Portland City Council has waded through a number of topics this morning and afternoon, after its marathon session last night on the topic of renaming 39th Avenue for Cesar E. Chavez.
Mayor Sam Adams referred a proposal to give a 10-year tax break to a new housing complex back to his office Commissioner Nick Fish’s office. A handful of neighbors from North Portland had testified against the proposal mostly out of concern for the design of the four-story, mixed-use building.
Commissioner Randy Leonard ended up voting for a proposal [PDF] to divorce the city’s efforts to bring Major League Soccer to Portland from its attempts to find a new stadium location for Triple-A baseball, despite earlier threats to the contrary. Fish also voted for the resolution, even though he voted against the two-stadium deal back in March. Commissioner Dan Saltzman and Adams also voted “yes.” Commissioner Amanda Fritz was the loan dissenting vote in the 4-1 split. She said she still had concerns about the funding sources for the remodel at PGE Park “in these times.” Leonard, in explaining his change of heart, said Aug. 1 is the new deadline to find a site in Portland for the Portland Beavers minor-league baseball team. “Then all bets are off,” Leonard said.
And, in a separate discussion about the impending layoffs at the Bureau of Development Services, Leonard said he is making an effort to find new city positions for some of the nearly 150 people losing their jobs due largely to the decline in revenue from building permits. The council approved a proposal to have all managers, including Leonard, take 10 furlough days — for a savings of about $116,000. Leonard said he would use savings from the his furloughs to pay for a new position in his office for someone who is losing his or her job at BDS. (Updated: Thursday 11:40 a.m.)
Fritz also introduced a resolution today to freeze merit pay raises for non-represented employees. But her resolution was tabled in a 3-2 vote. Saltzman joined Fritz in supporting the proposal, which was designed to pool money to prevent future layoffs among non-represented employees if the economy declines further. Leonard called Fritz’s idea “unfair on a a number of levels” in part because he thought it targeted female administrators. Fritz, for her part, said she was disappointed in the council’s unwillingness to plan ahead.
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Tags: Amanda Fritz, Bureau of Development Services, Dan Saltzman, Major League Soccer, Nick Fish, portland beavers, Portland City Council, portland timbers, Randy Leonard, Sam Adams
Watched the Timbers ARMY present to Council yesterday, Channel 30.
Unbelievable…THEY WANT IT DONE AND THEY WANT IT DONE NOW! They appear to believe that the city of Roses belongs solely to them…City Council must do their bidding. They are running out of patience, obviously with have bigger and better plans on the summer date book than spending the next two months in front of their computer screens fighting and working their game on every blog site in town. These boys are wired to get their way! At all costs.
Watching Amanda Fritz not be cowed by them, and stand her ground for the city, further earned her a growing respect in my mind.
They so have Leonard by the tail, and Sam…….please, I’ll bet he owes the TA so many favors for still being the guy sitting in the middle chair. Dan and Fish fortunately have the 15 million hole left to patch, and they appear to stand strong on not allowing it on Portland’s side of the ledger.
In the meantime……I can’t help but wonder if when the Timbers Barmy
all meet up (off line), do they click their heels together, and give JW some kind of raised arm salute?
annie –
How do you feel about Oregon’s vote by mail?
Oh little Obi…..you must get out more……seriously. There is life beyond following behind JW.
Oh little annie – you know nothing about me. And this isn’t really about me, it’s obviously all about you.
Do you have any friends?
Hi annie, you sure do seem to have a lot of time on your hands. I can’t read a thread in this town without seeing your OUTRAGE splashed through the comments. Have you considered taking up knitting?
Or possibly channeling all of that passion into an outlet like, say, the Timbers Army? We’d even teach you our super secret raised arm salute.
JW…….if it helps you sleep better at night believing I’m the only one in town seeing the TA in a less than flattering light, go ahead. However, other than reading other sites, this is the only place I post. Honest.
BTW, left a longer message to you below under Nevets.
As a neutral in this debate, I want to thank annie for her calm, rational comment. It helps illustrate for me just how vulgar and uncouth the Timbers Army really is.
Annie, I invite you to our BBQ on Sunday. Free food and cool people to hang out with. You will change your mind that day.
I know it’s hard to imagine…but so very not interested. Thanks though. I like soccer. It’s what the TA has morphed into, I have no interest in.
Knitters Unite.
Hum..JW says, “Hi Annie, you sure do seem to have a lot of time on your hands.” But then JW admits to the same, “I can’t read a thread in this town without seeing your OUTRAGE splashed through the comments.”
Strange.
Why Steven, what took you so long? It would appear that it must take you hours to write a post, from that comment. You do read the “papers”, oui? Then what????? Mull about what to say after you’ve passed it around your team of budskies and wait to get approval back, and by then hours have passed. Yay peer group approval/pressure. Fortunately this country was built from a quicker reflex.
Your apparent lack of understanding that my it isn’t exactly writing a book to post a comment, that some of you jump on continuously bore us with, leads me to believe you must sit on your crap feed FOREVER, before you have enough content to sally forth at the speed of a snail.
