Voters should say no to Metro's bid to renew parks levy: Editorial Endorsement 2016

OXBOW.JPG

Autumn at Oxbow Regional Park, which straddles the Sandy River and comprises about 1,000 acres owned and managed by Metro, in a file photo from last year.

(Stephanie Yao Long/Staff)

The Nov. 8 ballot is crowded with measures, most asking voters for money, in some cases acting as devices of self-taxation. One measure that could slip under the radar this year is proposed by Metro, the Portland-based regional government, for something as benign-sounding as maintenance on thousands of acres of park lands - open spaces that, polling shows, are held dear by folks in the region. Cleverly, the measure is promoted as not raising taxes at all, because it would merely reprise the same five-year maintenance levy approved by voters in 2013. Despite its $80 million yield over five years, individual assessments would hardly raise an eyebrow: about $20 annually for most homeowners.

But voters should say no to it. Metro should make another appeal to voters next year and do two things when it does: Ask for less money and show how the agency knows its program efforts funded by levy actually work. Anything less is to ask voters for a leap of faith that every dollar is necessary. Anything less should result in taxes actually going down. Even a minor tax assessment counts when the value of earnings by most folks fails to keep pace with the galloping economy.

Metro has a large task with the management of some 17,000 acres of land acquired through two publicly approved bond issues: $136 million in 1995 and $227 million in 2006. Throw in the current maintenance levy, and the agency's public investment exceeds $400 million. The idea throughout has been that Metro could save from development the natural spaces that make the region distinct while engaging the public in them. Significantly, a particular effort has been to help urban, underserved communities - defined by color and socioeconomic status - connect with nature by involving them not only in park use but conservation work on the acquired lands.

But the work doesn't end there. Metro manages the Oregon Zoo and oversees the region's solid waste disposal and recycling efforts. It coordinates with TriMet and constituent communities in planning mass transportation systems, such as MAX trains lacing the region. Notably, it is the keeper of an urban growth boundary that concentrates development within it while staving off suburban sprawl and protecting farmland outside it. Most of its efforts are large and expensive, such as committing $60 million in bonding capacity to an otherwise private hotel project at the Oregon Convention Center, which it also oversees. Pockets of rancor about the agency's reach and influence nest in some suburban and rural venues, where folks have argued Metro has grown too large and operates without sufficient accountability.

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are Laura Gunderson, Helen Jung, Mark Katches, John Maher and Len Reed.

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Last December, an internal audit at Metro sought to gauge the effectiveness of projects conducted under the Nature in Neighborhoods banner. Since 2006 nearly 200 grants worth more than $18 million were awarded, most of them paid for by the earlier bond funds as well as the current levy. In 2013, upon passage of the current levy, the agency estimated it would spend up to $7.5 million on community grants for land restoration, public education and trail projects - all as part of the Nature in Neighborhoods effort. But the audit found, among other things, "it was difficult to determine what had been accomplished" by the projects, and "despite having goals in place, performance measures were not consistently established prior to awarding grants."

Nature in Neighborhood projects may have enormous value. And the outreach to engage so-called underserved communities may be defensibly within the agency's mission as a publicly funded protector of natural areas. But it is impossible at this time to know. Without clear metrics by which to gauge a project's success or failure, and a system for consistently applying them, the agency cannot couple with its request for more money a value guarantee to taxpayers for any of its work.

The current levy won't run out for another two years. Metro has time to get this right. It must show that it is as efficient and disciplined in its spending as it is forward-thinking in its purposes. Voters can signal the agency this year by voting no to renewal of the maintenance levy.

-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board

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