Boom Times Redux: Now The City Might Have $30 Million Extra to Play With Next Year

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Remember how in December we reported Portland's going to have a bunch more money next year? It turns out we're probably going to have a bunch more than that, and Commissioner Steve Novick has wasted no time staking a claim to it in the media.

A half hour before Mayor Charlie Hales' office announced the City of Portland might have at least $10 million more next year than anticipated, Novick—as is his wont—sent a note to reporters on how it should be used. From Novick's message:

Gentlefolk of the press – FYI, the word on the street is that the revenue forecast will improve significantly, both ongoing and one-time. I am recommending that we set aside a significant portion of any one-time revenues for the Portland Building. From an emergency preparedness standpoint, ensuring that a building that houses over a thousand employees survives the earthquake is absolutely critical. But I fear it’s the kind of can that, in the normal course of events, is too easy to kick down the road. So if unexpected revenue gives us a chance to address it, we should take it. More later, but I wanted to put this bee in your collective bonnets.

(Novick later clarified he actually meant ongoing money—the stuff that (semi-)reliably fills city coffers each year, not one-off, Scrooge-McDuck-money-pit cash that comes and goes as it pleases—since that money would need to pay down project debt into the future.)

The Portland Building, of course, is the beloved, behated city bunker where a significant portion of our civil servants spend their workdays. It also needs repairs that could reach up to $100 million.

Just a short-while after Novick's email, the actual financials came in from the Mayor's office: surging business license taxes, tourism dollars, and property tax revenues have made the picture look a lot rosier even than December, when the city announced a likely $19 million surplus. Now, number crunchers say we may be looking at more than $30 million, roughly $20 million of it in one-time funds.

Rest assured other city commissioners will have ideas what to do with this windfall. None of them had the quick-trigger instinct to put them out to the press, though. (Yes, I realize I'm falling prey by writing this post.) Not even Hales, who formally announced the new money, offered specifics.

“Nearly every economic factor is moving in the right direction,” the mayor said in a statement. “Now is the time to prudently invest the additional one-time revenue in basic services.”

This isn't necessarily done, by the way. The City Budget Office makes a point of being reserved in its forecasts, meaning we may have even more next month, when more-solid business tax info comes in. Or less.