Amanda Fritz penned a brilliant letter to the mayor today, and posted it on her blog. The back story: Mayor Tom Potter is slated to speak at the Southwest Hills Residential League neighborhood association meeting on March 22, about charter reform. Fritz called up that neighborhood group and asked if a member of her group—the anti-charter reform group Committee for Accountable Government—could also speak that night, as a counter point to the mayor’s pro-reform agenda. The neighborhood group put the kibosh on that idea. “That request was denied,” Fritz writes. “In contrast, former Auditor Jewel Lansing requested time on the agenda of several Neighborhood Associations to present our Committee’s viewpoint, and has yet to receive a positive response. Neighborhood Association chairs are evidently unclear about the rules and desired public process for citizens’ education and discussion of the proposed Charter changes.”

So Fritz wrote to the mayor, both asking him to—as the commissioner in charge of the Office of Neighborhood Involvement—remind the ‘hoods that they have to be politically fair (thanks to their 501(c)3 status), and requesting that he be a gentleman and give the opposition a heads up himself, so both sides can represent whenever he’s out stumping for charter reform.

You are a man of honor with commitment to good public process. When you are invited to speak at neighborhood meetings where everyone knows you are the Mayor of Portland and Commissioner-in-charge of ONI, please ask those scheduling the agenda to also invite a speaker opposing the Charter changes. I hope you agree that only by having both views presented will audiences be given a fair opportunity for informed debate and discussion, instead of one side being given special access.

Former Mayor Bud Clark and many other eminent citizens are volunteering to attend neighborhood meetings. Your scheduler may call [or] e-mail [me], and I will gladly arrange speakers to attend all your engagements with Neighborhood Associations and districts.

If the Mayor doesn’t meet Amanda’s challenge, you’ll still have a chance to hear both sides of the charter reform conversation—argument, debate—at the Mercury’s forum, slated for April 4 at Acme in SE Portland. We promise it will be fun, and we promise there will be beer.