Portland doesn’t have a shortage of good ideas. We are short on follow-through and implementation.

We pass plans. We announce initiatives. We hold meetings. We create more commissions and steering committees generating thousands of beautiful reports. And yet—far too often—the basics still don’t work.

This is not a vision problem. This is a results problem.

Before we can solve big problems, we need a government that can handle basic ones. Right now, too many City systems are slow, fragmented, or unclear. That dysfunction leads to delays, rising costs, and frustration for everyone—from residents to small business owners to community leaders and the rest of us.

City Council must find ways to:

• Create policies that will allow the administration to effectively streamline permitting and other internal processes;

• Clarify its relationship with the administration and the responsibilities of the City’s bureaus and offices; and

• Find ways to track which programs are actually delivering good results (without falling into the traps of performance-based accounting).

This isn’t flashy work, but it’s the foundation for everything else. And it will require City Council to do something we haven’t seen in quite a while: Determine what the Council (as a whole) views as its priorities for the City aside from individual Councilor’s personal priorities—or what they think the City’s priorities should be.

Portland doesn’t need dozens of new initiatives. We need to make existing systems work better. City Council needs to focus on Portland’s basic book of business and fix what is broken there first:

• Streets and sidewalks that are maintained consistently;

• Water and utility systems that are reliable and affordable; and

• Core services that people can depend on.

When basic services fail, everything else gets harder. If the City cannot deliver the basic things that people need and expect, then the City is not delivering for constituents. Period.

A budget is a moral document that establishes a set of priorities. Budgets should be readily available and easy to follow, clearly connecting revenues to expenditures within programs and lines of business. Right now, the City’s budget is the opposite: utterly transparent, yet mostly useless. To the public and even for its own uses. An effective budget, and an effective budgeting process, would not have lost track of $100 million (and more) in funds.

Right now, it’s often difficult for the public—and even decision-makers—to clearly see where money is going and what results it’s producing. The City cannot develop good policy without a good budget, a budget that provides:

• Clearer tracking of outcomes;

• Better alignment between spending and results; and

• Clear information about trade-offs.

Public trust starts with Council, and Council cannot fulfill the public trust without robust financial information, clearly presented, that supports good decision-making.

We cannot measure the success of any program until we see how it works—and provide enough time to collect good data and information for good evaluations and assessment.

City Council should:

• Expand programs that are working;

• Improve ones that show promise; and

• Reevaluate those that don’t.

This isn’t about ideology. It’s about effectiveness.

We can—and should—assess the effectiveness of government programs by multiple measures, not just mere cost outlays or profit margin. But first we have to agree on ways to properly assess which City Council programs are worth further City investment versus which ones we can set aside for now.

Trust in government doesn’t come from messaging. We’re all tired of politicians saying the right things. On this campaign, I will be demonstrating what I plan to do when elected to City Council, not just talk about it. I’ll be seeking opportunities to engage with folks to actually solve problems, not just talk about what needs to be done and who should do it.

When people see:

• Streets and sidewalks getting fixed;

• Systems working for people, not against us; and

• Problems being addressed, not just argued over relentlessly.

Then their trust will follow.

I would like the chance to earn that trust.