Dear SE Examiner
I realize the title of this article is “Pushback Over Parking Reform,” but perhaps you could have found someone’s perspective that favors reform besides PBOT’s to quote in your article.
The biggest employer mentioned, Fred Meyer, subsidizes a transit pass as an option for employees. Paid Parking and permits will create more space for customers cycling through and would certainly not put any employees or businesses into the “dark ages.”
For Hawthorne and other SE neighborhoods to promote themselves as truly green, they must embrace parking reform and incentivize employees and customers to utilize other modes to access their businesses when possible.
Kathleen Parker
Dear Editor:
Special thanks to Midge Pierce for her excellent reporting in The SE Examiner.
As the legal challenges continue to build against the hopelessly corrupt developer-giveaway known as the “Residential Infill Project,” opponents need to consider tough tactics such as naming members of both the so-called Planning and Sustainability Commission (PSC) who voted for the new over-reaching plan and members of the Portland City Council who vote for it as defendants in the up-coming lawsuits against the plan.
Deposing these parties will force the truth to come out about what special interests influenced the R.I.P. and give Portlanders a chance to “follow the money.”
This destructive idea, born from former developer lobbyist and mayor Charlie Hales, and rammed through by the co-conspirators at the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability and the City Council, will not, as experts have testified, solve the affordability issue touted by R.I.P. supporters.
It will be shown that this issue has been purposefully kept from public vote and that public testimony has been stifled. Portland’s liveability and neighborhoods are at stake and residents need to speak out at City Council meetings.  Sign up and testify.
Politicians, bureaucrats and developers come and go, but Portland neighborhood residents (owners and renters) have to live here. Get this issue on the ballot and let the people decide.
Frank DiMarco
