Weekend Wire

All the good stuff gets dumped on a Friday, in the hope that nobody'll notice, and yesterday was no exception here in the City That Works (you over)™: ethically-challenged mayoral candidate Jeffer-some Smith is down in Salem, doing his "Representative" schtick. And it does seem to be working for Bus-Boy: At the insistence of Rep. Peter Buckley, the Democratic co-chairman of the Joint Ways and Means Committee, money for Smith's project remained intact while another, established economic development program, the Oregon Investment Council, was targeted for cuts. 

Oregon Inc., as it is known, has a proven track record. In its first three years, it helped create or save more than 600 jobs and raised more than $70 million in private capital, according to the Oregon Business Development Department's website. Economic gardening, now known as the Grow Oregon Council, remains an untested idea. 

Naturally, Petey and Jeffy pooh-pooh the very thought that politics might have anything to do with it - it is, after all, standard procedure to gut a well-established and successful program in order to support one with no record of success.

Good news for Portland ratepayers, though: the water & sewer slush-funds aren't as low as previously thought, so Randy's only going to raise the water bill by 11%. This should provide enough additional revenue to continue to fund his pet projects through the end of the year (certainly, they aren't to provide water service). And Dan "The Man" Saltzman's sewer whizzes only need to add 5.9% to your bill - a "savings" of nearly thirty cents per month!

Overall, then, rates for water and sewer "services" - already 5th-highest in the USA, will climb by a modest 17% this year. Here at el rancho indebto, that means that the paltry $301.81 paid for three months of "service" will jump to a respectable $353.12. As another local blogger often says, "Go By Streetcar!"

Meanwhile, out in the 'Burbs: PCC Rock Creek has "partnered" with SolarCity and SolarWorld, and so you can rest assured that good times are on the way for Oregon taxpayers.  2,100 solar panels are being installed at the campus, and everyone involved is just pleased as punch.  So where's the money coming from? A bond measure voters approved.

As part of the project's multi-pronged partnership, SolarCity, a Portland-based energy consulting company, will actually finance, own, build and maintain the system, which will have an estimated value of $2.5 million. 

Through what's called a "power purchase agreement," Portland Community College will prepay $830,000 to SolarCity. That money will buy 20 years of energy, which will roughly match the expected lifespan of the array. 

As usual, you can't really depend on The Zero to get the story right: SolarCity is actually based in San Mateo, California. And of course, there's no mention of what happens in 20 years, when the system hits end of lifespan.

Talk to a SolarCity rep about a home installation, and it's all sunshine and roses. And when the contract's up, they just "give" you, the homeowner, the system for nothing! Sounds great, doesn't it? Um...at the end of the system's lifespan, who's going to be responsible for taking it off the roof and disposing of it? Hint: it ain't them.

Comments

[T D]

Disheartening like much of the rest of the news. Thanks for keeping these issues center front, Max.

Jefferson Smith has done an extra push in raising money before the legislative session because he can't raise it during the session. There's a small silver lining in the legislative session cloud.

[Max]

Jeffer-Scam Smith is extraordinarily weaselly, even by Oregon political standards:

One thing we've been wondering about since we discovered that Smith had been convicted of driving while his license was suspended, was how the license got suspended to begin with. Apparently, it was because Smith failed to write in, or show up in court, to either plead guilty or defend himself on one or more moving violations for which he was ticketed.

Here's one case, in which he was doing 52 in a 35 mile-an-hour zone, in a silver Volvo, apparently just after midnight one night in July 2002, at which time he was a lawyer in the largest law firm in town. The disposition of the case is "FTA," which we're told means failure to appear.

Here's another one, from spring of 2004. This time he's driving a brown Jaguar X16 with expired tags at 20 to 2 in the morning. He gets pulled over, admits that he's driving on a suspended license, gets ticketed, and then again, the disposition of the case is failure to appear. (The Jaguar was towed.)

Here's another failure to appear, on a radar speeding ticket charging him with going 40 in a 25-mile-an-hour zone on Halsey in a mid-afternoon in January of 2009. That was in a 2000 Acura.

Don't even get me started on the various money-laundering entities he's set up to front his "Bus Project".