Don Mazziotti has given the mayor a lot of lead time to find a new executive director for the Portland Development Commission. It’s certainly possible that Mayor Potter will look outside Portland, but so far he’s given me the idea that he’s willing to look at local talent to fill positions.
Portland has a lot of people who could do well at administering PDC. It has a lot of people who could do well at explaining PDC’s mission to the council and the outside world (not the same thing as administering it well). I predict that if the Mayor goes outside the established City bureaucracy but stays local, he’ll appoint Nicholas S. Fish to the position, which I think Mr. Fish would willingly accept.
The Mayor could do a lot worse. He can’t do much better.
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I’ve been wondering if someone was going to mention this idea.
Brilliant idea. Simply brilliant…
D’er. I had a typo in my post title when I pinged this post. So now you have two pings which lead to a page that doesn’t exist. Heh.
Alas, I couldn’t find a way to edit your pings to change “Develoment” to “Development.”
Yeah. That’s why I changed my “page not found” page to include links to the five most-recent posts. Heh.
Query: If such an offer were proffered, and the estimable Mr. Fish accepted it, would it prove to be more of a political stepping stone (finally) or a career-ender?
My suspicion is that if Fish could truly capitalize on the goodwill towards PDC that his selection likely would engender (he might not have won a Council seat, but he has a very solid following even amongst those who voted for Sam Adams), and really open up the agency productively, he’d be almost guaranteed to be able to run for an office in the future and cinch it.
I think that if Mr. Fish did well at PDC, he would find a lot of other opportunities open to him, electoral and appointive. Earl Blumenauer’s not going to want to serve in Congress until he’s 75.