On Wednesday January 26th at 9:30 AM we shall see if Tom Potter starts down the right public housing policy path by establishing his authority over HAP, HCDC and PDC and taking responsibility for the actions of the twenty-nine housing commissioners that serve at his pleasure or if he choses to continue with business as usual, ignoring history and following in the failed public housing policy footsteps of his predecessor.

On Wednesday January 26th at 9:30 AM two appointments are scheduled to be voted upon, Catherine Such as a new HAP commissioner and Shar Giard as a reappointment to HAP.

Below are questions sent to Catherine Such. Her answers to them should determine how she is received.

Below is also a Bill of Particulars providing evidence for the rejection of Shar Girad's reappointment.

From whom is Tom Potter taking bad advice on this matter? His lead staff person for public housing policy who a) didn't know the name of HAP's long time Director of Policy and Public Affairs? and b) didn't respond to my emails and phone calls, which forced the writing of this commentary, stating my serious and unequivocal objection to this reappointment?

Tom Potter should immediately withdraw Shar Girad's nomination or he will be starting off his term as mayor on the wrong foot. If he persists in moving this nomination forward then he, Tom Potter, is sending a signal to the public that he approves of the behavior and actions taken by Shar Giard mentioned in the Bill of Particulars, an untenable position. Potter's future credibility with all matters relating to public housing policy would be needlessly put in jeopardy. This is not a position of strength from which to govern for the person directly responsible for oversight and implementation of public housing policy in Multnomah county.

Sam Adams will show us whether he was sincere with his campaign slogan to "shake things up" at city hall or succumb to the siren song of the status quo.

Randy Leonard, Dan Saltzman and Erik Sten: If you would vote to keep Donald Rumsfeld on as Secretary of Defense for a second term in light of his record then you would be at ease publicly defending (perhaps in a debate with me?) all of the charges against her in the Bill of Particulars below and voting for Shar Giard to stay at her post. On the other hand. If you think a record of serious errors and gross mistakes in judgement makes a difference in evaluating a public official's fitness to continue in office then it's time to send her packing.


Richard Ellmyer
Portsmouth - the 18% solution neighborhood, North Portland
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org

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From: ellmyer@macsolve.com
Subject: Getting To Know You
Date: January 21, 2005 12:06:40 PM PST
To: catherine.such@pnc.com

Hi Bertha and Catherine:
Congratulations on your nominations by mayor Tom Potter to the board of the Portland Development Commission and the Housing Authority of Portland. Upon confirmation by the Portland City Council you will join twenty-seven other publicly appointed officials at PDC, HAP and HCDC as housing commissioners with statutory authority to make public housing policy and spend approximately $200,000,000 per year of taxpayer's money. In light of the weighty responsibility I would like to ask you a few questions which should be answered before council approval for the edification of those voting on your nomination and the citizens you may serve in a position of public authority.

1. Do you support a policy which would require the mayor's office to announce through the city's email notification system and other methods the proposed nomination of all publicly appointed officials so that citizens would have ample time to prepare testimony for a regular calendar agenda item?

2. Are you aware that only Portland's mayor can nominate a person for board membership on HAP, HCDC and PDC?

3. Are you aware that ORS 456.ll0 states that a commissioner can be removed by the mayor, "For inefficiency or neglect of duty or misconduct in office?"

4. Do you understand that all twenty-nine housing commissioners serve at the pleasure of the mayor of Portland?

5. Are you prepared to support mayor Potter's and city commissioner Adams' interest in gathering public housing data by neighborhood from PDC, HAP and HCDC as a basis for a near future public housing policy discussion and debate?

6. Are you prepared to discuss the 3-6-9 public housing policy proposal* immediately after PDC, HAP and HCDC have submitted their public housing data by neighborhood?

7. Do you agree that a series of quarterly meetings with mayor Potter and the other twenty-seven housing commissioners to listen to the mayor's plans and directions for public housing policy in Multnomah county and then hear from your colleagues on their thoughts about public housings policy would help point HAP, PDC and HCDC in the same direction?

8. Are you aware that Metro councilors David Bragdon, Rex Burkholder and Robert Liberty share an interest with mayor Potter and city commissioner Adams to begin discussions aimed at regionalizing public housing policy? Are you prepared to support that effort?

