Hales and Novick on Tuesday at a press conference on the street feeq

Portland Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Steve Novick in 2014 when they tabled their original street funding plan.

(Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)

Keep the Portland street fund weird.

One week before the Portland City Council was expected to vote on the controversial $44 million street fund, Mayor Charlie Hales introduced a radical new plan: Send a menu of options to voters in what officials termed an "advisory vote" in May.

The vote won't actually decide anything — it's nonbinding. Even if every option fails to get 50 percent of voter approval, Hales is prepared to take the most popular plan to the City Council for adoption later this year.

"We will ask the voters to pick from the array of funding options, and we'll adopt the one with the most 'yes' votes," Hales said in a prepared statement. Opponents could still refer that plan to voters for a final say.

The advisory vote is thought to be unprecedented for City Hall, and some critics called it the latest desperation move by Hales and Commissioner Steve Novick to raise upward of $40 million a year for paving and safety projects.

"We have held 14 months of hearings. We've spent countless hours on this. The time to act is now," Hales said.

The options will be outlined Thursday at a previously scheduled public hearing on the street fund at 6 p.m. at City Hall. Options could include a progressive income tax, local-option property tax levy, increased gas tax or other options.

Mayoral spokesman Dana Haynes said Hales spent Wednesday discussing the advisory vote with Portland's four city commissioners.



"This is the one that we, meaning City Hall, meaning this building, can live with," he said.



Portland won't place the options in a single ballot title, under the advice of city attorneys, Novick said. Instead, each option will be listed separately, with voters asked to vote yes or no on each.



Novick confirmed two options that will make the ballot: a progressive income tax and a gas tax. He said the city may also refer some version of a user fee or a property tax.



Haynes conceded that officials suspect that none of the options will win a majority of votes. "If one of them gets 49 percent, and none of them gets as much, that's the one that will go forward," he said.

What's happening Thursday

What:

A public hearing at Portland City Hall

When:

6 p.m.

What it means:

Mayor Charlie Hales said the city wants to send a menu of street funding options to voters in May for an "advisory vote" on which plan they prefer

What it isn't:

The vote won't be binding, and it doesn't factor in the nonresidential (business, nonprofits, government agencies) half of the fee. It also doesn't mean opponents couldn't seek to refer the issue to voters for another vote after subsequent council action.

It's not clear whether Commissioners Nick Fish, Amanda Fritz or Dan Saltzman would support an option that failed to get 50 percent of a public vote.

Fish supports a public vote but won't automatically support the option with the most voter support, an aide said. Fritz, in a public meeting Wednesday night, could not immediately comment, and Saltzman could not be reached.

Haynes said the City Council is reluctant to refer a single option to voters for final approval because any new tax is unpopular and opponents could use a vote to "kill this thing."



"This is going to be a public vote to find out which is most palatable," he said.

The latest version of the street fee -- first unveiled in May, then reintroduced in November and changed several times since -- was already unraveling before Wednesday's announcement of taking ideas to voters.

Fritz, long viewed as a potential third vote to help pass the measure, said she couldn't support the plan because it would be too much of a burden on low-income residents.

Meanwhile, the part of the proposal that involves imposing fees on businesses, nonprofits and government agencies will advance to a City Council vote next week. But if it passes, it won't take effect until voters choose an option for residents, according to Wednesday's news release.

Despite all the changes, Novick said he's not concerned about giving Portlanders whiplash.

Just last week, Novick pledged to refer a progressive income tax to voters for approval in 2016 if the City Council couldn't support a plan to charge residents $36 to $144 a year, depending on income.

Wednesday, he said the advisory vote makes more sense, allowing voters to express their preference while stripping critics of the ability to simply shoot holes in City Hall's proposal.

They'll have to choose an option, he said, if they really agree that Portland needs money to fix its crumbling streets.

"I think it might be hard for some of those people to say, 'Well, we're just going to oppose whatever you come up with,'" after an advisory vote identifies a favorite, Novick said.

The vote idea did little to quell critics, however.

Paul Romain, a gasoline lobbyist who has called on the City Council to set better spending priorities before asking for more money, called the plan "just political desperation."



"Instead of actually trying to get something done, it's just a game," he said. "It's taking a poll at taxpayers' expense, and then they go through the process of adopting something."



Romain said he can't recall an advisory vote like this in his decades lobbying throughout Oregon. Haynes, Hales' spokesman, said Portland hasn't done an advisory vote in decades — if ever.



"If you planned to screw this whole thing up," Romain said, "you could not have done a better job."

Robert McCullough, a prominent energy economist and Southeast Portland neighborhood leader, also continued to express frustration with the city's plans. His neighborhood coalition has been fighting the city Transportation Bureau for access to public records so it can analyze the formula behind the proposed business fee.

McCullough, who supports a gas tax, said Hales and Novick continue to pursue complex options instead of a simple one.

"The right answer is, if we need to fix roads, you should simply put the gas tax up for a vote and see what happens," McCullough said.

Sandra McDonough, president and CEO of the Portland Business Alliance, didn't support Novick's $36-to-$144 annual fee proposal, but is reserving judgment on the new options.

"I think that it was clear to them that there weren't three votes for the other package," she said. "The mayor is putting himself in the driver's seat, which is a good thing."

McDonough said the new plan is "an unusual approach." She does have one major concern: "If they put six options on [the ballot] and no options gets 50 percent, what do they do?"

Novick said he hopes at least one other member of the City Council is willing to join him and Hales in adopting the favored option, even if voters pan them all.



"Nobody has said to me, 'I will vote for what gets the most votes,'" he said. "However, I think that at least four members of council think it's a good idea to have this advisory vote."



Novick said the City Council needs to try to move forward with a funding proposal even if it's unpopular.



"If we get anything done, we will have done something no City Council has done," he said. "I'm never going to apologize for trying."

-- Andrew Theen and Brad Schmidt

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@cityhallwatch

bschmidt@oregonian.com

503-294-7628

@cityhallwatch