"Every time they spin this private sector meltdown as a failure of the City, it's that less likely that the city will reach any deeper than the $3.5 million already committed to this politically difficult project."

Exactly, Charlie. The only rational explanation is what is commonly known as "group think" or, somewhat less flatteringly, the "kiss ass" syndrome.

I have imagined a conversation between Dr. Kohler and Steve Stadum that could have gone something like this;

"Ring, Ring"

"Steve here"

"Ah, yes, Steve, this is Dr. Kohler"

"Sir, yes, how are you doing, sir?"

"Fine, Steve. Can you run over to my office? I have a couple of things I want to talk with you about"

"Yes, sir. I will be right there"

Steve rides his bike from the annex over to Dr. Kohlers' suite of offices.

"Steve, my boy. Good to see you"

"It's very good to see you Dr. Kohler. My, you must be working out. You look so...svelte!"

"Oh, Steve, it's just those boys down in research. They came up with this new pill...Oh, but I digress. Steve, there are couple of things I want to talk with you about"

"Yes, sir"

"First, I am still thinking about that whole Chief Administrative Officer job we discussed."

"Yes, sir!"

"Second, I need some advice on the whole cost overrun thing on our tram"

"I will do my best, sir"

"You know, Steveo, you really blew the whole PATI board thing. Now our ass is on the line with these cost overruns."

"Sir, I am really sorry about that. I will do anything to make that right. Sir, I do mean anything"

"All right, all right. Settle down, Steve. No used to you losing your dignity over this thing. Besides, its a few million measly bucks. But hell, let's have a little fun with it.

Here's what I'm thinking, Steve. We start spinning the story that the city blew this thing. We send out a few emails to 10,000 of our closest friends saying "Oh My God, you know how the city is. Well, they've done it again. Completely mismanaged the whole thing. Hell, we didn't know what was going on. Christ, now were stuck with the bill."

"Oh, Sir. I like it. The city is sooo the easy patsy for that kinda thing. I even heard they may have been part of the Kennedy assassination. He He"

"Oh, good one, Stevey. But let's stay focused. Now, it's settled, we will start spinning this line, Christ, the editorial board will eat it up. Hell, on second thought, they may even buy your Kennedy deal"

"Sir. Of all your brilliant ideas. This one is the best. The city will be so embarrassed they will have to come up with the extra money to pay for our...ummm, I mean, their screw up"

"Now you're catching on, Stevearooni"

"Sir, it will work!"

"OK then, Steve. Give the boys over at PR a call and get them to work"

"Yes Sir! Right away Sir!"

"Oh, and Steve"

"Sir?"

"That promotion?"

"Sir?"

"It's yours"

(Weeping hysterically now) "Thank you Sir!"

Paul-

The tram is under construction and will be finished.

The current controversy is good, old fashioned bargaining.

OHSU is just trying to get us to pay a cost they should pay.

I am not biting. I am not even nibbling.

It appears as though at least two of my colleagues will stick with me through the misinformation campaign OHSU is conducting.

Aaah, you mean you aren't going to back up a tow truck to the 500,000 ton tower? Darn, and here I was, getting my camera ready and everything!

;)

First of all, I'd like to recognize that Randy Leonard is a city councillor like no other. I disagree with much of what the dude says and stands for, but there ain't anybody else I know of in the game who is willing to explain himself like Randy does.

That said, Randy, you make no sense here. It was not OHSU who figured out that the early cost estimates were off. It was the neighborhood. They raised the issue time and again, and told the city about it time and again in all the sham public hearings that preceeded the railroad job.

The city turned a deaf ear. The fix was in. Neil decided already.

Randy, to try to retail to us now that the city council was a victim in this thing is an insult. Bullshit, Randy. You know it.

I understand trying to cover your ass. It ain't gunna work this time buddy. I know you weren't on the council from the beginning of this fiasco, so maybe you have some plausible deniability. But don't try to tell us that the council was mislead here and that the true costs weren't known until OHSU fessed up.

What do you think we are, Republicans?

