Mayor Sam Adams makes yet another disingenuous invitation for public participation in the governance of Portland.
In January 2009 mayor Adams invited hundreds of citizens to city hall to contribute items to the city's lobbyists' agenda. Not a single new suggestion was ever included.
The due process fiasco of the John Ball school site and Adams' back room treachery stands as the premier example of the irrelevance of citizen input when it conflicts with city hall's personal political agendas.
The Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area Advisory Committee, The Portsmouth Residents Action Committee and the North Portland Business Association asked mayor Adams to agree to the requests made by the ICRUAAC to stop new funding for Public Housing in the overloaded Portsmouth neighborhood and set a cap of 15% public housing clients in all ICRUAAC neighborhoods. Adams not only denied he ignored the well reasoned, justified request.
Sam Adams, who used to agree that you can't make good public policy without good public data and twice sought Public Housing Statistical Data from the Housing Authority of Portland as a city commissioner, albeit unsuccessfully and inexplicably without challenge (presumably based on his fear of the "Public Housing Mafia"), has morphed into some unrecognizable political creature that now deliberately blocks all attempts by taxpayers and candidates for public office to rightfully, legitimately and legally acquire Public Housing Statistical Data.
Without Public Housing Statistical Data "Portland Plan" Efforts Are A Fraud
Unless and until mayor Sam Adams instructs the Housing Authority of Portland and the Bureau of Housing, over which he has total control, to release authentic, accurate, complete and timely Public Housing Statistical Data the citizens of Portland will be without the resources necessary to discuss and debate how the annual expenditure of $200,000,000 on Public Housing in Multnomah county figures into their ideas for Portland's future.
As a recent officially recognized candidate for appointment to the N/NE Senate seat I asked mayor Adams for Public Housing Statistical Data. He refused.
For the next six months as a declared candidate for the North Portland House seat in the May 2010 Democratic primary I will be discussing the rights of taxpayers and voters, especially those in North Portland, to have access to authentic, accurate, complete and timely Public Housing Statistical Data to help them make an informed choice between:
1 - A candidate, Richard Ellmyer, who supports Equitable Distribution of Public Housing
AND
2 - A candidate, Tina Kotek, who supports Sam Adams' Public Housing Statistical Data COVERUP and a public policy of UNLIMITED neighborhood concentration of Public Housing.