PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Either Jo Ann Hardesty or Loretta Smith will replace the retiring Dan Saltzman on the Portland City Council, and whoever wins will make history as the first African-American woman commissioner.
It’s a close race. Both have political experience — Smith is a Multnomah County commissioner while Hardesty is a former state lawmaker. Though both are Democrats, they have differing views on several issues.
Hardesty, for instance, does not know whether the Portland Police Bureau should have more officers.
“I don’t know that yet until we’ve done the audit and find out how police are spending their time today,” Hardesty told KOIN 6 News. “I know that 28 gang enforcement officers are not effective in finding gang memebers so maybe we should disband the Gang Enforcement Unit and retrain those officers to be community police and walk the beat in our city.”
Smith, though, thinks “we need to expand police because we have more people here today than we had 10 years ago. In the last 3 years we’ve had 45,000 to 48,000 people move to Portland knowing that we need to make sure everybody is safe in our city.”
Another hot topic is how to find a place for the city’s homeless. Smith favors repurposing the vacant Wapato Jail facility and buying existing properties.
“We put $60 million on top of existing services for homelessness from the city of Portland and Multnomah County,” Smith said. “I would take half of that money and start land banking, buying up multiplexes. We cannot build our way out of this homeless crisis.”
Hardesty strongly disagrees and has other ideas for temporary shelter elsewhere.
“That we have many more shared housing opportunities, housing with services attached, opportunities for people to share homes with people who need homes.”
They both agree the city needs faster response times for 911 calls.
The winner will be in charge of the 911 center, the fire bureau and the Bureau of Emergency Management.