Transcript
Automatically generated transcript. It may contain errors and includes testimony in languages other than English that is not individually marked up for assistive technology.
Unidentified speaker
Okay, everybody, we actually, before we get started, have a pre-gavel this morning.
This is my pre-gavel, and I would like to welcome Dr. Sharif Elnahal, who is OHSU's newest president.
I think you've been on the job for a little under a month now.
Dan Ryan
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
Dr. Elnahal has asked for a moment on our agenda to introduce himself, and given the important role OHSU plays in our community as a Thank you.
So as a healthcare provider and also as a large employer in the Portland area, I wanted to make sure we had an opportunity to recognize him, thank him for joining our community, and hear a little bit about his background.
Dr. Elnahal, before coming to Portland, served under President Joe Biden as the Undersecretary for Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs and led the largest integrated health system in the nation, delivering world-class care to 9 million veterans.
Dr. Elnahal, thank you so much for being here with us this morning.
And please, we'd love to have you share a little bit about your background so that council, but also Portlanders who are watching today, can meet you.
Thank you so much, Council President, and good morning to the entire council.
At OHSU, we're proud to serve Portlandians across this great city.
We have operations in every district on top of, of course, our main flagship in District 4 on Markham Hill.
In the South Waterfront, but we also have operations everywhere in Portland, and we're really proud of that.
I want to just take a minute to introduce myself, and again, very much appreciate the time in front of all of you.
I've dedicated my life to public service and to lifting up vulnerable communities in every role that I've had.
Most recently, as the council president mentioned, that was in the Department of Veterans Affairs as the Undersecretary for Health, essentially the chief executive officer of the VA healthcare system, which of course includes the Portland VA.
Dan Ryan
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
Very close collaborator with OHSU.
And I had a chance to serve 9 million enrolled veterans and increase the number of veterans getting VA care significantly through a landmark piece of legislation, President Biden's signature achievement for veterans called the PACT Act, which finally allowed for the VA to serve veterans' needs who were exposed to toxic substances during their service.
We were able to enroll more than a million additional veterans into care and upgrade the coverage of an additional 800,000.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you.
We were able to reduce our homicide rate by 4,000 during our tenure, and I'll never be more proud of those results for those who wore the uniform for our country.
And before that, I had a chance to be president and CEO of University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, also a state medical center, an important safety net institution serving the most vulnerable people in Newark, New Jersey.
And so this is my first chance to live on the West Coast, let alone Oregon.
And what I can tell you is I've been nothing but a welcoming environment since I've been here.
And I know that it's not easy But it has still never been more important to be a public servant during this time.
Today marks the first day of a federal government shutdown that impacts our operations, that impacts the state, and I know that it impacts Portland.
And that is just one of many examples of how hard but also important it is to be a public servant during this time.
What I can tell you is that OHSU is committed to partnering with all of you in serving Portlandians, and we will do that very diligently and meaningfully.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
To lift up the public health goals in this city.
We provide the most complex, intricate care in the state of Oregon.
We are an asset to the entire state.
We're also a really important employer for residents of Portland, and we continue and aim to actually increase that trend of getting folks in the pipeline as early as possible for healthcare professions.
And that includes our OnTrack program in 2 important school districts within the city of Portland where we get people interested, kids interested— Thank you.
Interested in STEM careers.
We have many opportunities to be there for the training pipeline as students, as trainees across the different health professions— our medical school, our nursing school, our dental school, our school of pharmacy, the list goes on.
And we want to grow and build people's qualifications within this city so that they can serve this city well beyond, and they'll have an opportunity to do that in OHSU.
Our goal right now is to continue that really important track record of service while also making our organization more sustainable financially.
And that'll require some tough decisions over the next year.
We lost $133 million last year.
In my previous experiences, I turned around University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey under very similar circumstances.
That was a team effort working with our employees, with our labor partners from the ground up to improve efficiency and outcomes.
And that is what we're doing.
That's my pledge to OHSU and all of the patients and families and residents that we serve.
So I know you're extremely busy.
I'll stop here, but I really appreciate the opportunity to get to know all of you.
I had a great meeting with the council president recently.
I'll be meeting with the mayor on Monday, and we have calls out, I think, to each of you to hopefully get on your calendar.
So I look forward to that and appreciate in advance any questions and comments you may have.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here this morning.
We are so glad to have your leadership in our city, and I can't wait to see as you really dig in in your work at OHSU what your vision is for the future of the institution.
And we welcome you and your family to the city of Portland.
Thank you.
Councilor Green, did you have a quick question or comment, please?
Just a quick comment.
Dr. Ellenhall, thank you so much and welcome to Portland.
I'm really looking forward to your leadership at OHSU.
It's so important to not only District 4, but also the city as a whole.
And I also just want to give you a special thank you for your service to the Veterans Administration.
The Portland VA, I think, is one of the finest medical institutions that I've ever experienced.
I get my care there myself as a veteran.
It's so meaningful to our veterans in this community.
So knowing that you're bringing that forward and that kind of look on Pill Hill just means a lot to me.
So thank you.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
And welcome.
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Appreciate it.
Appreciate your representation of us on Markham Hill for sure.
Anybody else have questions or comments?
Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you so much, colleagues.
We will start our meeting now officially.
It is 9:38 on Wednesday, October 1st, and as a reminder, it is October 1st, which means District 4, you are up first for voting for the next 3 months.
Get ready.
Mhm.
Uh, Rebecca, could you please call the roll?
Good morning.
Clark.
Green.
Mitch Green
Here.
Unidentified speaker
Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman
Here.
Unidentified speaker
Avalos.
Candace Avalos
Present.
Unidentified speaker
Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Here.
Unidentified speaker
Smith.
Loretta Smith
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Here.
Unidentified speaker
Ryan.
Steve Novick
Here.
Unidentified speaker
Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Here.
Unidentified speaker
Murillo.
Angelita Morillo
Here.
