City Cast Portland
🏊 Celebrating a sewage-free year in the Willamette River
February 3, 2025 · — Rachel Monahan
Good morning! Portland’s new city council president, Elana Pirtle-Guiney, will be driving the conversation on key issues.
🎧 She shared her thoughts with the City Cast Portland podcast on the mayor’s ambitious new plan to end unsheltered homelessness as well as the city’s staggering $100 million budget shortfall and the council members’ early vote to double the size of their own staff:
We were not set up to be successful in this work, and we want to be successful in this work….We need[ed] to give ourselves the tools.
What's CITY Talking About?
A Year Without a Sewer Overflow
Last week, Portland marked a year without the sewer system overflowing into the Willamette River. Why is that even a thing? It turns out that the city’s rainwater runoff and raw sewage flow through the same pipes. [OPB]
- Key facts: An infrastructure project completed in 2011 brought the instances of overflows down from about 50 a year to four during your average rainy season. [OPB]
- Related: The plan to banish a toxic nuisance from the Willamette River. [City Cast Portland 🎧]
Poll Finds Homelessness as Top Issue
Homelessness, followed by affordable housing, are the top issues in the Portland area — according to a poll of 700 registered voters by the firm DHM Research. It’s more of confirmation than a surprise: Voters have repeatedly identified homelessness as a top concern, and the number of people experiencing homelessness has risen.
- 35% of respondents chose homelessness as the top issue.
- 18% chose affordable housing
- 12% chose safety [OPB]
Despite Trump, Gender-Affirming Care Continues
Hospitals in Colorado, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., have already paused their gender-affirming health care for transgender patients who are age 18 or younger, following President Trump’s executive order restricting federal funds for those patients. But Legacy and OHSU (which have Oregon’s only two general hospitals for children) are continuing to provide that care as of Friday. [Oregonian]
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What To Do
Monday, Feb. 3
- 🌲 ‘Yukizuri Create Winter Scenery’ | 10 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. (through Feb. 28) | $21.95 (for garden admission) | Portland Japanese Garden
- 📽️ ‘David Lynch: The Art Life’ | 7 p.m. | $10 | Cinemagic (Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard)
Tuesday, Feb. 4
- 🚌 Free Fare (celebrating Rosa Parks Day) | All Day | Free | TriMet, Portland Streetcar, and C-TRAN
- 🔬 Altered States: The Neuroscience of Psychedelics (science pub) | 7 p.m. | $5 | OMSI
- 📚 Nikole Hannah-Jones: 2025 Hatfield Lecture | 7 p.m. | $51+ | Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Wednesday, Feb. 5
- 🎗️ ‘Taken From Their Families’ (exhibit on Japanese American incarceration) | 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. | $8 | Japanese American Museum of Oregon (Old Town)
- 🏮 Celebrate the Year of the Snake (dragon and lantern viewing event) | 5:30 - 7 p.m. or 7 - 9 p.m. (various times through Feb. 16) | $43 | Lan Su Chinese Garden (Old Town)
- 🎵 Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few | 7:30 p.m. | $34.50+ | The Old Church (Downtown)
- 🎥 ‘The Tale of the Princess Kaguya’ (Studio Ghibli Film Festival) | 8 p.m. | $9 | OMSI
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🚘 Recently, I found myself following the car in front of me a little too closely as I tried to get a closer look at a bumper sticker: “I Read Dead People.” Or that’s what I think the verb was; the car’s vanity plate referenced books as well. (I definitely didn’t get a photo while driving.)
But today, here’s a recent favorite I saw while out for a walk. It’s a straight-up Portland stereotype — and, naturally, was seen on an older green Subaru, with plenty of other bumper stickers:
Free · Daily