Yes, Portland is beautiful. Yes, we have Forest Park and OMSI and the Rose Garden and great food and beer and lots of other good things. I’ve lived here for most of the past 40 years and there are wonderful things about Portland.
But… Portland has more murders than Seattle (“Portland recorded more homicides than Seattle in 2024. What’s behind the violence?” Feb. 14). Our streets are falling apart, yet the Portland Bureau of Transportation is facing extreme budget cuts. We have a seemingly intractable homeless problem. We have open air drug markets downtown. Both are contributing to fewer businesses and workers downtown.
Our educational statistics are atrocious, (“Oregon’s near-worst-in-nation education outcomes prompt a reckoning on school spending,” Feb. 9). We have declining enrollment in our public schools and yet we’ve considered building three of the most expensive high schools ever built in the country. Unemployment overall is modest, but tech employment is falling, and we apparently can’t find enough health care workers…