Portland Heights / SW Hills questions

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by 2bpurrfect

i agree that multnomah county is terrible on services, all kinds of them including public works and social services. I don't advise anyone to move to multnomah county, which is most of Portland. Taxes and fees ( including car registration etc) are higher there, regressive and idiotic in some ways , reflecting many of the people and officials voting them in. Some of the non-tax measures voted in by them are outrageous as well.
as for West Hills, the streets get very treacherous and icy in winter, we are talking some steep hills. The city and county of course do NOT do anything about snow and ice on anything but the main thoroughfares. This creates driveability problems and nope Amazon won't deliver to such streets either when frozen. Luckily the US mail is better about it.

Yes, the flatland 'burbs just outside of West / Southwest Portland are so much nicer in so many ways. While West Side of the city is better, Portland and especially East side are a disaster imo.

You complain about taxes

And then you complain that the city doesn't immediately salt and sand every tiny dead end residential street shoehorned into the west hills after an ice storm?

How many truck and drivers do you think it would take to lay down salt on every residential street in the city of Portland? Which is honestly the ONLY way to deal with iced over streets other than just waiting them out. And then Portlanders would be screaming about how all their cars are rusting out like those in Michigan. And gardeners would be furious about all that salt wiping out all the roadside vegetation.

[ccjarider]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

You complain about taxes

And then you complain that the city doesn't immediately salt and sand every tiny dead end residential street shoehorned into the west hills after an ice storm?

How many truck and drivers do you think it would take to lay down salt on every residential street in the city of Portland? Which is honestly the ONLY way to deal with iced over streets other than just waiting them out. And then Portlanders would be screaming about how all their cars are rusting out like those in Michigan. And gardeners would be furious about all that salt wiping out all the roadside vegetation.

Interesting comments and not necessarily untrue but I think some context is required.


I looked up a typical mid west city budget FY 2023/24. (Detroit)
Overall city budget- is approx. $2,600,000,000 (2.6 Billion)
Budget for ice/snow removal $4,600,000

Thus winter road maintenance is .2% of the overall city budget.
Doesn't take into account state/county costs but you get the jist.


I am pretty certain the "Progressive" Portland Oregon morons voted onto the city council **** that much $ away creating studies to prove the "evilness" of straight, white, home owning, job working taxpayers here.




Also - the roadsides of mid west and east coast are lush and beautiful. There is not enough road salt put down to make a difference. That is a false analogy by enviro-nazi's.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by ccjarider

Interesting comments and not necessarily untrue but I think some context is required.


I looked up a typical mid west city budget FY 2023/24. (Detroit)
Overall city budget- is approx. $2,600,000,000 (2.6 Billion)
Budget for ice/snow removal $4,600,000

Thus winter road maintenance is .2% of the overall city budget.
Doesn't take into account state/county costs but you get the jist.


I am pretty certain the "Progressive" Portland Oregon morons voted onto the city council **** that much $ away creating studies to prove the "evilness" of straight, white, home owning, job working taxpayers here.


Also - the roadsides of mid west and east coast are lush and beautiful. There is not enough road salt put down to make a difference. That is a false analogy by enviro-nazi's.

Portland doesn't have a giant snow removal budget. But these things are not incremental. They can't just increase it by 10% and have mean much. To truly implement a snow removal program reminiscent of a snow bound city like Juneau (where I used to live) would require a tremendous investment in infrastructure. Juneau has vastly more snow plows and snow trucks per capita than Portland. And they have lots of sidewalk snow plow machines as well. They plow all the sidewalks into the streets and then plow the streets into the center turn lanes, and then come through with front loaders and scoop up all that snow and dump it into the ocean where it floats away and melts.

There would be no point in spending billions of dollars for a massive snow removal fleet for Portland that would only get rolled out one or two days every 5 years.

And yes, salt does destroy vegetation alongside roads. That is not some enviro-Nazi myth. You can see thousands of examples of it if you care to google. For example:



This is not any sort of new theoretical thing. The ancient Romans knew this. Have you studied the Punic Wars where after the Romans finally defeated Carthage the legend goes that they sowed the fields of Carthage with salt to put the final nail into the coffin for Carthage to destroy their agriculture?

It is simple osmosis. Groundwater moves from the soil into plant roots through osmosis when the concentration of dissolved salts and minerals inside the plant roots is higher than the surrounding soil But if the water in the surrounding soil has too many salts and other dissolved minerals, the diffusion gradient runs the other direction and the salty soil will instead suck water out of the plant roots, killing them. It isn't that the salt is toxic. It is that the plant is no longer able to take up water from a salty soil. Some plants are better adapted to salty soil than others. But if it is salty enough, nothing will grow.

[ccjarider]

Never stated Portland should make significant investment in snow removal. Agree it not logical. I am pointing out that your referencing winter road maintenance would increase taxation is probably flawed.

In context, is not a major expense and I think it pretty clear that Portland taxes are incredibly high and the return is pretty abysmal. With more efficient effort, better winter road mgmt could occur for "free."

Referring to ancient Roman war to prove road salt damage is kind of silly don't ya think?