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| Drug, prostitution zone action postponed ONI budget cuts aim at city hall staff In a comparable exercise to Parks & Recreation, the Office of Neighborhood Involvement last month presented three cut “packages” totaling $164,587. Package I would transfer members of the Neighborhood Crime Prevention Program staff from 1900 S.W. Fourth Ave., spaced rented from Portland State University, to City Hall. Package II would reclassify the positions of three members of the ONI central office staff, with attendant salary reductions ranging from $7,635 to $26,602; it would also reduce the salary of the director of the Elders In Action program by $20,000. Package III would eliminate the position of financial analyst, and transfer these duties to the business operations supervisor. In years past, community leaders complained when neighborhood office budgets were cut and called upon ONI to absorb these costs within its downtown office. Drug, prostitution zone action postponed Renewal, and possible changes, to the city’s drug- and prostitution-free zones and the laws that govern them, originally scheduled for Feb. 6, will be delayed until March 15, Mayor Tom Potter’s office says. Current law allows police officers to order people arrested or cited for drug- or prostitution-related crimes to be “excluded” from certain designated geographic areas for a certain length of time. If they then venture into these zones, they are subject to immediate arrest for criminal trespass. Last winter, rather than renewing the law, Potter and City Council simply extended it for three months to allow the city to examine its operations. In three subsequent public meetings, many people attacked the zones as a way by which the police can harass people and deprive them of basic rights without just cause and without an adequate chance to defend their rights. In the same hearings, and especially the final one, others defended the zones as a way to deal with criminal activity that is otherwise out of control. In addition to reviewing the operations of the zones, council is also considering zone boundaries, as it does every three years. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office is recommending that the city add a new drug free zone on 82nd Avenue and expand an existing prostitution-free zone there by 500 feet to the east and west. They are also considering dropping a prostitution-free zone on Northeast Sandy Boulevard west of 82nd Avenue due to a decrease in illegal activity there. Some Parkrose residents have asked for a prostitution-free zone on Sandy, east of 82nd, to be extended further east. “This has been pretty divisive in terms of people for or against it,” Potter’s aide Maria Rubio told the Memo. “We’re putting together a work group to draft a new ordinance, and bringing in stakeholders for and against the law to review it.” The council was scheduled to approve the extension on Jan. 25. |
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