$100 Million looted from schools to bail out Milwaukie Light Rail

by In the news Wednesday, November 17. 2010

chart lrnov2010.serendipityThumb $100 Million looted from schools to bail out Milwaukie Light Rail $100 Million from schools for Light Rail Bail-out
By NW Spotlight,

TriMet and their partners are intending on taking $100 million from schools, public safety and other essential services to help fund Milwaukie Light Rail. The plan is to use Urban Renewal, for part of the funding. Urban Renewal now devours $60 million every year from the state common school fund. Enough for 800 teachers.

A new report from the Portland Development Commission (PDC) projects a taking of $163 million from Portland Public Schools over the next 5 years. With the PPS district announcing a need of $1/2 billion in levies for building upgrades taxpaying voters deserve to know where millions in school funding goes.
Does the public want school money spent on light rail?
Millions will be taken, again, from the State “common school fund” to pay for Milwaukie Light Rail.

This in addition to hundreds of millions in lottery profits for the project. The PDC spread sheet details how Urban Renewal diverts millions from Portland schools. The NEA, “The National Education Association” has long been critical of Tax Increment Financing (see here).

With cities and counties adding more UR districts and use of Tax Increment Financing the statewide loss of school funding will grow.

chart lrnov2010 $100 Million looted from schools to bail out Milwaukie Light Rail

Some taxing jurisdictions are now stepping up and opposing the diverting of their resources. Public Safety jurisdictions have recently opposed this type of Urban Renewal financing. This week, the Clackamas Fire District board adopted their new Urban Renewal policy which is similar to the one also adopted by Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue earlier this year. Schools, other agencies and the public need to join public safety in opposing this type of Urban Renewal financing.

Understanding the connection between the announced $1/2 billion needed PPS building repairs and the $1.5 Billion Milwaukie Light Rail should trigger that added opposition.

If it gets reported.

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Posted by In the news at 11:04 | Posted in Measure 37, Uncategorized | 36 Comments |

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Rupert in Springfield

Yep – cut school maintenance budgets to fund things taxpayers would never pay for. Then when the schools are in disrepair you pass a bond. Anyone who opposes the bond hates kids and hates teachers.

Didn’t we just talk about this just a few threads ago?

Its just the standard government rip off.

Union workers get the bond money for school repair, as well as the Light Rail, so votes are delivered. Teachers unions dutifully pony up for the “you hate kids if you defy us” ads and are rewarded with fat raises a few months later. Politicians get the union votes delivered to them, all bought with the taxpayers money.

Chances are voters will fall for it every time.

valley p

Yeah…we could save a lot of money by closing crusty old schools and not building any transit systems. What has education or transport ever done for us?

Steve Plunk

Once again words that add nothing to the conversation.

valley p

Mega dittos Steve.

Rupert in Springfield

Why are you writing this in a reply to me?

no one ever suggested that, but if you think thats a good idea go ahead.
jim karlock

*Dean Apostile* we could save a lot of money by closing crusty old schools and not building any transit systems
*JK:* Once again Dean shows his complete lack of understanding reality. Now pay attention:

LIGHT RAIL CANNOT DO ANYTHING THAT BUSES CANNOT DO CHEAPER in our region.

Thanks
JK
Joanne Rigutto

I think his point was that school funds should go to, oh, I don’t know, maybe schools? Instead of light rail or anything else.

I don’t agree with the statements about unions, etc. but definately those funds absolutely should not be used for anything other than schools. No wonder the schools are in financial trouble. As long as this type of funding theft is going on I’d not vote for another school bond if I were a Portland resident.
Joanne Rigutto

I think his point was that school funds should go to, oh, I don’t know, maybe schools? Instead of light rail or anything else.

Joanne Rigutto

Sorry about the double reply. Thing told me there was a problem with the post, so I trimmed it and his submit comment and they both showed up.

DUH

Is what they are doing legal? If so, it sounds like the people are electing the wrong people to write the laws.
Anonymous

vp,

You’re an unethical idiot to take that from this issue.

You don’t care what it actually says because you’re a despicable lying left wing advocate.

