When Carlotta Collette took the gavel – officially – as Acting Metro Council President on Sept. 9, she also took the reins on a body that her predecessor called cumbersome (to put it nicely) on his way out the door.
And she’s OK with that.
Metro was prepared for the end of the David Bragdon era, with the first elected Council President’s term expiring at the end of the year. But his sudden departure, immediately in advance of a potentially contentious urban growth boundary decision, and his outgoing comments, criticizing everything from Portland’s food cart culture to the drawn out participation it takes to develop policy in the region, caught many off guard.
Collette said Bragdon felt terrible about the way his comments were interpreted.
“Sometimes he gets frustrated with how long public process takes here,” said Collette, who also has pointed out how public involvement is ingrained in Oregon’s DNA. “He was feeling a little frustrated that it took three years just to do the urban reserve decision but that was a historic decision. Nobody else in the world has done a 50 year planning decision. And it was staging for the decisions we’re making now.”
Among those are the urban growth boundary – where to expand it and how much – and the rest of the Community Investment Strategy, including the creation of a task force to target public investments.
And now, the Metro Council has just six members to decide on what part of the proposed investment strategy to endorse.
It’s still unclear how the Metro Council will respond to a Dec. 8 deadline to appoint an interim president to serve out the remainder of Bragdon’s term.
One scenario would be to appoint Collette to that position, then leave her Clackamas County seat vacant until Jan. 1 (she’d have to resign her district seat). Collette was unopposed in her run for re-election this year, and would be sworn in to the district seat again in 2011.
Councilor Kathryn Harrington said she was comfortable with Collette serving as the acting council president.
“We can continue on for the remainder of this year as a council of six. I’m comfortable that we can go through our discussions and deliberations and stay committed to a decision by the end of December,” she said. “We may decide, based upon input from the public, from discussions and deliberations throughout the region to postpone that (UGB) decision and take a little longer, but we may not. I am comfortable with all of those possibilities.”
Through a procedural move, the council can put off parts of the urban growth boundary expansion decision for a year. It’s also possible the council could decide not to move the boundary at all.
But keeping Collette in the chair’s seat is not cut and dry. Councilor Rod Park, speaking at the Oregon Association of Nurseries’ Government Affairs Committee meeting Wednesday, said there is no front runner.
“There isn’t four votes on any scheme to replace him (Bragdon),” he said.
Collette said she doesn’t think it’s necessary to add another councilor to the board to reach a majority vote on the community investment strategy, or at least part of it.
“If we get to a vote on Dec. 9 and it’s 3-3 across the board, then it does go to next year. We can do that,” she said. “I don’t see a 3-3 split within the council. But we don’t even have a proposal. Which side I’m on, I certainly don’t know.”
Seemingly less likely is a scenario where the winner of the Nov. 2 council president election would be appointed as interim president. Some at Metro are hoping to avoid a scenario where the last month of the council president race is put in the immediate context of the urban growth boundary expansion; both of the areas Metro Chief Operating Officer Michael Jordan proposed for expansion are on farmland near Hillsboro, and former Hillsboro Mayor Tom Hughes is running against former 1000 Friends of Oregon Director Bob Stacey for the council presidency.
“We would like the voters to be able to vote on the next Metro president without having the UGB decision be a part of that vote,” Collette said. “We have six councilors who’ve spent at minimum three years with this issue.”
And, she pointed out, at least a couple of months of public conversation await – civic wisdom, as she put it, of what are the wisest choices for the region’s downtowns, communities and neighborhoods.
“That’s not such a bad deal,” she said. “We get to protect farmland and make our downtowns more vibrant.”