@pdxstepheng.bsky.social
"Blatino" 🇵🇷 recovering banker & VC doing my best to make Portland a little better every day. Spreadsheets are my super power, sneakers are my kryptonite. Helping founders get mo betta at www.vanportstudio.com
It's a Black History Month tradition. @pdxstepheng.bsky.social shares one profile per day throughout February, and then I gather them all up into a single post for future reference. This time around, it's a Pitch Black alum edition. siliconflorist.com/2026/03/02/b...
A PSA for you to share if you’re getting the “Are you okay? Is it safe there?” sorts of queries: Portland Oregon is absolutely fine #pdx #portland (Footage courtesy @pdxstepheng.bsky.social)
Feeling frustrated? Go give time or money to OPB or something - protect the rare remaining independent media in your community. www.opb.org/give/
…. There’s a ton I would change about prosper and how we position economic development in the region but consistently shitting on bureaus without offering up solutions helps no one.
I think that’s the point… TIF isn’t a magic wand. I don’t think the city has ever bought into having resources that are non tif to support businesses and community. How do we start having conversations about other needed tools and put them in context of what TIF can do. That’s bigger than prosper.
There seems to be a third thing that’s as consistent as death and taxes… that’s @jamiedunphy.bsky.social shitting on Prosper Portland work while disregarding data, basic economic principles or state law. 😒
Councilor Dan Ryan's office had controversial local podcaster Andy Chandler on staff for 3 days before realizing Chandler's personal views were "not in alignment" with that of Ryan and his team. Chandler frequently platforms anti-trans guests and lambasts DEI as racial discrimination.
The latest controversy on Councilor Dan Ryan — the only current elected official who has voted against the expansion of Portland Street Response multiple times.
We believe District 2 wants to invest more in PSR and less on controversial right wing podcasters.
If you’re looking for something to do today, @pdxstepheng.bsky.social and I would be happy to hang with you for a bit youtu.be/ALRCxWDQx8c
So that is the thing if you have “ongoing” allocation you don’t have to ask every time. The budget defaults to including money for you. The bigger picture isn’t about Prosper it’s about whether the city wants to invest in economic development at all. This amendment ends funding for that.
Once ongoing budget goes away it doesn’t come back. At the end of the day it doesn’t have to even go to Prosper. The real question is how will the city invest in economic development moving forward? What’s the plan for making a better solution for ecdev then what we have today?
$40 million gets spent down to zero in 2-3 years with the programming that it pays for. They could do less loans to businesses or fund business assistance providers at a lower level but the money still runs out. What’s lacking is a plan for how economic development happens after the money is gone
So what happened when the money is all spent? How do we fund economic development in 2-3 years from now?
Prosper worked with the mayors office to take a 12% budget cut as part of his budget. They were already taking a cut. This amendment ends ALL of their future funding from the general fund
Details matter here. They are ending ongoing general fund allocations and they are asking Prosper to replace that money with money that is used for a loan fund that supports small businesses. Once that money is gone in 3 years they have nothing left.
Why @councilorgreen.bsky.social & @jamiedunphy.bsky.social would be “defunding” small business in Portland with their amendment to cut all general fund money from Prosper Portland. No one in community asked them to do this and it would have catastrophic consequences.
To @councilortiffany.bsky.social so you can’t say you didn’t hear from small business owners…. We do NOT want you to DEFUND Prosper Portland. Critical funding and support to BIPOC owned businesses across #Portland would be lost.
siliconflorist.com/2025/05/18/a...
This is tax increment finance money so no this money can’t legally be used to do the work
Sorry to get technical on you but this graph doesn’t look at age of the people moving. Econorthwest work did and it was degrees folks in their 20-30s moving here
That’s actually not what census data has been saying. The folks at Econorthwest have been sharing that younger folks continue to come here
I think we should have a regional business advancement team that doesn’t force cities to compete with each other and is staffed industry professionals and business owners. We need to be finding ways to be proactive & ways to center what’s best for businesses vs. “this is what we’ve always done”
It really depends on your perspective; we have the most diverse city in our history, natural resources and the region as a whole is getting better. It’s time to lean into reimagining what Portland looks like in the changing landscape.
Our Enterprise Zone program run by the city is one of the ways we financially support larger firms to locate and expand here. There are a number of things that attract (and retain) companies here; cost of living compared to other west coast cities, outdoors, great talent pool and balance of life
Not having Fortune 500 companies here is actually an advantage because then we don’t have whales in the fish tank telling the city and state what to do and when like in Washington. But don’t confuse that with us not having large companies. We have four billion dollar did companies here
Yes Prosper is our version of Office of Economic Development. They actually collaborate and share notes with the folks in Seattle often. Prosper has a more diverse set of tools than Seattle does though based on how state law works in Washington.
No one else does this work at the city. Prospers budget is .14% of the city’s annual budget this isn’t about cost savings it’s sadly about power
Prosper took a 12% cut already and I imagine would be willing to take more of a cut. The proposed amendment takes ALL their funding.
The number of women and BIPOC owned businesses in Portland is increasing. Tell me how cutting funding to the organizations that have been supporting this growth is a smart thing???