Portland Mayor Sam Adams drops plan to use water and sewer money for college scholarships (17th Article)

Brad Schmidt
"Portland Mayor Sam Adams drops plan to use water and sewer money for college scholarships"
The Oregonian
April 07, 2011
URL: http://blog.oregonlive.com/portlandcityhall/2011/04/portland_mayor_sam_adams_drops.html

Summary: Portland Mayor Sam Adams on Wednesday ditched a controversial plan to tap water and sewer money to pay for community college scholarships. Adams first proposed the strategy a year ago and hoped to implement it this week. But growing public skepticism over how water and sewer money is used, and uncertainty among Portland City Council members threatened to postpone approval of the program. Instead, Adams opted to pay for the program exclusively from the city's discretionary general fund. "It's important to me that we move this project forward," Adams said, "I don't want the debate -- which I think is also important -- about funding sources to cloud or slow down our effort to get scholarships out to up to 200 applicants." His initial plan was to serve 500 students with $500,000 in city money -- one-third from the general fund and two-thirds from Portland's Water and Environmental Services bureaus. Last week, he submitted a scaled-back plan to serve 200 students with $360,000 in city money -- $193,000 from water and sewer money, the rest from the general fund. Now, with all the money coming from the general fund, Adams is looking to a city contingency account to replace $193,000 in water and sewer money.

Intended audience: All readers

Key Points: 1. City officials hope the PCC Foundation matches the money, creating a Future Connect program with three new school positions to advise students.

2. "The project is great," said city Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who noted that she would have supported the program even if it tapped water and sewer funds.

3. Commissioner Nick Fish, asked afterward whether he would have supported such spending, waved off the question as hypothetical.

Relevance: Why the Mayor relate scholarship to water and sewer money? I am kind of on the against side. Scholarship should not be on the expense of people's daily life. I would prefer from commerce ways, such as companies.