Adams: Unpaved streets 'embarrassing;' polling public

Does this mean no money currently paid in property taxes goes to fixing or maintaining roads?  I find that difficult to believe.  If they are "public roads" why stick the private property owner with the expense?  And who pays to maintain them after the initial outlay, or is it $300 a month forever.  Then what when the hit is too big for those on social security?  The city puts a lean on the home and eventually takes it away?  Hardly fair at all.

Unpaved strees embarrassing ? Adams is embarassing!

Watch property taxes go up.

If we can make bike lanes we can pave 65 miles of public streets.

Whats even more embarrassing is having a worthless lying pedofile for a Mayor.

Leave them unpaved. Once paved, bicyclists will only claim them as their exclusive bikeways!

Most if not all the neighborhoods with unpaved streets were annexed into Portland, often without their consent.

http://wweek.com/portland/article-17460-dirt_roads_dead_ends.html

 

“The City of Portland does not currently share in the cost of constructing streets or maintaining substandard streets. Since the beginning of the City’s history, most or all of these costs have been paid for by adjacent property owners....But there’s a bigger problem with the city’s policy—it’s based on a total falsehood.

In a 2000 report to City Council about funding for street improvements, an expert panel delved into the history of Portland infrastructure. They called the notion that property owners have always borne the cost of paving streets a “long-standing myth.”  As recently as 2000, the study found, the city was paying most or all of the costs to pave many streets, especially in poorer neighborhoods."

 

Sam Adams is lying once again. Plenty of money for bike lanes; but no money for paved streets in poor neighborhoods. The people of Cully were sold on the idea of annexation with better services. The City has a long history of paying for street paving (despite what Sam the Liar says in this piece), just not any more because it is more important to him put in bike lanes. The least he could do is be honest about it. Adams is a truly pathetic individual.  

Everyone in this city pays in to some pot of money that pays for roads. The streets that have never been paved should have been a part of that pot from day one. The city has saved money over the past 60+ years by not paving these streets and now our Mayor wants to bill the homeowners on those streets to pay for paving that they have already paid for? 

 

I live on the corner of two roads with no sidewalks, but at least the roads are paved. In fact, nearly all of my neighborhood has no sidewalks - except for those new construction locations where the city requires the developer to install sidewalks. This has resulted in a random hodge-podge of sections of sidewalk that randomly start and then stop a few feet later.

 

I am also a short walk from several unpaved streets and it is horrible. Even the unpaved streets are not minimally maintained and have potholes the size of bathtubs. 

 

The city has completely ignored them and I feel that the homeowners along these streets should be allowed to withhold some of their taxes as they are not getting the same level of service that others in this city enjoy.

Leave the roads as they are.. what a d-bag.   These idiot Politians wanting to spend, spend, spend and spend some more.  Sick.  Dig in your own pocket for a change and keep out of mine!

This seemed like an ideal "shovel ready" project for the stimulus...so much for that.

 

 

I live on one of these unpaved streets, and I agree with a lot of what I'm seeing here. First, we do have a lot of people living along our street that are very low-income. About half are also immigrants, with not a lot of social support systems in place to help navigate this issue. We also have a wheelchair-bound woman a few houses down who cannot even leave her paved driveway without assistance from Tri-Met's LIFT service .I'd say nearly nobody along our street could afford the $72,000 for a fully-equipped street, let alone the $14,400 for pavement just down the middle. 

 

The gravel from our street gets tracked into adjoining paved streets and wears down already-paved surfaces. The dust kicked up blows into adjacent streets, causing not only a mess but air quality problems. I have seen cars incur serious undercarriage damage when their drivers did not anticipate or see potholes ahead (and contrary to what you might think, this almost universally affects people who do NOT live on the street, since they don't know the corridor well). It has slowed the passage of emergency vehicles that use the street, as well as delivery vehicles. Filthy storm runoff from our street runs into nearby sewers on paved streets. And unpaved roads also present a connectivity issue for people who are just passing through - I have experienced this many times while trying to reach destinations in Parkrose, Cully, Sumner, Woodstock, and other neighborhoods.

 

If you think this issue doesn't affect you in some way, then you live in a bubble.

 

For what it's worth, anybody who lives in Portland contributes to transportation funds via property taxes, including people who bike, walk, and live on unpaved streets. I think bicycle improvements are a worthy investment that more than pay for themselves in a variety of ways, but getting all of our streets built to a baseline level of safety and utility should also be a priority for the city, regardless of the income of the people who live on them.

Adams.....you're like an unpaved road. 

I live on an unpaved dead end street in SW Pdx with a creek at the end and only 6 houses abutting the roadway. There is probably less than 20 trips a day on average. I love my unpaved street because it prevents untreated water from flowing down the street and into the creek when it rains. It would be a travesty to require us to pave our street and I think this is a really bad idea. Only Portland residents who actively request improvements should be considered.

Portland, you deserve what you get! How many times are you going to keep electing idiots like these guys. Portland's whole city government structure is screwy anyway.

He can find 5 million dollars to spend to fluoridate the water but can't find the money to pave the streets. 

 

If they pave the middle and leave gravel on the sides I doubt if they will maintain the streets after the work is done.  I live on a corner lot and one side of my house has a street like that the city is supposed to maintain.  After contacting the city 3 times they came out about 3 times in January of this year and poured a little asphalt to fill the bigger potholes.  There is still a lot of work to be done and they haven't been back.  I believe this was the first time in 23 years that the city had done any maintenance on the street.

 

""It's embarrassing that we have 65 miles of dirt roads,"

 

Shut up and move to Beverly Hills, yuppie.

 

"He is proposing a $100 million project. It could cost that much if all the homeowners around unpaved roads go for that plan. While the city may front the money for improvements, it's the homeowners who will eventually foot the bill."

 

Sam Adams is embarrassed so he wants homeowners to pay a hundred million dollars so that we can be more like Seattle.

Stop putting in more bike paths, bike boxes and other special frou-frou for bicycles ~ and cancel the light rail that nobody seems to want anyway (with understandable good cause) ~ and there should be plenty of money available to pave / repair existing streets and roads.... without further gouging Portland taxpayers.

50  Million dollars per mile of unwanted train tracks through the middle of town, and this clown can't find the money to pave streets?  Why not just OIL the gravel to keep the dust down until we stop wasting money on train tracks.

Residents should lobby to have bike lanes put in...that way...they get the roads paved for free.

If the city is responsable to keep up the roads, the city should come up with the funds to fix or pave them. Too bad all the money was spent on bike lanes and lite rail bridges

Mayor Adams budgeted more than $500 million for his ten year "Bike Plan" (much of it robbed from gas taxes and sewer revenues) and nobody blinked. But $45 million to improve residential neighborhoods requires each neighboring residence to pay $10/month for 30  years?  This Mayor and this City are an embarrassment:  the city has deteriorated rapidly while he was Mayor.  Nothing he does between now and his last day on the job can change that.  Worse yet, I don't expect Charlie Hales to be any better.

This is a "no brainer"....

When you purchase a house , you purchase the improvements that go along with the house, pavement, curbs, sidewalks. If you purchased a house without these improvements then you payed less. Anyone here that thinks otherwise that "they shouldn't foot the bill for paving THEIR street" ?? Well, you get what you pay for !

Adams wastes money on little pet projects but ignores the basic needs of the city.  Typical liberal.