Thank you for your timely response. Best of luck.


Richard Ellmyer
Portsmouth - the 18% solution neighborhood, North Portland
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org


* DRAFT
Declare 3-6-9 Neighborhood Percentages As Transparent, Understandable and Accountable Distributive Public Housing Policy Goals

WHEREAS the city of Portland has an established policy that public housing clients should not be concentrated into a few select neighborhoods but rather distributed throughout Portland’s neighborhoods,

WHEREAS it has become necessary to quantify the policy of distribution of public housing clients in order to assure that public expenditures are being spent in furtherance of these objectives,

WHEREAS it is necessary to adopt neighborhood map based accounting as a reporting and decision making tool regarding public housing policy and expenditures.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, the city of Portland shall establish as its primary public housing client goal in each Portland neighborhood a target of six (6) percent of that neighborhood’s population. Goals for minimum and maximum shall be established so that no neighborhood shall have fewer than three (3) percent and no neighborhood shall have more than nine (9) percent of its population as public housing clients.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, the office of the Portland City Auditor shall coordinate the collection of data and report annually on the status of accomplishment toward the 3-6-9 goal.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, the city council shall fund the City Auditor’s 3-6-9 related activities by whatever combination of funding sources from HAP, PDC, BHCD or other revenue sources it may chose.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, all appointments for PDC, HAP and HCDC commissioner shall be made during the regular city council calendar.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, the mayor shall determine that all nominees to become HAP, PDC and HCDC commissioners agree to support the 3-6-9 policy goal before being formally nominated for council approval.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, during the confirmation proceedings the mayor shall publicly instruct the appointee of his or her obligation to use the office to which they are appointed to further the 3-6-9 policy goal.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, this resolution is binding city policy.

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Bill of Particulars - The Case For Removal of HAP Commissioners
From: ellmyer@macsolve.com
Subject: HAP Commissioners Failing Accountability Test Must Be Fired
Date: April 27, 2004 12:13:05 AM PDT
To: mayorkatz@ci.portland.or.us
Cc: erik@ci.portland.or.us, dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us, jfrancesconi@ci.portland.or.us, rleonard@ci.portland.or.us

Mayor Katz:
This is a formal request to remove from public office the following Housing Authority of Portland commissioners:
Jeff Bachrach, Harriet Cormack, Richard Fernandez , Shar Giard, Chris Lassen, Lee Moore, Kandis Brewer Nunn, Howard Shapiro, Antoinette Teixeira.

Public officials must be accountable to the public for their acts. The public officials mentioned above have failed to account to the public for how the $90,000,000 in taxpayer funds they will spend in FY 2004 supports the public policy goal of distribution of public housing clients throughout the jurisdiction not concentrating HAP clients in a few select neighborhoods. In fact, the evidence shows that 10% of the 117 neighborhoods in Multnomah county house 26% of HAP clients which directly contravenes the distribution versus concentration in select neighborhoods policy.

All of the current HAP commissioners behave as though they had volunteered for the same high school reunion refreshment committee not an official public appointment to a quasi-government agency that has the statutory authority to spend $90,000,000 of taxpayer's money. Although appointed as individuals, all of the current HAP board have taken on the Star Trek quality of the Borg. The personal pronoun "I" is always replaced by "we." This collective identity is alien to the democratic process as practiced in the state of Oregon on planet earth.

These persons were appointed to the HAP board as individuals not as a team or collective. As on the elected Portland City Council, the elected Multnomah County Commission and the elected Gresham City Council each appointed official on the HAP board is also individually responsible for his or her actions. Apparently the Consent Calendar approach to appointment has left all of these HAP appointees with the mistaken impression that they are accountable to no one and have no responsibility to express their positions publicly on basic public housing policy. This is not acceptable behavior. All of this current board should be removed from office immediately.

Other failures and causes for removal:
1. They supported unprecedented censorship of citizen access to and direct responses from HAP board members.

2. They continue to refuse neighborhood map based accounting of HAP clients in favor of an indefensible zip code plan.

3. They failed to stop HAP's illegal behavior of lengthy and numerous zoning code violations at Columbia Villa which included at least one official citation that they ignored.