Unidentified speaker
Novick.
Here.
Here.
And Lauren, could you please read our rules for order and decorum?
Good morning.
Claire Adamsick
Welcome to the Portland City Council.
Rebecca Dobert
Sorry.
Claire Adamsick
Welcome to the Portland City Council.
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Unidentified speaker
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Lauren.
Before we move into our business today, colleagues, I just want to note the moment that we are in.
I know that all of us have been deeply alarmed by President Trump's decision to federalize Thank you.
We are working to mobilize our Oregon National Guard members and deploy them in our city.
And there are, there are a lot of things that we would all like to be doing to help stand up for our community in this moment.
There is also a lot of work that we need to get done.
So while we watch this play out in our community, knowing that there is other work those Guards members could be doing, that there are other supports the federal government could be sending our way, That this is a dangerous precedent for our country, and that the president's mischaracterizations of Portland that he's using to justify his actions are wrong, are unfounded, are not what we see on the streets every day in our community.
We also know that because our city is under control, because this is a safe city, because we do not have chaos on our streets, we need to continue to do the work of our city.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
And it's our responsibility as City Council and as the legislative body for Portland to do that daily work that our community members expect from us.
So while all of our attention is a little bit split right now, and I know that our community members who are watching this meeting may be wondering how we can do what at times seems like Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you, Mayor.
Unidentified speaker
I just want to note that this is not less critical work given the moment that we are in.
It is actually incredibly critical for us to continue to ensure that the daily work of the city is operating while we sit in this time.
I just want to note that and acknowledge that because I know that there are a lot of folks who are, are torn between those 2 places right now, and I appreciate that everybody's here allowing us to do this regular work of our city that in fact helps us to keep our city moving forward in the way that we all know Portland can.
I also want to take one more moment before we begin our meeting because we have a number of guests who are here today, and I'd like to make sure that you get a proper welcome.
And I believe, Councilor Kanal, that you met with our guests this morning.
Is there anything you'd like to share?
I did.
Thank you, Madam President.
I want to take a moment to welcome our guests up in the gallery.
We have 22 young leaders here from Southeast Asian countries.
A delegation coordinated by the International Program staff at the Center for Public Service at PSU's Hatfield School.
They're here for 4 weeks at Portland State University total, and then they'll be going to Washington, D.C. to meet with representatives of the Department of State.
Sameer Kanal
Good luck.
Unidentified speaker
And they're working on civic engagement while they're here and asked a lot of really great questions.
They've done more homework, I think, than a lot of folks on our form of government, on how we can engage with different communities that are often underrepresented in government both here and around the world.
So I had a great chance to meet with them very briefly.
Wish I'd had more time with you all, but thank you so much for being here and for watching, and we appreciate you.
Thanks.
Thank you so much, Councilor, and welcome.
Thank you for being here with our community for these couple of weeks that you get to spend in Portland.
We hope you have a wonderful time here, and thank you for being with us today.
Colleagues, the first item on our agenda is agenda approval.
I will note that both items on the consent agenda Items 5 and 6 were pulled from the consent agenda and will be placed at the end of today's regular agenda.
Are there any other amendments to today's agenda?
Seeing no hands up, do I have unanimous consent to approve the agenda?
Not seeing nods, but I'm not— there we go, I've got a couple nods.
Okay, I think we are good to move on.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
The next Next item on our agenda is public communications.
Rebecca, could you please call up our first guest?
Carrie Henderson.
Welcome.
Thank you so much for being here with us today.
Good morning.
My name is Carrie Henderson, and I'm here to share my experience living across the street from the Moore Street Shelter and have for the last 13 years.
I want to begin by saying that I fully support the mission of helping people off the street.
However, it is critical that we find a way to operate a shelter in a residential neighborhood without negatively impacting the community.
Since the shelter opened in January, the livability of our neighborhood has significantly declined.
While the mayor and other city officials often cite the Oregonian article claiming major crime is down, the issue we are seeing is with ongoing low-level criminal activity, which I strongly feel isn't being reported or tracked properly.
We are witnessing these events on a daily basis, and while they may be considered minor, their cumulative effect is a major problem for residents.
As someone who works from home, I have a clear view of the activities in and around the shelter.
I've personally witnessed and reported several issues such as open drug use, individuals openly urinating and defecating on the sidewalk outside of my house and the shelter, trespassing on private property, public indecency, and violent outbursts.
I called 911 about a physical altercation between 2 shelter guests, but police never showed up or followed up.
On 2 other occasions when I felt my safety was threatened by a shelter guest, Please did not arrive.
Ongoing loitering and sleeping on the sidewalks despite this being an enhanced enforcement zone.
When I reported a man sleeping outside the shelter for 4 hours directly across from a daycare during operating hours, I was told by shelter services it's not against the law to sleep on the sidewalk.
While this may be true, it demonstrates a failure to manage the shelter's perimeter effectively.
We need security to monitor the perimeter of the shelter and actively deter loitering, drug use, and other unlawful activities.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Bringing unsheltered guests into a low-barrier shelter without this additional security is unacceptable and makes neighbors feel unsafe.
The decision to move the shelter's entrance from the large parking lot on Williams to Moore Street in July has led to a significant increase in these issues.
We've reported our concerns repeatedly and requested the entrance move back and have been ignored.
I've been told the plumbing by the Moore Street shelter is inadequate for the number of participants.
Why is porta-potties placed directly outside the entrance?
Rebecca Dobert
Councilmember Herbold.
Unidentified speaker
This lack of proper sanitation is unhygienic and raises serious questions.
Why was the location with insufficient plumbing chosen for a shelter?
Furthermore, why was this shelter placed within 1,000 feet of a high school and across the street from a daycare?
We feel that our concerns are being dismissed and that the city does not care.
This isn't just a cry for help, it's a plea for partnership.
We need you to seriously address these issues and work with the community to find a workable solution.
We are miserable in our own home.
