On Monday night, I went to the monthly neighborhood association meeting because I didn’t have any other plans and I didn’t feel like sitting at home. I’ve developed some very odd habits since I stopped drinking, and the neighborhood association is one of them. At the beginning of the meeting, a man stood up and explained that his property is on a dirt road and he’d like to know why the city no longer “grades” it. I have no idea what this means, but the long-winded answer from the very awkward city employee, who works with the Bureau of Transportation, went something like this: sorry, but the city doesn’t have money for that. Then the weirdest thing happened: the cop who comes each month and gives a report on crime statistics in the neighborhood spoke up and said she won’t drive her squad car on most of those streets. I have no idea if she said this to annoy the bureau guy – in Portland, as is the case in most large cities I’m familiar with, there is no love lost between the law and City Hall. The bureau guy, at any rate, was unfazed: he got up and gave a presentation about the millions of dollars that are going to be spent on bike paths. Just for fun, I wanted to ask the guy if the bike paths were going to be “graded,” but a group of angry old ladies took over and demanded answers about the parking situation on their street. “We were all presidents of the PTA at one time or another,” one of them said, “so we have a few things to say.” And for the next 20 or 30 minutes, they did.
On Wednesday morning I was out running errands and saw one of the white Bureau of Transportation trucks pull up a few blocks from my house, and sure enough a woman with a bright vest got out and started making markings on the sidewalk. Spring must be right around the corner, I thought. I do not make promises but I will do my best to not use this blog to write about the sidewalk situation in my neighborhood. I’ll just say that whenever I see one of those trucks pull up I picture a thousand-dollar check with my name on it, honest money handed over to “fix” a few fantasy code violations. Anyhow, when I came home Wednesday morning I heard the news that the city council plans to approve a plan to take money from sewage and water budgets to pay for the bike paths. So everyone’s pissed off, including, believe it or not, the cycling community – that’s what they call themselves in Portland – which believes the mayor is doing this to shore up support for his next election, when he’ll need all the support he can get.
