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Citizens Hold Meeting About Sale of Mt. Tabor Park Land
At the Same Time City Says Park for Lease, Not for Sale
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Citizens gathered for an informational meeting at the Mt. Tabor
Presbyterian Church last night, November 13, to share what they had
learned about the City's plan to sell a part of Mt. Tabor Park to
Warner Pacific College.
The room overflowed with over 50 people in attendance even though the
meeting was quickly organized and announced with only a few days
notice. Some citizens found out only a few hours before the meeting.
The City did not send a representative, but Warner Pacific College's
Vice President, Andrea Cook, was there and took questions and plenty of
heat by people angered at the deceit of the sales deal.
"This process has lacked transparency. They were in control of it and
chose to set up an adversarial one. We love the parks and that's our
agenda," said Kay Hall, a professional facilitator who volunteered to
moderate the meeting.
"I thought the meeting was exceptional. It showed that we have
citizens who are fiercely dedicated to our public lands and are
determined to protect them from cavalier and high-handed attempts to
sell them off," said John Laursen, Mt. Neighborhood Association board
member. "The conversation that the City owes to its citizens is to
have a searching and thoughtful public debate about the maintenance
yard and nursery and their long term value to the parks system as a
whole. That should precede ANY conversation committing it to private
use," he continued.
Part of the conversation of the meeting centered around education about
the importance of Mt. Tabor Nursery and Central Yard to a park system
that is known world wide within urban planning circles. Members of the
meeting signed and took petitions for circulation that established the
signers as stakeholders of Mt. Tabor Park and called for no sale, or
lease, of any portion of it.
"This nursery has been here for ninety-eight years and was founded by a
premier horticulturist trained at the Harvard's Arnold Arboretum and
London's Kew Gardens. He was a designer for eight years with the famed
Olmsted firm. Emanuel Tillman Mische was the conscious of this City as
one of the first park supervisors hired. He had to advocate hard for
street trees and not only did he advocate for them, he planted
thousands of them right on the south slope of Mt. Tabor where the soils
and aspect were perfect. Our streets and our arboretum and parks are
filled with his dedication to long term visioning," said Cascade
Anderson Geller, the preparer of the National Register of Historic
Places nominations for Mt. Tabor Park, as well as the Washington Park
Reservoirs and Mt. Tabor Park Reservoirs.
Most people at the meeting were surprised to learn that public lands
can be sold at the discretion of the City Council with no public
process. What triggers a public process is a land use zoning change,
in this case including an historic zoning overlay. If the City
chooses, it can sell the land and then let the new owners deal with any
public process triggered by a change in the zoning. In the case of
Warner Pacific, documents reveal that the City was doing much of the
due diligence for them at the expense of the public, including a
suspicious land devaluation from $396,000 in 2005 to $18,000 in 2006
for a parcel of the land to be sold. The City had also done a
memorandum laying out ways to remove the historic overlay.
"I think we as Parks advocates should demand that if the city wants to
sell any parks property, they should process the zone change from Open
Space to something else BEFORE the sale. Changing the Comprehensive
Plan map is always a Type III process with the final decision made by
Council. They should make that choice while the public still owns the
property, so if the zone change is approved, the buyer has to pay full
market value. And if it isn't, the buyerwould have less claim of
private property rights if they subsequently purchased it and tried
again for a zone change," Amanda Fritz wrote in a September 22, 2006
email to the Team4PortlandParks listserv when she learned about the Mt.
Tabor Park sale proposal. This listserv is the communication tool for
the City Wide Parks Team she founded before her campaign for Dan
Saltzman's seat on City Council in the last election.
"I was surprised that so many people attended with such short notice
and I was also surprised that so many people felt so strongly that PPR
is out of control. There needs to be more public input into the budget
process since they have shown that their intent is not necessarily to
be good stewards of our public lands," said Mark Bartlett a Mt. Tabor
resident and member of research team that has spent the past month
working diligently to understand not only the Mt. Tabor sale, but the
drivers of it, that clearly involves a change in policy about public
land and its management.
Citizens plan to be on hand at PPR's one and only pre-budget meeting on
Wednesday, November 15 at 7 PM at the Oregon State Building. Chief on
their agenda is stopping the sale of parklands. They also want answers
about what is meant by a "fundamental restructuring" of PPR, that has
been undertaken out of the view of the public as mentioned in the
resolutions brought before Council, but stalled, earlier this month.