Please take the time to learn more how we can reduce the impact on our neighborhood Thank you for being here.
I know that your councilors have heard many of these concerns as well.
We appreciate you sharing them with the whole body.
Councilor Ryan, did you want to add something?
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you so much, Carrie, for showing up this morning.
You proved that 2 things can be true at the same time.
You support us having services to get people off our streets and have shelters, and you support the need to have a safe place for people to come and get services.
We should have better wraparound services that include the neighbors that live near the shelter.
You have been heard, and I know the 3 of us will work together to work with the mayor's office to tighten up those reinforcements that allow you to feel safe while you work at home during the day.
Thank you.
Rebecca, can you please call our next guest?
Next we have Huy Duong.
Huy's online.
You can go ahead.
Thank you for being here.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Go right ahead.
Thank you.
Oh yes, I own and operate a small business on Southeast Foster Road, and 10 years ago I planted 9 cherry blossoms on my shop.
And now a lot of people, a lot of my customers love the idea, and I have a petition with the governor to plant Um, more cherry blossom from 10,000 trees to, uh, from Portland to Mount Hood to beautify Oregon and hopefully, you know, to promote civic pride and beautify Oregon to drive away crime and homelessness.
Because once you beautify the state, you know, people value the state.
And, you know, Mount Hood is being on the east side of Oregon, it's, uh, you know, sunrise On the first day of spring, you know, hopefully it hit those cherry blossoms and radiate through the whole state, you know, for to beautify the state.
And I know that in the '90s, sisters, Portland sisters support Japan.
They donate 100 trees to Portland in the '90s in Waterfront, and hopefully we can go to Japan and ask for them to donate a few thousand trees, and, you know, which is paid for the shipping, and beautify Oregon.
And I have a petition right now, and I collect signatures as I work within my business and in my spare time, you know, when I got— get off work, and I just collect more signatures.
And a lot of people like the idea, you know.
Um, I have not met anybody that opposed the idea.
Um, so yeah, that's my pitch.
And, um, I already planned, you know, a few, uh, what, 30 cherry blossoms on, um, near my shop and around the neighborhood.
And, uh, you know, neighborhood come out and donate and help me water the plant.
I'm going to plant some more in the few next few weeks when the weather is, uh, get better, out of my own pocket, you know.
And, um, Just want to beautify the state of Oregon, you know, to beautify the state.
And I wish I can show you my notebook that I had collected in the past 7 months, but I couldn't access to the Zoom call, so I dialed a number.
Can you guys hear me okay?
We can, and I'm sorry that we're not able to see it either, but we really appreciate you sharing this vision with us.
Um, hearing from folks about how we might be able to do better is always helpful.
Thank you.
Speaking of, uh, you know, uh, I'm glad that we have the doctor from OHSU today.
Um, you know, always as you doctor and nurses can see the cherry blossom from on top of the hill, you know, it's going to uplift their spirits and, you know, the patience.
And I believe it's going to bring foot traffic to downtown, that people are going to live on high-rise buildings again to, you know, see the cherry blossom in the future.
So yeah, that's my pitch.
Thank you very much.
We really appreciate you bringing that to us.
Rebecca Dobert
Aileen Doldalow.
Unidentified speaker
And while Dr. Adil Dallal comes forward, I think Councilor Green had one quick comment.
Thank you.
As these commenters are approaching the dais, I just want to uplift everyone wearing red generally in the audience is here in support of Tita Maria and the Migrante Portland Caregivers Oregon, our Care for Caregivers campaign.
It's really important that in this time we uplift and think about wage theft among migrant workers.
So thank you.
Thank you so much.
Good morning.
My name is Dr. Eileen Doldolao, a Filipino community member and public health research scientist.
I'm here with Tita Maria, a beloved community member and caregiver.
Thank you for the opportunity to voice my support for the Justice for Tita Maria campaign, which seeks accountability and redress for Tita Maria And highlights the ongoing struggles faced by Filipino workers and immigrants.
Tita Maria worked 14 years in a Portland care home earning less than $50 a day, far below Oregon's minimum wage.
She may be owed as much as $195,000.
Her experience is not unique, but part of a larger pattern of abuse that affects immigrant and low-wage workers.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Wage theft through unpaid overtime without wages or illegal deductions remains a crisis.
In 2022, Oregon workers filed over 1,100 wage claims totaling more than $3 million.
Yet many cases go unreported, particularly among immigrants who fear retaliation or lack awareness of their rights.
This campaign is about more than one person.
It is about standing with every Filipino worker and immigrant who deserves dignity and fair treatment.
We recognize Tita Maria on this first day of Filipino American History Month, connecting her fight to the legacy of Filipino American labor leaders like Larry Itliong and Philip Veracruz, who championed justice and better working conditions.
Justice for Tita Maria is inseparable from justice for immigrants everywhere.
Immigrants are the backbone of our communities but often lack protection.
Thank you.
Standing up for Tita Maria means advocating for all workers regardless of origin.
Today, I urge everyone to support this campaign and push for reforms that protect workers, enforce just labor practices, and honor the legacy of those who fought back— who fought before us.
Together, we could build a movement rooted in justice and solidarity.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for raising this issue, both for all of us and for our community members today.
Okay, I think we'll move on to our next speaker now.
Thank you.
Rebecca Dobert
Autumn Blankenship.
Unidentified speaker
Welcome.
Thank you for being here this morning.
Thank you.
Good morning.
My name is Autumn Blankenship.
I am a code specialist for the City of Portland's Urban Forestry Permitting and Regulation Division.
I'm using my vacation time to speak here today.
My role is to review tree removal permits as they expire and to investigate reports of missing trees.
Today officially marks the move of forestry permitting Out of Parks and Recreation and into Portland Permitting and Development, previously the Bureau of Development Services.
There's a lot I would like to say, but I will keep this short and sweet.
Moving forestry permitting out of Parks has been incredibly damaging.
