Bridge Meadows Corporation Board (Including Elected Judge Alicia Fuchs) - Land Use Vigilantes
The Bridge Meadows Corporation was forced to admit on May 11th before Ian Simpson, the hearings officer, that it had taken down the sign on the John Ball School site inviting the public to attend a meeting intended to explain and discuss the meaning and process of the conditional use hearing on May 11th. What does this bizarre behavior say about the character, morals and ethics of these do-gooder types from outside North Portland who would destroy a sign about a public meeting called to educate citizens about government procedures. Clearly they hoped to prevent neighborhood residents from participating in this community discussion lest the locals should get wise, organize and challenge their corporate NIMBY scheme. Quite shocking.
No action is too petty for these folks that disregard and defile the DUE PROCESS rights of local property owners, business owners and tax payers with sanctimonious impunity. This dirty misadventure began in 2006 with the Bridge Meadows Corporation gang joining commissioner Saltzman in deliberate, reckless, undemocratic abandonment of DUE PROCESS for their own private selfish agendas. Their motto, "our nobel, pure and holy ends justify any means necessary to win." Their strategy is founded in the Bush, Cheney, Rove doctrine of success at any cost. No price is too high in blood or public treasure and trampling of moral, legal and ethical impediments to low too to achieve their pet, personal and self-aggrandizing goals. DUE PROCESS can be tolerated until it interferes with their political plots.
Ian Simpson Can Derail Portland Public Schools Board Surplus Asset Policy
Hearings officer Ian Simpson can send a powerful signal to the Portland Public Schools Board if he allows a conditional use permit to be granted to the private Bridge Meadows Corporation (see testimony below). This decision would effectively end any pretense that selling so-called surplus PPS public property to the city of Portland would keep the public's property in public use - the intent of the legal obligation to offer such property to the city of Portland.
Candidates for the PPS board and PPS board members should be asked why they have not demanded that the city of Portland keep the John Ball School property in public use. They must also confirm that while serving Portland taxpayers on the PPS Board they will demand that the John Ball School site and all future offers of PPS surplus real property to the city of Portland MUST include a written commitment to go through due process and a commitment to continued public use.
Candidates for the PPS board and PPS board members should contact Rachael Hoy<rachael.hoy@ci.portland.or.us> of the Bureau of Development Services before 4:30 PM on Monday May 18th to express their concerns.
If you are a taxpayer in the Portland Public Schools district you may want to contact the candidates for the PPS board and PPS board members as well as Rachael Hoy<rachael.hoy@ci.portland.or.us> of the Bureau of Development Services before 4:30 PM on Monday May 18th and express your concerns about keeping public property in public use and not using the city of Portland as a backdoor giveaway of public resources to private corporations.
Scott Bailey - snwc@pacifier.com
Steve Buel - sbuel@comcast.net
Martin Gonzalez - mgonzalez@pps.k12.or.us
Pam Knowles - pamknowlesforgreatschools@gmail.com
Rita Moore - ritamoore1@yahoo.com
Trudy Sargent - tsargent@pps.k12.or.us
Ruth Adkins - radkins@pps.k12.or.us
Sonja Henning - shenning@pps.k12.or.us
Bobbie Regan - bobbie.regan@pps.k12.or.us
Dilafruz Williams - dilafruz.williams@pps.k12.or.us
David Wynde - david.wynde@pps.k12.or.us
Ian Simpson Can Unravel City/County Agreement And City's Credibility
Hearings officer Ian Simpson can send a powerful signal to Multnomah county if he allows a conditional use permit to be granted to the private Bridge Meadows Corporation. With his signature of approval Ian Simpson can declare worthless an intergovernmental agreement, known as Resolution A, that assigns authority and responsibility for foster care to Multnomah county. This was pointed out in the testimony of Amanda Fritz in October 2006 against the Bridge Meadows Corporation. Contracts that can be abridged for the convenience or whim of either party aren't worth the paper they're written on.
If you are a Multnomah county commissioner you may want to be on the record by sending a note of objection to Rachael Hoy<rachael.hoy@ci.portland.or.us> of the Bureau of Development Services before 4:30 PM on Monday May 18th. Otherwise the Multnomah county commissioners share in the dissolution of this legal agreement. The credibility of future agreements between Portland and Multnomah county, especially those involving urban renewal areas, will inevitably be connected to the public behavior of both parties on this issue.
If you are a taxpayer in Multnomah county you may want to contact the Multnomah county commissioners as well as Rachael Hoy<rachael.hoy@ci.portland.or.us> of the Bureau of Development Services before 4:30 PM on Monday May 18th and express your concerns about the value of government credibility .
Ted Wheeler - ted.wheeler@co.multnomah.or.us
Jeff Cogen - jeff.cogen@co.multnomah.or.us
Deborah Kafoury - district1@co.multnomah.or.us
Diane McKeel - district4@co.multnomah.or.us
Judy Shiprack - district3@co.multnomah.or.us
We would like to hear from lawyers directly involved in this matter, namely, Nick Fish<CommissionerFish@ci.portland.or.us>, Alicia Fuchs<alicia.fuchs@ojd.state.or.us> and Jeff Cogen<jeff.cogen@co.multnomah.or.us> regarding potential penalties on parties that arbitrarily and capriciously abrogate contracts.
Ian Simpson Must Confront Police Or Take Full Weight Of Public Safety On Himself
Hearings officer Ian Simpson will carry the full weight of every public safety incident that is attributable to the future Bridge Meadows residents if he grants a conditional use permit. Serious public safety issues that have been placed in testimony on the public table remain unanswered. The Portland Police Bureau's suggestion of planting low bushes and installing good lighting as a response to serious public safety concerns is a "cop out" of the highest order. Ian Simpson would be foolish to declare all public safety concerns have been addressed to his satisfaction without the Portland Police Bureau testimony regarding these serious public safety issues (see testimony below).