Walter Raimondo, resident of the Mt. Tabor neighborhood for 45 years,
plans on attending PPR budget meeting and had this to say about last
night's meeting, "I was greatly impressed with the participation of the
community. The organizers expressed, eloquently, information about how
our City functions that was very educational and beyond my
familiarity. In the short time we spent the together, I developed a
wonderful understanding about how important it is to protect our public
interest and our public property."
Organizers of last night's meeting didn't learn that the Mt. Tabor Park
sale was off until they arrived home after the meeting to emails from
the City.
Initial responses to this news are celebratory, but cautious,
especiallyat themention of a lease agreement with Warner Pacific
College. Citizens are still suspicious that PPR plans to whittle down
Mt. Tabor Park somehow. These suspicions are substantiated by maps
various researchers have seen on line. At last night's meeting,
someonein attendancebrought a googled copy of a map of Mt. Tabor
Park, showing the nursery between Harrison and Lincoln Streets and the
Yard not included in the boundaries of the park.
"The long term lease spells development and privatization of our open
spaces and parks. We find this unacceptable. Public means public,"
said Shannon Loch one of the organizers of last night's meeting and one
of the principle researchers of the sales deal. "The definition of
what is highest and best is a conversation that should be held in the
public realm and not among council members and other private
interests.
We welcome the opportunity to continue our discussions with the City
about the highest and best use of not only Mt. Tabor Park Central Yard
and Nursery but all of our public lands," Loch said.
Warner Pacific College said that they weren't interested in leasing the
land, when they appeared before the Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association
at their September meeting.
It was at this meeting that both the City of Portland and the college
said that they were only in the earliest stages of discussions. One
month later, a public document request revealed that the two parties
had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a timeline calling for a
sales agreement to be done by November 15, 2006. Legal counsel and
government relations specialist for Warner Pacific College is former
City Commissioner Jim Francesconi, who was the last councilman in
charge of parks before present parks commissioner, Dan Saltzman.
Interestingly, it was Commissioner Francesconi who sponsored a
resolution before City Council calling for a moratorium on the sale of
parkland in the late 1990s and put into place the current leadership in
PPR.
"The public is rightfully suspicious about everything at this point,"
said Cascade Anderson Geller, one of the founding members of the
Friends of the Reservoirs. During research on the reservoir burial
project, we learned of the college's interest in the land and inquired
about it in May 2003, but was told by PPR that to do a public records
request would be $4068. (see attached email) "But," she continued, "we
are exceedingly happy that the City has heard the voice of the public
and now that we've uncovered some information about the direction, or
misdirection, our parks bureau is heading, we're committed to
continuing a conversation with City officials. Our goal is to provide
our children, and our children's children, with the opportunity to
fight City Hall about this land, and all of our parklands, in the
future."
Community organizers will meet with Commissioner Dan Saltzman later in
the week.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Community organizers will meet Friday, November 17 with Commissioner
Dan Saltzman, the first time available for a meeting with him when they
learned about a resolution affecting Mt. Tabor Park Yard that park
officials said would be coming on the agenda "later in November". That
resolution then was filed for the November 1 agenda at the last
moment on October 26, giving researchers only a few days to study and
prepare for testimony. At the November 1 meeting, citizens waited for
hours, since it was not a time certain item, and then the eleven people
who signed up to speak were not allowed to testify. Mayor Tom Potter
wanted to forward a piece of the resolution and withhold any testimony
regarding Mt. Tabor Park. Citizen researchers, however, had made a
direct connection with the domino triggering effect of the loss of Mt.
Tabor Park Central Yard and Nursery if any portion of the resolution
was approved. Commissioner Dan Saltzman continued the item, as a
placeholder, to the next week's agenda since Commissioner Randy Leonard
firmly expressed dissatisfaction in the resolution and PPR's attempt to
address a budget note.
On October 30, citizen researchers were surprised to learn that one
document, the 2020 Vision Refinement Plan, cited in the resolution
filed by Commissioner Saltzman's office, was unavailable because it
didn't exist. 'That was a mistake,' said a PPR official. Citizens had
been calling for the resolution to be withdrawn due to its acceleration
to the agenda and because it was, as one City Hall official described
it, "awkwardly written and difficult to understand".