Staff reductions have resulted in the loss of leadership and our most tenured tree inspectors.
Turnaround times for issuing permits has increased and is expected to get worse as the busy season.
The city has less capacity to investigate reports of dangerous trees today than it did at the beginning of the year.
The Urban Forestry Development Permit team was actually moved to PP&D in 2024 as part of the citywide restructuring.
So it was quite a surprise to the rest of forestry permitting when it was announced that we would also be moved to PP&D.
It was also a surprise to PP&D, who did not have plans for absorbing forestry permitting.
But have been very gracious as they integrate us into the fold.
It should be noted the decision to move forestry permitting to PP&D was after 10 positions had already been cut to balance the division's budget.
So much of the move doesn't make sense, like why would Trees@ Urban Forestry single point of contact line be housed in PP&D?
This function of our division will be reconsidered in the coming months, but it's just one example of how the move was ham-fisted.
Thank you.
Remaining staff such as myself will make the best of the situation, though we are keenly aware of the risk of further cuts in the next budget cycle 9 months from now.
The majority of trees in Portland are on private property.
There must be a collaborative relationship between private property owners and the city if there is to be a tree canopy for future generations.
The Urban Forestry Code Compliance Team was designed to hold community members' hands in navigating the Title 11 tree code.
Thank you.
We implement Title 11 with the ultimate goal of promoting a safe and healthy tree canopy in perpetuity.
For that work to be undermined is disappointing, to say the least.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for being here and taking some of your time out of your regular workday to share those concerns with us.
Rebecca Dobert
Harish Ganapathy.
Unidentified speaker
Welcome.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you, honorable council members.
I am Dr. Harish Ganapathy, and thank you for this moment to speak.
Since 1993, the nonprofit Art of Living Foundation has been a powerful force in Portland, and this year our impact is reaching unprecedented levels.
On October 20th, nearly 3,000 Portlanders diverse in age, background, and experience will gather at the Oregon Convention Center for our upcoming Journey Within event.
This is a game-changing initiative, um, reclaiming hope, healing, and unity when we need it the most, and it is led by the world's most renowned peacemaker, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
Gurudev is recognized globally as a humanitarian, a peacemaker, behavioral health and wellness expert.
His work is rooted in the belief that individual peace is essential for world peace.
Thank you.
And has presided over forums at the European Parliament and the United Nations.
His ability to bridge warring factions and opposite ideologies is unprecedented in the modern age and has progressed peace efforts in Colombia, Venezuela, Iraq, and Sri Lanka.
Several U.S. cities and legislatures have honored his contributions to American society.
Over a period of 44 years, Gurudev has uplifted the lives of 800 million people across 180 countries.
And on October 20th, he is visiting Portland for the Journey Within event at the Oregon Convention Center.
This event is all about strengthening the bonds within our community, fostering compassion, cooperation, and mutual respect across neighborhoods and backgrounds.
To highlight just one shining example of our recent work since this summer, 250 school-aged children in Portland labeled at-risk are transforming into calm, confident, and thriving individuals for whom violence is a thing of the past, all after practicing breathwork and meditation that we have taught them.
I can confidently say that this is the first time something like this has ever been achieved in the city of Portland.
Such is the game-changing nature of our programs by getting to and addressing the root cause of violence.
Council members, city administrator, your presence at the Journey Within event on October 20th would send a resounding message that Portland's leadership stands firmly behind this bold effort for unity and well-being.
It would inspire the thousands who are already transforming their lives and demonstrate that our city's leaders are committed to peace, resilience, and collective strength.
Thank you for your leadership.
We invite you to join us Together, we can mark this moment as the turning point towards a healthier and more hopeful Portland.
Thank you again.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for sharing that experience and those results with us and all of the information.
We appreciate having you.
Rebecca Dobert
That completes public testimony.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you, Rebecca.
Colleagues, the next item on our Agenda is the committee referral list.
I will try to do this quickly.
The Public Street Plaza package was heard in Transportation and Infrastructure.
We will actually be hearing that today.
Establishing a charge to fund city payment of a flood safety benefit fee was heard in Finance.
Authorizing Bureau of Transportation to acquire rights at Northeast 122nd Yes.
Between Beach and Wasco was heard in Finance.
Require the city administrator to develop a plan to establish a storefront support program was heard in Arts and Economy.
Men's sidewalk vendor code was heard in Arts and Economy.
Reappointments for the Prosper Portland Board of Commissioners and the River Community Advisory Committee were heard in Arts and Economy and Homelessness and Housing.
Amend City Code to Adopt State Building Codes was heard in Homelessness and Housing.
And Researching Disparities in Public Contracting Workforce Unemployment was heard in Labor and Workforce Development.
The next item on our agenda, because this is the first meeting of the month, is the City Administrator Report.
Councilor Ryan, do you have a question while the City Administrator gets ready?
Yes, I do.
Councilor President, I appreciate that we're— we have a system now where these are read into the record.
I would like to ask you to consider saying when they'll be heard at the council meeting.
I think it was helpful when you said the first one will be heard today.
And so I just would like that in the future so we know where this is going.
Sometimes, and it didn't happen today, we are talking about things that haven't actually been heard in committee yet.
So I can't always do that.
But where there are things that are not scheduled for today, I can try to do that.
It's when it's been passed.
And then when it's coming, so the public knows when it's coming.
And we are hopefully moving toward a system where that will all be more transparent online in advance as well.
Dan Ryan
Great.
Unidentified speaker
Mr. Jordan, go right ahead.
Thank you, Madam President, members of the council.
You have the report before you.
It continues to evolve.
I will say that the appendices also are evolving over time.
They are becoming lengthy.
And again, as I said last month, if you have feedback on any component parts of that, please let us know.
There is one thing in the narrative part of the report that I just wanted to lift up because it's been going on now for actually decades, and that is the cooperative effort between the Bureau of Transportation and the Parks Bureau and the Bureau of Environmental Services regarding The wetlands out along the Springwater Corridor and Foster Road.
