Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler Friday held a press conference to reflect on some of the city’s accomplishments from 2019 and to talk about the future in 2020.
He specifically spoke on the work within the bureaus he governs — including the Portland Police Bureau and Housing Bureau and their efforts to “improve livability” in the city.
This comes as Wheeler is campaigning to become Portland’s first two-term mayor since the late Vera Katz left office in 2005.
“Ordinarily I would never be so tacky as to specifically outline my goals for a press conference,” Wheeler said. “But I want to do it, because these are important values to me.”
Wheeler described Portland as a “successful city,” citing its livability, economy and unemployment rates.
“But we also know we are experiencing some growing pains and we see that through the cost of housing increase, congestion on our streets and in our highways and certainly through the homeless crisis that we’re experiencing up and down the West Coast and across the country,” Wheeler said. “I want people to know that I have confidence that we’re on the right track, that we are making progress in those areas that we are experiencing growing pains.”
Wheeler’s statements mostly focused on collaboration between him and other commissioners, bureaus and agencies.
He touched on work regarding the climate and economic development. He spoke at length on efforts toward aiding homelessness and increasing affordable housing — highlighting investments into the city and county’s Joint Office of Homeless Services, development of the Portland Street Response Team and a recent intergovernmental agreement to allot some money from Portland’s tourism industry toward the homeless crisis.
“We not only help with the immediate needs of people experiencing homelessness, but we also invest in their future,” Wheeler said, citing 878 new affordable housing units that were built in the city this year.
As far as improving livability for people who already have housing, Wheeler said the city has prioritized trash and debris pickup and the cleaning of “problematic camps” with Clean Start — its program that hires people who have formerly experienced homelessness to remove trash in central areas of the city.
“Since January, Clean Start has cleaned more than 32,000 bags of trash totaling 375 tons of trash and 22,000 needles,” Wheeler said.
For larger campsite cleanups, the city is currently considering a $4.5 million annual contract with Rapid Response Bio Clean, a hazardous waste removal company. The Council was poised to approve that contract Wednesday, but the agenda item was pulled last minute after pushback from homeless advocates.
“We had a ridiculously long agenda and we know this is an important issue that people are interested in, so rather than try to cram it into an already overtaxed agenda, I decided to pull it back and we’ll have it on a different day,” Wheeler said.
He continued: “While it is illegal in the city of Portland to erect tents in public rights-of-way, we do not randomly go out and harass or move people camping on the streets. The whole reason we have this contract around camp cleanup is so we are thoughtful and compassionate in how we prioritize the cleanup of camps.”
In response to recent public opinion polls, such as one conducted by Metro — the Portland area’s regional government — which revealed some pessimism about the city's direction, Wheeler referenced the nation as a whole and how national politics may be affecting Portland.
“We have a highly partisan and highly divided nation,” Wheeler said. “The reality is we are a successful city, we are vibrant, we’re growing increasingly diverse, we have the strongest economy we have ever had, but there’s another side to the coin — we’re growing as a city. … We’re experiencing big city problems.”
He continued: “I encourage people who feel unhappy about the direction of the community not to pull their chairs away from the table and walk away, but to pull their chairs into the table and work with us.”
Copyright 2019 Oregon Public Broadcasting