Year Two: Potter's call to arms

City Hall - Many wonder how the mayor's priorities and strategy will play out on the battle fronts of finance, development and livability

Friday, January 20, 2006

ANNA GRIFFIN

For a day at least, how about we all cut Portland Mayor Tom Potter some slack?

Sure, he's among the most powerful people in Oregon, with an armed guard at his side, a swanky City Hall suite, a government-owned Toyota Prius and an annual salary of $104,000 on top of his Portland Police Bureau pension.

Yet for a man determined to stay above politics, the next year is shaping up to be a nonstop campaign for school funding, public financing for City Council candidates, and, oh yes, the sweeping government reform Potter hopes to leave behind when he returns to retired life.

Today's speech represents the beginning of that campaign, a call to arms for the battles to come. But is the mayor picking the fights his constituents want? As a quick, unscientific poll of Portlanders showed this week, everyone has his or her own notion of how The City That Works should work and what Potter should say about it.

Business owners want him to talk about pumping money and resources into economic development, including lowering taxes. Parents want help for the public schools, even if it means raising taxes. Neighborhood activists want police to spend more time out of their cars talking with the people they're supposed to protect.

Potter wants to remake city government into something more efficient, more accessible and more in line with Portland's priorities. Many residents, judging by their comments this week, seem eager for him to spend just as much time filling potholes, promoting urban renewal and working to keep Portland's neighborhoods affordable.

"We're spinning a little bit -- not down, but in circles," said Patricia Gardner, a Pearl District architect and chairwoman of the Neighbors West/Northwest neighborhood coalition. "It's like when you start your computer and you watch that little circle go around and around as it warms up."

Across the river and across town, Scott Vala, co-president of the Southeast Uplift coalition, feels the same way. He says his adult children can barely afford to live in Portland, and he's eager for answers.

"The mayor is really pushing for good process, but at some point it becomes too much, and you have to ask, 'How long does it take to get something done?' " Vala said. "I don't know what the mayor and the people in City Hall can do about something like the cost of housing, but they don't seem to be doing anything. So I guess I want to hear some specifics about what he's going to do about our problems."

Specifics aren't Potter's style.

Mayor Vera Katz, who led Portland for 12 years and left a physical legacy as long as the waterfront esplanade that carries her name, liked to deliver annual addresses that were big on policy. Especially in the latter half of her City Hall career, she tried to use her big moment at the bully pulpit to focus on major problems -- cleaning the Willamette River, for example -- or lay out her to-do list for the year.

"She always wanted to use the speech to make announcements, in part because people are conditioned to expect that in something like the State of the City or the governor's State of the State or the president's State of the Union," said City Commissioner Sam Adams, Katz's chief of staff during most of her administration.

Potter, however, is a different kind of mayor, light on headline-grabbing specifics and big on important, if sometimes snooze-inducing, process. He talks about his role as the city's leader -- to build relationships, restore trust and optimism, model the behavior the public wants to see from its bureaucracy -- in touchy-feely tones that would surely embarrass other politicians. It's the luxury of a guy who left an easy globe-trotting retirement to run for the office.

He campaigned two years ago on a pledge to streamline and open up city government. He and his staff spent much of their first year focusing inward, studying Portland's bureaucracy, recommending changes and fielding applications for the committees that are now studying the structure of municipal government and preparing Potter's "visioning process."

"He told us in the campaign that he was going to redo how government was working," said Carol Cushman, president of the Portland League of Women Voters. "I think that's why he got such a large vote of confidence from citizens, and we need to give him the time to actually do it."

But in his second year, Potter faces several tests at the ballot box: He's trying to find a replacement for the Multnomah County I-tax in time for a May vote. He plans to campaign against a business-led effort to repeal public financing of political campaigns in the spring primary. He wants voters next fall to consider reforms to the fund that pays fire and police pensions.

And he hopes to put fundamental changes in city government on the November ballot -- perhaps including the end of Portland's unique commission system, in which all five City Council members serve as both legislators and administrators.

So today's speech marks an oratorical trumpet call for Campaign 2006. It's a chance for Potter to make his sales pitch for the big votes to come -- and to remind Portlanders who might be growing impatient exactly why they gave him this job to begin with.

"Under Vera, I didn't always go to the State of the City because there are always a lot of people who want to go and a finite number of seats," said Commissioner Randy Leonard. "But I'm going this year because I think this is a very big deal for him, and for the city."

Anna Griffin: 503-294-5988; annagriffin@news.oregonian.com