A proposed ordinance aims to deprioritize some homeless camps considered “low impact” This week, Portland City Council will consider new rules for homeless camp clean-ups. If approved, the city will “deprioritize” camps considered “low impact.” But, what makes a camp low impact? The city says a camp is low impact if it’s 150 feet away […]
Light rail has problems with reliability despite massive government funding. The U.S. Postal Service boasts that “neither snow nor rain nor heat” can keep mail carriers from swiftly completing their rounds; TriMet’s MAX Light Rail service can make no such claim. Last week, the heatwave brought temperatures well into the 100s, causing MAX services to […]
On Saturday, police responded to a call that a man was in the middle of I-84, swinging a pipe at cars. As police approached, the man jumped the freeway barrier onto the MAX tracks, where he got creamed by a train and was pronounced dead at the scene. But there’s more. Just two hours earlier, […]
By adopting a near-zero assumed rate of return, PERS can become solvent in the next decade No one wants to talk about the biggest problem facing Oregon. It’s not the pandemic. It’s not homelessness. It’s not racial justice. The biggest crisis facing Oregon is its public employee retirement system, or PERS. No one wants to […]
The race is on for a reliable power grid. A newly redeveloped model used by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council to calculate annual loss of load probability (LOLP) shows significantly higher LOLP in 2023 compared to previous predictions. The LOLP calculates the likelihood that utilities will have to take some kind of emergency measure […]
Should we breach Northwest hydropower dams to replenish native fish species on the Columbia or continue benefiting from hydro’s cheap and reliable power? With the innovative Whooshh Fish Passage System, our region wouldn’t have to choose between the two. And, yes, the company is really called “Whoosh.” The system is set up alongside dams to […]
Say your roof is leaking and you call a roofer for a quote. If they say “I’ll have to charge you the highest rate in the region” before saying hello, you’d probably just hang up. Oregon’s leaky roof is infrastructure spending. Instead of hanging up the phone, Oregon’s legislators may force every contractor to charge […]
As Oregon students return to the classrooms, watch out for a new fad that could make our state’s academic performance even worse. That fad is known as the “four day school week.” Oregon is one of only nine states that allows four day school weeks and more than 130 districts operate on a four-day schedule. […]
Every student deserves access to a quality education. Despite the setbacks caused by closing public school buildings, many Oregon students were already struggling to succeed in the public school system before the pandemic. According to the National Association of Education Progress, only 34% of Oregon fourth-graders tested “proficient” in reading in 2019. Moreover, Oregon continues […]
Last November, Oregon voters approved three ballot measures related to drug use. While all three passed by large margins, the policies themselves are contradictory. The purpose of Measure 110 was to make health assessment and recovery services for drug addiction widely available, and to adopt a health approach to addiction by removing criminal penalties for […]
