Or maybe the other 47 people who applied were so bad that even someone who could only stay two years was the best choice?
That says something pretty damning about the County's ability to recruit and retain competent executives. Did no other qualified people want this job?
Either:
• Field didn't disclose the two-year limit
• There was no two-year limit and retirement is scandal-related; or
• Field told the county Chair but the information was hidden from Mayor Wheeler and other stakeholders
Something doesn't add up: If Field always had a 'two-year fuse,' how was he the best candidate out of 48 applicants?
Was this time limit disclosed to Mayor Wheeler and the 30+ stakeholders who reviewed candidates for the >$230k/yr job?
🤔
As bad as these numbers are, we know from permitting activity that the 2025 and 2026 numbers will be worse. I hope the members of the newly seated Portland City Council understand this.
And this is absolutely the ideal solution:
Good points here in this thread from Terry: even with these additional resources, Council will still be understaffed.
The easiest way to handle reductions is simplistic, across-the-board cuts.
More staff means moving beyond the surface level. I hope additional council and mayoral staff will empower our electeds to do deeper work identifying inefficiencies within the discrete work of our bureaus.
Paying for this is where this gets hard.
Does more staff naturally result in more engaged or productive electeds? No.
IMHO, that's the best (yet still unsatisfactory) critique of this proposal: we need a way to predict how much we expect the government to improve so we can check later if we were right.
The evidence is clear: to match peer cities, our elected leaders need more help engaging with our community, conducting analysis and writing policy.
Vote!
Proud to have the endorsement of every gay man ever elected to Portland City Council.
Proud to have the endorsement of every gay man ever elected to Portland City Council.
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