I’m at city hall—which is crawling with TV reporters—trying to figure out why there’s suddenly four votes for renaming 4th Avenue (the entire NW-SW length of it).

Here’s what happened: With concerns that a vote to rename Interstate today would keep this mess going, Commissioners Erik Sten and Dan Saltzman met yesterday to sort it out. They were concerned that waiving the code that governs renames could open the Interstate rename up to a legal challenge. (Seeing as how the council planned to waive a law that says they can’t meddle with it. AHEM.) If not that, then Interstate businesses and residents were threatening to mount a referendum challenge. Neither of those paths really honor César E. Chávez, which is what the council is unanimously committed to doing.

So they came up with the idea of 4th Avenue. It means all of city hall’s stationary changes. As Commissioner Randy Leonard puts it, every mayor from now through Portland’s future will have letter head that says “1221 SW César E. Chávez Boulevard.” It’s an inarguable honor. (Meanwhile, part of PSU’s campus is on the street, too.)

Sten and Saltzman got Leonard on board—he’s eager to “stop the madness.” After Commissioner Sam Adams met with the committee yesterday afternoon, they talked to him, too. Then Saltzman went to Mayor Tom Potter, to ask him to consider the idea overnight—and to consider owning the idea, so the council could reach consensus.

Instead, Potter’s office called the Oregonian.

Now, the committee’s coming in at 1:30 to meet with Sten and Saltzman. Leonard warns that he still “cannot predict the outcome” of the rename, despite four votes of support for 4th.

How would a 4th Avenue rename work? A Saltzman staffer is busily crafting a way to amend the official city process—four votes enacts that immediately—so that city council can initiate a name change (right now, the code that’s been waived before specifically prohibits a council initiated rename).

The current theory, then, is that the council will initiate a 4th Avenue rename today, which would then follow the rest of the official process—it’ll head to historians and the planning commission, then back to council for official sign off. There’s talk of getting through that process in time to put up new street signs on César E. Chávez’s birthday, March 31.

And Leonard’s toying with the idea of writing a charter amendment that outlines a fair rename process for the future—one that’s “not subject to political manipulation.”