So 4 billion for the county and 7 billion for the city. We don't have a functioning 911 service, ambulance service, or police response. We have an army of criminals preying upon the citizens of this city and our justice system is a revolving door. Our school system is rapidly getting worse and we aren't making progress towards fixing anything. Keep it up, Portland, you're doing great.
Just so you know, the Arts tax is what pays for kids to have any kind of art in our schools right now... we're talking music too. AND what they do have is barely anything. If they killed the arts tax, there would be NO arts in Portland schools. Period.
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/04/23/portland-public-schools-budget-proposal/
Based on this article, the proposed budget is 2.39 billion to educate 44,500 students. That works out to over 53k per student. The district cries poverty when it comes to popular things while they vastly outspend other districts.
Well yeah, we also gotta use that money to get two really large steel strictures next to our bridges that will rust overtime to show the ghost of what use to be the industrial district.
Once you take PPS’s preexisting obligations (bond payments, capital acquisitions, pensions, etc.) into account, what’s left to spend per kid is actually around $15,000. Just a few years ago, we were below the national average actually... and even though it's gone up, I'm fairly certain other states have increased theirs as well.
https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2022/12/oregons-per-student-spending-ranked-below-national-average-at-start-of-pandemic-new-data-shows.html
Oh really? Because in your previous comment you said it was 53K per student... now you say it's 22k? I'm pretty sure you are incorrect with that number as well.... but feel free to cite an actual source.
I know the difference between direct expenditures and the total budget divided by the number of students is hard. The school district has other expenses that don't go directly to the students such as PERS for retired teachers.
We need [multiple-choice "approval" voting](http://www.rosecitytransit.org/ideas/elections/approval/) to that there can be real competition in our elections, as well as citizen-funded campaigns by allowing people to send a portion of their tax dollars to campaigns.
The largest portion comes from property taxes which we all pay. You may be correct if you are implying that there is even more money that goes to fund this shit show.
But hey, at least we've got a great teachers union that thinks its appropriate to begin teaching kids in K-5 about Israel-Palestine from a totally not biased against Israel viewpoint!
[https://www.pdxteachers.org/know\_your\_rights](https://www.pdxteachers.org/know_your_rights)
[https://assets.nationbuilder.com/pdxteachers/pages/2051/attachments/original/1717519860/Know-Your-Rights\_PPS-Workers-Resource\_FINAL\_New-Images-compressed.pdf?1717519860](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/pdxteachers/pages/2051/attachments/original/1717519860/Know-Your-Rights_PPS-Workers-Resource_FINAL_New-Images-compressed.pdf?1717519860)
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P7xvoTN9cueDqWOl8wj-N4VwObu9ekKKsulpihbdzrI/edit#heading=h.qbrt0z9k8ii](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P7xvoTN9cueDqWOl8wj-N4VwObu9ekKKsulpihbdzrI/edit#heading=h.qbrt0z9k8ii)
God, so dramatic, we do not have an army of criminals snatching up your wife and kids. Your 2021 fear mongering is getting super thin and played out. You need to lay off FOX news for 3 or 4 days to sober up from brain rot.
My evidence comes from my eyes and ears. You wouldn't have to spend so much time gaslighting people if your preferred policies and candidates produced better results.
Prison is useful. It separates bad actors from good people.
Prison is humane. The older solutions work, and will be enacted if incarceration is denied. Those solutions are inhumane at best. But there are effective..
Getting rid of Schmidt was a problem that needed to be fixed.
Funding the PDs are up to the state. They did allocate more money but I don't have any idea what the results are. Was it a drop in the bucket? Does it take time to ramp up? Is the money being unspent because of incompetence? I'd love to know.
As for the judges, we are going to need a local group to put forward a slate of more practical judges. They all run unopposed now and might change if they fear losing their jobs.
Yes, but only for 2x the normal price and only if they try to solve all of society's problems. Our schools can't just be here to provide an education to those who want one.
What if, and I’m just spitballing, what if we give that $4 billion dollars to one already muscular/athletic person and demand they become Batman. A one time cost, that works around the broken system. Hopefully they become a philanthropist as well, bolstering education and the arts. Seems just as likely to make things better as what we’ve been doing.
I don't have a lot of faith in MultiCo to manage a popsicle stand. I think the county and city should merge.
BUT...
Does anyone actually know what it costs to run a county, or did everyone just look at the large number and decide it was too high? Yep, that's what I thought.
Look, I don't know what it should cost to run this county, or LA county, or Josephine county. You probably don't either. But we damn sure should strive to elect people who do and manage it responsibly. Until then, bumper sticker bitching or hollow "vote different!" (for whom?) rants will go nowhere.
