They aren ' t , its mostly a combination of Federal and Metro funds Metro is an elected council that helps coordinate actions between Portland and its many suburbs , including Gresham , Tigard , Beaverton , and several others . The main concern was that a small town on one end of the proposed line were going to throw a spanner in the works for the whole area . Tigard is a small , wealthy , and conservative part of the overall Portland Metro area and it isn ' t entirely clear that they even had any binding authority over the project but this vote means that a handful of NIMBY ' s who don ' t want transit accessibility won ' t tie up a major project moving forward . <| sep |> Thank you i ' m going to try that ! I Just edited my question to ask if you see an underlying issuetheme that accompanies all of these ?