Being a homo and all, I hate to rail on things like this, but I saw something Friday that is such a great example of the tone deafness that liberal people often suffer from that I could not pass it up. The finances in Oregon are a disaster, as always. The schools in Portland are about $19 million short, in spite of the tax hike we approved earlier this year. The state agencies have been ordered to cut their budgets by 10 percent, also in spite of the new taxes. One of my friends who works for the health department, where she works on finding real solutions to real problems – childhood obesity, tobacco, things like that – is forced to take furlough days regularly. A woman from one of the schools in my neighborhood came to a meeting recently to grovel for a $2,000 grant to support keeping its library open before and after school hours. The grant is from a local tavern, which donates proceeds from the brew fest it has every August. It’s a nice gesture, I think. Come get drunk and support the schools. It’s how we do shit here in the territory.
Anyhow, even though we’re going broke, Multnomah County is hiring a diversity officer. I’ve never hyperlinked to anything on this blog, but there’s a first time for everything. If you’re interested, check out the job description and apply. If you don’t have time for the actual description, here are a few highlights. Most of it is such bullshit it would make people who do HR at PR agencies – a double disaster, clearly – quite proud. Stakeholders, initiatives, capacity, competencies, system wide, aligning, organizational change, best practices – it’s all there. Here’s the best single line, one of the key responsibilities: Creating a safe environment for difficult conversations around equity and diversity issues. And if you can deliver on that sort of foolishness with a straight face while other more critical offerings are slashed and burned, your minimum annual salary will be $78,000. That’s not quite as much as you’d make for the same level of deceit at a PR agency, but it’s not a bad start.
About Me
- Rotary
- Portland, Oregon, United States
- I'm in my mid 40s and long for the era when the main mode of communication was the rotary telephone. As I recall, people knew how to spell without spell check, they answered their phones unless they weren't home and twittering was something birds did on cartoons. All ironies aside, I really miss those days.