Looks Like We’ll Be Getting Fluoride in Our Water; Fish and Novick Both Like It

Even nonetheless he’s on vacation this week, withdrawal his staff to margin a hundreds of calls and emails that have been flooding city legislature offices given a Oregonian broke news of a critical domestic pull to fluoridate Portland’s water, Commissioner Nick Fish has motionless to import in on a impossibly quarrelsome issue.

In a statement expelled today, Fish joins pro-fluoride frontman Randy Leonard in blessing a proposal—putting a thought tantalizingly within strech of a three-vote infancy it needs to pass.

Fluoridation is upheld by a extended bloc of open health, medical, and community-based organizations. It’s a safe, cost-effective and common clarity proceed to safeguarding open health. In fact, Portland is one of a final cities of a distance that doesn’t fluoridate a celebration water….

It’s time for Portland to join a infancy of cities opposite a republic and fluoridate a water. When this emanate comes to Council, we will opinion to strengthen a simple health of all a children.

Who competence join Fish and Leonard? Mayor Sam Adams’ bureau told a O this morning that the mayor hasn’t nonetheless done adult his mind. And Amanda Fritz and Dan Saltzman are also both on vacation, though as a O also notes, it’s trustworthy that both are prone to also go along with it. One doubt that could outing adult a domestic pull is either to have a legislature contend yes—or to send it to a open for a opinion that could breeze adult failing. Like each other open referendum on fluoride in a water.

Separately, in an talk currently with a Mercury, incoming city commissioner Steve Novick announced his support for a final city legislature vote, pursuit fluoride protected and effective and bonus to a dental health of low-income Portlanders.

“The legislature should opinion to exercise it,” Novick told me, observant a city and state in a midst of a “dental health crisis.”

Asked if a legislature should let a electorate import in—a move, if a magnitude passed, that lend some-more legitimacy than if a legislature had to step in over a heads of some really vibrated foes—Novick pronounced this wasn’t a box where a legislature ought to “punt to voters.”

Says Novick, who won’t take bureau until January: “You do your job.”