In a few weeks Portland voters will be voting on a measure that would remove Portland's Bureaus of Water and Environmental Services from city control and have them run instead by a new elected board. Proponents claim that this measure will cut Portland water rates and provide transparency in an agency they believe is out of control. But opponents of the measure see it as a power grab by the city's largest industrial water users and corporate polluters, masquerading as a populist revolt. They say that the real intention is to roll back the city's most important environmental initiatives.
On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Bob Sallinger with the Audubon Society of Portland and Mike Houck with Urban Greenspaces Institute about why they oppose Measure 26-156.
Mike Houck has been a leader at the local, regional, national and international levels in urban park and greenspace issues since founding the Urban Naturalist Program at the Audubon Society of Portland in 1980. He founded the Urban Greenspaces Institute in 1999 and directs the Institue out of the Center for Spacial Analysis and Research at Portland State University's Geography Department, where he is an adjunct instructor.
Bob Sallinger is the Conservation Director for the Audubon Society of Portland and shepherds peregrine falcons on Portland bridges every spring.
- KBOO
- KBOO