And we celebrated the opening of the Springwater Wetlands Restoration Project in the last month, and it received an award from the APWA for the Project of the Year.
I grew up around here, and those of you who did in the '60s and '70s will remember that just about every time it rained in Portland, Foster Road flooded, and the businesses around Foster Road flooded.
It has literally been a decade since Foster Road has flooded, and the reason is these projects.
And I think it's a great example of how the city can take what was a problem that was just perennial and apply our resources over a long period of time to really make a part of our community much more livable than it was before.
And so I just wanted to uplift that particular piece of the report because I know a lot of staff and a lot of community members and a lot of community organizations have worked for a long time to bring these projects to fruition.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So thank you, Madam President.
Michael Jordan
Thank you, Councilor Mitch Green.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you, Mr. Jordan.
Councilor Dunphy, do you have a question for Mr. Jordan?
I do.
I have a couple of questions about the report.
First of all, thank you.
This report is robust and you're obviously trying to walk the line between too much and not enough detail.
I really appreciate that.
A couple of questions I have that you may not be able to answer today, but I sure would love some follow-up.
As near as I can tell, I'm looking at this and it looks like, PBOT has $100 million in unspent grant funds.
I'm looking at page something, I don't— 39.
If I'm reading this correctly, under PBOT has roughly $100— or $100— yeah, a little over $100 million in an unspent balance.
Do we know what that is earmarked for or what those dollars are to be?
I can't tell you specifically, but I know that the grant— federal grant funding that runs through PBOT is almost entirely associated with projects.
So I can't tell you which ones, but— and we can certainly get back to you on all the projects under that category.
Yeah, that'd be great.
I'd love to know a little more.
Again, you may not be able to know specifically, but this is related to the building energy efficiency grant through Specifically, do you know if this program— this is using PSEF dollars to work with commercial building owners on energy efficiency upgrades, but there's not a requirement on this for building owners to have a tenant when they are doing these upgrades.
Do you know if there is any language in this program to protect rent levels, knowing that these energy efficiency are coming I do not off the top of my head, but we will find out and get the answer back to, I assume, to the entire council for your question.
Yeah, please.
You bet.
Yeah, I just want to flag that, and I'm bringing things back to Vienna.
In Vienna, we heard similar programs to this where working with commercial building owners and also with landlords who run apartment buildings, that there's a public granting process by which to make upgrades to these with the guarantee that rents stay as they were.
I would really wanna make sure that that is what we are enforcing with this program.
I think it's a fantastic way for older buildings to get upgraded, but I would sure hate to see either new tenants or existing tenants suddenly see a rent increase because of that.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Councilor.
Thank you.
That is all I have for right now.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Ryan.
Yes, thank you, Council President.
It's good to see you, City Administrator Jordan.
I also wanna say thank you so much for this report.
It just keeps improving.
I know I need to spend more time with it.
It's just really helpful to get a sense of what's going on.
I wanna lift something right here on the report, and that's Civic Life's Wafa Almalkatari.
The Portland Welcoming Week is something that I had a chance to dive into.
In my time on this council.
And she has really transformed that celebration.
And at a time where we have fear that's, in my opinion, not needed, it's so important to remember how important it is to celebrate our new arrivals, 'cause that's always been our country's emerging economies, quite frankly.
And it's also just, it's so important that we continue to have that.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
So at a time of constraint, I just want to say how important it is on so many different levels to continue to support our public servants like Wafa that does such great work out in the community.
So I hope that she hears that.
I didn't warn her that I would do that.
I miss seeing her regularly.
I also want to comment on the grants report, which I find helpful, but I continue to ask the question on not so much the money coming in, which is great, but how is it being spent?
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Is great to see.
It's how we're regulating the money going out.
I really push for reforms in that area.
And so I'm trying to track that those reforms have been implemented.
And so far it's hard to get into the details of that with this report.
And perhaps there's another way for me to get that information.
I think there is.
You certainly could reach out directly to Grants or I can make that connection for you, Councilor.
And I'll talk with the Grants Division about whether we can I can put a little something in the report that notes the regulations that have been put in place regarding the recipients of the grants.
So I can do that.
I think it's important to track that at a time of challenge with our budget.
It's so important to track the money that's going out and to ensure that there's integrity in which and how it's being spent.
Absolutely.
And thank you for noting, Wafa.
Many councilors participated in many of the events this last month.
And to the staff's credit, it was a more complicated effort this year because of the atmospherics in our community and the general challenges that are faced by our immigrant communities.
And the staff did a great job with that.
I can only imagine.
And that's why I wanted to lift it on this day.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Morillo.
Thank you, Council President.
Good to see you this morning, City Administrator.
Thank you for everything you're doing during such an intense week for our city.
I really appreciate it, and it's not going unnoticed.
So I just wanted to start out by saying that.
I wanted to highlight part of the report that talked about my budget note regarding the reestablishing independent programmatic analysis within the City Budget Office.
I think that was a really important I think that was something that was really important for the council as a whole as we were going through the budget this last cycle.
And I really appreciate all the work that went towards providing more information.
But I was kind of hoping that there would be a bit more detail in some of that.
And I'm not sure that the path that's laid out is fully in line with what I was intending with my amendment.
The part that I was specifically looking at was the outcomes of Section 2. which says provide annual retrospective performance and budget execution reporting.
I have a financial analyst in my office now, Kristen Johnson, and she has some examples from past years that kind of show a little bit more what I'm looking for.
And so I was hoping that maybe after this she could connect with you to give some examples of that, if that would be helpful at all.
I had the opportunity to meet with Kristen this week And I would love to do that.
And I'm sure that Director Levine at CBO would also love to meet with Kristen and talk about those examples.
We'd be happy to do that.
That sounds wonderful.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Madam President.
I have a couple of quick questions.