OHSU seems to be banking on the fact that the majority will be distracted by their spin. We should counter with the kind of simple, no-thought-involved soundbite that they would use and repeat it ad nauseam when dealing with the press. OHSU is a poor citizen. Period. Internal debate will happen anyway. When OHSU are (if they are) talking facts, we can talk facts. But when they're just cranking out PR bullshit, we should respond in kind. Should be our mantra: "We have no opposition to the tram per se; we just wish OHSU would become a responsible corporate entity."

Hell, that's the way to respond on PGE, QWest issues as well. "We don't have anything against a privately owned utility provider, we just wish PGE would be a responsible corporate citizen". "QWest, no discussion about anything until you pay the franchise tax and be a responsible corporate citizen". From off-lease dog parks to Wal-Mart, OHSU and PGE, Randy Leonard's position seems to be to consistently ask for responsible citizenship. If he seems biased right or left, then I guess that just reflects the natural tendency of those on the right to only act responsibly with regard to their own immediate, perceived interests.

The current controversy is good, old fashioned bargaining

In all due respect, sir, this is not good. It isn't good for the city, it isn't good for OHSU.

There should be a level of respect when speaking to OHSU, and OHSU should be showing the same level of respect. As mom always said, "Just because one isn't playing fair, that doesn't mean we bring ourselves down to that level." As our elected leader, Randy, could you please offer something more substantive than backing up a truck and pulling out the support poles. That isn't the Portland spirit, it's just nasty talk feeding the BoJacks of Portland.

I voted for you to solve our city's problems, not create more while in office. We don't want to alienate our largest employer, an employer that brings more high paying jobs than just about any other employer in Portland. In order to compete in the 21st century economy we need a strong R&D University, we need to use our strong relationships with OHSU and PSU to grow the connections between the two; offering Portlanders a stronger higher education system.

I fear that in all this public bickering over a tram today, that the relationship the city should be enjoying with OHSU will be frosted for many tomorrows. Randy, I'm not sure what you or everyone else are trying to figure out. The cost overruns are clear, the mismanagement in the beginning is clear. How inappropriate having a ski lift designer come up with initial cost estimates is clear. Your diatribe above isn't.

After this brouhaha about who said what, when and where dies down, what is your solution Randy? Finger pointing aside, what are you proposing?

...did the neighborhood actually know the estimates were off -- as in have proof, even of a deductive sort -- or did they merely suspect and/or assume they were?

C'mon, someone out there must have an answer to this. It's important, I think, because if the neighborhood had actually laid out a bunch of the early data or something and argued that it was clear something was amiss, that's one thing.

But if it was simply that the neighborhood was going, "well of COURSE they are trying to screw us" then it's something else. The fact that broken analog clock is right twice a day doesn't mean it's saying anything useful from an informational standpoint.

Lets be clear about one thing, MDM. OHSU has adopted an aggressive strategy to mislead the public about the reasons for the dramatic understatement of the cost to construct the tram. Thier strategy, in my opinion, is to trash the city in an effort to not look bad to their private sector funders.

You are right that we should be respectful of one another. However, respect is not forthcoming to those who use their leverage (jobs in the community, etc.) in our community cynically.

I appreciate your voting for me in the past. If you recall, I promised to put the interests of ordinary Portland citizens above all others first. That sounds good, but it isn't always a pleasant task to follow through on that commitment.

The current controversy with OHSU is an example of that.

The solution to the current controversy is simple. OHSU and the developers should pay all increased costs of the tram above what has been represented to the city council -and Portland taxpayers- in the past.

OHSU's public relations will be having more problems than the partial list in Charlie Burr's post in the very near future. Stay tuned.

Randy, please don't let the city staff (PDC. PDOT, etc) continue being a part of the misinformation on the taxpayer costs to build the tram.

As many blogs have pointed out, the tram is costing taxpayers well over $21M at this present time in direct, attributed costs. Remember, even Adams attributed $11M in taxpayer costs just 6 weeks ago in his O commentary; and left out many other direct costs.

Also I politely agree with most of Sasha's comments about the Council knowing of the cost overrun issue. Many times before and after your first date on the Council, CTLH, Stop the Tram, Homestead, Southwest Neighborhoods Inc. cited the cost issue.

