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Portland council’s openly socialist progressive bloc (Candace Avalos, Jamie Dunphy, Mitch Green, Sameer Kanal, Tiffany Koyama Lane, and Angelita Morillo) has been voting in lockstep.

As part of an Oregon Ethics Commission investigation to see if they violated either city and state law on negotiating outside of public meetings, a huge block of Teams messages has been acquired by public records request by Willamette Week. It reveals councilmembers discussing plans for government appropriation of buildings as well as airing grievances and annoyances at their colleagues as well as constituents. Even worse, they make it clear some of them lack even the most basic governance knowledge.

For example, on July 9th, Candace Avalos sent out a link to a story about the office tower Big Pink selling for $45 million – an astronomical collapse of 88% in value (It was last purchased in 2015 for $370 million). This was the exchange:

Dunphy: $45 million dollars? THAT’S IT??? Holy shit are we in market correction mode.

Candace Avalos: What does market correction mode mean?

Dunphy: Meaning that our real estate prices have been wildly out of control, and that the values of these buildings don’t match their worth, so now we’re seeing prices reduced to firesale levels, which will reduce property taxes etc

Candace Avalos: Reduce property taxes and therefore revenue the city gets?

Dunphy: Yes. Plus it will impact the evaluation of value for other buildings in the area,
Dunphy: It’s not inherently a bad thing, it’s not great, and we all knew our real estate prices were detached from reality, but this kind of a market correction can hurt. I’m less concerned about the biggest buildings be devalued, but it could have ripple effects to individual homes or condos etc

Candace Avalos: Forgive my ignorance here because this is NOT my area of expertise, but isn’t it good for these prices to go down? And if buildings are this cheap we can capitalize and do more buying as a city like we did recently with those 3 apartment buildings?

Dunphy: There are definitely some opportunities that could be beneficial, yes.

Candace Avalos: People’s individual homes have skyrocketed in value, making it so much harder for new people to get homes, so don’t we want them to go down?

Dunphy: Well, the problem then becomes having homeowners “underwater,” where the value of their home is worth less than the outstanding principal on their mortgage, so they won’t be able to refinance. There’s also a lot of these larger buildings that are owned by retirement accounts, so if the value of their portfolios decreases, retirees would see their investment portfolios decrease rapidly.

Candace Avalos: Hmm ok I see

This is a city councilmember, in charge of Portland’s $8.6 billion dollar budget, that doesn’t understand even the most basic concept of a real estate correction (one of the worst corrections in the entire country) and how it will utterly decimate the budget they are making. Instead, they look at it as an opportunity for the government to buy up buildings for their social programs cheaply.

As part of the government troops at the Portland ICE facility, I can confirm that there is nightly military helicopter activity over downtown. You can hear it for hours as the copters circle and trade off flying over the ICE facility.

Sadly, our local protest-industrial complex geniuses started encouraging people to shine lasers at overhead aircraft. The problem? OHSU and Emanuel do Life Flight operations to downtown hospitals. OHSU is quite literally a block away from the ICE facility. Sadly, Life Flights have been mistakenly targeted to the point OHSU has stopped flight operations to the hospital. Patients are sent to the Hillsboro or other nearby airports – which can be a 30-90 min away by ambulance depending on traffic conditions.

One group of men arrested shining laser pointers at helicopters – turned out to be in the US illegally. They are now facing criminal charges and deportation. More recently, a man in Hillsboro was also just arrested and admitted to targeting an aircraft with a laser pointer. He admitted to the crime as well as got busted for possession of about 100 grams of meth (about $600-1000 worth).

It’s worth noting that using a laser pointer at an aircraft is a federal offense that can get you 1-5 years in federal prison and pointing one at a police officer is against Oregon state law.

Links:

• https://www.koin.com/news/portland/life-flights-diverted-from-ohsu-over-laser-threat/
• https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/ohsu-divers-emergency-flights-lasers-helicopters-portland-ice-facility/283-d41b43d0-d0d6-458c-a9d0-0605de6ea1eb
• https://www.koin.com/news/crime/aloha-man-arrested-admits-to-aiming-laser-at-helicopter/

The former Gordon’s Fireplace Shop, a highly visible multi-story building right next to I-84, went out of business in 2016. Investors swooped in and bought it for $2.7 million in 2017 during Portland’s boom time. Sadly, it has become a vacant, graffiti-covered building as investors waited out the market.

