Anonymous ID: 874512 Nov. 24, 2021, 8:16 p.m. No.15075733   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>5943

"When it comes to how a city is run, urban experts say Portland has one of the most unaccountable, inefficient, outdated forms of government compared to any other major city in the United States. “I will tell you, it’s even worse than that,” City Commissioner Mingus Mapps said. “Portland’s form of government is inexcusable.” Mapps, in his first term as a city commissioner, was elected to serve the people. But that’s hard to do under Portland’s commission form of government.

“Probably most Portlanders think we have a mayor and 4 members of the city council, but that’s not how things really work here in Portland,” Mapps told KOIN 6 News. “We really have 5 mayors each in charge of his or her own fiefdoms.” Those fiefdoms are the city bureaus: Fire, police, water, parks and recreation, housing, environmental services. The list goes on. Each commissioner is assigned their collection of bureaus and offices to oversee, responsible for hundreds of employees, multi-million dollar budgets, labor agreements, strategic plans, day-to-day operations.

For the last several months the Portland Charter Commission has been meeting, taking public input and ideas, with the goal of putting the question of changing Portland’s form of government on the November 2022 ballot. City Auditor Mary Hull Caballero agrees. The city’s commission form of government takes away your voice at City Hall.

“I am convinced that one of the most important things we can do to turn the city around is to change our form of government,” Mapps said. “Our commission form of government is just untenable. If we don’t change that our city is going to fail.”

 

https://www.koin.com/is-portland-over/mapps-change-form-of-government-or-portland-will-fail/