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Primary Conversations: Metro President
Rex Burkholder, Bob Stacey, and Tom Hughes are all running for the nonpartisan Metro Council president job and political junkies are calling this race one of the more interesting of the primary season. Metro is the only elected regional government in the country. The seven member council (six councilors and one council president) control a $425 million budget to put towards transportation and land use planning as well as services such as recycling, the zoo and some parks. The council serves 25 cities in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties. The current council president, David Bragdon, can't run again because his term limit is up. To date he hasn't endorsed any of the three vying to be his successor.
Metro is perhaps best known for managing the urban growth boundary and while urban and rural reserves have come up in the course of the campaign thus far, the focus has been more on transportation, specifically the Columbia River Crossing, and job creation.
Economic development is a bit of an unusual focus for a Metro election campaign and each candidate is challenged with drawing a clear connection between planning and jobs. That's just one reason this race is one to watch. If none of the candidates wins by more than 50 percent in the May primary, the two names with the most votes will be on the ballot in November.
What's the most important role Metro plays in your life? What questions do you have for Tom Hughes, Rex Burkholder and Bob Stacey? What are you looking for in the next Metro president?
GUESTS:
Tagged as: 2010 election · jobs · land use · metro
Photo credit: Mykl Roventine / Creative Commons
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There seems to be a disconnect between the urgent need to address the climate crisis and Metro's investment decisions.
Recently Councilor Burkholder voted for Metro's transportation plan that will increase global warming pollution by 49%.
What legacy are we leaving our children if Metro just continues to fund highways-heavy transportation plans that increase pollution?
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Columbia River Crossing staff recently released information showing that a 10 or 12 lane bridge across the Columbia would accomodate enough new vehicle volume to create back-ups from the I-5/I-405 split in Portland to Marine Drive during the morning peak on average weekdays.
Does it make sense to spend $3 billion to move the bottleneck three miles south of the bridge, or should we consider other options?
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And why has this not been clearly addressed by the "Columbia Crossing"
advocates??????
Thousands of us live downstream from this big new fast bridge.
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You introduced the program with the words "Metro does all the land use planning for Washington, Multnomah, and Clackamas Counties..." In fact, those local jurisdictions do their own land use planning (with or without meaningful citizen input); Metro only provides the land use framework/land supply for the local planning to take place.
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Point taken. Thanks for the careful ears.
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Yes, there are people who object to sprawl; especially when driving around the east side of Portland and seeing the multitude of desolate spaces, empty storefronts, abandoned spaces and ramshackle homes. There are a lot of people who get upset when acres of farmland are being crammed full of homes, and communities are burdened with more traffic and the schools are bulging, when inner-city spaces can just as easily be turned into modern residential and commercial use where they already have the infrastructure to deal with the influx of people.
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@Rex,
You continue to support a large, expensive plan for the I-5 bridge, and renewed that support with a blog post last week.
In that post, you said this bridge will reduce congestion, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and provide new options compared to doing nothing.
Should Metro region residents really be forced to choose between a widely panned and unfunded bridge project and doing nothing at all? Please explain this false choice and any other alternatives you see as worth discussing.
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HB 2001 requires the region to reduce transportation related carbon emissions to 90% of 1990 levels. How will you make decisions about sharing the burden and opportunities across the region?
Are there other actions you will take to address our region's carbon emissions in other sectors such as manufacturing, energy consumption and freight?
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The CRC needs to be a complete solution not just a new bridge. Pollution and gridlock aspects of the CRC have not been adequately addressed. A toll that stops traffic is inefficient and stupid.
Do residents of Portland and Vancouver need more jobs to facilitate the full use of the CRC? Chicken-egg excuse ensues. Businesses will complain that gridlock makes delivering goods to consumers expensive. Those expenses, and taxes to improve infrastructure, will prevent businesses from hiring employees.
I don't buy Metro's vision that we'll have pretty farm land and nice rural urban areas when the central urban area is sacrificed to pollution and gridlock. I live close to I-5 and don't look forward to the type of congestion that chronically plagues Seattle.
