Portland fact book lists education as priority

Education topped the list of concerns that citizens and experts had about the Portland-Vancouver area in a group of surveys published in a new Portland State-based fact book.

Used as a fact book to study issues and trends in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region, the 2007 edition of the Portland State Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies’ (IMS) biennial Metropolitan Briefing Book was released on Jan. 3.

John Tapogna, a contributor to the book, said that education topped the list of key concerns because it is important in “shaping the region’s reputation and driving its economy.”

Other than surveying the general public, IMS also questioned what it calls opinion leaders (appointed officials, academics, journalists and citizen activists) in the Portland area about the region’s key concerns.

Studies conducted for the briefing book found that healthcare and the economy are also key issues that most people surveyed are concerned with. The book surveyed 833 community members by telephone and 435 opinion leaders in the local Portland-Vancouver area, made up of Clackamas, Clark, Washington, Columbia, Multnomah and Yamhill counties.

The surveys used in the production of the book were conducted during several weeks in October, according to Craig Wollner, associate dean of the College of Urban and Public Affairs at PSU.

“The surveys were framed by the election campaign of 2007 and by local and regional events of the summer,” Wollner said.

Information collected through the surveys was compiled in the 70-page briefing book designed to target the key issues facing the regions economy today, and to initiate discussion in the community about how to approach these issues.

Tapogna, the managing director of economics consulting firm ECONorthwest, said the survey shows that citizens in the area are typically concerned about the quality of schools in the region, that parents want their children to receive a quality education, and that employers want an educated workforce.

“The Portland-Vancouver region is making progress in education, but the news is not uniformly good,” he said.

The positive trend in the region’s educational reputation does not come from the quality of local K-12 programs, Tapogna said, but from the large amounts of recent college graduates that migrate to Portland, making it a “well educated” city.

The survey showed that citizens have a concern for the state of the Portland-Vancouver region’s mental health programs, also identifying controlled healthcare costs and the price of prescription drugs as key issues, according to the “Critical Issues” section of the book.

Sheila Martin, director of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies at PSU, said that the close “regional economy” in Oregon makes all of the counties near the Portland-metro area rely on one another.

“Those of us that live in one part of the region can’t ignore what’s happening in other parts of the region,” Martin said. Many residents of certain counties in the region work in a separate county from the one that they live in, creating the interactive regional economy, she said.

Concerns among citizens have risen in recent years because of an increase in poverty-9.3 percent of families and 12.8 percent of individuals in the region earned incomes below the poverty level in 2005, according to Martin. “There are more people employed in Portland than ever before,” she said, adding that wages have not seen a substantial raise in the last several years.

Surveyed participants also focused on population growth as a key issue. ‘The general public feels strongly that population growth is a serious issue,” said Wollner.

According to George C, Hough, director of the Population Research Center at PSU, Oregon’s population is mostly urban, focused in the Portland-Vancouver region. In 2005, the population in the region was estimated at about 2.1 million, an 8 percent increase since 2000, and is expected to grow about 9 percent in the next 3 years, perhaps reaching 2.4 million by 2015, according to Hough.