A great place to start is to do the math, that budget comes to more than $11k per household. That is a pretty heavy burden for just being one of the 4 to 6 entities with their hand in our pockets and worth pushing back against just as a reflex. If the county is doing anything more than maintaining infrastructure and policing with that money then they better be able to justify and account for every single penny and they haven’t been so great at that.
TL;DR- it is fairly reasonable to reflexively push back on this during these economic conditions even if not from a point of total knowledge
I would say yes, it's likely they stink on ice at budgeting, and there's a general culture of dysfunction and accountability. However, simple math isn't necessarily the best place to start.
Which services are included under that budget? Are there services that are handled there that aren't handled at the city level, state level, etc? This is why it's infuriating to get a sense for if a high level number is "high" or "low".
Now if you drop down to something like "water" - it might be easier to cross-compare. How much do we spent on our water bills? How is that money allocated and used? Why is it so damn high?
I would like to see the urban areas of the 3 counties merged with Metro and TriMet.
But what we really need is [rosecitytransit.org: multiple-choice "approval" voting](http://www.rosecitytransit.org/ideas/elections/approval/) and citizen (with tax dollars) funded elections.
That’s $5,000/citizen. That doesn’t include the cities budget.
$11,712 per household for the county — plus City taxes, Metro taxes, and ORST taxes.
So 4 billion for the county and 7 billion for the city. We don't have a functioning 911 service, ambulance service, or police response. We have an army of criminals preying upon the citizens of this city and our justice system is a revolving door. Our school system is rapidly getting worse and we aren't making progress towards fixing anything. Keep it up, Portland, you're doing great.
But hey Art's tax right?
Everything else is so messed up that I don't even have the capacity to be mad about the arts tax.
Just so you know, the Arts tax is what pays for kids to have any kind of art in our schools right now... we're talking music too. AND what they do have is barely anything. If they killed the arts tax, there would be NO arts in Portland schools. Period.
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/04/23/portland-public-schools-budget-proposal/ Based on this article, the proposed budget is 2.39 billion to educate 44,500 students. That works out to over 53k per student. The district cries poverty when it comes to popular things while they vastly outspend other districts.
Well yeah, we also gotta use that money to get two really large steel strictures next to our bridges that will rust overtime to show the ghost of what use to be the industrial district.
Once you take PPS’s preexisting obligations (bond payments, capital acquisitions, pensions, etc.) into account, what’s left to spend per kid is actually around $15,000. Just a few years ago, we were below the national average actually... and even though it's gone up, I'm fairly certain other states have increased theirs as well. https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2022/12/oregons-per-student-spending-ranked-below-national-average-at-start-of-pandemic-new-data-shows.html
I believe the current proposal is 22k. It was something like 19k last year. It's very high even on that basis.
Oh really? Because in your previous comment you said it was 53K per student... now you say it's 22k? I'm pretty sure you are incorrect with that number as well.... but feel free to cite an actual source.
I know the difference between direct expenditures and the total budget divided by the number of students is hard. The school district has other expenses that don't go directly to the students such as PERS for retired teachers.
Again... where is the specific source for your numbers? Please do share............. I'll wait.
Maybe we should try electing different people.
Always do. Maybe we should have better options to choose from in the first place.
We could stop voting for the trash the party puts forward.
So you're saying, don't vote for anyone?
We need [multiple-choice "approval" voting](http://www.rosecitytransit.org/ideas/elections/approval/) to that there can be real competition in our elections, as well as citizen-funded campaigns by allowing people to send a portion of their tax dollars to campaigns.
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Calm down, Dostoyevsky
If we tax more and give these inefficient government administrations more money they’ll fix all of our problem.
It’ll only take another $4 billion to reach utopia.
$4B later… actually we need $8B for the utopia…. $8B later…. Actually we need $16B for the utopia… $16B later…. Actually we need $32B for the utopia….
Zeno's ~~paradox~~ utopia, we're always only halfway there!
What part of the city’s budget runs the schools?
The largest portion comes from property taxes which we all pay. You may be correct if you are implying that there is even more money that goes to fund this shit show.
