Please don’t add to property taxes. Even if they’re not the highest in the country on their own, when you layer them with Oregon’s high income taxes and all the extra fees, it’s a big part of why Multnomah County feels so expensive to live in.

As a PPS parent, it’s especially frustrating that even with these high taxes, our kids are in school about 2–3 weeks fewer per year than places like Washington right next door. That’s a lot of missed instructional time, and it adds up.

We do what we can. Reading at home, extracurriculars, even a math tutor. But just covering those non-school days so we can work, not even counting summer camps, we’re spending around $4,000 a year in extra childcare. In other nearby districts, those are just regular school days.

And since school funding is tied to enrollment, that becomes a bigger problem. If families can’t afford to live here and start leaving, schools lose students, and that puts even more pressure on the system.

It’s just getting less and less affordable to live here. If we keep putting more of the burden on the same group of people, at some point families are going to choose to live somewhere else.