A resident of the West University area who calls himself the “Moss Street Defender” is pushing to recall City Councilor Bonny Bettman.
Still steaming over the city’s rejected plan to level six blocks for Sacred Heart Medical Center’s expansion, Zachary Vishanoff, 31, said Bettman’s drive to keep Sacred Heart in the downtown area threatens the livability of his neighborhood.
Bettman, who represents the University area and downtown, helped draft a proposal to purchase or condemn a swath of property west of Hilyard Street for the hospital’s expansion. After that proposal was scrapped, she supported construction near the hospital’s 13th Avenue and Willamette Street location or on land to the south and west of the existing Hilyard Street site.
“Bettman has seen enough media coverage in the past month to give her the impression that this is an unpopular idea,” Vishanoff said. “I thought that the public outcry would have some effect on her, but it didn’t. Maybe she’s not representing us.”
Vishanoff, a delivery man who’s lived in the area for 20 years, filed last week for a petition to recall Bettman. He has 90 days to gather 594 signatures of registered voters living in Bettman’s ward. If those signatures are turned in before the deadline and are certified, the city will hold a special election in the ward within 35 days after certification.
Bettman did not respond to inquiries for an interview before press time. But she has criticized Vishanoff for trying to settle a difference of opinion via the recall system in other news reports.
Vishanoff has been handing out posters reading “RECALL BETTMAN” and has organized a protest, which will begin at 4 p.m. Tuesday outside Sacred Heart Medical Center.
A few residential buildings and businesses, including the clothing store Delphina, have posted Vishanoff’s signs along 13th Avenue.
Bettman “is not supporting the people in this community,” said Jewel Kenny, a manager at Delphina. “The people who voted her in are the people she would have destroyed and whose homes she would have destroyed.”
Vishanoff has also protested possible University construction on Moss Street and the placement of a cellular-phone tower at 14th Avenue and Villard Street.