In another clear sign of Portland’s unprecedented commercial real estate collapse, the building was just sold in 2025 for $575,000. A 78% decline in just 8 years.

This marks another major commercial property sold at more than a 70% discount in Portland. Since COVID and the riots of 2020, Portland has experienced the highest commercial vacancy rate in the country as well as a 3 year population decline as both businesses and residents flee the 2nd highest taxes in the country.

The Knight Cancer Institute here at the Oregon Health & Science University has an annual symposium on current Cancer research around May.

If you’re curious, you can always sign up to attend or check out the recordings from past years on their symposium website.

If you spend much time in Portland, you’ll hear lots of people claim the recent woes are ‘just like this everywhere’ and because of national policy. While nationwide macro policies do make a difference such as tariffs that are causing broad price increases, many other metrics do not.

Moody’s analysis indicates that Oregon is one of 22 states already in, or at high risk, of recession, while around 16 other states are actually experiencing expanding economies.

Recent data from Oregon’s labor market shows a recent very high spike of unemployment and under-employment.

Oregon’s unemployment rate has steadily climbed for 2 years – now up to 5.0%. The U-6 rate (under-employment rate which consists of full-time employees that have had to take part-time jobs or recently given up looking for work) is at 9.3% – the highest level since Covid.

Besides bad management leading to a 10 year academic decline until Oregon is the 5th worst school system in the country, Portland has another new problem: dramatically declining student enrollment.

In 2023, Portland schools saw an astounding 17.3% enrollment decline. Parents simply pulled their children out of the failing, dangerous school system into private schools or moved elsewhere. What’s worse, is this trend has not only not stopped, but continues to see loss of students. This, all despite some of the highest spending per student and 30 years of complete Democratic party control.

Part of this may be due to the steady, 3 straight year population decline of Portland as people leave some of the highest taxes in the country, one of the highest property crime rates, and some of the least affordable housing due to urban growth restrictions. How bad is this decline?

The 2015 forecast, for example, predicted about 55,000 students for the 2028–29 school year. The latest forecast predicts PPS will dip below 40,000 that year, enrolling 39,945—about a 27% decline.

This means that Portland schools are about to see their funding dramatically cut since it’s based on student population – probably by about 30%.

Links:

• https://www.opb.org/article/2023/04/18/why-portland-elementary-school-enrollment-is-declining/
• https://www.wweek.com/news/2025/08/13/murmurs-enrollement-projections-sound-alarms/

In what turned out to be a shockingly un-advertised amazing event, The Adventure Game Fan Fair (blog feed, facebook) was held in Tacoma, WA on July 26, 2024. Present were all the amazing people who made the games from your childhood days at Sierra. Ken and Roberta Williams, Al Lowe, Graeme Devine (7th Guest), actors from Phantasmagoria, creators of Space Quest, and many others. It was surprising how small the event was with so many of the best dignitaries of the industry present. In fact, many online were shocked to learn about the event only after it was over.

If you did miss it, the entire event was livestreamed (source). They even used my copy of 7th Guest at the panel discussion. You certainly don’t want to miss Al Lowe playing the Leisure Suit Larry theme on the saxophone:

There’s no word yet on if it will happen again, but there are rumors it will come back in Q3 of 2026 – somewhere in the Midwest. So keep an eye on their website. I count myself lucky to have been there because the crowds were so small you could sit and chat with any of them at length about anything.

Since the end of July 2025, all 32 speed cameras in Portland have been off. Portland Bureau of Transportation spokesperson Hannah Schafer told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the cameras are being replaced as the city shifts to a new vendor. The project won’t be done until November at which point the cameras will then be turned back on.

So until then – drive safely I guess?

Despite the fact Oregon has tons of free wind and dam power, we have power bills that are going up by double-digit rates every year. Up nearly 20% in just 3 years.

We have much higher costs for power than many parts of the country. Why?

Dramatically increased state regulation, demand pricing, and requirements to be 100% carbon free by 2040 name a few.

https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2024/03/5-takeaways-why-are-oregon-power-rates-going-up-so-fast.html

An emo song that is 100% accurate about Portland drivers in 2025. They can’t merge. They stop while merging to signal in. At least 10% of cars have no license plates (real number was much higher according to ODOT). Niceholes that come to stops while they have right of way to wave people without right of way across intersections (and cause accidents). Rear endings GALORE.