To make Portland the most ambitious city in America, we have to start by asking, “What’s the Portland we want?” I think it’s a city where you can afford to live, raise a family if you want to. Earn more, and build something of your own without the city getting in the way. Piling on up to fifteen hundred dollars this year in new taxes and fees, one fee at a time, doesn’t build that city.
There’s two sides to Affordability: what are you paying just to live here, and what can you earn? So every dollar City Council spends, every fee it charges you, and every decision it makes, needs to answer one question: is this building the Portland we all want?
