This Week in the Mercury
Friday, September 11, 2009
Politics Why Portlanders Should Care About the Vancouver Mayor's Race
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 4:42 PM
The man sitting rapt in the front row of the Vancouver mayoral debates last night was wearing an American flag hat and a fannypack and applauded voraciously whenever the two mayoral hopefuls said "God bless" anything. Oh, Vancouver.
But while the first debate between Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard and challenger Tim Leavitt was a bit... different than Portland's political scene and Pollard is famous for once smashing a Portland-themed Starbucks mug to demonstrate his town's independence from our fair city, the very close mayoral race in America's Vancouver could have a big impact on an important Portland issue. As I predicted over the summer, the key issue in the race has turned out tolling on the new Columbia River Crossing bridge.
Check out Leavitt's campaign literature:
Don't rejoice yet, anti-CRC activists. Leavitt stumps that he proudly voted for a 12-lane bridge while on the C-Tran board. Mayor Pollard is also in favor of as big a bridge as we can get to accommodate the third of Vancouver's population who commute over the river.
The issue that separates the two politically centrist, pro-business candidates is their stance on tolling the CRC. Leavitt has taken the politically genius and financially absurd stance that the CRC should be built with absolutely no tolling. Although Vancouver's mayor won't make the final decision on tolling the bridge regardless of who wins, the "no toll" rallying cry is like honey from heaven to Vancouver's daily commuters.
- Royce Pollard opines, front, while Tim Leavitt gets ponderous.
But signs for Leavitt are in numerous downtown windows while I didn't spot a single sign for Pollard in downtown stores last night. And, embarrassingly, Pollard came in second during the city's mayoral primary election. During last night's debate, Leavitt, who proudly described Vancouver as "the second largest city in the Portland metro area," said that the project should be trimmed down to a point where it's cheap enough to not rely on tolls for funding. When I pointed out that tolls aren't just to cover the cost of the bridge but to incentivize public transit use and carpooling, Leavitt replied that heavy traffic on an eight lane or 10 lane bridge would create enough of an incentive to use transit. "If we par down the scale of the project, it's going to be a de facto bottleneck still. If you reduce the scale of the project, the need for tolls for both environmental and financial purposes diminishes," said Leavitt.
Right, so we should get the state and federal government to throw $2-3 billion into building a new Interstate bridge that will still be traffic-clogged. That's Leavitt's bold new idea for Vancouver.
Both Metro Council President David Bragdon and Mayor Adams think the idea of not tolling the new bridge, assuming it ever gets built, is out of the question. "Reducing the cost of the overall project could reduce the amount of the tolls. If you want to have a project, you're going to need tolls," says Bragdon. "There's going to be some form of local participation and that participation is likely going to be tolls."
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Leavitt told you he wanted to "par down the scale"? I have no idea what golf has to do with bridge tolls.
"The man sitting rapt in the front row of the Vancouver mayoral debates last night was wearing an American flag hat and a fannypack and applauded voraciously whenever the two mayoral hopefuls said "God bless" anything. Oh, Vancouver."
Yes, Mirk. Those Auslanders 20 minutes up the road aren't as soignee and sophisticated as you are, the poor things. I only wish you'd gotten a picture of that ridiculous creature! That would have been even funnier!
So he "proudly stumps" that he voted for a 12-lane CRC and now wants to reduce the size of it until there are no tolls? Who did he think was going to pay up when he voted for it?
Smart man, that Leavitt.
And Leavitt is sicking Victoria Taft's flying monkeys on Pollard, and Pollard just rolls over.
http://victoriataftkpam.blogspot.com/2009/…
I was sitting near the man in the fanny pack, and for whatever it's worth, I think he may have a mental disability. Most of the 420,000 people on this side of the river do not.
I also think somebody needs to get Adams to clarify this statement, from last Friday:
"If there are not tolls on this project [i.e., the 12-lane one?], I don’t see a project that I can support in the future," said Adams, who sees variable pricing as a way to reduce rush-hour traffic. "If all that congestion comes to north Portland, then I need to look at a much smaller bridge to support — like three lanes each way."
http://www.columbian.com/article/20090905/…
That sounds like *Adams* endorsing the idea in Sarah's second-to-last paragraph.
