Cascade CounterPoint

The Portland Bureau of Transportation--or PBOT--is spending tens of millions to convert miles of a four-lane state highway, known as 82nd avenue, into a two-lane neighborhood street and busway.

TriMet is headed for a contentious decision November 7th to put 82nd Ave on a major “Road Diet,” cut motorist capacity in half, and replace car lanes with BAT lanes for bikes and transit.

It all started three years ago when ODOT transferred the Portland section of 82nd to PBOT, who began spending millions on a scheme to “build a better 82nd avenue.”

PBOT’s overarching vision—for 82nd and others—means converting state highways to busways by reducing lanes, adding barriers, punishing motorists with gridlock, and calling it progress.

It’s part of Portland’s “Transportation System Plan” that envisions walking, bicycling, transit, and shared vehicles for 70 percent of Portland. Their “strategy for people movement” literally does not include personal vehicles.

When Metro, PBOT, and TriMet meet--a rabble of bike activists, lawyers, and Democratic Socialists plan to make a showing and demand more miles of dedicated BAT lanes for buses and bikes on state highways.

Oregon motorists make up 90 percent of 82nd avenue users. They’re busy living their lives—not attending PBOT meetings. This time, when TriMet meets on November 7th – let them hear from you. Submit a public comment and tell them to remove BAT lanes from further consideration.

Last week, Cascade's President, John Charles, emailed a Memo to the Portland Public School Board urging them to consider the Bond Accountability Committee’s concerns about overbuilding high schools. Their report concluded by stating that,

“…the district should not be building such large high schools when there is not the student body to justify it. Given declining enrollment and decreasing birth rates this issue is even more pronounced given the project budget issues."

Willamette Week also cited the statement, raising alarm about the Board’s failure to use demographic and enrollment data in sizing future high schools.

Nonetheless, the PPS Board voted to move ahead as planned while Chairman Wang argued that size reduction is "unfair" and failing to explain how empty buildings will better serve students.

By 2033 Portland will have at least 3,000 empty high school desks. Even now, talks of school consolidation are ongoing. Do Portland taxpayers want to spend $1 billion on expensive and empty classrooms?

On the flip side, Beaverton High School has chosen better, building a high school for 1,500 students with the option to replace a building if enrollment goes up.

PPS should design real high schools for real students and expand later if necessary. By ignoring the Committee’s due diligence and moving ahead with over-sized and over-priced schools, they will accelerate the district’s slide into the fiscal crisis they already face. Portland taxpayers and students will ultimately pay the price.

Read more at www.cascadepolicy.org

The Portland Public Schools Board is considering the purchase of an 80,000 square foot building to house the “Center for Black Student Excellence.”

This triggered a 90-day due diligence review with a final vote in December on whether to purchase the commercial building. While the committee so far has reviewed the building’s merits, they haven’t asked the hard questions.

First is the fact that the One North building will not be used as a school, but as a community center and a hub for organizations who “advance a culture of black excellence.”

However, PPS is a school district whose primary mission is classroom education. They’ve never operated a community center with classroom dollars and buying a commercial building for non-school programming will be hard to justify.

A second question is the legal one. Supreme Court rulings have made it clear that race-based programs in public education violate Civil Rights laws. Is the District Board willing to risk federal revenue for a non-school, race-based program?

While buying the One North building is a bad idea for a tax-supported school district, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Many private organizations serve minority youth with experienced staff and robust programming. The Center would be an imaginative project for them to sponsor.

The Center for Black Student Excellence should be a private venture. One great fit could be the 1803 Fund, established by Rukaiyah Adams, who first cast the vision for the Center five years ago. Ms. Adams could use this opportunity to launch the vision without the legal restrictions and challenges sure to arise for a tax-entity like Portland Public Schools.

Last week KGW news reported that Portland area rents are up 22 percent since pre-pandemic levels. We see it everywhere: so-called “affordable housing” costs have risen so quickly that even though cities and states now spend more money than ever, fewer housing units are being built. In April 2024, the Cascade Policy Institute published a report asking why this is the case. Unfortunately, the state of Oregon has refused to make data available that brings to light why rising costs continue to accelerate.