4. They sanctioned the sending of HAP staff to the Planning Commission to establish ten acres of seventy at Columbia Villa with business zoning. They exercised no oversight on a staff that had no idea where the ten acres would go nor did these HAP commissioners care that establishing a ten acre business zone at Columbia Villa would be antagonistic to the interests of Kenton, St. John's/ Lombard plans and business districts. The Planning Commission came close to laughing HAP staff out of the room for professional incompetence, unpreparedness and an outrageous proposal. Any private developer making such a pitch would have been cut off and "thrown out of the building" for wasting the Commission's time.

5. They approved the falsification of the HOPE VI grant submitted to HUD by listing a financial commitment by Multnomah County of $3,758,500 for a branch library to be sited at Columbia Villa which was never budgeted nor sanctioned by the Multnomah county commission and opposed by the local library citizens committee that spent years working on the issue.

6. They mislead the public by approving the publishing in HAP's newsletter and in the official Hope VI grant revision of December 20, 2002, a set aside of 4 acres and a rudimentary proposal for a new elementary school at Columbia Villa at HAP's initiative without commitment or funding from the Portland Public Schools.

7. They suppressed from the HOPE VI proposal submitted to HUD a letter dated June 9, 2001 from the North Portland Business Association which refused to endorse the Housing Authority of Portland's Hope VI plan.

8. They approved deceitful tactics (mentioned in the NPBA letter) to unnaturally extend the Interstate Light Rail Corridor Urban Renewal District about three miles west of Interstate Avenue in order to HAP claim that Columbia Villa was within an Urban Renewal District so that it would get extra points at HUD not money from the ILRCURD. Of course, the minute HAP won its designation it reneged on its promise and asked for "a money allotment for street improvements." Then a bit later HAP came back a second time "asking for money for infrastructure improvements."

9. They failed to secure free methane from the Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant which could have been used for generating electric power, heat, hot water or steam across the street at Columbia Villa.

10. They failed to secure free recycled water from the Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant which could have been used on vegetation across the street at Columbia Villa.

11. They failed to investigate utility sharing options such as those used by motels, hotels and large buildings which could have been used in planning the Columbia Villa remodel.

12. They failed to have not a single one of the hundreds of structures to be built at Columbia Villa evaluated for ecological and environmental soundness by The United States Green Building Council, PGE or other third parties.

13. They failed to justify building the highest concentration, 230 units, of "chubby" houses (HAP made 50'x50' "chubby" lots instead of 25'x100' so they couldn't be accused of building "skinny" houses) in Multnomah county.

14. They failed to take responsibility for setting the price of for sale homes in the $140,000 to $175,000 at Columbia Villa when the Portland Planning Commission, the Portland Planning Bureau and the St. Johns/Lombard plan have identified the need to increase buying power in the Portsmouth neighborhood which would be accomplished by selling homes in the $200,000 to $250,000 range not the anti-business, anti-neighborhood, artificially low figures they supported.

15. They failed to address the overloading issue in the Portsmouth neighborhood which has the highest number of HAP clients of all 117 neighborhoods in HAP's jurisdiction, Multnomah county, and will maintain or increase those numbers when the Columbia Villa remodel is completed.

The Oregonian recently set public accountability as the highest standard by which to judge public officials. Years of service and a myriad of good deeds are trumped by one major decision to avoid being accountable to the public. In the case of four Multnomah County Commissioners is was the failure to be accountable for public process which lead to an unaccountable public policy. In the case of HAP commissioners, they failed to be accountable by refusing to show that HAP's public spending of $90,000,000 was in concert with the established or presumed policy of distribution not concentration of public housing clients into a few select neighborhoods. 26% of HAP's clients are housed in only 10% of Multnomah County's 117 neighborhoods. This is clearly a concentration of HAP clients in a few select neighborhoods. Refusing to acknowledge this fact and practice is a coverup and must not be allowed to continue.

The evidence for removal is so overwhelming and compelling that the HAP commissioners named above should be dismissed from their appointments as soon as possible by a council resolution placed on the Consent Calendar, which was the method used to appoint them.