On the Issues

The following are the questions posed by the Maine League of Young Voters to all Portland mayoral candidates, and Ralph Carmona’s answers. If he did not address an issue of concern to you, please feel free to email ralphcarmona@gmail.com or call his cell phone at (207) 420-5916.

Community Engagement

1.  Have you been to/participated in any local events?  Naked Shakespeare, The Farmers Market, Pride, City Council Meetings, Art Walks, Take Back the Night, or others?

Ralph Carmona in Monument Square

Thanks to Andrew Painter for sharing this photo he took of me talking with voters in Monument Square!

I am active in the public life of the city and enjoy the many cultural and entertainment opportunities available here. One of my favorite Portland experiences has been becoming a Portland history docent, immersing myself in the fascinating past of this city.

I have a great time at the First Friday Art Walks, along with enjoying the theaters, restaurants and arts events here. I participated in Pride Day, the Memorial Day parade, and Sudanese Independence Day march. I attended Portland’s Fourth of July celebration on the Eastern Promenade and talked with voters while we waited for the sun to set.

I have testified before the Portland City Council on numerous occasions on issues from immigration to the DREAM Act to the Thompson’s Point project. I organized the Portland chapter for the League of United Latino American Citizens (LULAC). As vice chair of the Portland Democrats, I organized this year’s Truman Dinner, raising more money than ever in the committee’s history while drawing a wide range of notable Maine attendees.

As chief spokesperson for the Maine LULAC, I have testified and lobbied on issues involving the city council, Maine State Legislature, and Maine’s congressional delegation, including a private meeting with Gov. LePage in April to lobby for issues important to Portland.

I was a lobbyist for the DREAM Act and wrote in support of that federal legislation, which would provide a path to citizenship for young people who came illegally to this country as children.

I also provided testimony on the Governor’s legislative proposal to deregulate existing environmental laws.

I was the chief fundraiser for and engaged in get-out-the-vote efforts for the MLYV campaign on the immigration initiative. I also wrote Op-ed pieces for the Portland Press Herald on the issue, participated in the Portland 101 course, and hosted a fundraiser for the Portland 101 course.

As part of organizing an observance for Cesar Chavez, I wrote an op-ed piece on the diversity and universality of Chavez’s message and appeared on radio and television regarding his birthday and the event. Also spoke out against the Maine Labor Mural removal and taking Chavez’s name off the Department of Labor Conference room

With my wife, Vana, I took the recent Munjoy Hill Hidden Garden tour and donated financially. I also supported a play with former legislator Harlan Baker to support efforts to reinstall the Maine labor mural.

2. What organizations do you belong to?

Member, NAACP
President, Portland LULAC
Member, Portland Chamber of Commerce
Member & Usher, First Parish of Portland
Certified Portland History Docent
Instructor, “Portland’s Future: Politics and Policy,” Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, USM
Maine Natural Resources Council
Member, Maine Historical Society
Member, Police Department Community Police Advisory Board
Member, Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition
Member, Friends of Eastern Promenade
Member, Munjoy Hill Neighborhood Association
Member, Maine Historical Society
Member, Maine Audubon Society
Member and former vice chair, Portland Democratic City Committee

Leadership

3.  In a few sentences, summarize your vision for Portland.

My campaign theme is “Portland on the Rise.” I see the need for a mayor who will foster sustainable economic growth (more livable jobs and wages), quality of life issues (investments in human and physical capital), and provide a leadership that will be transparent, accessible, unifying and effective.

4.  How do you stay informed about local issues?

I attend city council general and committee meetings, participate and follow organizations like MLYV, MPA, NAACP, LULAC, MIRC, I also read local newspapers and out-of-state press, news magazines  and numerous public policy and non-fiction, books.  I also have learned as a student in MLYV’s Portland 101, History Docent Program, and taught a Portland Future: Politics and Policies course at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on the USM campus. Since beginning my campaign, I have spent part of every day walking the streets of Portland, meeting voters, sharing my thoughts and listening to their concerns.

