By Fred’s Campaign Team

SUBJECT: Economic Experience
GRADE: A
COMMENTS: Fred has a substantial amount of experience in the world of real estate and banking. He has presided over 1000 real estate transactions and 2000 mortgage transactions over his 25-year career as a Realtor. He also has a strong background in banking, having worked for five years with one of Australia’s largest investment banks, Macquarie Ltd. With a strong understanding of how the housing market works and a focus on North and Northeast Portland, Fred can speak firsthand to the changes occurring in Portland’s economy. Fred’s economic understanding of Portland would be highly invaluable at City Hall.

SUBJECT: Community Involvement
GRADE: A
COMMENTS: Fred has taken an active role in the community he calls home. After reviving the King Neighborhood Association, he was elected its President in 1990, an office in which he faithfully served for nine years. Under his leadership, the King Neighborhood Association went from a dead organization to one of the most active Neighborhood Associations in all of Portland, with a board noted for its diversity of backgrounds. As a Realtor who sold homes near his own, Fred worked not just to make money selling properties, but to build, shape, and preserve a community that he and his neighbors could be proud to call home. This degree of community involvement reflects a civic spirit currently lacking in City Hall.

SUBJECT: Commitment to Social Justice
GRADE: A
COMMENTS: Fred has long been an advocate for social justice in Portland. Of particular interest to Fred has been the issue of law enforcement and how the police interact with citizens. By serving on the Portland Police Bureau’s Police Internal Investigations Auditing Committee (PIIAC), he worked to hold the police accountable to the people and helped ensure fair, impartial analysis for all parties involved in investigations. At the same time, he served on the Police Bureau’s Budget Advisory Committee to ensure that Portlanders’ tax dollars were being spent well. Yet Fred’s passion for social justice is not limited to police issues. He has long been an advocate for LGBT rights in Portland, going back to his hard work on the No on 9 Campaign in 1992. Finally, Fred has fought in his capacity as a Realtor to keep Portlanders in their homes. During the Great Recession of 2008-10, Fred coordinated with dozens of people who were at risk for displacement and homelessness, and, at no personal profit, worked out arrangements to keep them in their neighborhood homes in North and Northeast Portland. All of this points to Fred’s willingness to take leadership roles in fighting for Portland’s most vulnerable people.

SUBJECT: Experience with Everyday Portlanders
GRADE: A
COMMENTS: Fred turned a seedy strip club in North Portland into a neighborhood bar called Shanny’s Tavern. It was a good place, and patrons enjoyed its homey environment and friendly owner/bartender. The beer was good, too—Fred was an early adopter of Portland’s renowned microbrews. As its owner, he employed up to ten people at a time, and paid a wage that was well above the market standard. Even after he left the bar business, he maintained his focus on building relationships as a Realtor and as a community activist, and counts people from a great variety of cultures, neighborhoods, political stances, and socioeconomic levels as his friends and confidantes. As a candidate, Fred has still has been known for his openness to talking about the issues and listening to people’s hopes and concerns. Chat him up next time you see him out and about, or give him a call—he’ll talk to anyone, anytime.

SUBJECT: Appreciation for the Nitty-Gritty
GRADE: A
COMMENTS: Fred knows what it takes to be a City Commissioner. His service on the Metro Future Vision Commission is a testament to his ability to apply personal experience as a Portlander and professional expertise as a Realtor and banker to making the City of Portland a better place. On the Commission, Fred dove wholeheartedly into the details of urban planning, from traffic engineering to population dynamics, and by listening, researching, and asking questions, he helped the Commission. Fred has a lot of good and bold ideas, like instituting land banking in Portland, or mandating micro-generation of power on newly-constructed buildings, but he recognizes that any good idea is rooted in many layers of research and analysis. Unlike many on the current City Council, Fred only proposes ideas that he knows to be airtight, and refuses to offer “feel good” solutions that accomplish only superficial change.