The resolution called for approving a new maintenance facility plan and
releasing money to fix up maintenance facilities. Although it didn't
specifically call out the sale of Mt. Tabor Park Yard to Warner Pacific
College, the community research team was certain that it was part of a
domino event that was needed to move to the next phase of the ongoing
preparations for the sale. Community organizers felt that the
resolution had been thrown together at the last minute because they had
exposed the deal and the MOU timeline expressly called out for the
signing of the sales agreement on November 15.
Information from documents lead them to believe that the $650,000
included in the resolution, was apparently to go toward the central
maintenance facility but without any specifics about how it would be
spent. Citizens believed that these funds could be spent helping the
City to condemn and demolish Mt. Tabor Park Central Yard, thereby
circumventing historic design review. Citizens brought these concerns
forward in previous press releases and to City Hall, and afterwards a
new exhibit appeared on the resolution that showed that the $650,000
would be spent on other facilities and not Mt. Tabor Park Central
Yard. Citizens said that thst made it appear that Mt. Tabor Park
Central Yard was off the table as a maintenance facility.They asked
thatsome of the $650,000 be set aside for Mt. Tabor Park's facility as
a good faith effort, and to give credibility to the public process that
was starting to be discussed by some in City Hall regarding the fate of
Mt. Tabor Park Central Yard.
A new substitute resolution, filed on November 2 for the November 8
council meeting, madeno mention of the suspect 2020 Vision Refinement
Plan document. A reference to the 1999 Maintanence Facilities Plan,
that was called out in the resolution of November 1 was missing as
well.That document,specifically said that Mt. Tabor Park Central Yard
was the best place for PPR's main maintenance facility.
"Parks has apparently devised a scheme, by developing this new
facilities feasibility study, to waste more money on something that is
not needed. No where do they appear to have made a case for spending
more than $40 million, a bare bones estimate for costs, on new
maintenance facilities. They haven't maintained their current
facilities, including Mt. Tabor Park Central Yard, even though their
own last evaluation says, 'The cost for relocating the facility
presently located at Mt. Tabor would by very expensive... It would
also be difficult to find land that has access to all parts of the City
that is as good as the access from Mt. Tabor Yard... All of the
district and program supervisors agree that the present yard is
centrally located and works well to serve all parts of the
system,"**said Shannon Loch one of the principle document requesters
and reviewers. (**Maintenance Facilities Plan: Guidelines for
Improvement and Development, 1999 Portland Parks and Recreation.)
At the November 1 Park Board meeting, where PPR first presented their
maintenance facilities feasibility study only a couple of hours before
City Council was poised to vote on it, director of finance for PPR,
Robin Grimwade stated that PPR is between $100 - $130 million behind in
maintenance costs. One Park Board member commented that he wondered
when such grim news would simply become "white noise" as no amount of
creative funding, including levies or bonds, would be able to touch it.
Community members believe that PPR is headed in the completely wrong
direction, toward sale of various parkland across the City and eventual
privatization of cultural and historic treasures such as Pittock
Mansion, that has now, like numerous other important public resources,
become a "transition site" that is expected to become self-sufficient.
"Even partial privatization of our public resources puts them in
jeopardy. It is one of the most important issues of our day. So much
effort went into setting aside public lands, libraries, schools and so
many of the things we take for granted everyday. We can't afford to
lose them, nor access to the information about them. This will happen
if we continue with this privatization trend. Private sponsorship can
be great, but it should come willingly and without expectations from
those companies, individuals and institutions that are enriched by
these same public resources. We don't want advertising and a
commercial feel in our parks. PPR is headed in that direction," said
Anderson Geller.
Adding to the confusion and questions of credibility about the
resolutions, the substitute resolution of November 8 opened with a call
for the establishment of a 6 month public process using the new Bureau
of Innovation's tool #9 for public process to be administered by the
Office of Neighborhood Involvement (ONI). When community organizers
were visiting City Hall on November 8, after Commissioner Saltzman
withdrew the resolution, ONI officials said that they hadn't been
approached about this proposal and didn't have the staff to undertake
such a process.
"It has been like a Lucy and Ethel episode this month at City Hall,"
said Anderson Geller. "There's a whole lot of spinning going on and
whole lot of public money being spun into a black hole. We want to
slow everything down, stop the spinning, pull facts out of that dark
hole and into the light and, most importantly, put the "public" back
into public service."
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