The issue is the dishonest raiding of millions FROM SCHOOLS to build RAIL transit and other boondogles the public does not support.

Not your lying crap distortion of whether we should fund transit and schools.

Your just the kind of agenda driven lunatic who can’t grasp the issue and helps enable the morons perpetrating this gross misappropriation.

Your democrat cabal has been horrible for Oregon public education for at least 20 years.
Your just the typical little fool who clings to it.

valley p

“You’re an unethical idiot…a despicable lying left wing advocate….your lying crap distortion….agenda driven lunatic …Your just the typical little fool …”

I love elevated policy debates! But enough about me. Lets talk about you. What do you think of me?
“”

Analmous, you are a freakin’ pocket doper for booOregon. Take your schick and dildo yours and michael moore’s bungholes simultaneously while potland’s mayor looks on lasciviously and ask for permission to joint on in. Argh!

“”

Actually, the bid goes to all the Dem shmoo Kool-Aid dringers in Orebegone…’cluding fondling floggers.

Rupert in Springfield

It must be great to be able to speak another language.

Rupert in Springfield

Actually it is the standard mode of argument from the left.

Basically Dean is defending the behaviour here – building choo choos at the expense of schools.

Now that is an indefensible position and Dean knows it. Nobody would go along with such a position other than extreme left wing individuals. Dean knows that so he has to change the argument.

Therefore rather than defend his position he makes up an argument no one ever made, and then attacks that argument.

It is a lame strategy as it is so absurdly easy to defeat, yet the left tries it all the time.

Dean and Prudish Anonymous Stalker guy are the main proponents of this line of argument. It never really works but I think its about all the they really have, other than simply attacking the person making a point.

valley p

Thanks for making my arguments for me, but no thanks.

My opinion is that posing this as a schools or transit funding issue is misleading. Schools are underfunded, IF they are, because we Oregonians passed ourselves a tax cut, property tax rollback, and limit 2 decades ago. We told the state to fund schools but by the way, don’t raise our income taxes or pass a sales tax to do so.

This left schools with an operating budget but no capital or O&M budget. For a while, schools could defer maintenance in order to fulfill their core mission, education. But over time, this catches up with them and us.

Meanwhile, there are other public spending needs. Prisons for example. We way increased prison spending by passing several measures to lock more people up. That funding competes directly with schools. And, health care costs exploded all through the 90s and this past decade, well before Obamacare. Those costs also end up affecting classroom spending.

And we started a couple of expensive wars, and more than doubled our defense spending. This also competes with school funding as a national priority. Oh, and lets not forget the geezers. They lay claim to about 60% of federal spending. Do we favor geezers over schools? Yes, because the former vote and the latter don’t.

So we come to light rail. I know you guys hate it. Fine. But the Portland region decided a long time ago to build a light rail system. They use mostly federal and state transportation funds for this purpose, but have to find local matches. Property taxes are constrained by the same measure we passed in the 90s. So they turn to creative financing, including urban renewal.

To your accusation: am I favoring light rail over school finding? Answer is no, I favor both. Were schools “looted” to fund light rail? No. Not unless you also agree they were looted to pay for wars, prisons, and geezer care.

Duhean

No, he’s just an idiot, period.

Steve Plunk

As Rupert points out this is much like the previously discussed public/private partnerships. Take tax money in and target the spending (give to cronies or cool projects) in an urban renewal district. The problem is it seldom renews anything.

Medford has has such a district for about 20 years that was meant to revitalize the old downtown. When it was formed the downtown merchants still held sway over town politics and wanted funds to help them compete with the new mall. So two decades have passed and the downtown is no better off. These districts are just some people attempting to take a bigger piece of the pie at the expense of others.

Voters should learn from the past mistakes and reject these attempts to favor a few over the many.
Anonymous

The bigger unreported story is much worse with many pieces like this.

TriMet

TriMet is planning on bonding $60 million, or more, for MLR against future operations revenue which they already know will be far short of costs for years to come.

Operations, pensions and Health Care for their retirees (OPEB) will devour more than TriMet’s projected revenue.

Here is good outline for anyone interested.

