We have a special night planned at Bike Happy Hour tomorrow (Wednesday, July 17th). City of Portland staffers will be on-hand to help us understand what’s in store with the upcoming election and our transition to a new form of government.

If you’ve read some of our previous reporting on the charter reform effort, you’ve already done your homework. Or if you’ve clicked on those nice Ranked Choice Voting banners on BikePortland for the past few weeks, you might have already started learning about how the new voting process will work. Regardless, tomorrow night will be an excellent opportunity to get a hands-on education.

In addition to ranked choice voting experts, we’ll have City of Portland Charter Transition Project Manager Shoshanah Oppenheim in the crowd to answer all your questions about how things will work on January 1. How will the role of PBOT director change? How will the new Public Works Director manage PBOT? If no city council member is in charge of PBOT, how will transportation policies and projects get proposed and voted on? What other questions do you have for Shoshanah?

To spice things up, staff from the city elections office will do a short presentation about ranked choice voting that includes a mock election. We came up with nine candidates and the question to rank them with is, “What is the most important off-street path in the Portland cycling network?” You can visit this website and begin your voting now. We’ll also have a QR code to hit at Bike Happy Hour so you can make your decisions on the patio tomorrow night.

In addition to nerding out on elections and government, we’ll be joined by at least one city council candidate. District 2 candidate Jennifer Park will join us and will say a few words around 5:00 pm.

It will be a great night. Hope you can join us. (Bike Happy Hour is 3-6 pm every Wednesday at Gorges Beer Co on SE Ankeny Rainbow Road)