I hope that voters do the math. I was wondering when Saltzman would go over budget with those slick adds about "saving the children". There is over $60 million a year in property taxes being used to pay off debt or bonds for Tax Increment Funding (TIF) deferrals. Anyone who has a house in Portland knows that the appreciation in property values in established neighborhoods that haven't received a dime of Urban Renewal money, has exploded since the 90's. TIF does not recognize inflation so all of this has been going to fund things like the TRAM, etc. What happens when you do the math is that you find out that Saltzman's "claim to fame" the children's initiative lets the citizens pay in a short term levy which will expire in a couple of years, for what was given away long term in TIF and other government give aways. Why does the PEARL district for example get millions to develop new expensive to operate parks with water features, when a neighborhood like Richmand, with lots of kids and new families moving in to fix up the homes has been waiting since 1991 with a master plan to develope a little park for thier kids to play and there is never enough money to help them develop that one small park. For the estimated cost published in a WW article of $110,000/year just opererate Jamison Square in the Pearl, which because of TIF does not contribute its fair share property tax revenue to the City's General Fund to pay for operations.

Tax waiver was good enough for Saltzman
Thursday, October 13, 2005
By Anna Griffin
The Oregonian ..... Saltzman himself continues to benefit from a tax waiver the council granted in 1997. Saltzman owns about one-quarter of the Village at Lovejoy Fountain apartment building that earned a 10-year waiver the year before Saltzman won election. The building sits in the southern end of downtown where Saltzman's family has owned property since the 1970s.
Saltzman says his interest in the Village at Lovejoy Fountain doesn't compromise his campaign for reforms. "I don't see it being a problem," he said. "It's pretty clean."
After his recent defeat, Robert Hinnen, Trammell Crow's senior managing director in Portland, had no problem with Saltzman's vote, either.

Willamette Week
7/11/2001
A Park's Place
BY DAVID SHAFER .....On a per-square-foot basis, Jamison Square's total $3.8 million price tag is comparable only to Pioneer Courthouse Square, on which the city spent $2.6 million in the early '80s (another $1.7 million was raised from private sources).

Many who object to Jamison's price tag stress that they are not opposed to beautiful or high-concept parks, only to spending so much money on a small park in a neighborhood that has yet to become a neighborhood. "The League is an avid supporter of parks and open spaces," says Shelley Lorenzen, first vice president of the Portland League of Women Voters, "but this is cutting into funds available to serve less well-to-do parts of town."
Those who watch kids stumble across the unmown and divoted outfields of other neighborhood parks scratch their heads when they hear about Jamison's $860,000 fountain, $80,000 landscaping budget, hardwood boardwalk and benches priced at $2,500 each.
"The resources directed downtown just dwarf what we get in the rest of the city," says Nick Sauvie, who helped residents of the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood wage a 10-year fight to get a city park in their Southeast Portland enclave.
he parks department is overseeing Jamison's construction, however, and will be responsible for the $113,000 annual cost of maintaining and managing it.
Also in the equation is the fact that some neighborhood activists think the park is little more than a publicly funded front yard for developer Homer Williams and his company, Hoyt Street Properties, whose 34 acres of River District land include three sides of Jamison Square. A 1997 agreement between HSP and the city stipulated that the developer donate the land for Jamison Square (the agreement also calls

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