The Disingenuous Street Renaming Project

As Portland elected Sam Adams by a landside, this left him with a lot of political capital. This capital was regarded with as much consideration as Adams has for our city's treasury - why be responsible when you can borrow and spend?

So instead of trying to fix the city budget, Adams decides to dig up the dead horse of street naming and, full of piss and vinegar, finds Marta Guembes and her boulevard committee. Promising a new deal, this time legal and following rules so there can be less interference.

Adams promised this time it is going to be different. The city is going to follow the rules. Well, follow them almost. Somehow someone discovered a loophole showing that all the committee has to do is get 2500 signatures and name as many streets as they want. They chose three. I don’t know why, they could have chosen ten or a hundred. The intent of the street changing ordinance was to get a majority of the businesses or residents of the proposed street on board, or get 2500 signatures city wide per street. The committee should have been required to obtain 7500 signatures for choosing the three streets, but because of a badly written ordinance this was not the case.

So here we are today. We have a very disingenuous Guebles, who cares more about getting even and sticking it in the eye of any Portlander that disagrees with her than she does about naming an appropriate landmark after Cesar Chavez. If Guebles were really interested in furthering the good name of Mr. Chavez's name she would have reached out to the folks on the affected streets. She did not. Her whole strategy and game plan is to force this down the throats of people who do not want it. The only supporters of her coalition are a bunch of leftist ideologues that are on the bandwagon because they despise anything to do with commerce or tradition.

Now the city of Portland is going to repeat this acrimonious exercise in futility. The only good sign of hope with this idiocy is that one of the losers is going to be Sam Adams who is going to gain more adversaries in the coalition for his recall.