From: Richard Ellmyer
Subject: Public Records Law Demand For Hope Meadows Board Information
Date: November 3, 2006 9:09:23 AM PST
To: tpotter@ci.portland.or.us, dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us, erik@ci.portland.or.us
Cc: Interested Parties

Mayor Potter, Commissioners Sten and Saltzman:
I have asked you twice, on October 23, 2006, before the John Ball school vote on Wednesday October 25, 2006 and after, on October 27, 2006, for the names and contact information for those on the Portland Hope Meadows board of directors, with the same results - No Response. You leave me no choice but to invoke the Public Records Law to prod from you what should have been placed voluntarily on the public table.

I demand a copy of all public documents, paper and electronic, in your possession that include any contact information i.e. name, mailing address, email address and phone number for all members of the Portland Hope Meadows board of directors. The date your office received any relevant material must be clearly stated on each document.

I demand that this information be sent to me in either plain text or PDF format via email by 5 P.M. 
Friday November 10, 2006. An email or letter explaining that you have no such information will also be acceptable.

Failure to respond in a satisfactory manner by the deadline will result in an immediate request of the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office to arbitrate or enforce compliance.

The three of you have already brought dishonor upon our city for your reprehensible behavior in bringing a Resolution to distribute public land before the Portland city council without due process. Your staff persons handling this issue - Shannon Callahan - Sara Culp - Margaret Bax, were unprofessional, unethical and dishonest in their dealings with me. I discussed at length, with each of these public employees, the Portsmouth Green Homes Community Project, a private development plan for the John Ball school site committed to building a state of the art green, owner occupied in perpetuity, residential community with a public library. During our meetings I inquired about the process for disposition of this public property. None of these staffers had the slightest idea what the process would be. I made it clear that I expected the process to take from 3 to 9 months with competing ideas to be placed on the public table to be discussed, debated and then voted upon.

By chance I was informed a mere five days before the predetermined vote. I was and still am angry and appalled by the deception and cowardice of those elected officials that voted for the stealth resolution and their staffs that aided and abetted this Portland image destroying misadventure. The callous dismissal of a legitimate entrepreneurial green project, which could have been a PDC international destination of environmental acclaim with a public library, was a personal and professional insult to me and my partners at Reworks Inc. as well as an affront to environmentally concerned citizens throughout our city, county and state.

None of these public employees - Shannon Callahan - Sara Culp - Margaret Bax, had the common decency to inform me directly that the Resolution to transfer public property known as the John Ball school site was on the Council agenda. Had I behaved in a similar manner when I worked on the personal staffs of former state senator Bill McCoy and Multnomah county commissioner Gladys McCoy, I would have been dismissed on the spot.

Costs To Provide Public Data?
If any of your offices have the hutzpah to charge for providing this public data then please split the bill between the following:
1. State representative Gary Hansen. A note of appreciation and credit is due here. In a face to face conversation this Monday, Mark Kirchmeier, Hansen's assistant, offered his and Gary Hansen's support in the campaign to stop the Portland Hope Meadows board and the board of its parent, Hope Meadows in Illinois, from continuing their interest in developing the John Ball school site. [Tina Kotek, soon to follow Gary as state representative from North Portland, is also on record as opposing the process and sale of this public property to Portland Hope Meadows.]

I have already put several parties connected to Generations of Hope in Illinois on notice that as this issue gets national press, and it will, they will be complicit in a flawed political process and bullying their way into a neighborhood that doesn't want them and is already saturated with public housing. And make no mistake, Portland Hope Meadows IS public housing. Public Housing = Means Test + Government Subsidy + Rental Agreement.

2. Commissioners Sam Adams and Randy Leonard. Our public process stalwarts will surely be interested in to whom their colleagues have chosen to give 1.4 million dollars worth of public property or if they have a clue as to the recipients of their misdirected and indefensible public largess.

3. North Portland Neighborhood Services Director Tom Griffin. All of the leaders of North Portland's neighborhoods, especially the unfairly and gratuitously maligned by Tom Potter, Portsmouth neighborhood, want to know lots more about the character of the individuals who are on record as unethically refusing to disclose the names and contact information about fellow board members who are also now on the record, albeit without identities for the time being, as willing to debase public process for their own selfish ends.

4. Portland Press - Sandy Rowe, Bob Caldwell, Cornelius Swart, Richard Meeker, Steve Clark. These folks from the Oregonian, St. Johns Sentinel, Willamette Week and the Portland Tribune have an interest in telling their readers the who, what, why, where and when of this story of disturbing civic behavior and its impact on Portland's reputation and citizens' respect for Portland's city council and their failing faith in the local political process.
 

Richard Ellmyer
Portsmouth Green Homes Community Project Champion
3-6-9 Resolution author and project champion
Writer/Publisher - HAP Watcher commentary - Published on the Internet and distributed to 13,000 readers interested in public housing policy in Multnomah County.
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org
President, MacSolutions Inc. - A Macintosh computer consulting business providing web hosting for artists and very small businesses. Located in Portsmouth, the neighborhood with the second highest concentration of public housing clients, 17% and rising, within HAP's Multnomah county jurisdiction of 117 neighborhoods.