I wanted to include this with the morning news roundup, but couldn’t find the link on OregonLive (surprise, surprise). The link reappeared on their labyrinth-like site this afternoon, though.

Anyway, the O’s Anna Griffin wrote a nice piece on Mayor Tom Potter, and whether he has done anything. At least I thought it was a nice piece—I have a feeling Team Potter wasn’t calling the folks back home to brag about the Sunday front page story.

Highlights:

[B]eyond downtown safety, the mayor struggled last week to come up with other examples of significant, substantive results from the 27 committees he’s named in his first 29 months.

“There are many examples,” he said. “I just don’t happen to have them here right here.”

Potter’s personal victories have been tempered.

He helped persuade voters to pass a temporary property-tax for Portland Public Schools, but only after failing to find support for a regional tax and then unveiling and quickly abandoning a plan for a citywide income tax. He’s tried to build relations with leaders in other parts of the state, but hasn’t used those alliances to win the tax restructuring he wants. He replaced the leadership at the Portland Police Bureau with community policing fans, but got the chance only because of Chief Derrick Foxworth’s sex scandal.

“It’s not bricks and mortar with him. It’s not the esplanade or Pioneer Courthouse Square or the streetcar,” said Austin Raglione, his chief of staff. “I hear people say, ‘He hasn’t done anything,’ and I wonder, ‘What do they want him to do?’ “

I really hope Team Potter isn’t banking on the “behind schedule and over budget” visionPDX project to tell the mayor “what they want him to do.”