There are reasons that organizers of the Community Investment Initiative sought a Leadership Council that could be "trans-regional," able to identify with concerns that spread beyond city or county lines.
Regional reset
One of them, certainly, is the fractious nature of regional politics. Leaders of many of the region's cities simply don't trust each other, in part because of the zero-sum nature of many regional decisions.
An urban growth boundary expansion in Beaverton is one that wasn't awarded to Wilsonville. Federal transportation money granted to Fairview didn't go to Gresham. Adding flat greenfields for manufacturing in Hillsboro means that Portland has a harder time pitching companies on its brownfields.
The decline of comity between cities is one of the reasons Tualatin Mayor Lou Ogden has convened his mayors committee, which is scheduled to meet today before the final Metro Policy Advisory Committee meeting of 2011.
But it's also one of the biggest challenges faced by the Leadership Council as it looks at what regional problems are worth tackling, and how they should be addressed.
A refresher
The Leadership Council, a group of 28 business, nonprofit and community leaders, was initially a concept of former Metro chief operating officer Michael Jordan. It was assembled by a group of private sector leaders, and started meeting in February.
The group has been meeting since then to rethink the way the public sector spends its money, how to get the most private investment out of public spending, and where revenue for that spending should come from. Its recommendations are expected next spring.
In interviews this autumn, some of the region's elected leaders reacted with a mix of cynicism and hope.
But above all, they talked about wanting to control their own destinies.
"We've got to play by the goals set up for this region by the state or whoever, but also, the region has to let Beaverton do its manifest destiny. Let us hit the goals the way we want to," said Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle. "We'll deliver on whatever we're asked to."
Regional collaboration
That doesn't mean that change has to happen in a vacuum. Portland Mayor Sam Adams said he doesn't want to see Metro getting into the business of providing services. But, he said, it can help suggest new ways to do things.
"Pick a service area, pick a program," Adams says. "Align the boxes in a way, across the region, so that we can all feel assured that our collective and individual efforts are integrated. I think we're getting there with economic development. I think the opportunity exists to do that in other areas."
But sometimes, boxes don't exist, and sometimes, says Washington County Chair Andy Duyck, that's deliberate.
Washington County has one of the highest percentages of residents living in unincorporated areas of any large county in the United States. Communities like Aloha, Cedar Mill, Cedar Hills and Bethany have no city government, and Duyck says they like it that way.
"If the public wants to pay for it (a service), they can buy it just like off a menu," he said. "You can buy this service, buy that service."
That's brought enhanced sheriff's protection and road improvement projects. But, that also means that many residents, who live outside of any city or parks district, don't have community parks.
Challenges and trust
That's the inherent problem with regional investments. Fairview Mayor Mike Weatherby is adamant that his residents should not have to pay for a region-wide parks program, for example, because his city has fine parks already.
Beyond that isolationism, though, is a deep skepticism of other cities' fiscal responsibility.
"You can have the Village People ruining the parks downtown, and you have $600-some thousand for police overtime and you have $90,000 or whatever for restoring the parks," Weatherby said in a mid-November interview, during the height of Occupy Portland, "but the philosophy I get from Portland is 'We don't have enough money, but oh by the way we have cost overruns.'"
Weatherby said part of his trepidation is a fear that a regional plan won't allow for local solutions, using a hyperbolic scenario of Metro micromanaging a theoretical jogging path as an example.
"They'd have to decide how wide it is. Maybe they wouldn't even like where it is," Weatherby said. "Maybe they say 'We don't think it should be round. We think it should be triangular, just because we're different.'"
Cross-regional dialogue
Hillsboro Mayor Jerry Willey said his city needs to help the region be successful, and that under any regional tax proposal, "Hillsboro will play a significant part in the transfer of wealth from west to east."
But, he said, he is weary of the results of cross-regional dialogue.
"We get so much pushback on everything we do – it's a no from Clackamas County, a no from Multnomah County, but oh, wait a minute, we have a regional tax we want to impose," Willey said. "For those things to be successful, we've got to have a regional government that is truly collaborative, and we are a long ways from there."
Some of that frustration goes back to polarizing figures like Adams, whose proposal to require new housing developments to have 20 units per acre left a sour taste in many Washington County mouths.
"That kind of attitude is exactly why we can't have a discussion on stuff like this," Duyck said. "It doesn't matter whether we're talking about big lot industrial or transit or redevelopment on a corridor like TV Highway, we can't trust the rest of the region to have a good conversation and not inject their own jealousies and biases into it."
Adams said he supports regional approaches to problem-solving, because "we understand the regional benefit is our benefit." The key, he said, is building consensus.
"It's about Metro inspiring the cities with really smart insight based on fact, based on the way things are," Adams said, repeatedly pointing to the economic development work of Greater Portland Inc. as an example of a successful regional program. "Let's figure out what needs to be done, let's marshal the regionwide support for a key list of actions and let's do it."