OPB’s First Look: The cost of cutting into Portland streets

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Good morning, Northwest.

The cost of cutting into Portland streets may be about to go up.

OPB’s Alex Zielinski starts today’s newsletter by looking at a proposal before the City Council to bolster the budget of Portland’s ailing transportation department.

In other news, the Trail Blazers are going dancing, punching a ticket to the playoffs with a win over the Phoenix Suns last night.

Don’t forget to fill out our survey letting us know what you think of the fresh newsletter design.

Here’s your First Look at Wednesday’s news.

—Bradley W. Parks

Portland poised to approve higher fees on road construction to fund street maintenance

Portland City Council will vote today whether to dramatically increase a fee paid by contractors to help repair roads.

Currently, when utility companies need to cut into pavement to lay electrical wire, sewer pipes or other hardware, they must pay the city around $7.22 per square foot of damage to the street. The proposal before councilors this week would nearly double that cost to $13.84 per square foot.

According to the Portland Bureau of Transportation, this increase could bring in roughly $22 million more to the struggling bureau each year.

City transportation officials say this increase has the potential to be “transformational” to the city’s ability to pay for road maintenance, which has lagged for years and been a constant source of public debate. (Alex Zielinski)

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3 things to know

• Hundreds of people who were at Centennial Middle School in Southeast Portland this month may have been exposed to measles, according to state and county public health officials. (Amelia Templeton)
• A federal judge in Oregon ruled yesterday that a state law requiring insurance plans to cover abortions and contraception violates the constitutional rights of an anti-abortion nonprofit opposed to those forms of health care. (Conrad Wilson)
• Police have recovered the body of a man who had been missing since a car crashed into the Willamette River in Portland on April 6. (OPB staff)

Northwest headlines

• Blazers top Suns 114-110 in thriller to punch ticket to playoffs (David Brandt)
• Work underway to create new Washington state housing agency (Jake Goldstein-Street)
• Oregon education officials propose new accountability targets for district and student success (Alex Baumhardt)
• Months of work later, Marion County no longer in public defense crisis (Madeleine Moore)

Listen in on OPB’s daily conversation

Noon and 8 p.m. weekdays on OPB Radio, opb.org and the OPB News app. Today’s planned topics:

• Portland-based band The Builders and The Butchers release new album
• Coyotes in Washington carry tapeworms that can be passed to dogs, humans in rare cases
• New maps assess health of sagebrush ecosystems across the West

Co-existing with beavers: Corvallis, nonprofits try new tactic in bypassing dams

Where Mulkey Creek crosses under the Bald Hill multi-use path in Corvallis, beavers built a dam that led to frequent flooding and trail closures.

Several groups, ranging from government entities to nonprofits, came together to find a solution. They settled on a fix that could be the first of its kind in Oregon: a notch exclusion fence.

It’s created by making a notch in the beaver dam to drain some of the water, keeping the trail dry without totally emptying the pond.

The notch is then protected with a cage that has wide-enough gridding for passing fish but not for repair-seeking beavers.

Letting the dam drain a bit helps to keep the path clear, but it also allows beavers access to an area they once called home in much larger numbers. (Zac Ziegler)

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