Is the CRC being used as a clever political and business wedge to make it easier for Oregon and Washington to justify widening I-5 adjacent to the bridge? Think of all the jobs (gridlock and pollution) that widening I-5 in Portland and Vancouver will create?
In the 1960s there used to be commuter trolley tracks running along MLK (Martin Luther King Boulevard). Now commuter trains return to Portland. If one lives long enough they'll likely have an opportunity to see past ideas regurgitated. Why were train tracks removed from MLK in the first place?
We increase traffic complexity by adding commuter trains to already crowded streets which serve trucks, cars, bikes and pedestrians languishing in cross walks.
I personally enjoy the gridlock created when a single pedestrian shuffles (slowly) along a crosswalk and stops 20-40 vehicles for nearly a minute. Brilliant!
With Portland's growing sewer-boring expertise, I'm surprised we're not putting more infrastructure underground. Subways? CRC running under the Columbia River instead of above it? Why aren't these solutions on the drawing board for discussion?
With complexity and sprawl comes the huge expense of attempting to expand and maintain it all sufficiently.
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I lived in Dallas most of my life. Trust me - don't be seduced by sprawl. It puts burdensome loading on all infrastructure resources. Try to find a nice capital intensive business to lure to the area. Design community college programs to support their staffing needs. I've lived here for the last 5 years because I can't take the sprawl in Dallas, all the freeways, all the cars. Be patient, be gentle.
Hal in Eugene
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Great show! It's helped me to decide who to vote for -- and NOT vote for. Tom Hughes would be a BIG MISTAKE! Do not vote for him. He will undo and ignore the most important development principles that we have worked so hard to implement.
KEEP HIM OUT!
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As a resident/homeowner in Hillsboro for 15 years, I have to say that I do not think that Tom Hughes guided the city in a direction that was beneficial for the quality of life for people in Hillsboro. Yes, there was lots of development and jobs added. I, and many people who live here, were dismayed by the way that houses were allowed to be built, with no apparent regard for saving natural spaces, parks, safe bike lanes and access by walking to local businesses. It is a city where, in most areas, one has to drive everywhere. It was a crazy quilt of development and when local residents showed up at building dept hearings to object to these awful developments, it was obvious that the city wanted the fees and was going to subber stamp the development, regardless of what the community wanted. Tom Hughes primary priority seems to be support of construction over maintaining quality of life, corporate over the living people.
I have lived in a community that knew how to truly create and implement a master plan - Irvine, California. Within many of its reisdential developments, children and families had parks, libraries, walking paths, complete daily shopping centers, and schools - all designed so that children could get to all of these without ever crossing a street. There were little "villages" like this through out the city.
So it has been very disheartening to see what happened to HIllsboro, versus what could have been done, under the guidance of Tom Hughes.
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I would like to ask all the candidates if they would help to bring more high-tech jobs to the east side of Portland and Gresham areas. Right now many of the high-tech jobs are concentrated in Beaverton-Hillsboro and in the Wilsonville area. The east side has no comparable locus for high-tech.
I worry especially that if Tom Hughes were Metro president he would continue to push job growth in the Hillsboro area and continue to neglect the east side.
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Why does no one address the elephant in the room? Why does no one mention the huge gridlock already in place at the Rose Garden and the intersection with I-84? How can you add more lanes and more traffic and not do something about the huge logjam 3-5 miles south of the bridge?
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Comments are now closed.
Question for Bob Stacey.
Bob, Under SB 1011 we were given the ability to designate Urban Reserves (first priority for future boundary expansions) on foundational farm land when on balance it is needed for the urban economy. You are on record of opposing the minor amount of Urban Reserves designated in Washington County that are on foundational farm land even though Cornelius, the County and even Metro feel they need this for employment over the next 50 years. Why are you stuck on applying the old rule of always protecting farm land when determining where boundary expansions occur when clearly it lead to bad decisions (like Damascus) and didn't work?