Just in case you missed this item is today's Portland Tribune, 3-12-04:

Portlanders respond to this question:
   What do you think should be the key issue that candidates discuss during the upcoming campaign for Portland mayor?
   
   
   • Richard Ellmyer, a computer technician and neighborhood activist from the Portsmouth district in North Portland: "Do the results of public-housing practice match the distribution -- not neighborhood concentration -- goals of public housing policies at the Housing Authority of Portland and the city of Portland? 'No' is the answer. 'Why not?' is the question."

http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=23123

Candidates should expect to be asked this question during and after the campaign until such time as the EVIDENCE proves that program results and policy goals do, in fact, match. Keep in mind that without neighborhood map based accounting there can be no evidence.

Those candidates for public office who support neighborhood map based accounting, Tom Potter, Sam Adams and Paul Leistner, are on the right track. They can all legitimately claim a sensitivity to and support for Portland's neighborhoods and their long standing official political identity.

Those candidates who oppose neighborhood map based accounting of public housing clients in favor of the discredited and indefensible zip code map based accounting or no accounting at all, Nick Fish, Randy Leonard and Jim Francesconi, have dismissed neighborhoods as viable political entities in our community. As a result, their opponents, the press, every citizen in Multnomah county's 117 neighborhoods and voters in Portland will have good reason to challenge the sincerity, honesty and credibility of their campaign oratory which includes, "how important neighborhoods are to me."