OPB sat down with Portland Mayor Charlie Hales on Saturday to discuss his concerns about rising gang violence and homelessness. Here are excerpts of Hales' remarks, edited for clarity and brevity.
On gang violence:
We need to have enough police officers, but we also have to get upstream in the lives of these kids. One of the things I’m proud of is that our city council approved $2 million to make our community centers free for teenagers. That doesn’t pay off in this year’s crime statistics. It pays off two, three, five years from now when those kids have consistently made different choices than hanging out with a gang.
On income disparity:
We have a national crisis in income disparity. It’s here, too. In 1970, Portland had three census tracts where more than 30 percent of the population was below the poverty line. Now we have 11.
On city priorities:
I know it’s a big city and people often have that perception that the city must be spending all its money somewhere else. Actually we have been spending the majority of our money on park investments in East Portland. We have beefed up the patrol effort at East Precinct--again not as much as I’d like. We’ve been making huge investments in streets. There’s never enough money to meet every need in the city.
On homelessness:
Each of those folks sleeping on the street, that’s a tragedy. I also feel the pain of people who are dealing with the side effects of a park full of homeless people where they’d like to go walk their children or grandchildren safely around and not worry about needles. So it’s a two-edged tragedy.