Sorry pup, but one can actually read and respond in less time than it takes YOU to quaff 1/2 a can of brewski.
My suggestion to you and Finnegan and Blackedout and Gingerdad, Bradley, ziggy and all your can’t make a move without one another team, is to widen your interests beyond your TA addiction, so that you can actually breath/read/ type an opinion all in one motion, and not take as you seem to understand….. a full on day and night.
Also….it would help the content of your ONE FOR ALL AND ONE FOR ALL types, that do nothing but loop the flat tire remarks and attempts at insult and intimidation if you simply got out more. A little soccer fan rehab might do you all some good.
Annie you’re doing good things on these blogs, please don’t get discouraged by the naysayers and the bullies. Just keep posting your calm, reasoned thoughts. And be strong.
merci.
you go girl.
Sorry Nevets, I’m taking a late lunch and was responding to your post without reading it may have been directed to JW, and not necessarly me. Well so much for my zooming through posts and responding. Good lesson.
You’d have to understand though….I get an amazing amount of hate mail on this site…as in a m a z i n g. Started back in Feb. on the Sam Adams stories. Never expected in that happened, but it is a curious off shoot. My sincere apologies if you weren’t out to get me.
If by chance you were……..join the crowd…..
annie- you don’t receive “mail”. You receive comments refuting your blather. That does not qualify as “mail”. You aren’t important enough to receive “mail” at the Willamette Week.
Well la dee da, Mr Dirtyblack Underpants…I should think you would have more important things to deal with, other than attempting to do whatever it is that you are attempting to do, informing me on the differences between mail and comments? Though I do appreciate the lesson, you might work on your delivery.
Don’t you have a little thing like roll away bleachers on your horizon, you need to get into therapy for learning how to deal with? Get your fingers walking into the Yellow Pages, pronto Mister! You might find what you are looking for, under “Bleacher Therapy”.
Ah, but she’s important enough to creep into that coconut on your cadaver and under your scaley skin ain’t she. nice.
I’m not too worried about “bleacher therapy” as you call it. Since you didn’t watch the vote yesterday I’ll summarize what happened. They told Nick Fish that they’ve already looked into those and its not feasible since the left/center field wall is a restraining wall that holds up 2 MAX tracks and the street. They can’t alter it or the street will crumble into the stadium while a train is up there. Nick Fish went, “oh that makes total sense”. Then he voted to decouple the projects and we won.
Maybe you should look into getting some season tickets for the permanent bleachers being installed on the east wall.
I take my soccer from a suite, sweets.
Yes, I think I know what you are referring to in yesterday’s presentation from the gent who spoke to the Council on Paulson’s behalf. BTW, you TA’s could take a lesson in charm from him. You good old boys have turned into mean greenies…
What has happened since Portland hosted the Women World’s Cup in 2003, when portable bleachers worked quite well? Did the stadium suffer a seismic seizure, and what was once possible, now not a fit? WHY? PBs have even been improved since then.
Others keep posting this solution on the WW, and elsewhere with no feedback, or reasons why PBs won’t work. Does it just come down to that “atmosphere” thing you hit us with awhile back? STYLE?
A nice idea…but those bleachers for the Women’s World Cup took 3 or 4 days to put up and 3 or 4 days to take down with a full work crew. Essentially they assembled permanent bleachers and then disassembled them. They weren’t “portable” bleachers.
You can do that on a special occasion for a huge event like the World Cup but not regularly…like when you draw 20K a game one night for a MLS game and have to have a 5K baseball game the next night and then have another 20K for a MLS game. Doesn’t work.
Thanks and try again annie. Your logic is fun to figure out.
It’s my understanding PBs are now state of the art, and that portable stadium bleachers are less cumbersome to put up and take down than they were in ‘03. Also, it’s misleading to allude to the idea that 20k worth of seating would need to be picked up with PBs. Your figure doesn’t take in the built in seating. How many home soccer games are scheduled for 2011? 15?
annie,
What is different now is that you want baseball to play in that stadium a few days after soccer. What was different then was that baseball season had ENDED in 2003 and they had enough time to not only put in bleachers, but lay down natural grass for a proper soccer pitch.
There’s no way to even come close to that type of configuration if baseball season is in session. Portland has been considered for international matches during the summer months several times since 2001 and been turned away because we could not properly configure the stadium during baseball season. The only times we’ve had such matches is outside of baseball season. Plus it’s very, very expensive to do it that way.
I can imagine that it would be very expensive, but the $42 million put on the table for Lents to sacrifice, was a pretty steep figure as well. So how expensive in comparison to $42 million and a butchered park?
Not only were you begging them for money, but you would have also had them gut, their fine and well used park; which I don’t care how many times Henry, Gingerdad and Blackedout, etc. try to spin it…in reality, it is a sweet historical park. Anyone still questioning that fact just needs to drive there and see for themselves.
So in comparison to $42 million, how expensive is it to hire teams of workers to make PBs happen at PGE? You say you need seating for 20,000, but doesn’t piggie already have seating for over 19,000? So how many portable bleachers are we talking about?