Fortunately, in the year or so since then, the Montana Department of Commerce provided data on 190 housing projects. Analysis shows that only one-third of increased costs are due to actual construction; the rest is due to the increasing size of housing projects. Large projects require developers to borrow money, which then adds interest expense. In addition, developers have massively increased the amount they spend on buying property for housing.

Developers welcome rising costs because they earn fees from the projects in proportion to the cost of the project. Unfortunately, state housing agencies who hand out “affordable housing subsidies” make little to no effort to ensure these funds are used cost-effectively. This means that affordable housing mainly benefits developers rather than low-income individuals who need it most.

The National Association of Education Progress (NAEP) annually releases a representative study of students’ academic performance. Known as “the Nation’s Report Card,” NAEP scores are an indicator of how much children are learning.

This fall’s report shows only 24 percent of Oregon eighth graders are “at or above proficient” in math, and 27 percent are proficient in reading. Of Oregon fourth graders, 31 percent are proficient in math, 27 percent in reading. These scores are lower than the national average.

This isn’t a surprise. Money spent in the public education bureaucracy has increased for decades, but everyone knows academic achievement has declined. It’s no wonder polls show strong majorities of voters, including poll respondents in Oregon, support “giving parents the right to use tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the school which best serves their needs.”

Oregon public schools can’t meet the needs of all children for reasons that are many and complex. But solutions can be simple, starting with freedom and opportunity. To improve education outcomes, policymakers should make it easier for parents to match their students with public, charter, magnet, online, private, home, or micro schools that best meet their needs and goals. Parents want their children to learn, and they want access to schools that will help them do that effectively. Children deserve no less than a great environment to reach their full potential.

On September 15, the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) released its 2025 Biennial Zero-Emissions Vehicle Report, revealing that Oregon is far behind on its goal of purchasing 250,000 “zero emissions vehicles” (ZEV) by 2025. The report was established in 2019 by SB 1044 to push ZEV adoption.

As of May 2025, 119,850 such vehicles were registered in Oregon, equaling 3.2 percent of the total vehicle fleet. Of those, only 84,636 were true zero-emission vehicles powered entirely by a battery. The remaining 35,214 vehicles were plug-in hybrids, which still rely on gasoline.

These numbers show that we’ve reached 34 percent of Kate Brown’s arbitrary EV Adoption Targets established during her era. Even more ambitious goals were set by ODOE for 2035, stating “at least 90 percent of new cars sold will be zero-emission vehicles.”

Two obvious reasons come to mind for this failed goal. For starters, EVs cost more than traditional vehicles—a good deal more. For medium– and heavy-duty vehicles the purchase price can be double or triple the price of a diesel or gasoline powered vehicle. In practical terms, finding or installing a charging station can be difficult or expensive, making long-distance trips a challenge to plan.

Few people will notice this policy failure because few really care about electric vehicles. The ZEV report is just one example of political elites telling us what to do and then being ignored.

Will the Oregon Department of Energy learn from their failure and leave us alone? No. That’s why they work for the government. But if you like your car, gas powered or hybrid, just keep it. Bureaucrats can’t make you buy something you don’t want and can’t afford.

The Portland Public School board is set to approve the sale for the “One North Building” as a home for the “Center for Black Student Excellence.”

The District is prepared to spend $16 million from the 2020 construction bond. Yet, they’ve never explained how the Center will operate or who it will serve. The name of the Center implies it will serve Black students, but the staff report claims it will be open to everyone. If true, it should be called the Center for Student Excellence.

PPS serves about 44-thousand students over 150 square miles, so how will those students travel to the Center before or after school? The building has 10 parking spaces and isn’t zoned for buses.

The staff report also states “student use will be limited.” If so, why purchase a new building with new operating costs? The district already has too many schools while enrollment is in decline.

