The community committee assigned by Council Resolution #37146 to collaborate with PWB on the Mt. Tabor history project (a.k.a. the interpretive program), now finds itself in the odd position of advocating to defund and cancel the physical signs as they are currently conceived. We feel that to proceed with this project as it is, is a waste of public money, and the result will not enhance the park. We believe the money could be put to better use elsewhere.
Here is some context:
Why Resolution #37146 was created…
Five years ago citizens and the Portland Water Bureau were locked in a seemingly intractable battle over the best way to handle the post-disconnection life of the historic reservoirs at the heart of Mt. Tabor Park. Scores of citizens attended multiple, lengthy HLC (Historic Landmarks Commission) hearings in 2014 for the related Historic Resource Review. Via the Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association, citizens submitted a case that insisted HLC must mandate PWB to take care of the historical property because PWB was not doing so on its own. The case also insisted water remain on the site, and historic views be protected. The HLC agreed with the community and rendered a decision that mandated water, preservation construction, and an interpretive program, among other things. The PWB rejected these mandates and filed an appeal. The community then filed their own appeal so as to have standing at the hearing before City Council.
At the first City Council hearing on the appeal, Commissioners implored us to work together to find a solution. In response, a small group of us waded into a series of meetings with the then-director of the Water Bureau, David Shaff. Not without pain, we diligently slogged through fourteen hours of tense and difficult negotiations, and eventually hammered out a compromise that both sides felt we could live with.
Citizens gave up much in this negotiation, including access to established land-use processes specifically designed to address many of our largest concerns. But as those established processes required time and funding for which the Water Bureau was unprepared, one of the primary tasks of our negotiation was to find alternative avenues through which the community’s underlying concerns could be addressed. The results of our effort were presented to Council jointly by the Water Bureau and the MTNA, and were formally adopted by Council in Resolution 37146. Much of what is contained in the Resolution is delicately crafted language that directly addresses community concerns for the site, or that mandates the process by which the parties will work together in the future to shepherd those concerns.
When Council adopted the Resolution in 2015, Mayor Hales and the other Commissioners stated clearly and firmly that the Resolution would carry the force of law, and we understood ourselves to be entering into a binding contract with the City. Many of our colleagues considered us foolishly naïve. “You can’t trust the City,” they said. “They will include you just long enough to bury your input.”
What Resolution #37146 does…
The Resolution directs citizens and the Water Bureau to enter into a collaborative partnership in at least two ways: to prioritize the spending of funds for preservation construction at the reservoir structures; and to develop an interpretive program that tells the story of the Mt. Tabor reservoirs and the City’s water system.
These collaborations are very important to the community, as we believe our presence is what will insure work products align with community expectations. The community feared the scarce preservation-construction funds would be consumed repaving roads, while leaving the basins and gatehouses neglected; our presence was to insure funds were spent on the projects the community wants done first. The community feared the interpretive program would be used to institutionalize a slanted messaging campaign about dirty reservoirs; our presence was to insure the program tells the dynamic history of the Bull Run water system.
When things began to go awry…
Over the first two and a half years of this collaboration our combined team of Water Bureau staff and community members established a shared vision for both the preservation project and the interpretive project. Although we did not always agree, we were without exception ultimately always able to find common ground and move forward. We developed a great deal of mutual respect as we repeatedly rolled up our sleeves to create great work products together.
But then staff assignments began to change. As first one of the original members retired and then the other, we community members believed that we had jointly established a strong enough foundation that our positive and productive collaboration would continue across the board.
Unfortunately, the staff members assigned to the interpretive program were not prepared for the give and take of collaboration with volunteers, nor were they prepared to navigate the structural bias from within the bureau to limit community involvement.
From that point forward the legitimacy of our presence on the team was questioned, our own expertise was dismissed and diminished, and we were managed rather than valued. To add more confusion to our role, we also were not considered by this new staff as part of the “stakeholder” community whose input was to provide a grounding quality to the project.
Ultimately, our role was unilaterally relegated to that of responders, not co-creators, and it was limited to the subject of “tone.” We still haven’t been invited to a meeting to offer our response to tone or anything else.
At this point, the bureau’s work on the interpretive program does not honor this part of Resolution 37146:
“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, the Water Bureau and other City bureaus as are necessary, are directed to collaborate with the MTNA to develop an interpretive program that tells the history of the Mt. Tabor reservoirs and the City’s water system.” [Emphasis added.]
The community prioritizes storytelling…
The four primary members of the community team have, among us, many decades of experience that is relevant to the interpretive program, including a deep immersion in the history of both the reservoirs and the City water system, as well as the creation of similar historical projects in Portland and elsewhere. By the time of the staff change, we had spent years of volunteer time developing a solid understanding of the facts that should be highlighted in the program, together with a clear vision of the narrative that would tie them together. Our goal was to tell the story required by the Resolution in an accessible and informative way, merging narrative and photographs to create a positive addition to the park experience for visitors from across the city and beyond. It is not an overwhelming amount of information – twenty-six brief stories, on eight signs, that would be substantive in nature, and that would allow repeat visitors the opportunity to learn something new on subsequent visits.
The new staff assigned to the project, though, demonstrated little interest in or concern for the content. This was a project to finish, not a program to craft. They focused their attention on imposing criteria developed without collaboration with the community team.
Of the handful of criteria that caused conflict, one seemed to cause the largest rift. Despite our living in a city that loves books and reading, that is home to independent bookstores, that invests public money in reading initiatives and public libraries, we were confronted with the extraordinary assertion that words themselves are elitist and somehow the use of them is antithetical to equity. An arbitrary word limit was set for each interpretive sign, that no more than 100 words could ever be used regardless of the story to be told. (We appealed to a Commissioner, and this word limit was increased to another arbitrary limit of 300 words per sign). Additionally, these new standards exerted a relentless downward push on “reading-grade-level,” with no willingness to consider the problems that attend the flawed tools that perform reading-level calculations. These calculators blindly assume all longer words are harder words, and all longer sentences are harder sentences. Forcing content to fit in the false parameters created by these calculators, inherently de-prioritizes writing a story that attracts and hold people’s attention. These tools do not rate, and in fact they may actively harm, whether your writing is compelling, or illuminating.
These “standards” led to sentences such as:
“Among the wealth of natural resources that sustained the Native peoples who inhabited this region for some 10,000 years was the abundance of clean, pure water.”
being reduced to this:
“Everyone needs clean drinking water.”
Conclusion: Please require more content, and practical maintenance planning.
What we have seen of the program since the collaboration was dismantled, is something we cannot support. The story that was called for by the HLC and the LUR has been eviscerated, and the language has been simplified to such an extreme that it serves little value. The tone is highly objectionable, at times reverting to a slanted messaging campaign by the bureau. They’ve let their technical writer gut the story – it’s a case study in how to ruin a great plot and put people to sleep.
The signs as proposed are much larger and much more expensive to produce than other signs you will see around the city, and we know by looking at those more-easily replaced signs that are sitting derelict, and by considering the general neglect PWB has left the MT. Tabor property in through the years, that these signs will not be properly attended to with vandals and age.
To proceed with this project as it is, is a waste of public money. And the result will not enhance the park.
