They vote down a bond for schools, which actually made sense to pass, yet then they vote to raise property taxes, which adds to leases, rent, homeowners, etc. So, to recap, they vote for a levy that will save 200 teaching jobs at schools that are crumbling into disrepair. The best part is that the levy will still be in effect once the schools close. Of couse, the teachers could reject their raises, and volunteer to put the money into the schools. Think that will happen?? Dumbasses. This is why I moved out of Portland/Multnomah County.
I felt that the bond was ridiculous. Largest bond in Oregon history?!? And all because the school district cut normal maintenance instead of administration? I voted yes on the operating levy but no on the bond.
The bond actually made more fiscal sense, though, at least in terms of modern reality. How is Portland going to upgrade its schools? Paying teachers is nice, but as the Portland population continues to move out of Multnomah county and toward the suburbs, the bond makes more sense.
I agree with SDP (that sucks). Schools choose where to put their money. Now they say they have no money for maintance and want this fat bond passed. They have enough money. They need to stop spending so much on administration costs and put into mainatance and upgrades. I say no way to that bond, nice try but we aren't dumbasses that you can say for the schools and we say OK all the time.
Teachers ARE schools. Administrators and building improvements and busses are just ornamental trappings.
I got a real kick out of voting for increases on anything back when I lived downtown with my dad who was renting his unit in the Koin. Absolutely no repercussions for my family! In hindsight that was a dick move on my part. It's not that I shouldn't have a right to vote, but should I honestly have been allowed to vote on things that can only benefit me and not shelter my share of the burden? Perhaps that form of democracy could use a tweaking so that people in my position don't have a say on those issues. It's about as fair as a county in Florida sending me a ballot to vote on whether to increase vehicle registration fees. Now, when my dad owned a house and these property tax measures at least had an affect on him, I didn't vote that way. If I were a little less of a jerk I would have just left those blank. On that note, I have visited A LOT of Portland Schools recently as part of a job I was doing. They were all clearly built around the same time and were all falling apart in the exact same ways. They were honestly deplorable. Having gone to West Linn schools and the new Riverdale High school back in the day, all of these schools made me feel personally lucky. My first thought was to research how all these schools were built around the same time monetarily (and were probably quite nice back then) and yet here we are decades later and they're all about to fall down. I don't quite have the interest to do that amount of academic research, but if anyone has the answer to that I'd be open to hearing it.
Rent tends to increase when property tax increases. Landlords do not as a rule eat cost increases themselves. barfo
The bond measure to repair the schools was full of monies not being well spent. If the crap was trimmed out of it I think it would have had a lot more support.
You know there is problems if you can't get Portland to approve a tax and spend bill for schools. Usually you say schools and Ptd approves it.
Wait, you mean you don't just pass on all increased expenses to your tenants regardless of the state of the real estate market?