I want to thank you, Administrator Jordan, For the work that you're doing on this report, and I think it— there's a lot of information.
Uh, I was looking through past reports trying to figure out where the ARPA money came from that you sent in the memo.
I didn't see that.
Michael Jordan
I maybe need more direction.
Unidentified speaker
Okay, I reviewed your, your September 23rd memo Oh, excuse me.
The, the, the fall towel shelter adjustment memo.
But I went back to see if you had mentioned any of these dollars in your previous reports, and I didn't see it.
So I'm wondering, where did these dollars come from and where were they sitting?
Well, I'd have to go back and check.
I'm not I'm not quite tracking on which dollars you're referring to.
So in your memo, in your TAO memo, you described directing $883,975 in ARPA carryover resources and $2.5 million in general fund encumbrance carryover.
And I don't recall seeing that in any of your previous reports.
Even though this was a memo.
I'm just trying to figure out how are we supposed to know that we have carryover resources or carryover encumbrance if it's not mentioned in any of your monthly reports?
Well, we certainly, as a way to help the report to continue to evolve, we could have a budget section on a monthly basis that talks about those kinds of issues.
We haven't specifically noted budget reporting on a monthly basis before.
So we— I think we can look at how we can report those things more in real time.
Yeah, in real time, because this was shocking to me that I asked Ruth in our budget office if we had any leftover ARPA money, and she said no.
And so I was very surprised I was surprised when your memo came out and it said we had $883,975 in carryover ARPA funds.
I was like, interesting.
And when I saw that your plan is to direct those to the gap that the mayor has in his shelter plan, I thought that, you know, we are supposed to identify places for that to go, that we should know about it at the same time that the mayor knows about it.
Because if he's getting a prior notice that we have leftover monies before we get a chance to direct those resources, I think that that is not serving the purpose of the council.
It is, um, it is basically taking our duty of being an appropriator and a policymaker away.
And so, you know, as a result, uh, you don't know this, but I had— I have a monthly Yes.
Coffee with a Cop in my district office, and I had about 35 people in that small conference room, and we were talking about the, uh, the bottle drop on 122nd.
And as a result of the bottle drop, businesses are losing a lot of business because they're doing drugs, they're buying drugs, they're, they're bringing bottles in.
Businesses Businesses have folks who are defecating in their doorways.
They have all sorts of petty crime, those kinds of things.
And so for me, I have no way, and since we're not over-prosper, of identifying opportunities that we can help those storefronts that we talked about in the arts and economy last week, and for those people that I met with last week with, um, Coffee with a Cup.
In addition to that, we also met with the Parkrose nonprofit that works with the businesses in Parkrose.
We're at risk of losing the, um, the dollar store.
We're at risk of losing a family grocery store and the Parkrose Hardware.
And they talked to all 3 of us.
Michael Jordan
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
In the district, and everybody's saying the same thing.
They need additional safety.
They need additional monies to help them reconcile some of the petty window things that they do every, every day.
Something is, is broken out, a door or something.
And so they're not filing, they're not filing, um, insurance claims because they're afraid to be, um, to have their insurance taken away.
So we don't have a pot of money where we can reconcile and to do crime prevention, uh, right now.
And I would have loved to been able to know that we had this money here that I could actually direct in one of my committees that it would go for.
But what I'm troubled by is the fact that, um, the mayor's office, they know about the money before we do.
And so they get a chance at having action at it before we do.
And we're supposed to know about all monies that are out there.
And we said that there were no monies in the TAO, but there were.
So that's, that's what I'm troubled by, and that's what I'm concerned by, that we were not notified in your monthly reports that we had this carryover money.
Well, I, I guess I appreciate your issue, and Jonas is here, can talk a little bit about the TAO and the process by which we go through the TAO.
And ultimately, the council has total authority over approving or changing what is proposed in the TAO.
So I'll let Jonas talk a little bit about the process.
Great.
Thanks, Mike.
Thanks, Councilor, for the questions.
For the record, Jonas Biery, the city's Chief Financial Officer.
So a couple questions, Councilor, I'll attempt to answer and tell me if I get it right or not.
Encumbrances, we will be having a more robust conversation about what encumbrances are, how they're allocated, how they're used as part of the fall TAO.
And so That's coming here in a couple of weeks.
I'll preview that encumbrances essentially reflect contracted dollars that are appropriated in a fiscal year and then that work isn't completed.
You know, we don't complete that work at the fiscal year cycle.
We don't stop on June 30th.
That work continues into the next fiscal year.
So those are sort of pre-appropriated dollars to continue the work that's already been appropriated and happening so that that work can continue.
Thank you.
Into the subsequent year, which is now the current fiscal year.
We'll have lots more conversation about that, including all of the details about all of those encumbrance carryover line items that'll be proposed in the fall TAO.
And I know we've started a conversation, you and I and staff this week, and that'll continue over the next couple weeks as well.
Any monies that are not spent by June 30th go back into the general fund.
That's my general knowledge of how the encumbrance works.
You don't automatically get to get those dollars back again.
You have to apply for 'em, right?
That's somewhat correct.
I mean, the challenge is, again, spending under those contracts doesn't stop on July 1st when the fiscal year starts.
And so in some cases, there are expenditures that are continuing to happen this fiscal year that need a source of payment.
And so encumbrances is a way to make sure that both those things that we've already done between July 1st and now Or the end of the fiscal year continue to get paid.
It is technically probably accurate that council can reappropriate those.
Jonas Biery
Right.
Unidentified speaker
That means we have to find another way to address those things that we've already committed and potentially already done.
So it's a little more complicated than just sort of the binary.
It's, you know, it switches one place or the other.
And we will have an opportunity to have a lot more robust conversation about that, both at the work session on October 22nd and then the fall.
But let me give the backside to this because bureaus were told not to ask for encumbrance money because we were in a, a tight budget gap.
