The buck stops with the City of Portland. It’s the government agency charged with making the place livable. If there’s a problem- be that homelessness, bad schools, or outrageous taxes, it’s up to the mayor and council to jaw-bone the other agencies and fix it. That’s what Bloomberg did in New York City and someone needs to do that in Portland. The go-along, get-along attitude of local government, in which elected leaders refer to other agencies as their “partners”, means they continue to pull paychecks regardless of how the city works. Years ago, Portland stole a slogan from Chicago, “The City That Works”; that wasn’t true of Chicago and it wasn’t true of Portland. Today, for the first time in the last 100 years, affluent Portlanders are moving to the Vancouver waterfront, which is essentially a gated community. Whoever thought it would come to this?