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115 12 CommIssIoners feud, delta dome Is reJeCted, and the fIrst woman dePuty Is hIred (1962–1966) U.S. involvement in the vietnam War was escalating, the beatles would soon make their American debut, and Oregon’s Columbus Day Storm had not yet devastated the state as Multnomah County government stood on the cusp of momentous changes. before it was over,“old” blood was purged from the threeman commission, a startling new government structure brought modern administration to the forefront, and county voters elected a young leader brimming with new ideas. the starting point may have been January 1962, when 75-year-old Albert L. “Al” brown, holder of various elective offices since 1939, suffered the last in a series of strokes and heart attacks. brown had been elected to the county commission in 1951, after serving as the elected county clerk from 1945 to 1950 and before that as county auditor from 1939 to 1944. As auditor, brown reportedly discovered a profitable way to enhance his salary. he would sort through a pile of outgoing checks until he found a vendor who sold something he could use. brown would pick up the phone and say to the vendor, “I’ve got a check for you here that you can pick up anytime.” then he would pause and casually say something like, “Yes, two steaks would be fine. Your check will be waiting in my office.” Once, brown insisted that a businessman who brought him a case of twelve fifths of whisky exchange it for a case of twenty-four pints that would yield twelve full quarts. In spite of such transactions, brown left only a small estate when he died, apparently satisfied to settle for the relatively minor creature comforts obtained through petty bribe-taking.1 As commissioner, brown seldom agreed with his two cohorts, Mike Gleason and Jack bain, but he never appeared to hold grudges and often sat silently for long stretches. Finally, at the end of one hearing, Gleason and bain sat determinedly silent, waiting for brown to speak. After a prolonged pause, Chairman 116 chapter 12 Gleason asked brown if he would like to make a statement. After a lengthy pause, brown responded: “the time has come, the Walrus said, to speak of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.” Gleason never asked him again. brown, who served eleven years on the commission, was a politician of the old school, who handed out matchbooks with the words, “vote for Al brown.” It was said that sometimes he would attend the funerals of total strangers, just to introduce himself and hand out complimentary matchbooks.2 brown seemed especially mystified by land-use cases. he had worked in real estate early in his career, but that was before the era of zoning codes and public land-use appeals and litigation. Multnomah County didn’t have to wait long to see litigation after adopting its zoning code in 1959. In 1960, the owners of a vacant plot of newly zoned residential land at S.W. 35th and taylors Ferry road sued the county—unsuccessfully—after county commissioners denied their request to turn it into a luxury trailer park.3 In 1964, with the moral support and an amicus statement from Multnomah County planners, citizens on both sides of the Multnomah–Washington County line challenged a three-to-two Washington County Commission vote (in which they had overruled their own planning commission) to rezone four and a half acres between S.W. Multnomah boulevard and Garden home road from residential to industrial. the zone change would have allowed the Schwager-Wood Company to build an electrical equipment factory on land abutting Multnomah County that was zoned residential on both sides of the line. Washington County Chair Clayton Nyberg told visitors, “I am the zoning law in Washington County”—a boast that was firmly deflated when the Oregon Supreme Court, in the landmark case smith vs . Washington County, ruled unanimously in 1965 that the Washington County Commission had acted “capriciously and arbitrarily ” in allowing the factory. It was the most egregious case of spot zoning they had ever seen, the court said.4 the site is today home to a Mormon church at 6605 S.W. Garden home road. In what proved to be his eighth and final year on the county board, Chairman Jack bain proposed construction of a new minimum-security jail to be located at the County Poor Farm near troutdale...

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