I woke up this morning to read the news that the Troutdale City Council rejected Multnomah County's request to vacate the 242nd right of way. The vote was 5-2 against. I attended the city council meeting last night, but only until the 9pm break. All the big guns were there. County Chair Ted Wheeler, County Commissioner Diane McKeel, and plenty of their staffers attended. Also in attendance were Metro Councilor Rod Park and some Metro Staffers. Representatives from McMenamins and the Reynolds School District were there, but I left before they testified.
I won't go into the details of the meeting, but the issues and the arguments were pretty much the same as the last time the city council was asked to vacate the right of way. Read about it here.
I have one concern about this. The votes to vacate the right of way weren't there on the city council. My own informal poll of city councilors this week never tallied 4 votes in favor of giving up the right of way. There were only 2 solid yes votes and only one swing vote. The other 4 were solid no votes. This was a dead issue. So who was it on the city council that insisted on putting this issue back on the agenda, dragging this lame duck of an issue through a five hour city council meeting and wasting everyone's time when the end result was known to most of the players?
In a side note, I give a tip of the hat to County Chair Ted Wheeler, who stayed for the entire city council meeting until nearly midnight, and then was up bright and early this morning for a lobbying visit to Salem. I left the city council meeting at 9pm. We were both wrong on our "March Madness" city council vote predictions, Ted. But you win the endless meeting endurance race.
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