The Portland City Council voted 3-1 Wednesday to push back until November 2020 the signage requirement it had only passed in October, before Jo Ann Hardesty replaced Dan Saltzman on the council and as commissioner of the fire and emergency management bureaus.
“We didn’t earn the trust of the people that were require to actually do these upgrades,” Hardesty said at a hearing earlier this month. “We didn’t provide enough information early enough to ensure that people thought this was a joint effort rather than something that was being shoved down their throat.”
The replacement ordinance adds a new requirement, however, that owners of unreinforced masonry buildings provide the warning to potential tenants on lease applications.
The policy was set to take effect March 1, but a judge had already ordered a temporary injunction prohibiting its enforcement until after he heard a lawsuit filed by owners of affected buildings.
The lawsuit, brought by a nonprofit coalition of brick building owners, developer John Beardsley’s company and building owner Jim Atwood, asked the court to rule the ordinance unconstitutional under free-speech and due-process rights. A judge is scheduled to hear arguments in April.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also opposed the policy, in part because it would apply to a number of predominantly black churches in North and Northeast Portland and advance displacement of black residents, the group said.
The policy didn’t require building owners to make seismic upgrades, which all agree would be expensive and likely require the buildings to be vacated for the duration of the work.
Instead, it called for the city’s more than 1,600 unreinforced masonry buildings to have a sign prominently posted with the disclosure: “This is an unreinforced masonry building. Unreinforced masonry buildings may be unsafe in the event of a major earthquake.”
It would also require a disclosure be filed in county records along with the deed, which owners said would be an “encumbrance” that would make it difficult to secure financing for needed repairs.
Opponents had asked the City Council to scrap the ordinance altogether.
“Placards are wrong. It’s a false narrative, and it’s fearmongering,” said Angie Even, an unreinforced masonry owner and an activist on the issue. “I don’t understand why we’re not talking about a repeal.”
But Hardesty said the year would be spent speaking to impacted communities and identifying strategies to pay for seismic upgrades, which she said were “absolutely critical.”
Commissioner Amanda Fritz cast the lone “no” vote Wednesday, saying she believed the city had a duty to inform residents of the potential danger posed by vulnerable buildings. Mayor Ted Wheeler was absent from Wednesday’s meeting.
“I view the placarding ordinance as a way to build public awareness of the issue, and support for solutions,” Fritz said.
Experts say a major earthquake and tsunami is inevitable along the Cascadia subduction zone, a fault that lies off the Pacific coast.
A worst-case quake could kill thousands and leave hundreds of thousands homeless. But even a more minor quake could cause brittle unreinforced masonry buildings to crumble.
-- Elliot Njus
enjus@oregonian.com; 503-294-5034; @enjus
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