Ryan's latest hostage: Grant Park field
First they took all the lights out of the parks. Now the Portland parks bureau has declared the Grant Park football and soccer field unsafe for high school league play. The public can still go out and hurt themselves on it, but the Grant High School athletes and their opponents won't be allowed to.
What the heck?
We're told the field has exhausted its eight-to-10-year useful life, and apparently nobody thought of making any serious plans to repair or replace it. Besides, the parks department will be quick to tell you, they just don't have money for maintenance.
Parks officials said the closure is due to the turf field coming to the end of its 8-10 year life span, and results from heavy use with inadequate maintenance investment from the city, which owns the field and the surrounding park. According to parks officials, the Grant field failed three safety tests in the last ten months: last November and December, and again in May 2023. Efforts were made after each test to make repairs but that was not enough to fully restore the field to safe playing conditions, according to officials.
Portland parks officials note that the Grant field is just one of a number of deteriorating parks facilities in need of maintenance.
“Due to insufficient maintenance funding, one in five PP&R assets will fail over the next 15 years without new resources,” Portland Parks & Recreation said in its release. “PP&R’s current maintenance backlog is $600 million and has also resulted in the failure of Columbia Pool and light poles in several neighborhood parks.”
What? Their budget is more than a half billion dollars a year (with a "b"). Nope, sorry, folks, that's not enough. As their commissioner, Dandy Dan Ryan, will tell you, we need yet another parks maintenance levy, or better yet, a whole new parks taxing district. More money for the insatiable City Hall maw is the only answer. And if you don't pungle up, well, no high school football games for you.
Then they wonder why people are leaving.
When you've got a 10-year asset wearing out, don't you, like, maybe, put aside some money every year for when the replacement bill comes?
And where the heck has the school board been through all this? Didn't the mad managerial skills of Julia Brimming-Over see this coming?
When I look at the parks bureau's webpage, I see a lot of mission creep. We've got all the toys, but we can't properly maintain a football field. Ain't that the Portland way?
How much of their 0.5+ billion budget goes to compensation including salaries and PERS?
ReplyDeleteWay too much.
DeleteWhen supervision is incompetent the inmates will run the asylum.
ReplyDeleteBut those Parks employees have a fine retirement benefit.
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right... This facility closure is part of a shakedown scheme to get more money from the public. The City tried to get the Leg to turn Parks into a separate taxing "district"...like the Library did a few years ago...but that failed. Ryan and crew KNOW that if they come to the public a tin cup, they'll get clubbed with the nearest blunt instrument.
ReplyDeleteSo, how best for Ryan to demonstrate his dilemma? Start holding the facilities hostage. Mark my words, public pools will be closing early this year...just as the real heat of summer is upon us.
I think I need to go touch (this) grass and see how bad it is.
ReplyDeleteSmell it too…🤮
DeleteThe crazy thing is that there still seem to be people willing to move here in order to then be beaten by the "ugly stick"...wth?
ReplyDeleteThe Parks Bureau needs to promise the taxpayers that it will buy no new parks and undertake no new projects, except replacing truly dilapidated buildings, until it has cleared its entire existing maintenance backlog. Since it cannot afford to maintain what it already owns, it can’t afford to acquire anything new.
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
DeleteThey resurfaced the tennis courts at my neighborhood park (Hamilton) after the last levy windfall. Now weeds are growing through the small cracks which will rapidly turn into large cracks. Is it too much to ask one PPB employee to get out of his/her/they truck and spray $5 of weed killer to prevent further damage to the playing surface? Apparently, it is. Why bother when Gullible Portland Voter is standing by to approve that "desperately needed" parks levy so they can drop $100k to resurface the whole damn thing. Meanwhile, I'll move my game to the impeccably-maintained Raleigh Park over in Beaverton.
ReplyDeleteI call for a tackle football game at Grant Park pitting Portland City Council vs. the Multnomah County Commission. No pads or helmets. If anyone gets hurt, they can wait :45 minutes for an ambulance like the rest of us (assuming someone picks up the phone at 911 dispatch). Or, hell, just spray some Narcan on that torn ACL.
ReplyDeleteBoy! Howdy! PP&R sure does a bang-up job at ASBESTOS TESTING...doncha know?
ReplyDeleteI never understood the movement to replace all the high school fields with artificial turf in the first place. I mean what’s wrong with grass? I do recall arguments that artificial turf requires less maintenance, this better. Apparently not in the long run.
ReplyDeleteBingo! They should have never replaced the real grass with artificial turf in the first place.
DeleteAssigned fields for a local recreational soccer club. The rule was that the parks were more desired for practice because they at least watered the grass once in a while. PPS never does, so the fields are like concrete in September.
DeleteI don't know if grass lasts better than turf in this situation but maybe it would. At least football teams could move around - 10 yards, 20 yards, left side, right side - so that the grass wouldn't be totally annihilated.
I know. I played little league games there in the 70’s, and when I went to Grant the football team either practiced there or played there if memory serves.
DeleteArtificial turf is no good for contact sports anyway.
It's for the kids, ya know.
ReplyDeleteTime to get rid of the worthless park rangers and shift that money to maintenance.
ReplyDeleteThe Parks Department doesn't have any money? Hmmm. Each time a new condo or apartment comes on line, there's a systems development charge that goes to a variety of things including parks. Unless exempt, any new central city unit under 700 SF is charged $5,615 for parks. A unit from 700-1199 SF is charged $8,399. Hundreds of these are added each year. The money has been collected, so where has it gone?
ReplyDeleteInto the black hole.
DeleteI spent two (adult) decades living in Portland. Glad i was priced out of my desired home upgrade in the early 00's.
Now I'm starting to feel the same way about living within Metro.
You’re not alone.
DeleteFrom some folks on the ground....apparently the city chose an under-qualified, inexperienced installer for this project. So now there are potholes in the field, making it unsafe.
ReplyDelete