Share this article! Adams warns of deficit Portland Mayor Sam Adams issued a memo to City Council saying the city’s current budget needs to be changed in order to avoid future deficit. Adams said the city will receive $2 million to $4 million less than expected in business license fees, but city bureaus are spending … Read more
Adams warns of deficit
Portland Mayor Sam Adams issued a memo to City Council saying the city’s current budget needs to be changed in order to avoid future deficit.
Adams said the city will receive $2 million to $4 million less than expected in business license fees, but city bureaus are spending at a faster rate than previous years.
If revenue and spending trends continue, the city could end next year’s budget with a $2 million deficit, the memo says. That would violate the Oregon Constitution, which requires the state and local governments to balance their budgets every fiscal year.
As a result, Adams is directing bureaus to take a number of immediate efforts to slow down their spending. Steps include an end to non-emergency overtime, cancellation of all optional consulting contracts, and mandatory approval of expenditures of more than $10,000.
Read the full story at the Portland Tribune.
Study cites low taxes
A new report from the Council on State Taxation says Oregon is tied with Delaware and North Carolina for having the lowest business-tax burden in the nation.
Proponents of Measures 66 and 67 are citing the report as support for the recently passed tax measures.
The Oregon Center for Public Policy, which championed the tax hikes, lauded the report as evidence that business could afford to “chip in a bit more” to help the state get out of its budget hole. In fact, the Silverton-based think said Oregon would have to raise an extra $1.7 billion more from business to get to the national average, a figure that will certain raise the blood pressure of business of folks who fought against the tax increases…
Opponents, who remain at fever pitch about the tax hikes, were quick to say that Oregon’s business tax burden, as measured by the Council on State Taxation, was never really the issue.
Read the full story at OregonLive.com.
River regulation fought
Portland city commissioners are moving forward with the River Plan for the North Reach, an effort to revitalize the Willamette River.
But some companies are raising concerns over the plan’s review process, which they believe will regulate building too heavily.
Opponents say the plan’s proposed rules are too burdensome and would put the city at a competitive disadvantage with the region’s other ports. Advocates, including environmentalists, say businesses should quit stalling.
“I don’t expect any side to be completely happy, but at the same time this is Portland,” said Mayor Sam Adams, who has pushed the plan with city Commissioner Amanda Fritz. “This is a place where we actually figure out how to do both: successful job creation, and in this case, protecting more of the environment.”
Read the full story at OregonLive.com.
PDX coffee scene perks along
With more micro-roasters opening over the past few years, Portland’s independent coffee scene is thriving while still retaining its sense of DIY community.
Of the 30 roasting businesses in Portland now, about half of them are micro-roasters, and most of them opened some time in the past five years.
The movement has been percolating in Portland for a decade under the pioneering stewardship of Stumptown Coffee Roasters—which has expanded to New York and Amsterdam—but recently the trickle has become a downpour. The new wave of roasters is an opinionated group of mostly young men who have two things in common: an obsession with coffee quality, and the desire to help consumers understand where it derives from.
The roaster is the closest most of us will ever get to the sources of our coffee, and this new generation of craftsmen is taking the role very seriously. Now, with small roasting retail operations in almost every major neighborhood in the city, Portland’s already well-educated coffee consumers have easier access than ever to knowledgeable roasters and nuanced coffees. “It’s pretty cool to have people come in on roast days and show them the development of the bean,” says self-proclaimed coffee nerd Justin Johnson, roaster for Oblique Coffee Roasters, which opened earlier this year in Southeast Portland. “It’s hard not to be the biggest geek in the world. You see light bulbs going off as they begin to understand what they’re drinking.”
Read the full story at Willamette Week.
Healthy outlook for hospitals
While still not sure exactly how it will pan out, hospitals and doctors on the South Coast are looking forward to some of the benefits.
Bay Area Hospital CEO Paul Janke says his hospital will have more financial stability, while others say reform will encourage more doctors to practice in rural communities and allow more people to take care of their health.
‘This is a great start for the children of Coos County,” [Dr. Carla McKelvey, a pediatrician in Coos Bay], said Monday at a press conference at Bay Area Hospital.
U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., called for changes to Medicare reimbursement, demanding an adjustment if Democrats wanted his vote on health care reform. He noted Monday that his district has one of the higher rates of Medicare-eligible residents and yet it has the fifth lowest reimbursement rate.
Read the full story at The World Link.