And so they had no way— if they generally, if they want the money, they would put in a request to have that money rolled over.
And so they were given direction not to ask for any of those dollars because we were in a very tight budget cycle.
So how are they supposed to— if they were told not to do it, and then any monies that were left, theoretically they're supposed to go back into the general fund, how do you expect the bureau to really run that way if they know that they're going to have some encumbrance and not have it taken up with the, um, the general fund?
So, so, Councilor, all of those details about The amount for each bureau is part of the fall TAO exercise.
So there will be a lengthy list of all of the sort of requested and recommended encumbrance line items that will come to this council for approval in the fall TAO.
Right, but I think you're missing my point, but I think you know what the point is.
The point of the fact is I need to know what, how much money was left over from the general fund.
And if, if they're applying for money that they don't know they have, we should know how much money was left over from the previous fiscal year, not waiting till November until the TAO.
And then when people get in trouble and they need assistance like this $11 million that we were expecting from the state of Oregon for our Portland Solutions, we are now not in compliance.
We don't have $11 million even though we have a lot of of wording that says we're going to do some creative stuff to make sure the mayor's shelter program is, is largely maintained.
But the issue that I'm having with this is if we're putting monies in our budget that we don't have in our care by June 30th, and then people are asking for additional dollars and we're not getting a report to say how much money is left over, how are we supposed to know And then we have to wait until you all do the TAO to tell us.
We should know about those dollars before TAO even comes.
Yeah, I understand.
And let's, I mean, I think it's a much larger discussion.
That's a process discussion and availability of information discussion.
The fall TAO is historically at least been the moment that that information is accumulated and assembled and communicated for council direction and adoption.
And happy, of course, as you know, to have conversations about how to upstream and improve that process.
But we have, I'll just acknowledge we do have sort of human and technology limitations that prevent some of that from being able to occur.
So the executive side is knowing more about the money than we are, and we're the appropriators.
That's all I'm trying to say.
This is simply saying that they should not know more about the money than we do since we are the ones who appropriate it and have to make sure that we have a balanced budget.
Yep, understood.
And that again, I just would reiterate the information being gathered now is Specifically to present to Council in the fall TAO for Council input and approval as to how that plan proceeds.
And I'll also, I just wanted, the other kind of question that you asked that I wanna just acknowledge for the public is that the ARPA dollars, I think maybe something got lost a little bit in translation.
The ARPA dollars are required to be committed, federal requirement that they be committed to specific purposes by a specific date.
Dan Ryan
Okay.
Unidentified speaker
Specific date.
That date has passed.
So those dollars have been committed to specific things.
I thought it was December 2025, December 30th, 2025.
No, sir.
Can I answer this really quick?
Please introduce yourself.
Yeah, so DCA Morrissey, Sarah Morrissey.
Just to be really specific, so all ARPA funds had to be committed by December 31st, 2025—.
Or 2024, sorry.
So all the programs were allocated December 31st, 2024, and then reported to Treasury at the federal level.
And so we cannot reallocate funds at this point, and we have until December 31st, 2026 to spend the funds on the programs that they were allocated to.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So that's the—.
Unidentified speaker
Those are really the qualifiers for the ARPA dollars.
So they can't go to another program?
They've already been reported to Treasury as of 2024.
So this encumbrance and this carryover that you're— the language that you're using is when you say carryover, so obviously the people who had the money, they couldn't spend it all.
So now we're giving them another shot at the apple to spend the money, and it's not open for, for everyone else?
For the ARPA funds, those have been committed and reported on, so those are not available, correct.
Loretta Smith
Okay.
Unidentified speaker
I think we need to move on to the next set of questions.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you both.
I just want to note that I think we will continue to have this conversation over and over as long as council continues to be told, well, the mayor needed to make some decisions and we will get them to you for approval, but the expectation is that those decisions have already been made.
And I think that's part of the frustration that we're hearing from some of our colleagues.
I appreciate that, and I understand the general anxiety about it, but no decisions have been made about the money in the TAO.
The proposal that will come to you this fall that you'll have a work session on and then vote on at some point is a proposal.
It is— those dollars The encumbered dollars, there's a list of encumbrances.
Those, as has been noted, are being proposed because of ongoing work that was continued from the last budget year.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Understood.
Unidentified speaker
Changing those is doable by council.
However, if you do it, we will need to find money somewhere else if those dollars have already been expended.
So that's the issue with encumbrances.
The other dollars that are going to be in the fall TAO and the other changes or reconciliations are open to council changing them.
Mr. Jordan, those dollars have not been spent.
We need to move to the next person.
I think the issue is that—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, I'm sorry.
Unidentified speaker
I'm sorry.
I just wanted clarity about that.
Yeah.
Councilor Green.
Thank you.
I appreciate the report.
It continues to provide a lot of the information that I need to kind of be aware.
So really thankful on that.
I especially like the service area shoutouts 'cause, you know, we're not commissioners, so we're not in the day-to-day with the bureaus.
But I want to uplift the shoutout to Mike Roy, who leads the City Fleet Division.
I recently toured the Kirby Garage and The fact that they're that successful and Mike has been that successful given the poor state of that asset is mind-boggling.
And so I raise that up as we all think about the decision that will eventually come before council to approve the financing for the Cutter Garage.
I can think of few situations that we'll face that are of higher fiscal urgency than that.
And so really wanted to connect that piece there, and shout out to Mike.
Um, uh, the other part is, you know, really grateful to hear the progress, uh, on the ceasefire work.
Um, thanks for calling that out.
Um, in the public safety area, you know, seeing, uh, you know, homicides decline by 51% and us kind of lead in those peer cities is really encouraging.
So, uh, that was also notable for me.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
Thank you, Mr. Jordan, for this report.
I had some questions about the— on page 2, the mayor's executive order update.
I'm wondering if you know when we can expect the project team to complete the triage and compliance review.
That's a great question, Councilor.