But most importantly, (this helps answer blX's question) as I've posted before, in late 03 the PATI Board's own Citizen Advisory Committee with SWNI wrote a three page letter to Council. They strongly asked for a delay because of the cost overruns that were becoming apparent even in the summer of 2003. The delay was requested to give time for further analysis of the cost overrun issue. That was two years before the tram construction began in the late summer of 05. There are many other examples of Council knowing/or should of known of these cost overruns.

But you are right, PATI and its CAC had several representatives from OHSU. They knew it too. And I agree with you that OHSU's blaming Council is not entirely fair. $3.5M should be the taxpayers TIF money limit.Period. With all the other "gimmies", rezoning of the entire NM that increased heights and density by six times, that has been OHSU's (and others)windfall that far exceeds their portion of the tram costs.

Funny how the "we have to finish what we started" message for the Tram parallels the emerging hardline conservative position on staying the course in Iraq.

We've gone too far to turn back now!

What kind of message will we send to radical islamicists {other public/private developers} if we don't follow through?

Will the Tram become Portland's Vietnam?

Oh, the humanity...

Actions speak louder than words when it comes to history. Completion of the tram now will send a message down through the future that, yes, you really can lie and mislead about project costs because in the end citizens through one avenue or another will be forced to pony up the dollars.

All the post-construction rightous rhetoric in the world after the tram is forced through will not wipe out the historical lesson that lying pays off big time in Portland.

None of the present parties now seeking cover has any legitimate excuse for not earlier seeking out cost information and asking probing questions.

Will this mistake get repeated? Probably, the city council including Randy don't seem to have learned very much from it. While I can understand not being happy that OSHU is blaming them, OHSU has always looked out for itself. The voters ought to be unhappy that the council wasn't looking out for everyone else in this project.

The real question is how did this project get approved without careful scrutiny of the budget? The answer is that the citizen participation process was designed to manage the expected opposition from neighborhood groups to what OHSU wanted, rather than to involve the public in the decision and force a thorough vetting of OSHU's proposal.

The mayor and city leaders signed on to the OSHU preferred solution before they had even defined the problem. The point was to buy OSHU's committment to the city and specifically to North Macadam. The result was that any reservations or alternatives that were suggested were seen fundamentally as anti-tram. Hard questions were not welcomed and careful scrutiny of the projects details were seen as efforts to kill it.

In that environment, it is simply unrealistic to expect city staff to carefully scrutinize the budget or to raise red flags if the nubmers didn't add up. The city staff who walked into the council at any point in that process and said that it was going to cost over 3 times the original estimate would have been handed their heads. It likely would have killed the project no matter what the consequences with OHSU. No one who works for the city was going to gain by frustrating its elected leaders, even with the truth.

Thank you, Commissioner Leonard and Mr. Burr, for the kind reference to my thoughts on how OHSU should respond to the tram cost overruns. I agree that its current PR approach isn't working. Interestingly, a few days ago Mr. Stadum gave a short, off-the-record talk about the tram project and South Waterfront at the Mausoleum Club, and if he would adopt the same tone in public, the City and OHSU might get along a lot better.

It would have been interesting, Issac, to have heard him respond to how he squares those conciliatory remarks with Dr. Kohler's letter sent to the business community.

"I think we have to build it now, don't we? The cost of ending it is too great. As well as the damage to the City's image." ~Paul

Sounds like Iraq doesn't it?

<h2>The city shouldn't be paying anything for the tram let alone 3.5 million. The neighborhood got screwed. Traffic will be like Seattle after the South Waterfront Project. The Pearl has no affordable housing, will the South Waterfront area designed by Homer Williams be like that? This project is just for a few luck enough to get some of the meat to make lots of money. Please don't dismiss me. I make a lot of sense. The 2nd downtown will create a lot of traffic on the already overcrowded Macadam. It looks as if affordable housing will be minimal. A lot of shady deals are involved in this project. All of Portland (the tax payers) are having to pay for a tram that a few will use. The thoughtfulness of this project seemed to be overruled by the sight of profit.</h2>