Signbusters United to save the Commons!

Yesterday I risked life and limb to take down another of Jobdango monstrosities. Photo to the right.

Ralph King is the CEO of the employment firm and apparently has no qualms about illegally planting his company’s signs all over the public right-of-way. Firm's owner, Tim Barron, has told a fellow sign-buster that jobs are more important than keeping the public right-of-way free of clutter.

So Jobdango officials know what they are doing is illegal. The firm has even been sued in the past for promoting Jobdango by writing in chalk on downtown sidewalks.

I phoned the company once to complain and gently posit my vision of what the city would look like if every business chose this form of advertising. I was met with a verbal attack. “Sounds like you have too much time on your hands. Get a job!”

I’m not about to subject myself to further abuse. I’ll just fight back by ripping down his signs (as I've done with 40 or so). Still I confess I don’t seem to be having much effect on Ralph and Tim. They continue to hire folks to put up more, weed-like. (Update: I took down two of their signs on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway today, Feb 7)

A call to the City produced all kinds of blather about tight budgets, enforcement priorities (illegal signs are way down the list) and Catch-22 regulations. An example of the latter is that if I take down one of these signs there’s no longer a violation because there’s no evidence. The photo shown here,  I was told, doesn’t qualify as proof of a violation either. Go figure.

But I do have one hero in the city bureaucracy. That would be Marcia Dennis, who thanklessly fields complaints about graffiti and various other visual assaults on the Commons. She even hands out anti-graffiti kits stocked with rubber gloves and all kinds of solvents. Marcia has agreed to send me the names of other Portland “Sign-busters.” There must be a couple dozen of us with “time on our hands.”

It’s time to organize. A well-publicized, Michael Moore-like mass visit/sit-in at  Jobdango’s office might be in order. Or verbal complaints at a City Council session. Or a publicity campaign. Or an on-camera citizens’ arrest.

Those are all safer than tip-toeing along the edge of the Capital Highway on-ramp to Barbur while traffic whisks by just inches away.

Meanwhile, if you want the thrill of being told to get a life, give Ralph or Tim a call to complain. The number is: (503) 256-4446.

Oh, and if you actually need a job, don’t get it through Jobdango. It only encourages the company to keep blighting our city.

Got Junk gets warned

Good news.

We may finally be getting through to 1-800-Got Junk. The trash collection firm has been steadfast in defacing our roadways with signs asking us whether we “Got Junk?”

They should ask themselves the same question. The answer is a resounding “Yes!” as is apparent by the sign blight they illegally scatter along the public right-of-way.

Now 1-800-Got Junk is at last in the cross-hairs of the City anti-blight enforcement folks.

A comment from a former Got Junk employee on one of my earlier posts moved me to complain to the City’s blight abatement czar, Marcia Dennis. (Her major focus is on fighting graffiti. No surprise there. Her e-mail is mdennis@ci.portland.or.us)

The former Got Junk employee reported that the owner of the franchise, located on SW Barbur, routinely laughs at the lack of City enforcement.

So I forwarded the employee’s comment and urged Dennis to take action. I also documented the problem by referring her to the Red Electric’s photos of my vast Got Junk sign archive. I must have 20 signs. (I picked up two more last weekend. )

I wonder whether the franchise owner is laughing after receiving the following:

More blight arrives in the Hillsdale Town Center

Today, walking down to Hillsdale’s commercial center, I noticed that workers were piggy-backing technological bric-a-brac on one of our utility poles again.

We have wires, barrel-sized transformers, defunct wireless cones and now — what?

Cell phone antennae of course. After I took this photo, workers attached a large equipment box the size of a three-drawer filing cabinet to the pole.

Lovely.

Of course, each of the several cell phone companies has to have its very own antenna.

Call it antenna envy.

Our Hillsdale commercial center is what Metro, the Portland-area regional government, has designated a “Town Center.”

Hence “the Hillsdale Town Center.”

The idea is to make the Town Centers pedestrian-friendly so that people walk to shops, schools and buses and leave their polluting cars at home.

Several of us believe that making our Town Center pedestrian-friendly involves making it attractive to walk around in. Actual sidewalks would be nice too.

We have street trees, although I noticed today that the one next to the new antenna-ized utility pole looks seriously stressed.

And some of us have actually had the audacity to propose undergrounding the utilities. No more poles, wires, transformers and, yes, cell phone antennae. The powers that be manage to bury all this stuff downtown, in South Waterfront and in the Lloyd and Pearl districts.

Why not here?

Could it have something to do with politics?

I’ve worked on and off for 15 years on the undergrounding issue. I used to joke that my goal was to see utilities in the Town Center undergrounded before I’m undergrounded.

It’s a joke no longer.

The “City that Works” needs to start working on undergrounding. A decade ago some of us, representing varied interests, including the utilities, suggested that fees should be placed on new technologies like cell phones (they were new back then). If they used the public right-of-way, they ponied up to mitigate the blight. The revenues would pay for undergrounding in Town Centers like Hillsdale.

Vera Katz was mayor at the time we made our report with its funding proposal. She assured us our suggesting would not gather dust on a shelf.

But that is exactly where it is today. While the dust gathers, the antennae and overhead wire blight spread throughout the City. And my own personal undergrounding becomes more real with each passing year.

On a brighter note. Clearly Hillsdale's pigeons are pleased with things the way they are.

Hillsdale streetscape — 2020?

Knowing my obsession about Hillsdale’s blight of utility poles, wires and overhead transformers, my friend and fellow Hillsdalite Arnie Panitch sent me these photos from India.

I think he wants me to keep our little visual clutter problem in perspective.

Or maybe he just wants me to chill.

Actually, I might use these gothic street scenes to make the point that if we don’t reverse the streetscape clutter here, this may be what we have to look forward to.

Thanks for show-and-tell, Arnie.

Sam, Sam, Sam!

If the headline on this entry sounds like scolding, it is.

On this day, when I took down two commercial signs illegally placed in the public right of way (one from the notorious Jobdango), I find it ironic that City Commissioner Sam Adam's Portland Department of Transportation is relying on intrusive signage in the public right of way to get its message out about public meetings.

What next? Signs scattered throughout our neighborhood for planning commission hearings, City Council meetings, PTA meetings? Where does it end?

At last count, this community was served by three (count'em THREE!) community newspapers plus an on-line newsletter (which I happen to edit and publish). You'd think that would be enough to inform an interested public about a Portland Department of Transportation meeting.

Interestingly enough, Adams and his transportation staff never even notified me, as Hillsdale News' editor, of the meeting he is publicizing so widely and flagrantly on utility poles throughout Hillsdale. (By the way, the last time they did this, the signs stayed up a full week after the meeting had taken place.)

All this from a man who wants to be, and likely will be, our next mayor.

It could be a long four years.