Isaac Laquedem

PDC names Bruce Warner as executive director

The Portland Development Commission this morning named Bruce Warner to be its new executive director.  Mr. Warner is the Director of the Oregon Department of Transportation. 

PDC's press release says that the decision was unanimous, but as the Commission took three executive sessions to come to its unanimous decision, I'm guessing that a fair amount of behind-the-scenes discussion, with some disagreements, took place before the Commission took its actual vote.

The feast at PDC

The Whimperer's story today about the expense tabs run up by Don Mazziotti, its outgoing (in both senses) executive director of the Portland Development Commission, included mention of a February dinner tab for $166 in Bend, at a restaurant and wine bar called Merenda.  Mr. Mazziotti had charged the four-person dinner to PDC, writing on the dinner bill that he had had dinner with the City's lobbyist.  The City's lobbyist, Marge Kafoury, says that she has never had dinner with Mr. Mazziotti in Bend.

The Whimperer thoughtfully reprinted the bill and Mr. Mazziotti's handwritten notation, but didn't point out that the bill is dated February 14, a date with two-fold significance.  It is, as everyone here knows, the birthday of the State of Oregon, a fit and proper reason for a public official to celebrate, but it is also the feast day of St. Valentine, a day on which most people above a certain age remember with whom they've had dinner.

I don't know the purpose of the dinner, but if it was to celebrate Oregon's birthday then I have to give credit to Mr. Mazziotti for supporting Oregon industry by including in the dinner a bottle from Foris, an Oregon winery.  But if dinner was for the other purpose commonly associated with February 14, then I'm at a loss to see how Mr. Mazziotti could have charged it to the City, even by accident.

The Six Commandments

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued rulings in two "Ten Commandments" cases, deciding whether governments could display the Ten Commandments.  It approved one display and disapproved the other one, in each case by a 5 to 4 vote.

Given that the court can't make up its own collective mind about when the Ten are okay and when they aren't, I suggest Isaac's alternate rule, which is much simpler to administer and reflects the Court's deep division.  Let each government display six commandments, choosing the six to reflect local values.  Oregon, among the least religious of the states, could leave off the first two commandments, while New York, the center of commerce, could safely omit "Thou shalt not covet."

PDC executive director selection update

The Portland Development Commission announced today that it will hold an executive session at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday to consider hiring an executive director, and then will hold a public meeting immediately afterward to vote on hiring an executive director and [interestingly] an interim executive director.  The news release is here.

I thought it was the non-tenured professors who didn't earn ****

From Margaret Soltan via Rose Nunez of No Credentials (welcome back!) comes this story of a Harvard professor, Martin Weitzman, who was arrested two months ago for stealing manure from a farm owned by a 98-year-old farmer whose nephew caught him in the act.  So far Harvard Magazine, which likes to chronicle the doings of the school's professors, has apparently overlooked the story.  The Harvard Crimson (the undergraduates' student newspaper) was happy to report it.  Professor Weitzman, whose trial starts tomorrow, says that he was doing the town and the farmer a favor by removing the manure from where it could have polluted a nearby watercourse.

Professor Weitzman holds the Ernest E. Monrad chair of economics, named after (and presumably funded by) a cheerful elderly fellow from Boston who had a long and distinguished career in money management.  I imagine he's heard his share of dinner party jokes about "his" professor.  It's been a few years since I've talked with Mr. Monrad, but if I should see him this year I'll ask him if he wants the university to transfer the chair he endowed to someone who grasps the concept of meum et tuum.

119 years of progress in political thought

It occurred to me that some of my thoughts on immigration aren't much different than those that might have come into the mind of a staid burgher of New York who chanced to see great-grandfather Laquedem get off the boat on this day in 1886.  Possibly the burgher would have thought better of him if he had known that two of great-grandfather Laquedem's sons would be in the United States Army in the Great War, and another son and six grandsons would serve in World War II.  I should probably have a higher opinion of immigration myself, for the same reason.

PDC's new director

The Portland Development Commission is expected to name its new director today.  The commission itself selects the director, but no doubt it will give Mayor Potter's opinion serious consideration before it votes.

I don't know which of the three candidates Mayor Potter favors, but I think we can read at least a few tea leaves from looking at his assignment of bureaux.  The Mayor assigned the Planning Bureau and the Portland Development Commission to himself.  He assigned the Bureau of Transportation to another commissioner. 

