Calling it quits

I see that a majority of the Portland City Council has started the process of getting out of that worthless "joint homeless office" setup with Multnomah County. The county, which controls the office, is just making the situation on Portland's streets worse, and city commissioners Gonzalez, Mapps, and Ryan say they're tired of paying for the county's counterproductive ways.

Those gents are all in the middle of tight election campaigns, and I'm sure they've done polling that shows the city's voters are absolutely disgusted with the lack of meaningful action on street camping despite all-time high taxation. The trio want to show the voters that they're disgusted, too.

As soon as the vote was taken to start drafting the city ordinance to get the withdrawal done, the county chair and drama czar, Ms. Chevy Vega, took to Twitter to denounce them all:

It’s clear these officials - candidates desperately vying for your vote this month - have their eyes on their own future and not our collective one.https://t.co/b0g9lg4hW8

— Jessica Vega Pederson (@jvegapederson) October 17, 2024 

But the three amigos are right. Don't throw good money after bad. We're stuck with JVP for two more years, and she's never going to change her ways. The only way to force her to come to her senses would be if Vadim Mozyrsky and Sam Adams both got elected to the county commission. And to tell you the truth, I think they're both going to lose. Vega will have her three votes, and probably four, for the remaining two years of her term. She can and will continue to mismanage the response to the army of drug addicts and thieves camped out, when they're not dying, on Portland's streets. What does she care? It's nice enough on Council Crest, where she lives now.

I doubt that the city will actually pull out, but it's a nice signal to send as the ballots arrive at the homes of the voters. Meanwhile, regular readers here know what I'm going to say next. We need to merge the city and county, like the big boys do in California, and end the bickering. Merge Metro in, too, that most obviously needless layer of government. Until then, if the county commission chair wants to be a stubborn buffoon, she can do it without cash flow from City Hall. The county gets plenty of money from elsewhere.

The city should turn off its flow to the "joint office" and put those millions toward something, anything that might actually make a dent in the street troubles. Giving the dough to Multnomah County has been about as effective as burning it.