5.  How will you represent the city’s economic interests at both the national and state level?

I will work directly with chief interests affected and involved neighborhood organizations, civic groups and the city government. My chief goal will be to politically match Portland’s leadership commensurate with its economic significance for Maine people. A highly experienced lobbyist for large corporate public and private institutions on complex issues of financial and energy services, I intuitively know the strengths and weaknesses of special interests and the power of their economic influence.

Born and raised in a world of public segregation, I have studied, been active and shown leadership for those on the social margins of America.  During the 1990s, I took on a popular governor on issues of immigration and affirmative action. In Maine, I have responded to Gov. LePage’s statements and actions on civil rights, immigration and his budget proposal impacts on Portland. Locally, I lobbied the Portland City Council, our two House of Representatives and US Senators on the DREAM Act impacting millions of future young Americans.  I was the only major critic to meet privately with the governor to discuss the effects of his budget proposals on the City of Portland.

As Mayor, I will utilize my 40 years of experience and skills to personally and publicly lobby and work regionally with other cities to lobby Augusta. As a national leading mayor, I will work with national leading mayors to fight in Washington DC for the national economic value we provide as the largest cities in the states. Beyond government circles, I would encourage development of high-tech and high-profile industries in Portland. My goal is to make sure Portland’s economy offers growth and value for investors, entrepreneurs and the working people who make this city great. Innovative work environments that work against our carbon economy are also crucial. To that end, I would encourage more emphasis on telecommuting and working remotely. More affordable housing would also save an estimated 20 miles of auto transporation per day.  Working close to home will result in keeping income in Portland.

Running the race

6.  How do you feel about private vs. publicly funded elections? How are you funding your own campaign?

I am a strong supporter of publicly funded elections. Unfortunately, this process has been undermined by the US Supreme Court and other court decisions that blew a hole in the matching fund piece.  This allows for outside money and special interest support that is not matched by public funds. The good news is that the Maine Ethics Commission is exploring options that would still allow for public funding. There are three possible solutions: First, a one-time public payment. Second, a hybrid public-private payment process. And third, a requalification of receiving personal small donations that would by supplemented by public dollars.

As one who has experienced working with a corporate PAC and working with business organizations.  I know that they dominate the campaign donation process. The influence of special interest money has drowned out important voices in our democracy.  That’s one reason Portland needs a mayor with the skills and experience to withstand the excesses of special interest practices and the over spilling effects of human nature’s penchant for bottom-line greed and economic concentration.

So far, I have funded my campaign with support from friends both old and new, people who have been part of my personal and professional life for over 40 years.

7.  Did you support Portland’s change to an elected mayor system? Why or why not?

Yes, wholeheartedly. In developing a course on Portland’s future for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, I discerned a growing unease among Portland leaders over a city governing process they viewed as lacking in accountability, transparency and decisiveness on the issues of the day. Even though the new mayor will be weak in terms of his formal role, the power will come in his ability to work with other council members, persuade and engage public involvement, and work with the media in a positive symbiotic – not adversarial – fashion.

8.  Do you support repealing the new state law that ends same-day voter registration? Why or why not?

Yes. I have worked to gather signatures in the mornings and afternoons on Market Day in Monument Square and Farmers Market at Deering Oaks  to help overturn this law.  It nullifies almost 40 years of active democratic voter participation and will disenfranchise as many as 60,000 Maine voters. It is a blatant effort to suppress the lawful participation of Maine people, particularly the working poor, students and young adults, and our respected senior citizens. It is a false solution to a nonexistent problem.

9.  How will Ranked Choice Voting impact your campaign strategy?

I believe I am running the same campaign I would run in a more traditional election system. I am running a positive campaign about making what is great about our city greater in the face of global economic and social forces impacting urban life.  Leveraging our assets for sustainable infrastructure investment and development, Portland can become the leading lighthouse for America’s urban future.

