PORTLAND DRIZZLE

🪿Good Thursday, Portland. Clouds are clearing — high of 52, only a 20% chance of rain. Good day for First Thursday in the Pearl District with 150+ artists. Your electric bill is getting bigger, and the number of homeless people in Portland / MultCo is increasing- or is it?

Starting today, Portland General Electric customers are paying about $8 more per month — a 5% rate hike approved by state regulators. Pacific Power customers are seeing a 3-4% increase. It's the sixth straight year of rate increases for Oregon's two largest private utilities. The Oregon Citizens' Utility Board warned that the rushed approval timeline made it harder to scrutinize the details. Meanwhile, residential demand has grown about 1% annually over the past decade. Industrial demand, driven largely by data centers, grew nearly 70%. Oregon passed the POWER act to make utility companies charge the data centers for this instead of residential customers, but they’re just- not complying 🤷More at OPB and Oregonian

That old boat or trailer sitting on your property? It’s not going anywhere on its own—and most junk services won’t touch it.

That’s where Jr Junk Services stands out. Family-owned in Portland, this is the team people call for the jobs others avoid—especially boat and trailer removal. I used Jr’s Junk Services recently, and Jose was great to work with. He showed up on time and made everything so easy for me. If you need something big gone without the stress, this is the move.

Learn more: HERE
Call/Text: (971) 369-3723

Six years after fires cracked its stone base and the city quietly hauled it away, the Thompson Elk is returning to SW Main Street. Portland announced today that a public rededication celebration is set for April 12 — 1 to 4 p.m. at Chapman and Lownsdale Squares, with a dedication ceremony at 1:30. The $2.2 million restoration sourced new granite from the same Barre, Vermont quarry used in 1900, added earthquake retrofitting, and swapped the gravity-fed trough for a recirculating pump that'll save an estimated 6.8 million gallons of water a year. The bronze elk itself needed no restoration work. It's been in storage, cleaned and polished, waiting. Mayor Keith Wilson called it "a milestone in the rebuilding, restoration, and revitalization of our beautiful city." The elk has been a backdrop for Portland civic life — women's suffrage marches, horse troughs, protests — since 1900. It was held together by a single bolt.

Multnomah County recently switched from a single-night volunteer headcount to a system that tracks everyone who touches homeless services — shelters, outreach workers, housing placements. The result: an estimate of nearly 18,000 people experiencing homelessness, up dramatically from previous counts. Wilson says the numbers don't match street reality and circulated a staff presentation suggesting the county may be double-counting people using fake names at shelters. County Homeless Services Director Anna Plumb texted during his presentation: "Nothing he is saying is true." PSU researcher Marisa Zapata called the aliasing theory "completely unfounded" — but acknowledged the new methodology will naturally produce higher numbers than the old snapshot approach.

This gorgeous photo was submitted by Chris Rentzel. More at chrisrentzel.com

On April 2, 1806, William Clark and his crew camped near what is now Cathedral Park, just beneath the St. Johns Bridge, on their way home from the Pacific.

PGE is making us pay for data centers that pollute and also don’t pay taxes, but the Elk statue is coming back so that’s nice.

by Michael Simpson Contact: [email protected]