It's not like they're proposing to build a mile of light rail, after all. The City That Works is just looking at "investing" in wind power. The concept is led by Commisioner Dan Saltzman, who has considerable experience in matters relating to the general pissing away of millions of dollars. This particular scheme would involve selling bonds, rather than directly stealing from your wallet. However, given the incredible amount of debt to which Portland City Council has already committed, who in their right mind would purchase bonds from an insolvent city?
Dan's The Man, though - if anybody can push through a plan to spend millions, it'd be him.
Dan: why not consider starting on a slightly smaller scale? If it works, then look at scaling it up. Let's put a few windmills in the Portland City Council chamber. With all the air that you and the other guys push around, it's bound to generate some wattage. So if it proves cost effective (and there is little doubt that it would be), we can expand it to the Multnomah County Commission. From there, we can increase production with a facility at the Metro Council. Having shown solid results, we can make a good case for extending wind power generation facilities into Salem - just imagine the energy production we could reap from there!
You don't need to rip us off for another few tens of millions of dollars, Dan. You can give us "green power" just by yakking away as usual.