Gail Shibley and Mayor Charlie Hales

Gail Shibley is the chief of staff to Portland Mayor Charlie Hales (The Oregonian)

UPDATE: This story was updated with comments from Hales' office.

Portland has 56 miles of unpaved roads, and transportation officials say even if the City Council approves a new tax or fee for road work in November, that number will remain unchanged for years.

Addressing gravel roads isn't a priority for the Portland Bureau of Transportation. In fact, it's not the bureau's responsibility.

"Those are adjacent property owner's responsibilities," PBOT spokesman Dylan Rivera said in a text message.

That didn't stop Gail Shibley, Mayor Charlie Hales' chief of staff, from highlighting those 56 miles of property owner responsibility when talking up Portland's need for new transportation funding recently.

"We have crumbling bridges, roads, many places with no sidewalks. In the city of Portland alone we have 56 miles of unpaved streets," Shibley said in a brief YouTube video via the "Charter Local Edition Northwest" program, which apparently was filmed at the Three Rivers Casino in Florence earlier this month.

Hales staffers on Wednesday highlighted another segment of the interview on the mayor's Facebook page. "Unpaved, nothing there, gravel. No sidewalks, no crossings for kids."

Dana Haynes, Hales' spokesman, said Shibley mentioned a wide array of problems facing Portland's transportation network. "Gail mentions that there's unpaved roads, Gail mentions that there's crumbling bridges, Gail mentions that the feds haven't acted in 20 years, and Gail doesn't go on to make any kind of promise that the street fee would address any of those things."

In the cable interview, Shibley also said Portland must show state lawmakers that it is serious about street funding. Then Salem and potentially Washington D.C., might follow suit with more money.

She said Hales is trying to reverse the "backward momentum" in deferred street maintenance and said the mayor's promise to maintain 100 miles of road in the 2013-14 budget proved that. Achieving that goal was "a big stretch," Shibley said, "And we are far, far behind."

As PBOT, Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Steve Novick rework the controversial street fee proposal pitched earlier this year, there's much debate about how much money to spend on maintenance versus safety projects.

Unpaved roads are not a part of the conversation.

According to PBOT documents, the city has 92 miles of busy streets that need to be completely rebuilt. That would cost $276 million.

On neighborhood roads, the situation is even more dire. PBOT says during the next 10 years the city needs to rebuild 133 lane miles of neighborhood streets at a cost of $253 million.

None of the more than $500 million in projects that PBOT identified include improvements to Portland's 56 miles of unpaved roads.

— Andrew Theen