It turns out the CEO does not like being a neighborhood activist, but if it becomes necessary in order to kill off this stupid Local Improvement District the city and some harpy up my street are trying to force on me and my neighbors, then so be it. CFO, find me another clean shirt! It’s fighting time, bureaucratic style!

A little background: an LID is a process the city has in place whereby neighbors can “band together” to pay for city-sanctioned road improvements. More about it here at a city of Portland website if you are interested. The problem is that “banding together” is pretty loosely defined. Once proposed, the city has a lot of latitude as to whether or not an LID is actually formed. And if an LID is formed, Kjel.org pays, whether it wants to or not. (Thanks, harpy!)

The LID Administrator the city sent out to talk at the meeting last night initially claimed to have no opinion as to whether we should proceed or not, but after listening to him that is clearly bullshit: it’s his job to get these things through after all, as they increase the city’s property tax base at no cost to the city.

So anyway, the CEO is now going to have to waste a bunch of his time trying to make sure that I’m not forced to pay for improvements on a road that doesn’t need it, “fixes” that would actually be detrimental to the neighborhood. The money involved is no small change either: while the PDX guy couldn’t give any solid numbers yet, he said most likely “mid five-figures” for the average property owner. He then tried to sugarcoat it: “it’s not personal debt remember, but is just a lien on the property itself.” Oh, just a lien! I’m terribly sorry, I guess it turns out that this thing would be fucking swell after all! I’ll just shut my mouth and go back to Happy Land, living in my gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane!! If you can’t tell, I was being sarcastic.

Sorry about that. The CEO gets a little fired up thinking about this. There are several other reasons this process pisses me off (i.e. turns out that that chucklehead the city sent last night was the author of a change in the Portland City Code a few years back making it easier for the city to form LID’s without the requisite “yes” votes from affected property owners. Impartial my ass.) but I’ll save those rants for another time. If I have to actually start attending City Hall meetings to keep this damn thing from happening the CEO’s demeanor toward certain neighbors is going to be sour, to say the least. The next block party might be a little icy . . . as if the CEO would ever go to such a thing in the first place.