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On the day Portland park rangers, police officers and social service providers are carrying out Mayor Charlie Hales' orders to sweep the homeless from the Springwater Corridor, Hales is out of town—moving his sailboat, a spokesman says.
It's one detail absent, as far as we can tell, from the extensive press coverage of the massive displacement of a homeless encampment that once hosted as many as 500 people.
Hales has made combating homelessness and easing the plight of Portland's homeless population a key theme of his last days in office—so much so that one might expect he'd be highly invested in making sure city officials manage the sweep well. (KGW Channel 8 did report that Hales is on vacation.)
The detail of Hales' location plays into of a pattern of inattentive management that fueled the critics who blocked Hales from seeking re-election.
Hales in 2002 famously declared it a "sin" to be inside in Portland in August. His calendar for August 2016 shows him out of the office for 13 out of 23 workdays, including for his daughter's wedding.
Former Commissioner Randy Leonard, who sparred with Hales as president of the firefighters union when Hales was a city commissioner, called Hales' absence at the start of the sweep "predictable."
"I certainly would have been there," he says. "I'm absolutely confident Sam [Adams] would have been there."
Hales, his office says, is moving his boat to California and couldn't rearrange his schedule. "Moving the trip dates, or the Springwater start date, would have been very difficult with the amount of planning that went into both," writes spokesman Brian Worley in an email. "If the mayor had moved the planned coordinated cleanup solely based on his trip, that would be an incredibly irresponsible use of city resources. With the amount of coordinated planning prior to the mayor's trip, the mayor's actual physical presence for the cleanup is unnecessary for the work to proceed."
In case you're curious, Hales and his wife, Nancy, own the Elizabeth, a 44-foot Kelly Peterson sailboat built in 1977—one of only 200 ever made. It has a salon, a galley, two berths and two heads, both flushable like a typical toilet, according to a previous description by the first lady.
Willamette Week