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Portland businessman takes on 'Amandia'

TIM CURRAN
The MID-COUNTY MEMO

If elected, east Portland businessperson Bruce Altizer, making his first try at political office, would be the first City Council member ever from east of 82nd Avenue.
Mid-county Memo photo/Tim Curran
East Portland businessman Bruce Altizer announced last month that he is running for the seat held by Amanda Fritz on the Portland City Council.

If elected, he would be the first Portland City Council member ever who lives east of 82nd Avenue.

Altizer, who was born in Seattle, grew up in New Mexico and Lebanon, Oregon. Appointed to the United States Military Academy in 1973, he graduated with a degree in Applied Science and Engineering. After graduation, Altizer served 11 years active duty in various parts of the United States and Asia, retiring from the Army Reserves in 1988 with the rank of Major.

He commanded platoons, a company, served on staffs at battalion, brigade, division, and installation level. He supervised tactical operations centers at both battalion and brigade level.

In 1990, he received a master's degree in Management of Finance and Public Policy from Willamette University.

In 1998, Altizer formed his own company and bought two Postal Annex franchises in east Portland. He has four full-time employees. Altizer has advertised in the Memo since he opened.

He is a member and former president of the Gateway Area Business Association, served on the 122nd Avenue Study Committee and is a member of the Midway Business Association.

Altizer, who lives in mid-county's Russell neighborhood with his wife and dogs, describes himself as “socially progressive and fiscally conservative”.

He thinks Fritz is a nice person, but in way over her head. “She is a great volunteer and community organizer, but she has no experience running large organizations and is unimpressive where it comes to accomplishments and competence. “Look on her website, even one of her supporters [Arlene Kimura] celebrates her ineptitude, saying Fritz's first four years were a 'learning experience' and the learning curve was steep. I am tired of politicians who waste money 'learning', studying us to death while our neighborhoods wither away. I know what we need. No 'steep' learning curve needed here. Despite her promises, we have seen little to no improvement in our standard of living out here.

He said loves Portland, but feels it is led by average politicians more interested in re-election and political outcomes than solving problems for the Portlanders. He said over the years, he has come to expect inefficiencies in city government, wasted taxpayer monies and commissioners earmarking taxes for their pet projects.

“I love Portland, but is not being well-led or served by our current crop of political leaders: the Water house, an Office of Equity, bicycles and buses over cars, city-wide food composting despite citizen's wishes; $1 million for a Children's Receiving Center that was open for only a few months.”

He asks, “Have they no competence?”

When city leaders decided to create a new bureau, the Office of Equity, spending more than 1 million dollars just in its formation, that was the final straw for him and when he decided to run.

“Is Amanda Fritz trying to give Portlandia writers show material?” Altizer asks. “There should be a feckless, navel-gazing City Commissioner character named Amandia who spends her time and millions of our tax dollars chauffeuring the buffoon mayor around in her zebra striped car tilting at imagined inequities around the city.”

Altizer said you do not need to spend over a million dollars to see inequities. “Look around our part of town,” he said, “unpaved sidewalks; potholes big enough to bathe in; few, undeveloped parks; fewer police and the only urban renewal in the entire city (Gateway Regional Center Urban Renewal District) that doesn't work. We have been, and continue to be, lied to, ignored and neglected.

“In fact, median income in east Portland has dropped and they continue to stuff people into dense housing clusters that are incubators for crime and mayhem. I don't have to tell you things are bad out here, everyone knows it. It is a severe recession. People are out of work or scared of losing their job.

Altizer claims the bureau Fritz oversees, the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, practices crony capitalism in east Portland: granting money to individuals and groups supporting favorable political outcomes suited to her reelection chances. “I'll give you one example of how irresponsibly Fritz spends our tax dollars: she presides over a bureau that funnels thousands of taxpayer dollars to immigrant rights groups and individuals who run seminars where invited Mexican Consulate officers provide undocumented workers with identification enabling their illegal existence here and draining already scarce resources. These groups have every right to do this, but they shouldn't do it with my tax money. I thought our state legislature tightened up identification requirements. Why is Commissioner Fritz, through her bureau, making an end run around Oregon laws?”

Going door-to door, Altizer found voters upset with the new food-composting program. “They are angry,” he said. “The justification to go ahead with the program was based on the results of a survey using flawed data following a small pilot program in Hazelwood. The large majority of people I talk to, do not want it. If elected, I would make it a priority to revisit that program.”

Altizer, who works full time and does volunteer work, admits he is running a shoestring candidacy. “I don't have a lot of money, and I have to run my business, so I don't have a lot of time to get out and stump for votes,” he said. “I am doing what I can, when I can and am depending on people's frustrations with City Hall and its endemic neglect towards our part of Portland to fuel my candidacy.”

Realistic, he does not expect to upset the power structure with his first try at political office, but he said he will feel better he tried. “I'll do my best if elected,” he said. “It's an uphill battle, but I know, with my education, my world experience and my background running a real business - something no one at City Hall has ever done - I could do a lot better job.”

Altizer's website is electbrucealtizer.com. You can call him at 503-307-1835, or e-mail him at AltizerforPortland@gmail.com.
 
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