Willamette Week| News| Politics

Is the City of Portland, renowned for its urban planning, about to make orphans of its top planners?

That's the concern raised by Blueprint 2000, a plan to consolidate the bureaus of buildings and planning under the direction of Margaret Mahoney, a veteran city administrator who is not a planner.

Currently, the two bureaus are separate and perform different tasks. Planners plan everything from the distance that houses should be set back from sidewalks to the layout of parks, schools and streets in new neighborhoods. Building inspectors make sure structures won't fall or burn because of faulty construction or wiring.

The goal of Blueprint 2000 is to make development review and permitting more efficient by merging the two city bureaus. But a number of parties--including planners, architects and citizen activists--fear that long-range planning will be neglected in the new structure.

Last week, members of the American Institute of Architects, the City Club and the League of Women Voters met with City Commissioner Charlie Hales to air their questions. Others may be drawn into the emerging coalition. Mary Kyle McCurdy, staff attorney at 1000 Friends of Oregon, says she was recently talking about joining a group that might be called "Friends of Planners."

Peter Fry, a planner and consultant for the Central Eastside Industrial Council, is more outspoken than most. "All over the country, planners are being turned into permit processors," says Fry. "It's a violation of planning ethics. We become planners to create new futures, not push papers."

No one objects to streamlining the permitting process, a maze-like system that was criticized by city auditors last year. "The current system is seven bureaus reporting to four different commissioners, who each have a little piece of planning," says Hales, supervisor of the planning bureau.

But there is mounting concern that Portland's reputation for visionary planning is diminishing. In addition to Blueprint 2000, skeptics point out that the city has not even started a search for a new planning director to replace David Knowles, who announced in October that he will resign in May. "The concern we have is that long-range planning seems to be all but nonexistent," says George Crandall, a member of the local chapter of American Institute of Architects.

If nothing else, many see this as an opportune time to clarify the future of long-range planning in the city. Currently, approximately 30 city employees work in long-range planning, which means they craft policies that guide and shape the city's growth, determining where new development will go and what it will look like.

The concern is that Blueprint 2000, with its emphasis on speedy permits, moves long-term planning from the driver's seat to the back of the bus. Then it will be developers--not the public--who will be steering new projects.

"If long-range planning must fight for ever more dwindling resources in an environment which is directed toward regulation rather than planning, the city will lose a major piece of the wonderful mosaic that has made Portland special," says Ernie Bonner, former city planning director.

Commissioner Gretchen Kafoury has been trying to merge the bureaus of buildings and planning since 1992. Kafoury understands some of the anxiety but dismisses much of it as a cultural difference between the elite planners and more blue-collar inspectors and technicians who work in the bureau of buildings.

"In my opinion, it's a class thing," says Kafoury. "Some planners think they're of a different level of intelligence than the technicians who do building permits and electrical inspections. I don't think it's a legitimate issues. Planning is not some mystical science."

Kafoury also holds Mahoney in high regard. "She's very, very competent. Next to Felicia Trader (director of the Portland Development Commission) she's probably the best administrator and manager we have," says Kafoury.

Hales attributes most of the anxiety to fear of change. "Machiavelli said, 'Nothing is more dangerous than the creation of a new system because the initiator has the enmity of all those who benefit from the status quo and only lukewarm approval of those who will benefit from the change,'" says Hales.

But, he stresses, "Portland loves planning, and that's not going to change."

Blueprint 2000 is slated to go before the City Council next month for review. "If the two bureaus are going to be combined," says Knowles, "the City Council must clearly charge the new organization with a mission to advance the livability of the city and make planning a priority and not an afterthought."

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Willamette Week | originally published December 22, 1998