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WINNERS
1. What state are we in--Florida? Local college
football fans enjoyed an embarrassment of riches over
the weekend as Portland State, Oregon State and the U of
O all beat nationally ranked opponents.
2. When Mayor Vera Katz was accused of lacking
vision two years ago, she sprang the idea of capping I-405
with a concrete lid, to widespread smirking in the press.
Now Katz's proposal, which would spend $10 million to cover
the gap between Alder and Taylor, is getting serious backing,
while Vera hints that she may seek reparations from the
feds for building the freeway in the first place.
3. Portland's homeless people got
a big win last week when Judge Stephen Gallagher ruled that
the city's anti-camping ordinance is unconstitutional and
punishes people for being poor. The city had argued people
are free to be homeless as long as they just keep on
moving--but Gallagher wrote "the court is not impressed
with the city's argument."
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LOSERS
1. Dial 503 for Hassle: Northern Oregon residents
awoke Sunday to a whiff of Y2K in the air--namely, the Qwest
telephone system that forced all telephone users to undo
eons of seven-digit local dialing and reprogram their phones,
computers and brains to add those three magic digits.
2. Belmont merchants got hosed by the city's Department
of Transportation, which sprinkled no-parking signs through
the business district and then didn't show up for work for
three days. Happily, the merchants' complaints yielded a
mea culpa from PDOT and a change in the city's policy on
temporary no-parking zones.
3. The Port of Portland and several other
river ports suffered their second major setback in the effort
to deepen the Columbia when both Oregon and Washington refused
to grant the Army Corps of Engineers dredging permits.
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