights for the words "Oregon
Lottery" only when the words appear on the Lottery's symbol,
which depicts crossed fingers.
The ruling appears to be a victory for Moore--and it means
he can continue to give the Lottery a finger of his own
by maintaining OregonLottery.com, a complaint site that
allows viewers to discuss the Lottery's shortcomings.
Lottery officials and the AG's office say, however, that
they aren't conceding anything. "We disagree with this interpretation,"
says Kristen Grainger, a spokeswoman for the AG's office,
adding that regardless of what federal authorities decide,
the Lottery may come after Moore under state law.
Moore figures actions speak louder than words. "They've
backed off and haven't bothered to pursue me at all," he
says.
--Nigel Jaquiss
|