Learning takes place everywhere in the district. Spending millions on a new building is unlikely to have a real effect on academic achievement.

Perhaps while evaluating the building, the Board can re-evaluate the Center’s vision with a goal to bring student excellence into every school and tailoring experiences to students from different ethnic backgrounds. Maybe investing in Centers for Student Excellence wouldn’t require a new building at all.

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregating school children by race was unconstitutional. As a result, districts across America spent the rest of the century integrating schools.

In Portland, though, segregation is back in vogue. A group called Albina Vision Trust began promoting the idea of a Center for Black Student Excellence (CBSE) in the summer of 2020 and persuaded the Portland Public School Board (PPS) to set aside $60 million for that concept in its $1 billion construction bond that voters approved a few months later.

Five years later, none of the $60 million has been spent because advocates have never been able to explain how one single building would advance Black excellence in a district serving more than 40,000 students spread over 152 square miles. A recent Oregonian editorial asked the same question, asking “how this center will finally help the district advance student achievement.”

Nonetheless, the PPS Board has announced a plan to buy a new building in North Portland for the CBSE. No details are available, but the purchase will be discussed by the Board at its next meeting on September 9.

In the famous 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. School Board of Topeka, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for a unanimous Court that, “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”

But PPS no longer cares about equality. The new goal is “equity.” Just don’t ask them to explain it.

The Oregon Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation Funding will consider legislation this week called “LC 2” as they head into a special session to address transportation funding.

The Governor’s Transportation Budget Framework defines the problem as an ODOT “budget gap” that needs to be addressed with a “funding solution.” She says that the cause is a lack of revenue for ODOT, oft repeated by legislators, lobbyists, and journalists who describe the problem as “declining revenue,” or a “dwindling gas tax.” These statements are simply not supported by ODOT’s financials showing that net revenue grew by 30 percent since 2018 and reached record highs in 2024.

A spending problem, not a funding problem, is the reason ODOT is about to eliminate 900 positions. The real problem is two-pronged: first, too many statutory restrictions on existing revenue; and too much debt service on $4 billion in highway bonds, which have grown at a much faster rate than ODOT’s revenue.

In reviewing LC2, Cascade offered the Committee two suggestions. First, amend LC 2 to free up gas tax funds for services Oregonians need and have already paid for. Next, pay off these highway bonds with lottery revenues. This would increase ODOT’s available gas tax revenue by more than 50 percent without a tax increase.

Governor Tina Kotek has called a special session of the legislature to secure more funding for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT). She wants to raise gas taxes by six cents per gallon, double vehicle registration fees, and increase titling fees.

The governor claims that ODOT revenue has been declining due to improved fuel economy of cars, but comprehensive annual reports online show the opposite, as does the Legislative Revenue Office presentation. In 2024 gas tax revenue hit an all-time high of $652 million, as nearly did registration and titling fees ($550 million) and weight and mile fees ($455 million). Total ODOT revenue increased by 30 percent between 2018 and 2024 while debt service increased 41 percent and is growing. The debt is not scheduled to be retired until 2049.

It’s not a revenue problem; it’s a spending problem.

First, since 2001, as part of the Oregon Transportation Investment Act bond program (OTIA), the legislature has forced ODOT to spend most new gas tax monies on construction projects while ignoring highway maintenance. Thus, while gas tax revenue has increased, the amount going to operations has decreased.

Secondly, the legislature voted to sell nearly $4 billion in bonds backed by gas tax revenues. As a result, ODOT paid $358 million out of the gas tax revenues toward debt service last year compared to only $70 million in 2007.

To paraphrase Warren Buffett, debt service is the tapeworm eating 55 percent of ODOT’s gas tax money.

When legislators meet on August 29th, they should repeal gas tax restrictions put in place by OTIA Programs I, II and III. They should also pay down ODOT’s remaining bond debt of $3.9 billion with lottery funds. This would free up gas tax revenue to be spent on road maintenance and set a course correction ODOT and the people of Oregon need.