Apologies for the radio silence, I had taken some time to heal an injury and now where I am back about 85% we have some things to get to
A new Transportation Utility Fee was passed starting next year, and here is what you need to know and at the end I will have my opinion
In a 9-3 vote the city council passed a transportation utility fee with the idea that the money will go to work on the roads. Starting in 2027 single family homes pay an additional 12 per month while multifamily units pay another 8.40 per month. Businesses will pay just under 5% of utility bills and 75% of revenue going to maintenance while 25% gets split between traffic death prevention project Vision Zero and sidewalk improvements.
One of the things I have been saying is we cannot do this because it is not feasible but I will break it down. We have this, we have the Portland General Electric increase that’s about 5% or an average of 8$ by the math of opb. Pacific power is 4.1% or roughly 5.64 more a month.
https://www.opb.org/article/2026/03/31/portland-general-electric-pacific-power-raise-rates
Take that with a 6.3% hike for water and sewer which is roughly 10$ a month by KGW math.
This is nothing from the state level increasing or the county. You have an additional 120 from water and sewer you have an additional 96 from power increases from PGE and 67 dollars plus change from pacific. You get this transportation fee adding an additional 100 to multifamily units and another 144 to single family homes that means the additions as they stand provided the rates on anything else doesn’t increase will mean an additional 300+ dollars in your bills, that is brutal. That doesn’t include fuel that doesn’t include food or insurance or anything else and that is just the fees by the city.
This is why I will say it again and again until we get a hold of our spending, not another dime in raised fees should happen. We need an audit, we need it public as possible, and until that happens no fees come forward because if we do not know how we are spending our money we do not know what value we will get on anything else. The mayor has had to introduce cuts to police and fire which was interesting to say the least. That shows though the depth to which our financials in the city are suffering and we need to fix it.
How do we fix it? First, we need to know everything in and out and get it verified in an audit and then we work from that to figure out where
Also, it as been a few days since the incident at the Multnomah Athletic Club and it is political well to do to bring it up for some extra points in social media, I didn’t feel I had anything meaningful to say outside of a very basic, this person needed help and the city couldn’t help. Whether that is a problem of the city or of the person it is sad in any effect, and I will leave that there. I know it’s not the political expressive writing of others, but other people can say what is needed better then I on that gentleman’s particular need.
T.J. Anderson for District 4 
Leave a comment