Analysis puts Sten proposal in doubt

Commissioner pushes ahead with ‘satellite’ urban renewal area

By Chris Lydgate

The Portland Tribune, Feb 29, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (25 Reader comments)

Damn the torpedoes – full speed ahead.

City Commissioner Erik Sten will continue pushing his idea to help build a new school on Portland’s hardscrabble outer east side using urban renewal funds from the Pearl District – despite a memo from the city attorney’s office that raises questions about the legality of such a transfer.

“We’re just going to go for it,” he says. “This is a chance to solve a seemingly intractable problem.”

Stripped to its essentials, Sten’s plan is to siphon off $19 million of property tax revenue generated by the gleaming towers of the Pearl District and use it to help finance a new elementary school and community center in the working-class David Douglas School District, which owns a building site in outer Southeast Portland but has no money for construction.

To accomplish this, Sten wants to redraw the boundaries of the River District Urban Renewal Area, which encompasses the Pearl, adding a 15-acre “satellite district” in deep Southeast Portland between Powell Butte and Happy Valley, unconnected from its parent district by so much as a cartographer’s cherry stem.

Graphic

The idea might not survive a court challenge, however, according to a legal analysis by City Attorney Linda Meng. Concerns raised by Meng in a Feb. 14 memo include:

• Oregon urban renewal statutes do not explicitly allow noncontiguous urban renewal districts.

• The parcel proposed for inclusion may not meet the technical definition of “blight,” especially since it lies in a pastoral area accessible by the county’s only covered bridge.

• The city’s charter does not allow it to build schools (that power is ceded to the various school districts inside the city limits.

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