This campaign is the culmination of my yearlong journey of talks with voters throughout the city about Portland’s future and active involvement in the issues of the day. My wife Vana is a Mainer, and together we chose Portland and intend to live out our lives here. I have no higher calling than to serve as its mayor and put Portland on the rise. Although most Portland residents were not born in Maine, I am finding that Portland voters are primarily concerned what the next mayor will do for them and Portland; that what matters is not where you come from, but what you can do.

Social services

10.  What role do immigrants and refugees play in shaping Portland, and, conversely, what role do you think the city can play in improving opportunities for immigrants and refugees?

The last thing anyone aspiring for office should do is to challenge the city to elevate its moral profile on the divisive immigration question. Yet, the lead organization on that issue was the MLYV qualifying this immigration voter initiative. The measure would have further integrated legal immigrants into our democratic process by giving those who contribute to city revenues (property taxes as owners or renters), have children attending our schools, and are committed to serve in the military, the right to vote in local city elections.

I took up this cause and talked with about 1,000 voters and got 90% approval rating for the measure. I organized the only fund-raiser and raised most of the money for the Portland initiative that almost passed last November. I did it because I lived, studied and have engaged in the immigration question all of my life.  Immigration will be the human lifeblood of Maine’s future and is America’s new reality. Like the evolution of our capitalistic society, it can be creative or destructive. In Maine, all this is epitomized in Portland, where now and in the future immigrants and refugees will play a central role in shaping the city’s economy and institutions.

As mayor, I would elevate the debate posed by anti-immigrant measures like state and federal executive orders or legislative residential restrictions, birther and Arizona copycat proposals. I will highlight the social stability costs of these measures and how health care and general assistance cuts will escalate costs because immigrants, poor and middle class people will find themselves increasingly at emergency centers.  I have engaged in hot-button immigration issues through shoestring efforts from developing a Portland League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to elevate the statewide significance of the Governor’s anti-immigration executive orders and racial remarks.  I sought to raise the moral significance of this issue with a Cesar Chavez observance and lobbying our federal representatives on the DREAM Act.  In my private 40-minute meeting with the Governor, I made clear that without immigration, Maine’s birth rate would been flat during the last 10 years. Those rates will certainly not rise in the future with his anti-immigration orders and such similar efforts. I emphasized that his proposed health and general service cuts were not about immigrants, but about Maine people and the impact he would have on the state’s economic engine – Portland.

As mayor, I will use my media and lobbying skills in this position of authority to reach out actively to the MLYV, immigrant and civil rights leaders, and join with other urban mayors and business leaders on a national counter-narrative.

The immigration initiative that I worked for MLYV is central to enhancing Portland’s democracy, Portland schools and the public assistance needed to prepare the estimated 30 percent of Portland school population for our future. This is consistent with the reality that immigration is central to Portland’s past, present and future.

11.  Do you think there are sufficient social services provided to Portland residents who are homeless or living in poverty? What would you do as mayor to improve access or availability of those services?

Immigrants and poor people come in disproportionate numbers to urban centers like Portland because we provide a greater level of services that are public in nature — affordable housing and public transportation, for instance, that are not available in less diverse and smaller rural cities. These people are as much a part of our economy and society as bankers, lawyers and even City Councilors. They fill minimum-wage jobs and start businesses. They develop their own mutual support networks through mediating institutions, like churches or resource centers.  Our city can offer a hand-up – not handout — in troubled times and help them move toward a job or path toward becoming an American.

We need to deal honestly with the dark side of homelessness (the violence and disorderly conduct from alcohol and drug addiction). We need to address welfare fraud to devote scarce resources to those truly in need and affirm the fact that more people leave than come to Maine for public assistance. As mayor, I will lobby hard for shelters and affordable housing as steppingstones toward social stability. Locally, this disconnect played out in a recent controversy involving the police chief and Preble Street’s executive director. I know these two leaders and the insides of that controversy. As Mayor, I would have bridged that divide by connecting the two folks and lobbying for resolution.