Great FAQ covering the topic
http://www.osc.state.ny.us/localgov/pubs/opeb45faqs.htm#actval
“Under GASB 45, public entities must account for, and report on their entity-wide financial statements”

TiMet has accounted for the OPEB liability (now $816 million and rising) over a couple cycles now, but has not contributed anything to any trust fund,
and they have yet to report it on their entity wide financial statements.

In the TriMet board meeting TriMet auditors and staff said the addition of the OPEB liability to TriMet’s financial statements would be completed some time next year.

I suspect that they are delaying this entry to avoid problems selling MLR bonds and at a preferable rate.

It is my understanding that TriMet will be attempting to sell bonds in December.

However, in a recent work session TriMet staff revealed there is an opportunity for these bond sales to be challenged.

Given that critics are aware of this opportunity I expect that such a challenge will occur.

TriMet’s ARC (annual required contribution) is $75 million and they are currently paying nothing towards it.

That means their liability and yearly drain on operations revenue will soar resulting in widespread service cuts.

This is why TriMet’s intention to bond against future operations revenue for MLR is “Madness”.

http://www.osc.state.ny.us/localgov/pubs/opeb45faqs.htm#actval

“According to GASB, the annual required contribution (ARC) is the amount the employer would be required to contribute for the year, calculated in accordance with certain parameters in order to fund the liability over time.

The ARC is the sum of the “normal cost” (the portion of the present value of estimated total benefits that is attributed to services received in the current year) and the amortized unfunded actuarial accrued liability (UAAL—the cost of those same employees for past, unfunded years of service). The ARC, in effect, recognizes that retiree health benefits are “earned” and are financial obligations accrued during an employee’s entire period of service. The ARC is the annual amount a government would have to pay to fund its liabilities over time. This liability can be amortized up to 30 years.”
Bob Clark

Nice work, Steve Plunk. I think it’s you who retrieved this PDC info. It’s one more argument for scaling back Portland Public School (PPS) District’s $500 million dollar bond request. PPS schould be applying pressure on the city and state to stop the foolish Portland (milwuakee) lightrail project, and make this money available to schools. The two other arguments for scaling back the request are (1) the amount of increase in average individual property taxes over night is too high at 10%, and should be scaled back to maybe 5%, which would still be in excess of inflation and population growth; and (2) the request should also include the sale of unused properties by PPS. Unused properties include Washington Highschool (closed and abandoned), Smith Elementary (also closed for several years), and the sale of Jefferson Highschool to Portland Community College (PCC). PCC is in a better position to offer Jefferson as pre college or junior college facility than PPS, as demonstrated by PPS failed attempts in the past to rejuvenate Jefferson.
David Anfinrud

I see politicians putting thier priorities in place. We do not need schools to educate people. We just need mass Transit multibillion projects to move the obedient min. wage employees to thier jobs. Because they can not afford to buy a car.
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Victoria Taft

“If it gets reported.”
It did on my show and my blog. And I’ll and I’ll post your blog entry and mention IT on the air today as well.
Hope it helps.
Source

Absolutely, Victoria Taft was all over this and did an outstanding job making the connections.
The press has had all of this and is in fact deliberately not reporting many of the most germane parts of the bigger story.
It’s stark evidence of the corrupted interface between our local government and the media.

“An interface is a point of interaction between two systems or work groups. In the manufacturing environment, the interaction and coordination between a number of work groups communicate plans and control production activity. This interaction can come in the forms of schedule, human interaction, computer systems, or any other medium of communication.”

Get it?

Folks always should try and post more comments on news stories where blog commenting is allowed.

It’s the easiest way to publicly call them on the carpet.
Ricky

First, I don’t have a car, so I depend on light rail.
Second, the kids are not learning much anyway as test scores show.
Third, light rail rides are free, so I am very happy with that.
Fourth, why not help the earth at the same time you help people like me get free rides to places where we commit crimes??
Kingston

Urban renewal helps increase property value by bringing in projects they can’t do on their own, this increases revenue from increased property value. Schools shoudl embrace urban renewal.

