You know I want to be a blog about things succeeding, about my city doing well, and about things just going in a more positive direction. We cannot have nice things currently thought so here is what is going on in my charlie foxtrot of a home city.

As another piece of evidence on the ever growing mountain of difficulties to start a Business in the city we have this little adventure in stupidity. Click the pic to see something KATU 2

A city who cannot clear their own sidewalks is asking business to take on fixes financially. That is some of the absolute dumbest shaniganery I have heard in a while. That is where part of this astronomical opening cost comes from, because the city who is being sued for not being ADA compliant because of all the campers on the sidewalk and needs to add ramps as needed from the sidewalk because that is public property.

Building permit costs has been astronomical and even places like Seattle are doing better

“Buh, we should have sales tax then, as that’s how the other cities raise those funds” From some moron probably

If that is the case then this would have been the problem for everyone pre pandemic, but there are very little cases to that, in fact a lot of people once declared Portland as a city easy to do business in. In short unless it changed in the pandemic all this shows is that our city is in a financial crunch and cannot raise funds or allocate funds to things they have done in the past.Also, we have not needed a sales tax in the past and got on for decades so unless people can claim that those in charge are so bad and the financial expanse of need versus resources so massive that they simply cannot I do not want to hear another word about a sales tax. Pound sand in every orifice and call yourself an hourglass, as that will be a more productive hobby.

Also, mind you it is not just this, it is insurance, it is fines, it is costs on top of costs, on top of costs and suddenly we have a downtown sector that looks more like a paintball war zone then an actual business sector. When the city cannot help people when businesses get their stock shoplifted and no cops come to help. It is something the city has had issues with for years, and I have been banging that drum enough that the drum has my phone number for booty calls. We are not in a place where the city can get out of this in months, we are in a place that this city gets out in years from now. That is provided that everyone in the city management, and the county and even the state management can get their head out of the proverbial backside.

Up next on the Portland makes me alcoholic article is that we had homeless people start getting physical with japanese diplomats who were touring the city. This personally gives me a sixth dimensional migraine, because some of my family, the ones I can work with help with that specific group to foster good relations between Portland and Sapporo. A program to have Japanese politicians and diplomats tour Portland to see what we are up to, and see what they want to learn and take back home with them. The only thing they may be learning is that we are turning into a sinkhole at record speeds. No one was harmed, it was light contact, there are plenty of reasons to look in the other direction if you cannot stand the truth. However, here we like shining flashlights where people need to see

“You just don’t like it because you are a republican!”

This reason has come up enough times that now there is no nicety when dealing with it, child in heaven I was born in Portland and was a democrat up until Obama. Those who are a zealot to their own political code without needing to adapt to circumstance has to be bar non, on either side, some of the dumbest people walking the planet today. You cannot be this dumb and think you are doing good work. It does not work that way.

So I am going to go chill out.

Stay Strong