As a national leading mayor I would work with other mayors and the business leaders to elevate the national American dilemma of homelessness and poverty facing us.  Next year’s domestic federal budget will be equivalent to the Eisenhower years of the 1950s – before John Kenneth Galbraith awakened America with his famous Affluent Society that criticized our national failure to invest in our human and physical capital.

I would develop advisory roles from those communities and fight present state and national legislative efforts to deny general assistance due to them. I would use my mayoral role to specifically attack the false view that immigrants or out-of-state poor people are the cause of Maine’s or Portland’s fiscal problems. My mantra will be that those impoverished people receiving TANF assistance are 90 percent disabled, elderly, single mothers and children. Legislative efforts to place 90-day residential in-state proof or impose a 30-day waiting period are counterproductive in that context. And I would be at the front end of efforts to oppose any state executive or Legislature effort to remove the state’s 40 years of revenue sharing to cities like Portland. Efforts like these will only force unavoidable property tax increases that are no longer tolerable in Portland. 

Cops and Crops

12.  How could city police improve public safety and their community relations?

Communication is critical.  I would work with neighborhood associations, civil rights organizations, the MLYV activists, and business leaders to assess our public safety issue. As one who has served as an advisor to the Chief of Police, my sense is that by most accounts he did a great job by pushing hard for community policing, addressing quality of life issues like graffiti and disorderly house conduct. There were some bumps along the way involving, as I mentioned elsewhere, the police and Preble Street Resource Center. The results are that the city’s safety record is below what it was last year and better than Maine as a whole. And I know that the chief has done the good work of succession planning so that the council does not have to waste taxpayer money and go on a fishing expedition for an outside successor. The lead candidates are inside the department. As mayor, I will seek to support — and expand where we can — the police department’s safety and community relations’ efforts going forward

13.  Do you support the ballot initiative to make marijuana possession the lowest law enforcement priority? Why or why not?

I clearly support the need to make possession of marijuana a low priority.  The reality is that if you are smoking pot out on the street, you could face a civil penalty – not actual arrest.  That is about as low a priority as it gets.

In terms of an initiative, I would have signed the petition and left it to the voters; but, knowing that there was no discussion with the Chief of Police on the matter, I would not sign it today.  There has to be a conversation on this issue. My understanding is that this might also be a constitutional question because federal and state laws drive law enforcement discretion.  Thirteen states have a zero tolerance standard that makes pot use a legal violation. Maine is not one of them. Ironically, federal and state law is more stringent on alcohol use in the public; there, you can actually be arrested.  Finally, use of marijuana for medicinal purposes is legal in Maine.

Education

14.  What policies can our city adopt to better serve at-risk youth?

The police department community policing has been a huge success.  It is a partnership with young people, parents and community leaders on issues ranging from graffiti to disorderly conduct. But most important is that it connects our youth with police.

We need to expand those kinds of partnerships to other departments and find ways to diversify the use of our schools beyond our adult education program. Of critical concern is our growing immigrant segment of the school district.  I have lived that life of struggling between cultures and find the need to integrate that community as we respect its differences.  One example, given to me by a school board member, city councilor and state superintendent of instruction, is to find ways to bring together law enforcement, public works, and parks and recreation resources to address at-risk youths. Such cross-departmental initiatives have proven to be significant in decreasing delinquency, increasing student attendance and increasing diversity of use. Another example that comes to mind is the District’s grant seeking efforts at support overhauling our public schools by creating smaller learning community and career pathways. This would involve students learning in and out of the classroom with a variety of adults and nonprofits that work with immigrants.  Mastery of skills will be measured beyond traditional test scores, involving demonstrations in settings such as learning exhibitions. This will create a model of personalized learning that will help make the diversity of Portland schools more creative and integrative going into the future.

