>
>
>
>
>
> Mayor Hales: Don’t cut funding for Portland Youth Pass and other youth programs you promised to protect
>
> Sign Christina’s Petition
> Mayor Hales: Keep Portland Youth Pass!
>
> Started by: Christina, Portland, Oregon
>
> Despite this statement Mayor Hales made about keeping YouthPass…
>
> “We have to do it. Where the revenue comes from to pay for it, whether it’s going to the philanthropic sector at the foundations, what public funds we use, I don’t know. … Having the students using the transit system and developing the habits of citizenship based upon using transit is wonderful, and we should never lose it. We’ve got to keep that program.”
>
> The Willamette Week reported today, January 30th, Hales is cutting funding to some essential Portland programs, a two of them are going to be devastating to Portland’s youth. Hales has already cut funding ($395,000) for the nonprofit Worksystems Inc., which funds summer teen internships and job-training programs. He also plans to cut YouthPass.
>
> WW reports Hales dreading the cuts to come. “It’s the student TriMet pass,” he says, referring to the bus passes for Portland Public Schools high-school students that Adams worked out a deal to keep last summer. “I know the value of that YouthPass, and I respected Sam for fighting for it. It’s going to be really painful.” (http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-20211-return_of_chucky.html)
>
> If Charlie Hales has supported YouthPass and claims it’s going to be painful, then why won’t he fight as hard as former Mayor Sam Adams to keep YouthPass? Why is it even on the chopping block?
>
> As explained by Portland Afoot, “YouthPass emerged as a state-funded program under Adams’ predecessor Tom Potter, who was looking for cost-effective ways to reduce high school dropout rates. Portland Public Schools then became one of several urban districts in the state to use the state’s Business Energy Tax Credit to support student transit passes.
>
> Then, in 2011, state legislators decided that even though the state would subsidize Portland Public Schools if it used expensive yellow buses to move its students, it was unwilling to subsidize PPS’s lower-cost, higher-benefit TriMet pass program.
>
> Even as Adams twisted TriMet’s arm to support YouthPass through June 2013, the then-mayor’s staff didn’t describe it as a long-term funding solution; the city’s YouthPass money this year had been left over from a one-time budget to improve Southwest Moody Street.”
>
> http://portlandafoot.org/2013/01/mayor-hales-preparing-to-cut-youthpass-ww-reports
>
> Here are some more relevant facts about YouthPass, courtesy of Portland Afoot…
>
>