Steve Plunk

Kingston, That’s the way it supposed to work. Unfortunately it doesn’t. That’s why these schemes are being scrutinized and deemed failures.
Marvin McConoughey

Kingston, I am skeptical that urban renewal has a high success rate, but perhaps you can refer me to an objective history and economic analysis of urban renewal that demonstrates consistent, or even common, success. Thank you.

Anonymous

Kingston,

What are you a journalist, a city planner or a developer?

You couldn’t be more wrong.
But I am certain you are in the Urban Renewal regime and know this.

TIF does exactly what the graph shows. It raids millions from schools and other essential services to pay Urban Renewal debt created by isolated things like the Tram, Light rail lines, subsidized private development schemes and a wide variety of other misappropriations. Such as buying buildings and then handing them over to the well connected who provide campaign money.

The 1000s of other acres inside UR districts that are already developed do not see the increased assessed values and tax revenue you claim. In fact all of those 1000s of acres inside UD districts are limited to the 3% yearly increase and cannot be raised because of some subsidized development or boondoggle that the millions were wasted on. That entire 3% from All of the property as well as any from the new development goes to retire the UR debt over decades.

As more UR is added faster than it is retired long term loss to schools, public safety and other essential services is certain.

The failures of the UR subsidized developments are also many and have resulted in even more tax revenue lost for good.
“”

Just say d’oh to the PPS crash cow and their current mouthful prophet (remember him? Matthew Prophet) who worked for half her current salary) SUSAN SMITH – puppet tier’d by the OEA and their other motley moth piece, Susan Castillo.
Bob Tiernan

*valley p:*

Yeah…we could save a lot of money by closing crusty old schools and not building any transit systems.

*Bob T:*

For a fraction of the cost of this light rail line (or any light rail line), many buses can be
purchased for more frequent service on many existing routes as well as adding new
ones. Why is it that you equate transit with light rail, and only light rail? Is that
one of the debating tricks you’ve been taught by the pro-LRT special interest people?

Bob Tiernan
NE Portland

valley p

I should be flattered that you think I have been coached on debating tricks. Am I that good?

I consider myself pro LRT and pro mass transit in general (including buses). I think having a diverse transportation system makes the most sense. It takes a lot of buses to carry the same number of people from A to B as it takes a 4 car light rail train. Rail is a lot more energy efficient and takes less labor to operate.

Portland is a city, not a town. It needs a rail system. In any case, it doesn’t matter what you or I think. Portland voters made commitments to light rail, they support politicians who build light rail, and they are completing a hub and spoke system that was conceptualized decades ago.

Yeah, its capital intensive to build such a system. We are a rich nation, state, and city, and can certainly afford to have both a rail system and good schools. Or we can disinvest in public goods and use our money for Beanie Babies, over priced real estate, Bernie Madoff investment schemes, tulips, or whatever the latest craze is. After all, the private sector knows better.

bytheway

If the project has been started, why not finish it?
Anonymous

vpd,
Are you just dumb or what?
You either can’t read or you have no comprehension. It appears, after all this time you have acquired absolutely nothing about UR or MLR but the proponents bromides.
A large part of the many fatal flaws with Urban Renewal schemes and Milwaukie Light Rail is the diverting of millions from schools and othe essential services.

But also the projects themselves fail miserably to bring about the promised “vision”. Yet the same vision is being used to hype MLR and the Urban Renewal to fund part of it.

Just like with Trimet, JPACT and Metro your defective thinking can’t even consider either the cost, the source of the funding or the real outcome.

bytheway,

The project hasn’t been started but even if it had, proceeding with $1.5 insanity just because the insanity “started” is insane.

You also might want to bone up on the real source of the local match shares.

valley p

“Are you just dumb or what? ”

I’ll take or what for 50.

“You either can’t read or you have no comprehension. ”

I don;t understand a word you are saying.

“But also the projects themselves fail miserably to bring about the promised “vision”.”

Fail? The Pearl District was a run down area of vacant warehouses when the urban renewal district was formed. Today the increased development and tax valuation is huge. Same goes for much of downtown Portland.

“your defective thinking can’t even consider either the cost, the source of the funding or the real outcome.”

My thinking is defective because I don’t agree with you?

$100 Million looted from schools to bail out Milwaukie Light Rail

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