15. Are Portland’s schools working well? Would you do anything to improve graduation rates and college readiness?

Encouraging a future Portland voter.

Extremely well, considering the circumstances. The School Department continues its good work with leveraging off the local Portland economy in areas likes the arts. This is a community that believes in its schools – witness the more than 100,000 hours of volunteer time given to the district. This largest school system in Maine has laptops for all students from 6-12th grade and will be completely wireless by the end of this year. Over half of the district’s teaching staff earn credit equivalent to five college courses in the past two years.

The Portland school district is one of the nation’s first to offer project-based Expeditionary Learning from K-12th grade. Our high school students have access to one of the broadest selections of AP courses in Maine. Students can take college courses paid by the state and our adult school program offers Portland immigrants and those in need of skills with lifelong learning and professional opportunities through academic, jobs skills and enrichment courses.  Portland school district also has a regional arts and technology high school that provides hands-on courses for our creative economic future involving health care, robotics and “green” construction.

Devastating cuts are having profound effects on educating a changing Portland student population. Our immigrant students are the future of Portland, but the broader cuts in assistance and more directly at Portland schools are creating a slippery slope.  This ultimately translates into a decreasing quality of public schooling graduation and college readiness.  Portland needs a mayor who can be the voice for those future citizens and workers, and lobby to maintain public school excellence for all of Portland’s students. My involvement on issues related to Portland schooling’s growing diversity best prepares me to work with the Superintendent and Board members to make our growing school and city diversity more creative – not destructive.

The district faces losing $6 million in state and federal funding. This means a reduction in 83 jobs. Fortunately, the budget remains sufficient to move the district forward in key areas such as pre-kindergarten, literacy in K-2, and elementary world language program and math instruction for grades 6-8.  These initiatives reflect Portland priorities identified in the district’s 2009 Future Search effort, its new mission, vision and core values.

As mayor I would engage in a wide-ranging partnerships (eg., Headstart, Catherine Morrill Pre-School) that expand early childhood education as a key long term solution to the district’s competitiveness and dropout problems. I would work with emerging ethnic organizations to deal directly with immigrant and high-risk youths. The board’s leadership to realign literacy in K-2 reflects best practices and there is the need for the district to adopt a common text for teaching phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension in K-2.  All elementary schools have a certified reading teacher to support classroom teacher efforts to increase student achievements.  But we need to expand that effort to acknowledge the more than 60 languages that are spoken here, and how Portland’s new immigration requires continued commitment to the District’s elementary world language program.

In other advanced countries, a second language is obligatory or even required. Portland’s superintendent is right to say: “Portland is already a multilingual community.  Preparing…students for the future requires a comprehensive approach to teaching world language from elementary through high school.”  I like his effort to cover textbook updates, consistency, high expectations and equal fairness for all Portland students. This means consistent staff training, common assessments and collaboration.  All this is expensive, but efficiences are integrated in that process through a common school approach.  This gives students the opportunity to take courses from any one of the four high schools. A common schedule reduces duplication, increases the length of the school day and maintains advanced honors courses. These are all keys to a postsecondary degree and successful future.

As mayor, I will work toward the dialogue that recognizes Portland public schools as the best investment America can make. We know that underfunded preventive maintenance and capital improvement have left places like Hall Elementary School, West Presumpscot, Reiche, Lyseth and Longfellow in pretty bad shape. And this is on top of the needed technology for this new century.

16.  Would you support charter schools in Portland? Why or why not?

Much of the advocacy for charter schools is rooted in the notion that parents want more personal choice for their kids.  We all want that. The difficulty is that, along with outstanding – and bad — examples of charter schools, they can reject students and send them back to  the public school system, which educates 90 percent of  all K-12 students. We should look at charter schools, but recognize they can undermine Portland’s public school integrative potential and can create inequities. Moreover, the source of our public school crisis is the insufficient attention given to teacher performance and failed recognition that  education is the best of all public investments. The central support for charter schools is a perception that public schools are not of high quality and put the benefits of teachers before students. Part of this is also an effort to destroy public school teacher benefits and wages. I will not take part in that, especially when our teachers have shared the pain of cuts we are facing in a shrinking economy.

