Another May 18 Anniversary

For many of us in this community, May 18, which famously marks the day of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, is the anniversary of another astonishing, if lesser, event.

Five years ago, in what is fast becoming a footnote to local lore, a large group of us successfully challenged one Pamella Settlegoode’s presidency of the Southwest Hills Residential League (SWHRL).

Settlegoode, with the legal advice of her then-husband, attorney Bill Goode, had mustered a compliant SWHRL board to sue the city over a boundary dispute with our Hillsdale neighborhood.

For reasons that will become clear, we had been unable to negotiate a resolution with Settlegoode.

So we chose to challenge her leadership at SWHRL’s annual meeting on May 18, 2005. Because many of us in Hillsdale lived in an overlapping area with SWHRL, we hastily joined the league, voted in large numbers at its annual meeting and defeated Settlegoode and most of her supporters.

Our own candidate, Jim Thayer, was installed as president and has served admirably for the past five years. (Thank you, Jim.)

Astonishingly, the very day after the vote, Settlegoode and Goode organized a lawsuit against the new board. The suit had an immediate “chilling effect” on those of us on the new board. Some, worried about legal costs, resigned. Fortunately, the Miller, Nash law firm and one of its attorneys, Bruce Rubin, came to our rescue, defending us pro bono. (Thank you, Bruce.)

One month later, the Settlegoode-initiated case was summarily thrown out under a state statute that prohibits suits seeking to punish the public for simply participating in the civic process.

As they say, justice prevailed.

In the months that followed, the new SWHRL board, working with neighboring boards, sorted out the boundaries by getting rid of the contentious overlaps. SWHRL now lives happily with Hillsdale, Bridlemile and Homestead as fully separate neighbors.

Settlegoode was a whirlwind of contention even in support of righteous causes. And often her causes were indeed righteous, as I had occasion to tell her. The problem — and I had occasion to tell her this too — was that she had serious problems with resolving issues amicably. She was objectionable in her objections. She chose confrontation and litigation over comity and cooperation.

(Significantly, suing had previously worked for and may have emboldened her. She managed to win a long legal battle with the Portland School District and walk away with a $1 million settlement.)

I lost track of Pamella after her final day in court five years ago. In the intervening years, I’d heard that she had divorced and moved to Florida, her native state. Then recently, her name came up in a conversation with an acquaintance.

“Settlegoode...Settlegoode...that name sounds familiar,” he ruminated. “I have a sister in St. Petersburg who mentioned someone running for the school board there with a name like that....”

I did a Google search, and sure enough, Pamella had run last fall, not for the school board, but for the City Council.

She’d sunk her teeth into local issues that only someone living in St. Petersburg could understand or care about. In November, St. Petersburg voters, with no knowledge of our experience in Southwest Portland, soundly defeated her at the polls.

My on-line search turned up nothing about post-election lawsuits. I take this as a small sign of progress.

Towering Monstrosity, Part III

I almost didn't hie myself downtown this morning to the hearing on the new "erector set" emergency communications tower planned for exquisite Council Crest Park. The high cards always seem to be in the hands of the "experts" and the land-use attorneys at these hearings.

Then I reread the approval criteria for the 43-story-high tower and the cavalier dismissal of one particular criterion (more on that later) by the Bureau of Developmental Services staff. It made me angry enough to snap on my crash helmet, mount my trusty Chinese "Milano" motor scooter, and scoot right down to the hearing.

In the convenience shop on the ground floor of the planning building, I bellied my way into a discussion that Jim Thayer, president of the Southwest Hills Residential League, was having with staff from the Portland Bureau of Technology Services, the folks pushing for the "erector set" design in one of Portland's most beloved parks.

Seems Jim had read my objections here (and here) on "Red." As an alternative I had proposed that the city use a windmill tower instead of the "lattice" design to give the tower some artistic pizazz. The technology services guys didn't like the idea. It didn't help my cause that The Oregonian carried a story this morning that one of the towers at a wind farm near Wasco had snapped over the weekend killing a construction worker.

The tech guys said the 20-story wind towers weren't high enough for emergency communication and homeland security (read "protection against terrorists").

All I knew was that Council Crest Park and those who view the West Hills from all over the city deserve better than one ugly tower replacing another corroded, 50-year-old ugly tower.

And I thought I had found the language in the official criteria to make my case, namely: the project should "enrich neighborhoods and the southwest community as a whole with ample accessible and well-maintained parks and open spaces. Preserve and enhance the natural habitat features of Southwest Portland's parks and open spaces...."

I seized on the words "enrich" and "enhance." The new "lattice" tower would do neither. It was just more of the same utilitarian ugliness. Unworthy of a Portland etc.

In January, when the city tech guys visited the Hillsdale Neighborhood Association, the neighbors were cool to the plans for just this reason.

So I thought the criterion had merit as an arguing point until someone in the pre-hearing klatch muttered that a stronger, corrosion-free emergency communications tower was "enriching" and "enhancing" because it would help fight terrorism (and, presumably, evil)

Uh-huh.

Somehow I didn't think that was what the criterion's authors had in mind.

Never mind.

Interpreting the authors' intention will be up to the hearing's officer, one Gregory Frank.

Staring into a hearing room microphone, I laid out my case, for the record, to Officer Frank.

Several others from the SWHRL neighborhood were present, but only two spoke (one was Thayer), but they were concerned only about what would happen to access to the park during construction. Privately, one neighbor speculated to me that the tower might prove a hazard during an earthquake because it could topple unenrichingly and unenhancingly onto the life-sustaining neighborhood water tank.

But I was the only one to invoke civic pride and beauty through my suggestion that the clunky "erector set" tower would in no way "enhance" or "enrich."

For some reason I'm hearing Ronald Reagan's line to Walter Mondale (or was it Jimmy Carter?) being applied to me, "There he goes again."

Yep, there I go again.

The record on this matter will be left open for another three weeks until Sept 14 (thanks to Water Bureau objections — Don't ask. You don't want to know, but it was weird, as Frank noted, to have one city bureau delay action on another's project.)

So y'all are invited to comment by writing to Hearings Officer Frank, at 1900 SW Fourth Avenue, Rm 3100, Portland, Or 97201. The case file number is LU 07-137780 CU ZE.

And you got it right, they don't take e-mail. In so many ways, Portland is still in an erector set state of mind.