You know, I'm starting to admire Potter. He's fighting dirty.

Actually, I think the thing has a good chance of passing if it is put on the May ballot. Householders are looking at $4.50 per month. That's not much, especially if you are sick and tired of the potholes out front. It's the small business owners that really get hosed... about $1800 a year for a kwikie mart operation... BUT... one thing I learned during my campaign. Most people who own small businesses in Portland do not live in Portland. So a lot of the folks looking at the big bills will not get to vote.

Chris you are wrong about the street fee. It favors businesses with deep pockets. Small business owners like me will be stuck with the highest rates while big businesses like Safeway and Fred Meyer get the lowest.

I am willing to pay my fair share as long as everyone else does too.

Pauline, my comment wasn't about the merits or shortcomings of the street fee. Rather, it was about The Mayor's track record of stepping into debates and taking the side of those who typically influence City Hall through monetary means (e.g. paid representatives, campaign donations, gifts and fancy dinners).

Another example of complete lack of leadership on the part of Potter. I am surprised anything at all was accomplished while he was mayor -- wait a minute - with the exception of activities Vera started he actually did accomplish NOT DO A DAMN THING! what an idiot.

What if we rename the initiative "Safe, Sound and Chavez Streets" for better alliteration AND to remind Potter of his position that it doesn't always matter what the voters think?

Okay Chris, no hard feelings. I have to admit that I don't know much about Mayor Potter's track record and I really didn't know much about this fee until recently.

When you are running your own small business it is hard to know what is happening that may hurt you. I can't afford a lobbyist to speak for me or to stay on top of the city politics.

The newspapers have been worthless for information on this. They have only focused on the politics and didn't give anything in-depth on how the fee will affect me. All the coverage was about how fair it is and that businesses will pay their fair share.

Well it's not fair, the big box retailers are going to get off easy. It is just so disappointing but what can you do? Back to work!

None taken, Pauline. One of Commissioner Adams' campaign promises in his 2004 race was that he would lower business taxes if elected (which he did). Perhaps he could be persuaded to make that part of his campaign pledges this time around.

Keep in mind that the fee is 1.5 cents/trip for most small businesses, so if it is $1800/year, that means you have 120,000 customers a year or 325 customers a day, (assuming you are open every day of the year.) So how does that compare?

For a small business like a restaurant, that serves mostly dinner, you can expect about 3 seating per table per evening on average, so $1800 means you have 100 tables... I don't know of any restaurants that have 100 tables, and if I did, I wouldn't call them "small." But if they did exist, they'd need to charge 1.5 cents more per table to pay for this fee, hardly going to break the bank.

For a store, that is open 24 hours a day, that is 13 customers an hour, or one every 4.4 minutes (on average, more during the morning and afternoons, and quite a bit less between midnight and 5am.) This is indeed the category that a 7-11 will fall under, and they'll have to raise prices by about a penny an item. Again, hardly going to drive them out of business because I doubt anyone is stupid enough to drive across the city lines to shop at the 7-11 that is a penny cheaper, you'd just burn too much gas in the process.

For a gas station where the average fill up is 15 gallons, that 1.5 cents will add 0.1 cents to a gallon of gas. The price of gas went up by that much today because some guy in Saudi Arabia picked his nose in a meeting with someone else from Kuwait. I certainly wouldn't be hiring a lobbyist to fight over the .1 cents, especially when it would allow my to get rid of the little 9/10s label at the end of all my prices anyways.

For someone like my butcher, where I've only once seen another customer in the shop, and I spend on average 10 minutes there and is only open 8 hours on weekdays, I have a hard time imagining him paying a fee of more than $150/year. Yes, I don't suspect he makes a lot in the first place, but that isn't the $1800 that people are claiming...

For the small business that I work in on the weekends, his "My wife doesn't have to get a job and can stay home and take care of the kids" customer load is 30 people/day, (most of whom carpool) so that works out to around $100/year for this fee.

But here is another comparison: the minimum wage went up from $7.80 to $7.95 on January 1st, or 15 cents. If your employees aren't handing 10 customers an hour (on average,) that means that that cost increase was larger than the Safe, Sound, and Green one. So why didn't anyone take the minimum wage increase to the voters?

There are definitely some people out there who have never seen a tax that they thought was fair. However the street fee rate does go down the more trips you create and the difference can be dramatic.

For instance, a business that produces 10,000 trips a month will pay $152.50 a month but a business that produces a quarter million trips per month will pay $855.35. So even though the big business is demanding 25 times more use of the street system, it is only paying about 6 times more.

Just a FYI on the minimum wage: In November 2002 Oregon voters enacted a ballot initiative that increased the minimum wage and indexed the minimum wage to inflation increases. So the annual increase in the minimum wage is actually a direct result of voter action.

When you get to be Potters age the only way you enjoy (ahem)relations is to screw someone metaphoricly. Sammy got a good screwing on this juan. Although he probably liked the idea of daddy Potter giving him a ride home he did not like being crossed politicly.