Shame on You Mayor Katz 12/29/03


Current Council Agenda for Wednesday, December 31 2003 @ 9:30 AM

CONSENT AGENDA – NO DISCUSSION
Mayor Vera Katz
1443    Approve appointment of Harriet Cormack to the Housing Authority of Portland Board of Commissioners for a term to expire December 10, 2006  (Resolution)

Mayor Katz and Portland City Commissioners:
There are very few members of the press, politicos or HAP watchers in the state of Oregon who did not know that Richard Ellmyer twice requested an opportunity to testify (See below) before the Portland City Council regarding the appointment of a new board member to the Housing Authority of Portland. It is undemocratic and an insult to me that all of you have ignored my legitimate request and attempted to deny my basic right as a citizen to testify on a public matter. Shame on all of you.

HAP Chair, Howard Shapiro, declared that thirteen minutes of staff time over sixteen months to forward policy related emails to HAP's board, which has statutory authority to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars, was excessive public contact. Willamette Week noticed this unjustifiable public censor behavior and declared HAP the "Rogue of the Week." Yet not a peep from anyone at city hall about the rights of citizens to contact members of Portland's public boards and commissions. Now, when HAP's most vocal critic asks the city of Portland for public documents and three minutes to testify about the qualifications and policy objectives of a new appointee to the HAP board he and every other citizen of Portland and Multnomah County is completely shut out of the political process. Shame on all of you.

If it wasn't for the thoughtfulness of a member of Erik Sten's staff on Monday morning December 29th I would not have known anything about this Consent Agenda item on Wednesday December 31st. I have had less than forty-eight hours notice, during the holiday season no less, to respond to a council item that I specifically requested information about and time to testify (See Below) a month ago. Thanks Marshall and shame on the rest of you.

Who is Harriet Cormack and why should she be appointed to the HAP board? What does she think about citizen access to members of public boards and commissions? Does she support the city of Portland's official policy of distribution not concentration of public low-income clients? Will she support neighborhood map based accounting of HAP clients as a method to evaluate and defend HAP's current effective policy of concentrating low-income clients into just a few neighborhoods - which is in opposition to the city of Portland's policy of neighborhood diversion? Does Ms. Cormack think that it is acceptable and good public policy for ten of one hundred and seventeen neighborhoods in Multnomah County to house twenty-six percent of all HAP's clients? Does she support a real estate covenant which will require all for sale houses at Columbia Villa to remain in perpetuity owner occupied and never rental? There are many more but these are good for starters.

The Housing Authority of Portland has way too much public money and way too little public oversight. It's time for that to stop. And it needs to stop with Harriet Cormack's appointment. Harriet Cormack needs to answer all the questions above and more before the Portland City Council takes testimony from the public on whether Harriet Cormack has "the right stuff" to be on the HAP board.

Please set up a system for Ms. Cormack to answer HAP policy related questions then publish her answers. After that you can ask the public to testify on Ms. Cormack's qualifications. This requires that you remove item 1443 from the Consent Agenda for December 31st. I look forward to an immediate response from the current mayor's office and also that of candidate for mayor, Jim Francesconi. Thank you.


Richard Ellmyer
Portsmouth neighborhood, North Portland
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org

***************************************************************************************
From: ellmyer@macsolve.com
Subject: New Fish In The HAP Tank
Date: December 2, 2003 11:24:57 AM PST
To: mayorkatz@ci.portland.or.us
Cc: rleonard@ci.portland.or.us, dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us, jfrancesconi@ci.portland.or.us, erik@ci.portland.or.us, mmock@ci.portland.or.us

Mayor Katz:
Nick Fish has announced that he will be leaving the HAP board before the end of the year. I would like to be kept informed about any public documents or meetings that will involve his replacement, especially and particularly the opportunity to speak before the council on his chosen successor. Thank you.

Richard Ellmyer


From: ellmyer@macsolve.com
Subject: Neighborhood ECONOMIC Diversity Is The Goal
Date: December 4, 2003 11:09:30 PM PST
To: hapzonewatchers@macsolve.com [Includes all members of the Portland City Council]

Hi Renee Mitchell:
I am always impressed when you address public policy issues. There was a great deal of substance in your piece, Keeping Villa diverse requires special attention.* However, I am very wary of your injection of race as a factor in the Villa remodel story. This slant is unhealthy for our community and wrong in this case. The Villa story is about neighborhoods and public housing policy relating to low-income clients. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with economics, neighborhood stability and community balance. While I have probably been HAP's severest public critic, at no time have I ever even suggested that anything HAP has done was race based. HAP must be held accountable for many many things but racism is not one of them.

I welcome to become new neighbors in my Portsmouth neighborhood every race, every ethnic minority, every sexual orientation, every gender, every person with or without a religious belief - including Arab Muslims, every height, every weight, even Republicans, in fact, absolutely any person or family, natural or extended, that can comfortably afford to buy a $200,000 and up house. The diversity I support at the Villa and throughout my neighborhood is ECONOMIC DIVERSITY.

Rick Michaelson, Planning Commission VP observed my map which clearly shows my Portsmouth neighborhood as the number one of 117 neighborhood in Multnomah county with the highest number of low-income HAP clients. (The Villa is NOT a "neighborhood" as you wrote. For the twenty-eight years that I have lived eight blocks away it has been an isolated government compound. And since Don Clark was in charge it included a necessary, full time, on site police presence. The entire point of this $135 million remodel effort is to INTEGRATE Columbia Villa residents into Portsmouth, which is a neighborhood.) Michealson and other members of the Portland Planning Commission accepted the report of the Portland Planning Bureau which found that Portsmouth and surrounding neighborhoods could not attract businesses because there was a statistical "lack of buying power." Michealson publicly asked for and got ideas from me about how the Planning Commission could stop more low-income housing from being built in Portsmouth and how they could encourage more home ownership in the $200,000 and up range.

Matt Hennessee, PDC Chair, thought a cap on the number of low-income clients in any neighborhood might be a good idea. Henessee, Michaelson and many others understand that concentrations of low-income public housing clients is an economic issue that is bad public policy. Dispersion of low-income public housing clients is the official housing policy of the City of Portland. It has nothing to do with race.

The HAP board is run more like a private club than a public institution that has statutory authority to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars. I have already told Mayor Katz and the rest of the city council that I want access to every public document related to the next HAP appointment to fill the Nick Fish vacancy and I want to be notified of any public meetings which relate to that appointment so that I may testify. I hope you'll be there to cover the story. Thanks for your continuing interest.

* http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/renee_mitchell/index.ssf?/base/news/1070456289175232.xml

Richard Ellmyer
Portsmouth neighborhood
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org

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