Portland, Oregon has a budget deficit which will make it harder to address these problems.
Years of neglect has left Portland roads, buildings, parks facilities, water systems, technology and other types of infrastructure deteriorating at an unsafe — and expensive — pace. The city owns nearly $75 billion in these types of structures and equipment, and much of it was built over 50 years ago. According to a city audit released Wednesday, most of the city’s infrastructure is “near or beyond the end of its useful life.” And it would cost the city more than $1 billion per year to make needed repairs…
The audit, which is only the latest in a years-long string of city reports raising alarm about its crumbling infrastructure, says continued neglect could lead to lawsuits against the city, environmental harm, and even larger repair costs in the future.
The cost has already ticked upward. According to city data, repairing aging infrastructure was estimated to cost the city about $300 million a decade ago. Left unaddressed, that bill rose to $500 million by 2019. And the latest estimate from 2023 puts the cost at $1.4 billion.
Civil engineers keep telling us this is a problem across the US. Biden’s infrastructure program was a step in the right direction. Interstate highway system may be the best maintained we have through fuel taxes.
Most other fed systems are antiquated. We hear of problems and old equipment in air traffic control and the IRS. Probably the tip of the iceberg. Covid data submitted by fax.
Local govts usually do this with bond issues when they can get voters to approve. Maybe that is the plan in Portland.
Sewers and water are in major need many places. Out of sight, out of mind.
Dad in his last few years told me that it was the Great Depression WWII generation that understood infrastructural spending as essential (“If the firing pin in your howitzer breaks at the crux time, and you do not have a god d—n replacement close by, you and your idiot led Company gonna f—king DIE, and so if you wanna live you learn to take good care of stuff.”)
Dad bought superb tools, took care of them, and my brother and I still have and use them with loving care. Real Estate agents in 1980’s Los Angeles warned each other about me at open houses “There’s that horrible man who crawls under the house and finds bad joints in the sewer pipes”. You betcha.
The USA is going to start obnoxiously falling apart, but taxes will be cut because “Guvmint wasting my money.”
Portland’s new city leaders, already preparing to make deep funding cuts to balance this year’s budget, have few options to address the immense maintenance backlog…
*What’s still missing in the conversation is how to pay for all of this. A previous city facilities report, referenced in this week’s audit, estimated it costing the city around $10 billion to keep these assets maintained over the next decade. *
Clark suggested placing a general obligation bond, which would raise property taxes, on a ballot in the coming years to fund maintenance. Clark said she’s certain there’s no appetite for a new local tax (an instinct supported by recent polling), but hopes that attitudes will change in the near future, once Portlanders start seeing improvements to homelessness and public safety concerns. “We have to show that we’re gonna turn the city around first,” she said.
My family arrived and homesteaded in what is now Portland in 1843, and my bones are bonded to Portland. In the late 90’s Portland’s political leadership started getting lazy and greedy. The piper must be paid.
I agree with Bob’s and Ms. Clark’s attitude on these issues as far as I can make them out. And, more universally, homelessness in the USA occurs on a spectrum from the practiced “homelessness” of many people of all ages and races and backgrounds who are expertly gaming charitable institutions and instincts, through to truly desperate people who get overlooked and ever more lost (housing costs!!!, lack of Public Health in a rational organized form!!!) while ne’er do wells push ahead in soup kitchen queues. We need some massive governmental and social reorganization.
The no crime for drug use was a means to address the fact the people of color are disproportionately arrested for drug crimes. Turns out a lot of white folks be drug crimin’, too.
It would be cheaper and more effective to address the White Supremacist culture of the police force. What are the odds that you’ll be able to program “the culture” into the Chinese police robots once they’re available? {{ LOL }}
The hope was that non-criminal possession would result in more seeking treatment. That did not happen. It became a haven for drug user and attracted addicts from across the country.
Another liberal idea in very blue Oregon. But more wishful thinking than results.
I’m delighted to hear there are still families that trace their heritage to arrival on the Oregon Trail. (I’m a UO graduate from 1975.)
The Oregon Trail descendants have true western values. That especially means self reliance. Family and friends take care of any problems. Outside help not required.
I suspect today that is less than 10% of population of Oregon. When I was there far more were flooding in from California. “Don’t Californicate Oregon!!”
I would not classify California as traditional western. Far more into styles and image. Lots of real estate millionaires (or children of) leaving for other western states.
California could have its own civil war between liberals and conservatives but at the moment liberals seem to be winning.
Exactly, but that crux self-reliant virtue was too often distorted into propaganda against the other crucial pioneer virtue of conscienscious community building.
Great grandmother “Birdy” was born in Oregon City in about 1854 and lived into the late 1950s, still telling me and sibs amazing stories. An extraordinary one was of how a vanishing band of the Lower Chinook peoples (smallpox and other diseases had devastated them for the previous century) had invited her oldest sister Katy to live with them and learn “the medicine ways of this place” before they all died off and the knowledge was lost. Katy became the first local midwife and pharmacist, compounding herbs. She passed her knowledge on down to my Grandma Ruth. It was through a tough mixture of self-reliance and communal resilience that they all survived and thrived.
Portland’s in a tough spot. No sales tax to bolster revenue, commercial property tax revenue down due to vacancies, and no central governance to prioritize infrastructure spending.
Citizens won’t be receptive to being taxed more, until they see impactful improvements to public safety and homelessness. Infrastructure spending will continue to take the back seat.
Grandma Ruth (us grandkids called her Mer, because Grandpa was Per) always had a huge herb garden, but died before I knew enough to become intensely curious. A cousin took it up with Columbia River botanists but they were intrigued but baffled.
A gynecologist friend suggested that, most likely, the herbs were mildly analgesic and smelled “right” to a woman in labor, and that combined with placebo effect of the right type of personality would have been enough. Mer could get me to go to sleep on a cold concrete floor by a combination of kind strokes, murmured insistence, and mint sprigs under my head.
Celebrate the failure, at least they had the guts to try something new. I do not mind Cities, Counties, States trying new ideas and then adopting the ones that work. If you do not experiment expect stagnation. I am not talking about breaking laws.
Interestingly, the same policy was adopted in Portugal in 2001, and remains in effect today. The results?
While Portugal experienced a small increase in drug use after its 2001 decriminalization laws, the effect was transient and most drug experimentation did not lead to addiction. [14] Additionally, **crime and drug trafficking increased in the five years after Portugal decriminalized drugs, but both subsequently fell.**
Perhaps the difference was that the policy was nationwide, therefore no incentive for people to migrate to one city or another, an it did not seem to affect Portugal’s overall inbound migration either.
These kinds of things have many moving parts, you need to look under the hood a little if you’re really going to understand what the drivers of behavior are.
Exactly, and let me add that PORTUGAL HAS FUNCTIONAL NATIONWIDE PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICES and they can track drug abuse as a treatable health problem and do intervene, and that Really Matters.
You are quite wrong. The decay has been obvious for 10 years. We are well in to a 45 year long decay. Pull up data on the average age of bridges spanning the major rivers in the U.S.
Or just take a drive from New York to LA and note the ages of the rest areas on the side of the freeways, or the facilities in the National Parks.
If you are brave enough, walk down the streets of the major business districts of 10 major cities 30 minutes after sunset.