Development, Infrastructure and Planning

17.  What kind of economic development is best for Portland’s economy?

I believe we need to focus on a growth that is sustainable for our economy; an ecology of commerce that seeks to fundamentally redesign, through market principles, our industrial, residential and transportation systems so that our growth springs easily from the earth and respects the land and sea.

Portland has the potential to have a commerce that is joyful, artistic, food for the soul and a destination of travel. A joyful city is a successful city and I believe the kind of sustainable growth I seek needs to be regulated in a fashion that is less command-and-control and more flexible and efficient. Reflective of the questions asked, there are numerous issues facing Portland, little different than those of the largest cities of other states. Very critical for appropriate economic growth will be the development of assets natural to Portland’s environment and size.  Portland’s arts, cuisine and travel businesses already have the foundation to reflect a creative culture in an age of expertise and diversity. There are already many high-tech companies in the area, thanks to a supply of educated and hard-working Portlanders. As mayor, I would seek to bring them into the life of the city and help encourage startups to build on the pool of talent already in place.

I intend to focus much of my energy on economic growth – not tax increases, cuts or deficit spending. Critical thinkers and many business leaders who have focused on Portland’s economy have a common ground on what is best for the future. The critical question, in other words, is how we move forward — not whatneeds to be done. I have the experience and skills to see critical issues – neighborhood or national in consequence – from different perspectives and to bring the council together to act on them. This requires adept personal and public opinion skills. It involves the ability to study and act on issues quickly. The problem facing the city, to a large extent, has been one of governmental fragmentation. The mayor is an inherently centralizing figure of leadership and his success will be a consequence of how that kind of leadership is exercised.

18.  How do you feel about our current transportation system (public and private)?

Modes of transportation that rely on the car culture will not be sustainable in the 21st Century.  Our way of life will radically change as the price of gas increases beyond $4/gallon. There are profound benefits in moving away from a culture that emphasizes a carbon economy. The Maine Alliance for Sustainable Transportation (MAST) is right to focus on transportation infrastructure that is more diverse in use, making our growing diversity healthier and emphasizing a walkable infrastructure.

We desperately need more efficient bus transportation; the  Peninsula Transit Plan (PTP) addresses that issue in its 2009 report. We presently rely on three different types of busing.  A more regional approach would create efficiencies and be more user-friendly and provide incentives. Finally, we need to have a mayor who will work among national leading mayors towards high-speed transportation. The  European experience with bullet trains is an example of how we are falling behind the need for a more viable transportation infrastructure.

Utilizing Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation System (PACTS) and city funding, we need to focus on enhancing key corridors, like Forest Avenue and Congress Street (between State and Franklin Streets), and implement the action steps laid out in the PTP.  We need to fully implement our state’s Sensible Transportation Policy Act (STPA), which seeks to decrease highway and road building that is so harmful to our quality of life. Actual state expenditures, however, continue to go down the path of more highway construction and not sustainable forms of mobility. Worse, is the conclusion at the June PACTS conference that a down economy requires the need to focus on greater efficiencies and use of existing resources.  As the Thompson’s Point project shows, however, there are ways that we can stimulate local revenue growth to invest in transportation.

On a regional level, we need to work with surrounding cities and seek national mayoral support for federal policies that are consistent with the STPA and Portland’s PTP.  Much of the mayoral leadership can come in working through the PACTS regional approach. In addition, as plug-in electric vehicles become more widely available over the next few years, I’d like to see Portland become a leader in making charging stations available to encourage cleaner forms of transportation. This energy-experienced mayor would utilize Portland Public Services to worked in partnership with Unitil and Central Maine Power on local and regional efforts to transform our energy economy as it relates to transportation.