If it is impossible. It’s impossible. There are others who know. Unfortunately, because of the way you and the Timbers Barmy have presented your case here with outright lies (about Lents), and other dishonorable tactics you use to spin information, you have proved yourselves untrustworthy. As well as Paulson’s company (though they be the charmers).
Their lovely manner of all attempts to schmooz Lents out of $42 million and their park, in large part with a rigged poll (omitting the $42,000,000. price tag in the poll and Lents was expected to pay out of pocket), leaves them in a position to unfortunately be seen as charming snake oil salesmen.
Because of the dishonesty and low brow tactics of the Timbers Barmy and those who more smoothly represent Paulson…it is the unfortunate state of affairs that you all have collectively helped to ruin your rep. in many circles, and you can post here all day and all night, but it will take someone other than any of you or anyone you hire for brainwashing Portland (as was done with the Lents poll) of the fact that PBs will in no way work, to convince me and others of it.
Annie 1 – Timbers Army 0
Go girl.
Wow.
Lents is off the table. The rest of us are moving on. I hope Lents figures out what to do with their neighborhood.
The plan is to add about 8000 new seats in the area that is currently the outfield. Plus an expanded concourse on the east wall and restrooms and concessions for this 8000. The remodel will then remove about 5000 seats from the existing 20000 to then expand the concourse and restrooms on the North and West ends. It’s less about the total capacity as it is about the configuration of the stadium.
Given this goal of 8000 seats plus infrastructure on the east end I look forward to your ideas of how to accomplish that without making professional baseball play in a space the size of a softball field.
Moving on from Lents, with valuable lessons learned from the team who would have gutted them, and sent them a monster bill for the favor.
About the stadium. Math was never my strong suit, but if you’re ripping out 5,000 old seats to put in 8,000 new ones, don’t you just add 3,000 in the end?
8000-5000=3000
Also, the seating figure repeatedly being stated as needed, is 20,000, which from your post above is already in effect, so I’m not getting why you need to do the remodel, and put the Beavers out on the street, if piggie already has the 20,000 needed seats.
Unless it simply just comes back around to what looks best in the eyes of a television camera, looking west to east, for broadcasts on cable…..and you would do that to the Beavers, just for a few ” All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up” moments, each season?
It’s a net gain of 3000 seats. But it’s construction of 8000 new seat locations in the east. Or you could consider it a relocation of 5000 seats from West to East, but regarldess they’re new seat locations taking up a LOT of space.
I’m not sure where you’re getting your stadium numbers, but the ones discussed on Wednesday, June 24 are for at least 23000 seats which gives PSU football the opportunity to advance to Division 1 status in the future. This would be considered GOOD for PSU.
Your math is fine, but you might want to take geometry again.
I think I’ve got the geometry of the situation ok. Angles right?
Obtuse angles.
So you’re the mathematician looking for a tutoring job on all obtuse angles. Word on the streets, was you had certainly hit town with your bag of instruction tools.
annie
I can’t respond to that. I have no clue what you’re attmepting to say. Can you go back to the ultra-emotional, hysterical, incoherent rambling instead?
Of course you don’t. No one expected that you would, and that’s ok, little O-B.
A growing number of us get the reason your childhood dreams for playing soccer in the big leagues, ended at the same point JW’s did (takes more than sleeping on big boy soccer sheets to make the team. Right?).
However, for those of you who angrily live vicariously (have your Mom look that word up) through the sport being played on the field…where the actual athletes are performing, and not you bleacher warriors crying about PBs (and the game you attempt on the blog sites, whoo hoo)….rumor has it…. the Timbers Barmy have something on radio you can dial into that is way more your speed. Tried listening, but fell asleep.
Hope whatever tricks you have up your sleeve for entertaining the tube troops with that West/East camera angle thing in the remodel plans, are more worthy of your efforts to rip into the piggie, than TA radio time, but what would I know….I’m not the one still sleeping in soccer jammies.
annie
You are seriously unstable.
Awwww shucks!
I love secret arm salutes. I love annie too.
Oh Mr. B-O, so you really do LOVE me… well, you certainly have an interesting way of showing it…never the less, birds are tweeting in my world again and I think I’ll go plug in the sound track to Disney’s Animated Sleeping Beauty…nothing can bring me down now.
“If you walk backwards, you’ll find out that you can go forwards and people won’t know if you’re coming or going.”
JW
Godwin’s Law reached on the first post?
Does that break the internets?
Whatever it is, the TA are big into lockstep, and jump when their leader and his boys on the side call them to duty. I’ll give the TAs this, they have organization and smooth control of their fan base down.
Wonder how much Paulson has grown to resent them.
It may not break the internets, but it’s awfully poor form. I expect much better from a veteran roustabout such as annie.
In closing…
Annie: “was responding to your post without reading it”
Annie, an artist is someone with the gift to light up a dark room.
annie is an artist!
[...] less than the $1.17 million tax abatement the city planned to give the developer, Mayor Sam Adams asked Commissioner Nick Fish to study the issue further. Fish leads the housing [...]