"Where are we going?"
...and why are we in this handbasket?
What the pro-toll folks don't seem to get is that this bridge is a federal and international asset. Yes, 60,000 Clark County residents commute to Portland daily because current leadership hasn't helped build the job base to support the community. But every single one of us, whether we live in Vancouver or Portland, Camas or Gresham, benefits from the bridge. Car-bound Vancouver soccer moms who never go to Portland still shop at a Costco that is stocked by trucks that cross that bridge. Bike-riding Hawthorne hippies who never go north of Burnside give holistic neo-natal massages to people who do cross the bridge. The two sides of the river are much more connected than either side likes to think, and it's blatantly unfair and inequitable to make one-third of Vancouver pay the entire local share for the bridge.
No, we shouldn't put out our hands and just wait for the feds and the states to cough it up--which Leavitt has never said. But we DO need to find another way of paying the local share for this bridge. A miniscule tax increase across the metropolitan area would be hardly noticed by any of us, and would be FAIR to all. Just because you don't drive the bridge every day doesn't mean you don't benefit from it.
"A miniscule tax increase across the metropolitan area would be hardly noticed by any of us, and would be FAIR to all."
Vancouver could actually pay a tax instead of relying on everyone else to pay taxes for them also. Just a thought...
Vancouverites that work in Portland already pay a tax to Oregon.
from the book GREEN METROPOLIS
Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability
By David Owen
"And don’t get Owen started on high- occupancy-vehicle (H.O.V.) lanes: they mostly just ease traffic! (The author considers anything that makes driving more agreeable, whether hands-free cellphones or recorded books or drive-through Starbucks, an environmental negative.) The real way to make an H.O.V. lane work, he says, is to eliminate regular lanes, increase the number of occupants required to enter the H.O.V. lane, and then charge those single-occupant cars, forced into slow-moving lanes, tolls. Then pray they’ll give up and join a carpool."
Immortal Goon:
What makes you think Vancouver doesn't pay tax? Vancouver commuters pay 10% of their salary to Oregon, for which they receive no representation. We pay sales tax, we pay property tax. Making one-third of Vancouver pay for one-third of a bridge that benefits all of Washington, all of Oregon, and the entire West Coast is just ridiculous.
Vantucky Holler, I agree with you. I've been trying to say the same things, but you put it in much better terms. Also, there are Portland folks who work in the Vancouver area. And if the bridge is just for the use of Vancouver commuters, why are both bridges so busy the rest of the day?
The mayor of Vancouver is irrelevant. The decisionmakers are the Washington legislature. With a local WA senator on the transportation committee, Don Benton, opposing the the CRC and especially light rail, funding is dead. He wants a third bridge, probably to the West connecting to a mythical Westside bypass, opening up West Vancouver to massive new suburban sprawl and connected to the good high tech jobs in Washington County. The Washington legislature would rather spend on Seattle area roads and they will not spend if a local legislator objects.
It is sad to hear politicians pandering to the idea that people can get a very expensive thing from which they benefit entirely paid for by others. Cutting taxes and tolls and increasing benefits, where have we heard that before?
Leavitt and his supporters are Socialists who want the taxpayer to subsidize the poor transportation choices of a suburban minority.
Stanley1967 , I wish I had seen your funny comment earlier on. Allow me to correct your false assertion.
Sorry, but I don't need to fly anywhere for Victoria. I live in Clark County.
The post you linked to was actually giving Pollard credit for resigning from an anti-gun group of Mayors, not condemning him. And no, I don't support Pollard either, but living in the county, I won't get to vote for either.
The two comments made were in effort to get Beaverton's mayor to also resign from the same anti-gun group. Remember, Pollard already had.
My email to Pollard simply asked him about his membership in the group and he replied with a copy of his resignation from the group, it wasn't asked for.
If this is how you support Pollard, it is little wonder he is lagging behind in the polls.
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