Yikes! County leadership is non-existent. Why do we have a county government with such a large budget?

How about a signaled crossing of Flavel along the 205 bike path, followed by a pedestrian / bike bridge over the creek? Seems relatively inexpensive given the existing signals and bridges for the train (but still not cheap).

Common sense backed by data; please run again Jon, I think the city is finally waking up!

Come on don't sugar-coat it! She brought that amendment for the Instagram likes, not to accomplish something useful! Glad she had to listen to the nearly-unanimous 3 hour dissent from the community (barring DSA lobbyists), as well as most of council.

Nope, only now ramping to historic norms. What do you think changed 4 years ago?

So what changed 4 years ago, and why do you still encounter camps and RVs on your way downtown? Perhaps the moratorium on camp cleanups 2020-2023 had some consequences?

No, we got some extremely antisocial tent folk blocking the entire sidewalk and aggressively not giving an F; we need a mechanism to influence their behavior

I guess if by "someone" you mean "the concentrated efforts of Joint Base Lewis McCord"... yeah, they definitely should!

A 60 foot rock tower built on a beach at sea level would be an incredible achievement... doing the same at 14k feet (with way fewer human-movable rocks available) seems almost impossible.

PFA needs to be at least a state-level program, and ideally a federal one, to make saving tens of thousands in tax bills more difficult than moving a couple miles in any direction.

A grand idea, until you run the numbers and realize that the 1000 highest earners pay like 80% of the total PFA tax revenue. If they continue to leave, PFA will need to broaden its tax base to survive (which will increase population flight to neighboring counties).

From the April 2025 audit: "If the program only meets its revised goals, it will have served about 7,500 fewer children by 2030, compared to how many children it could have served if it had kept its original goals."

multco.us/info/prescho...

We could be looking at closer to 100M by 2030 (and obviously nowhere near 242M). There is not plenty of money in Multnomah County given the current tax structure. The money has to come from somewhere, or the program needs to get more efficient.

I don't know how to feel about the Governor meddling in a single county's affairs, but we must be realistic about the future of PFA funding. The goal is to have 11k seats at $22k/seat (in today's dollars), which requires tax revenue of 242M. 2023 saw 148M collected, but with the downward trend in

the 5000 $500k earners are making exactly $500k, their group contribution drops from ~100M in 2023 to $30M. Is that enough to find preschool for everyone age 3 to 5 in Multnomah county?

You are welcome! I guess the real point I'm trying to make is the downward trend is real, whether high earners are leaving, staying and losing income, or getting better at deductions. Is the "For All" aspect of PFA actually attainable if the trend continues? For example, in the extreme case, if

Whether that is due to incomes dropping for those who stay, or very high earners leaving and replaced by pretty high earners (just above 500k) we can't know based on this data, but the downward trend In revenue from those who pay the vast majority of the tax needs to be considered going forward.

I posted a graph of per-filer revenue at the top of this subthread, which shows a significant downward trend year-on-year. This means the very high earner population of Multnomah county is earning less as time goes on.

Exactly, the very richest (upside outliers in the highest bracket) are leaving, replaced by earners closer to 500k. I wonder if this is this sustainable for the PFA program long term (it might be, I just don't know!).

Chart of S&P500 showing 25% increase in 2023

The theory is no 500k+ earners left from 2022 to 2023, they just made significantly less money? 2023 was a pretty good year for investors, at least in the S & P, so I'm not sure that explains it.

Clearly the highest earners are leaving, and their contributions make up the lion's share of total revenue. What's that long term plan to find the program, if this trend continues in 2024 and beyond?

Almost all cranes that big have moved on, as the financial window for constructing new tall buildings has closed (for most cities, esp West coast). Time to focus on getting low-rise built on the many vacant lots around town!