19. How would you improve the supply of affordable housing in Portland?

In the last few years, millions of Americans have lost their homes, the result of a massive housing bubble that extended ownership of properties and development of rental property under the guise of questionable financial instruments.  The guilty parties include private and federal corporate entities that believed in self-regulation. Of course, this has affected the job market, especially construction, and that affects consumer demand. With less demand comes market shrinkage.

The tragedy of affordable housing is that when their housing options fail, people become homeless. Some have estimated that 7,000 people were forced to stay in Portland emergency shelters last year. Much of the city’s affordable housing is really slum housing; it is a niche partly filled by newly arrived immigrants who live in multiple-family homes and create what are called arrival cities. It explains the need for a mayor to support the strong partnership between Avesta and Preble Street Resource center at all levels of government.

Portland has made good use of federal and state grants to provide niches of affordable housing, which is a needed part of any diverse city’s make-up. Even in this sluggish economy, $55 million was spent on affordable housing for 900 jobs in Southern Maine to build 255 units of which 146  (except 16 townhouses on Munjoy Hill) will be rental housing for low-income people. I talked with Dana Totman, Avesta’s CEO, and he said the cost of insurance, energy and property taxes overwhelm lower interest rates and housing prices. Totman emphasized that thousands of renters have emerged from the housing crisis. This microcosm called Portland reflects our national housing crisis.

The funding for that project was a mix of government spending:  bonds, stimulus dollars and tax credits. A lot of that will probably be cut this year.  Locally, we need to do what I advocated above: Spur local growth and have the mayor lobby Augusta and Washington DC to make the urban case for affordable housing.  At the same time, we need to make sure existing ordinances are implemented with affordability being integral to development projects. Failure to hold developers to this standard is one reason the city has lost 100 affordable units the last five years. Appropriate executive oversight could have prevented this from happening. I am convinced that stronger mayoral oversight would have prevented the recent loss of 54 apartments with the sale of the Eastland Park Hotel.  Other innovations are possible, like hostels, focused on socially integrative, safe and temporary housing for those who need it as a temporary mid-point to affordable rental housing.

Finally, it is critical that the new mayor advocate for affordable housing as a sustainable growth opportunity that increases Portland’s consumer demand and decreases carbon, safety and health care costs.  Affordable housing, Totman emphasized, keeps people within the city.  This leads to greater productivity, attendance and allows employees to contribute to the local economy. Investing in affordable housing also leads to more construction employment.

On sustainability, I have read an estimate that the average poverty rate is about 22,500 for a family of four. The average transportation car costs is $9,000 annually for those living outside of Portland. This of course leads to how public transit incentivizes lower income people, especially immigrants, to come to Portland. But key here is that affordable housing gives those folks a place to live and avoid the expense of car use; it also saves energy use and decreases the carbon footprint by eliminating, as mentioned, an estimated 20 miles per person average commute.

On safety and health care costs, Totman explained that good decent housing means a better quality of life for the least of us. This leads to decreased police emergency calls. With the development of Florence House and Logan Place, for example, such calls decreased 90% and 80% respectively.

20. How can Portland better manage parking as the city’s population grows?

The “fee-in-lieu-of-parking” ordinance has been one effort that provides for developers paying a $5,000 in lieu fee instead of paying for a parking lot or leasing a parking space. The funds raised contribute to a “sustainable transportation fund” that will be used for smarter and sustainable growth to help build neighborhoods more strategically and ensure walkable streets that will enable our increasing diversity to thrive.

The fee is one of the PTP objectives adopted by the council in 2009 and is part of an overall strategic effort to improve transportation alternatives to the car economy. Business leaders like it because it gives more flexibility in site development. Organizations, like MAST, like it because it provides greater public management of transportation and parking resources. Portland’s next mayor needs to utilize the PTP and regional possibilities to stabilize our urban transportation and encourage a well-connected and creative diverse city.

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