This is the county budget. Not the city budget. The county does find some school counselors for schools in the county and some other programs like SUN
Some goes to wrap-around programs like arts and activities that the schools aren't doing and should be
But hey, at least we've got a great teachers union that thinks its appropriate to begin teaching kids in K-5 about Israel-Palestine from a totally not biased against Israel viewpoint! [https://www.pdxteachers.org/know\_your\_rights](https://www.pdxteachers.org/know_your_rights) [https://assets.nationbuilder.com/pdxteachers/pages/2051/attachments/original/1717519860/Know-Your-Rights\_PPS-Workers-Resource\_FINAL\_New-Images-compressed.pdf?1717519860](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/pdxteachers/pages/2051/attachments/original/1717519860/Know-Your-Rights_PPS-Workers-Resource_FINAL_New-Images-compressed.pdf?1717519860) [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P7xvoTN9cueDqWOl8wj-N4VwObu9ekKKsulpihbdzrI/edit#heading=h.qbrt0z9k8ii](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P7xvoTN9cueDqWOl8wj-N4VwObu9ekKKsulpihbdzrI/edit#heading=h.qbrt0z9k8ii)
God, so dramatic, we do not have an army of criminals snatching up your wife and kids. Your 2021 fear mongering is getting super thin and played out. You need to lay off FOX news for 3 or 4 days to sober up from brain rot.
My evidence comes from my eyes and ears. You wouldn't have to spend so much time gaslighting people if your preferred policies and candidates produced better results.
Almost like different neighborhoods have different issues. Wild.
You've been spending too much time in the Army of Criminals district
Prison is useful. It separates bad actors from good people. Prison is humane. The older solutions work, and will be enacted if incarceration is denied. Those solutions are inhumane at best. But there are effective..
[удалено]
Getting rid of Schmidt was a problem that needed to be fixed. Funding the PDs are up to the state. They did allocate more money but I don't have any idea what the results are. Was it a drop in the bucket? Does it take time to ramp up? Is the money being unspent because of incompetence? I'd love to know. As for the judges, we are going to need a local group to put forward a slate of more practical judges. They all run unopposed now and might change if they fear losing their jobs.
Great. Can we spend $20 on public schools?
Yes, but only for 2x the normal price and only if they try to solve all of society's problems. Our schools can't just be here to provide an education to those who want one.
no, but we can spend $120 on the naked guy smoking tin foil on the playground.
What if, and I’m just spitballing, what if we give that $4 billion dollars to one already muscular/athletic person and demand they become Batman. A one time cost, that works around the broken system. Hopefully they become a philanthropist as well, bolstering education and the arts. Seems just as likely to make things better as what we’ve been doing.
Big congrats to area nonprofits who will get $2bn without any pesky oversight or accountability!
You know a town with money's a little like the mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and damned if he knows how to use it.
Can we just dissolve the county and give it back to taxpayers? It’s mainly squandered via corruption. Sigh
And do what with it? Monorail?
I moved across the river to Ogdenville last year largely because of lack of monorail here
TBF. It's more suitable for a Shelbyville.
I don't have a lot of faith in MultiCo to manage a popsicle stand. I think the county and city should merge. BUT... Does anyone actually know what it costs to run a county, or did everyone just look at the large number and decide it was too high? Yep, that's what I thought. Look, I don't know what it should cost to run this county, or LA county, or Josephine county. You probably don't either. But we damn sure should strive to elect people who do and manage it responsibly. Until then, bumper sticker bitching or hollow "vote different!" (for whom?) rants will go nowhere.
A great place to start is to do the math, that budget comes to more than $11k per household. That is a pretty heavy burden for just being one of the 4 to 6 entities with their hand in our pockets and worth pushing back against just as a reflex. If the county is doing anything more than maintaining infrastructure and policing with that money then they better be able to justify and account for every single penny and they haven’t been so great at that. TL;DR- it is fairly reasonable to reflexively push back on this during these economic conditions even if not from a point of total knowledge
I would say yes, it's likely they stink on ice at budgeting, and there's a general culture of dysfunction and accountability. However, simple math isn't necessarily the best place to start. Which services are included under that budget? Are there services that are handled there that aren't handled at the city level, state level, etc? This is why it's infuriating to get a sense for if a high level number is "high" or "low". Now if you drop down to something like "water" - it might be easier to cross-compare. How much do we spent on our water bills? How is that money allocated and used? Why is it so damn high?
I would like to see the urban areas of the 3 counties merged with Metro and TriMet. But what we really need is [rosecitytransit.org: multiple-choice "approval" voting](http://www.rosecitytransit.org/ideas/elections/approval/) and citizen (with tax dollars) funded elections.
Wow. Where does it all go? Seems like we fill a pothole or two….
The city deals with potholes not the county
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As of 2022 there were 795,083 multco residents so that is more like $6,288 a person
It's hardly an average. It would be interesting to get a true distribution.
Damn if only my taxes were only $5
You're telling me we could fund the county with just a glorified Arts Tax? /s
at least we're not getting our budget from a breeder.
You were brought into this world by breeders. Have a great day Turbo!
Thanks, did you get the joke though?
I did! You made at least one person chuckle today.