One of the candidates formerly headed the Planning Bureau.  Another was PDC's general counsel.  The third has a background in transportation.  From this I infer that PDC will select either David Knowles (formerly of Planning) or Karen Williams (its former general counsel) -- that is, one of the two candidates whose background tracks the Mayor's announced interests -- and not Bruce Warner, who came from the Oregon Department of Transportation.  Which way the Mayor will lean depends, I think, on what he wants PDC to do in the next four years, and in particular on whether he will look to PDC's new director to set policy or to clean up the agency.

Shouldn't the South Waterfront have become affordable housing?

Last week the Lake Oswego Review ran a citizen editorial criticizing the city's efforts to provide affordable housing, together with a rejoinder from someone involved with those efforts.  The two articles ran directly above an advertisement for twelve fine homes in Lake Oswego and West Linn, which taken as a group sported prices averaging in the neighborhood (not the Laquedem neighborhood, to be sure) of $2 million.

It's not easy to build affordable housing in Lake Oswego and environs; the schools and tree-lined lanes create demand that is manifested in the climbing house prices.  The absence of a county income tax doesn't hurt, either.  The Portland metropolitan area -- in fact, the City itself -- has areas where it should be easy to provide affordable housing, for example, on flat industrial land in the flood plain sandwiched between a freeway and a polluted riverbank.  Even with those drawbacks, heavy infrastructure subsidies from the City, and a tram and trolley to help the carless live there, from what I've read it appears that the most experienced builders who are operating there haven't been able to figure out how to build units that would sell for less than $400,000 or so.

Mayor Potter assigns the bureaux

Mayor Potter has announced his bureau assignments.  The biggest innovation is that he is placing the long-range planning functions of Parks, Transportation, Environmental Services, and Water under the supervision of the council as a whole, instead of under the aegis of individual commissioners.  He has accepted the resignations of the administrative heads of Water, Transportation, and Emergency Management (meaning that he has asked them to step aside, and they have).

The Mayor is keeping Planning, Police, Finance, and the Portland Development Commission.  Commissioner Adams gets Environmental Services and  Transportation.  Commissioner Leonard gets Water (the day-to-day operations) and Development Services.  Commissioner Saltzman gets Parks, and Commissioner Sten gets Fire and Housing.  (The complete assignment list, which includes bureaux I haven't named, is here.)  His list is different enough from my prediction that I'm fairly confident that I'm not him.

Buried in his announcement is the welcome news that he's separating land use planning from the issuing of land use permits.  That is, the people who are in charge of issuing development permits won't be the people tasked with finding reasons not to issue them. That bodes well for business.  I think we're in for some lively action between Planning (under the Mayor) and Development Services (under Commissioner Leonard).  On the whole, I think the Mayor made some thoughtful choices, including his cheerfully sly assignments to Commissioners Leonard and Sten: Mr. Leonard, a former firefighter, got the symbolically appropriate Water Bureau, and Mr. Sten, who had the Water Bureau during the firestorm over the failed billing system, gets the Fire Bureau in its place.

Painless Parker

Ninety years ago the life of a dentist was a sedate one.  Although a few dentists promoted their practices in a modest way, most dental societies (as with medical and legal societies) frowned on their members advertising, and indeed prohibited it.

Into this quiet competition burst Edgar Randolph Parker, a flamboyant self-promoter born in Canada (where his parents were married on this day in 1871) who attended dental school in New York and moved to California, where he set up shop.  He promoted himself as a provider of painless dentistry, to the point that he nicknamed himself "Painless Parker" and opened dental clinics -- which he called "Painless Parker's Dental Parlors" -- up and down the west coast, at one time employing more than 70 dentists.  Portland had a Painless Parker clinic, I think not too far from the fine building now occupied by the more subdued Oregon Dental Service.

Dentists weren't supposed to advertise, and California charged Dr. Parker with violating trade rules by practicing under the false name of Painless Parker instead of using his actual name.  In response, Dr. Parker promptly legally changed his first name from Edgar to Painless.

Painless Parker was on to something when he renamed himself for advertisement.  (You could say that corporations that pay to name stadia after themselves are doing the same thing, more expensively.)  I could picture one of our long-gone Multnomah County commissioners pondering whether to change his name to "Tax Cut" or "No Fluoride Forever."