Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler this week will launch his administration’s latest attempt to tame trash, graffiti and other public eyesores by establishing a new trash czar with powers to streamline the city’s highly fragmented approach to providing basic sanitation.
Wheeler announced the initiative, which he will bring about via an executive order, during his annual state of the city address Friday. The mayor signed the order Monday, though it does not go into effect until mid-week, his office said.
The effort comes more than a year after an Oregonian/OregonLive investigation showed that Portland’s unusual system involving many city bureaus as well as other local government agencies for maintaining its urban landscape was primed for failure and reached a breaking point during the coronavirus pandemic.
Over the last 14 months the city has poured millions of additional dollars into programs, promoted volunteer cleanups citywide and convened regular meetings with government, business and community leaders focused on bringing the sanitation problems under control.
Signs of visible progress, however, remain in short supply.
Garbage and debris continue to regularly line parks and commercial corridors. Illegal dump sites still routinely crop up in residential neighborhoods. Abandoned cars and vehicles dot public rights of way like pieces in a game of Parcheesi.
The mayor’s office said there are currently 20 separate city programs tasked with sanitation services, spread across eight different bureaus overseen by all five members of the City Council.
Wheeler’s order will create an incident command structure for sanitation and centralize many of the city’s diffuse services under a public environment management director overseen by the mayor, according to a draft copy reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Wheeler on Monday appointed Christine Leon, a longtime official with the city’s transportation bureau, to fill the newly created role.
This director will also coordinate with other government agencies responsible for trash removal and cleanups in parts of Portland, such as the Metro regional government and Oregon Department of Transportation.
“This is just common sense,” said Wheeler, who first took office more than five years ago, during his virtual address Friday.
The pending order will be the fourth time since February that the mayor invoked his emergency powers in an attempt to tackle complex issues that he believes have proliferated in part by Portland’s commission form of government, which allows each member of the City Council to control portions of the city bureaucracy.
The previous three each focused on homelessness.
While voters will likely have the chance in November to decide whether to change the city’s current form of government, Wheeler said he’ll continue to seek ways to cut red tape and pulverize bureaucratic roadblocks.
“I will not wait a year or longer for a more functional form of city government to be put in place,” he said. “Where and when I legally can, I am taking action to change and improve our city now.”