If you are a resident of Portsmouth, Kenton, St. Johns, University Park or Arbor Lodge you may want to contact Rachael Hoy<rachael.hoy@ci.portland.or.us> of the Bureau of Development Services before 4:30 PM on Monday May 18th and express your concerns about the serious public safety issues related to this project that have gone unaddressed.
Mayor Adams Can't Have It Both Ways
Commissioner Sam Adams spent his first hundred days in office visiting 100 businesses. Mayor Sam Adams spent his first day in office talking to business owners in North Portland asking how he could help them fill all those empty store fronts from Kenton to St. Johns. He heard often and loudly a well known business fact of life, you can't attract or sustain businesses to North Portland or anywhere without meeting a disposable income threshold in the area. So what does Mr. business friendly mayor Adams do? He ignores the North Portland Business Association's opposition to the Bridge Meadows scheme by flip-flopping, without explanation, his vote on the Bridge Meadows project which is not in the interests of the business community and the citizens of North Portland. He budgets taxpayer dollars for the Portsmouth Neighborhood Association which opposes every position taken by the NPBA with regard to public housing and the need for government programs that increase not decrease disposable income. Adams encourages with public funds the Portsmouth Neighborhood Association's support for the discredited and abhorrent policy of unlimited neighborhood concentration of public housing. Unlimited means it's fine with Adams if 100% of the Portsmouth and St. Johns and Kenton neighborhoods are completely filled with government public housing projects and not a private property or private business to be found. That's what UNLIMITED means. It is NOT a business friendly public policy.
Mayor Adams MUST use the power of his office to bring the disposition of the John Ball School property back to the city council where he MUST persuade his colleagues who also opposed it in October 2006 i.e., Randy Leonard and Amanda Fritz, to stand behind their still valid, unchanged and unchallenged arguments and vote away the shameful, disreputable behavior of Tom Potter, Erik Sten and Dan Saltzman. They MUST vote NO to the deceitful and characterless board of the Bridge Meadows Corporation and YES to DUE PROCESS and North Portland. Fairness demands that Portsmouth and the John Ball School site be treated with the same respect and the same rules granted to the Buckman neighborhood and the Washington/Monroe public school property.
Richard Ellmyer
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LU 09-104313 PD CU Hearing May 11, 2009 Testimony - Richard Ellmyer
A considerable amount of my testimony has already been submitted to the public record. It covers livability, public safety, the overburdening of public services, changing the desired character of an area and other individual and cumulative impacts upon the surrounding neighborhood. The concerns raised are of such quantify and magnitude that they cannot be resolved except in the political area before the Portland city council and therefore require the denial of a conditional use permit by the hearings officer.
The Portland Public Schools Board sold the John Ball School site under its legal obligation to offer the property to the city of Portland in order that it would remain in a public use. To grant a conditional use permit to the private Bridge Meadows Corporation for a private use is a powerful statement of rejection by the hearings officer of any understood current and future contractual obligation of the city of Portland to use public land offered by the Portland Public Schools Board for continued public use.
When Columbia Villa, Oregon’s largest public housing compound - which is one block away from the proposed Bridge Meadows corporation project - was about to shut down for renovation the two full time police officers assigned to keep public order there were dismissed. Crime statistics in the area immediately went up. During the demolition and construction of New Columbia crime statistics dramatically declined. Upon the opening of New Columbia, despite the assurances of the Housing Authority of Portland board and their boss, the mayor of Portland, that no Portland police presence was necessary, crime dramatically increased. Keeping the lid on criminal activity at New Columbia now requires three full time, uniformed, armed Portland police officers.
The statement by Portsmouth resident Patricia Kane relating to public safety concerns, which is supported by the 166+ NO votes of the Portsmouth Residents Action Committee and 58+ members of the North Portland Business Association and already part of the written public testimony, has been ignored by the Portland Police Bureau. To grant a conditional use permit to the private Bridge Meadows Corporation without the serious concerns expressed in the Kane statement being satisfactorily resolved places the burden of any and all future public safety issues related to the Bridge Meadows corporation project directly and unequivocally upon the hearings officer and not the Portland Police Bureau and applicant.
The Portsmouth neighborhood has the highest total number and second highest percentage of public housing clients of any neighborhood in Oregon. 78 percent of the dwindling student body at its high school, Roosevelt, are on free or reduced lunch, 35 percent didn't list a Social Security number, 560 have left to attend other high schools and as many as 140 students were classified as homeless.
The cumulative impact of the Bridge Meadows corporation project upon the Portsmouth neighborhood and the surrounding North Portland neighborhoods will be to add to the overload of public housing, increase social service stress, add more “at risk” students to overburdened schools, lower property values, prompt middle class parents to send their children out of the area to school or move for safety and educational reasons, prevent middle class families with children from moving into the area and decrease the level of disposable income in the area necessary to attract and sustain local businesses.
All of this is in dramatic contrast to the sale of the Washington/Monroe public school site which kept the property in pubic use and now enjoys a $600,000 federal grant to design a community center. Buckman gets due process and the prize. Portsmouth and North Portland get a disreputable back room political deal and the shaft.
The illegitimate disposition of the John Ball School property and the impossibility of satisfying the numerous legitimate concerns of the overwhelming number of property owners, business owners and residents of the Portsmouth neighborhood and North Portland weigh heavily upon the hearings officer to deny the conditional use permit and refer this issue back to the political area where, in October 2006, a majority of three current members of the Portland city council, Adams -Leonard and Fritz - testified against this project for many of the reasons mentioned above. Those arguments, which are my arguments and their arguments, remain valid, unchanged and unchallenged.