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In January I was working for the Oregon Senate documenting the opening of the legislative session.  While there I got to see Governor Kulongoski give the State of the State Address.  He said that it was going to be a hard year for Oregon.  Now that unemployment has hit 14% and the state budget has been cut to the bone, I would say that so far he has been right. 

I know the Rose Festival is all old new, but I haven’t updated for a bit and I wanted to put up a few images from the festivities.  The Starlight Parade has always been my favorite to photograph because of the dramatic night-time lighting. 

It seemed that the past few years the St. John’s Parade had been dwindling in size and quality.  This year, for whatever reason, it was back in full force.  The large high school marching bands were back where there.  Last year I only saw middle school bands.  The big floats were back too as were a multitude of antique cars and trucks. 

For more than 15 years the Portland City Government has been intermittently trying to doing away with North Precinct and combine it with Northeast several miles away.  Now, using the recession-caused budget shortfalls as the impetus, they’ve finally accomplished their goal.  To me is seems that using money as the justification is somewhat disingenuous as the savings, at least in the short term, are dubious and an Assistant Chief from PPB told North Portlanders at a town meeting that even if the money magically appeared to closed the budget gap, the city would still want to go through with this plan. 

Maybe administratively it makes sense, though I spoke with at least one police sergeant who thought not.

The day the city counsel voted on the new precinct plan, I spoke to a few local business owners to see how they felt about the decision.  Pattie Dietz, owner of a popular St John’s Cafe was unhappy with the vote, but willing to see how things played out. 

You can read my whole report here at the Portland Sentinel.