It is an odd adversarial relationship when each side claims to be supportive of the other’s aspirations. But such was the paradox in the 3.96 Code Change controversy pitting City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and Office of Community & Civic Life Director Suk Rhee against supporters of the city’s 95 neighborhood associations: Eudaly and Rhee calling for an end to the city’s four-plus decades of formal recognition for neighborhood associations, while at the same time lauding neighborhood association achievements, and neighborhood association activists arguing for maintaining the level of city involvement and investment in democracy by neighborhood, while at the same time lauding Eudaly and Rhee’s objective of broadening diversity in civic engagement. Yet accusations flew, emotions flared.
Emblematic of the intensity of the debate were two strident public addresses delivered in July, the first by Commissioner Eudaly (in charge of the Office of Community & Civic Life), then by Director Rhee. Incredibly, the venue for Eudaly’s speech was the opening of the Neighborhood Associations Rock! exhibition at the Elizabeth Jones Art Center before a standing-room-only audience of neighborhood association admirers. Greeted with polite applause, Eudaly began extemporaneously with positive comments about the exhibit of paintings and narratives dedicated to successful neighborhood association achievements, then abruptly switched to her prepared speech, insinuating that neighborhood associations are elitist, insular, and unwelcoming to underrepresented groups of residents like young renters and people of color.
The speech ended to zero applause, with the commissioner exiting amid groans and heated invectives. In contrast, the Portland City Club audience for Rhee’s passionate speech was cordial throughout as Civic Life’s top administrator denied being opposed to neighborhood associations, but then criticized what she considers to be unwarranted city favoritism over the years to neighborhood associations at the exclusion of minority groups, a policy that, in her opinion, has had “devastating” effects on communities victimized by American democracy’s “origins in white supremacy and economic exploitation” (a proposed code insert).
Inflammatory rhetoric and trenchant suspicions aside, the bottom line for both sides would be securing at least three votes of support from the five-member City Council in the fall. But by August, according to public records requests by The Oregonian, Commissioner Eudaly had concluded the proposal lacked the votes for passage, admitting that it had been a mistake to exclude neighborhood association leaders from the process of recommending revisions to the code that frames the city’s relationship with those organizations. Eudaly’s efforts to reframe the city’s engagement with its citizens had been frustrated by a failed engagement process, with the ensuing controversy awakening and mobilizing a sleeping tiger—those thousands of residents across the city supportive and protective of democracy at the neighborhood level—a system open to all, regardless of race, creed, or ethnicity.