As you know, we are plowing through— first tier of work was all of the contracts, grants, et cetera, that were, I'll say, in flight.
So we were already in the process of contracting for some amount of dollars for some purpose.
And our first priority was to go through all of those contracts and RFPs and make sure that the language was conforming to the executive order.
And so that's been the first tier of work.
My understanding is we're about 30% of the way through that work.
Jonas Biery
Okay.
Unidentified speaker
And so that work continues.
I also know that we're transitioning, I think this week, to the grants programs and make sure that those are conforming and intergovernmental agreements.
So I would say this work is gonna continue for some months.
And I think the culmination of the work after we get through the in-flight issues will be to work with Council on Any code language that needs to be amended to make sure we're conforming there, and then ultimately administrative rule language.
So that's kind of the process we're headed on.
And as I think some councilors who are intimately familiar with this, it's a lot of work.
There's a huge amount of change that's going on.
Thank you for the question.
I'm sorry.
Can you speak a bit to how the cuts from last year to the Office of Equity and Human Rights have impacted this ability to do this work, conduct these reviews in a timely manner?
And also connected to that, I'm wondering if the proposed 20% cuts to core services, which includes equity, how that could impact the ability to propose timely recommendations for navigating what's coming down federally.
That's a good question.
First of all, just the base budget and resources in the Office of Equity and Human Rights did not foresee this issue in preparing last year's budget.
Tracy Warren
Mm-hmm.
Unidentified speaker
And so this is, I'll use the term, a bit of a fire drill for everybody here at the city, both the Attorney's Office and the Office of Equity and Human Rights particularly.
And we put a fair amount of pressure on that office.
And I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Danielle Brooks, from the Office of Equity and Human Rights.
She is doing a huge lift with the Attorney's Office to get through these executive order conformance discussions.
So it has affected our ability to be nimble, if you will, because that budget is down to, I would say, you know, the bare minimum for us to meet our legal obligations under Title VI and Title II and ADA.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Those kinds of issues are— those are regulatory issues that we have to deal with.
And so we're strained right now.
To the realignment issue, as far as equity is concerned, it will be a challenge.
There's no question to meet that 20% target.
On the other hand, it presents us with an opportunity to work with council about what are the highest Priorities out of the Office of Equity and Human Rights?
Are we adequately staffing our regulatory requirements?
Do we have enough resource to be nimble when these issues come up and be able to be responsive in a timely manner?
And then of course, how do you deploy resource across the entire organization, not just in the office, to be able to meet what we're trying to accomplish in major categories of how we, I will say, work on equity with community, with our workforce, and ultimately our service delivery.
So that's an opportunity for us coming this fall and this winter.
Great.
I appreciate you mentioning the idea of focusing on what the priorities are from council, and hopefully that can lead into some sort of long-term strategy to make sure we're meeting our equity requirements.
You bet.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Avalos.
Thank you.
Based on this discussion, it is clear that there's still a lot of work to be done to ensure that councilors are informed about these real-time budgetary challenges and decisions.
It is disturbing to hear that there's this gap, right?
And that we know about it, we being the city knows about it in June, supposedly, as has been reported by OPB.
And yet we find out about it last week.
And I think ultimately the disconnect for me is that back in the budget cycle when council was asking for options to fund our priorities during the budget cycle, there was often discussion of there's no room to give or there's all these trade-offs.
But when the mayor's priorities are not funded, as is happening right now with this $11 million, suddenly there's a lot of money to move around.
I think that's what you're hearing expressed by us and is why we feel unequipped and disempowered to perform the budgetary duties that the charter clearly gives to the council.
So what is your response to that concern?
And do you all have a plan?
One, does the mayor have a plan to not receive his $11 million?
What is he going to do if he doesn't receive that?
And 2, what is your plan to, you know, I guess, bring maybe some discussions to the council about how we close this gap?
Because I think the anxiety you feel is this— there's this constant information gap or delay.
Candace Avalos
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
That makes us feel not in control of the powers that we are given.
Does that make sense?
So what's your response to that?
Well, I think we can always improve in trying to get the council real-time information.
I will say when it comes to, when it comes to the end of year in a budget year and the beginning of a next There is always a delay in being able to give information that you can rely on.
And so that takes time with the accountants, it takes time with the budget office to get those numbers where we feel like we can actually talk about them in a real way.
So accumulating the information is important, and that transition always takes time.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
It takes some time.
But having said that, I'm hearing that we can do better on a monthly basis being able to put as much financial information into my report as possible that we feel like we can rely on and convey.
So Council is up to speed as much as we can do that.
We haven't been including detailed budget information in the report so far.
But we can do that.
And so I'll talk with CBO and the CFO about how could we formulate something that could get the council information more in real time rather than— we had been targeting the fall TAO discussion to deal with where we are regarding all the issues that you're somewhat familiar with regarding what got us to a deficit situation trying to fill a hole.
You know specifically about some of the issues, but we'll try to deal with all of those issues in the work session on the fall TAO.
But I will work with CBO and the CFO about how we can get more real-time financial information on the report.
I appreciate that, and I understand the nature of budgets, you know, but I do think that there is a broader discussion we need to have, and I'd Maybe even pose to Finance Committee Chair Zimmerman if maybe there's an opportunity to have an open discussion about what it is that we're looking for and what we need.
Because I agree too that you're getting unclear, probably, direction from us on what we are looking for.
So I think it's worth having a public discussion about that.
Loretta Smith
Mm-hmm.
Unidentified speaker
And then maybe, you know, in addition to having more in your reports, you know, if there are other types of real-time communications that can be sent over email, right, that is just like a heads I think that would help us feel more in the know instead of feeling surprised.
Candace Avalos
Sure.
Unidentified speaker
So those are some suggestions and I'm happy to work offline on that.
Tracy Warren
I appreciate that.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you, Councilor.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Kanal.
Thank you, Madam President.
I'm going to have a couple things that follow up on some of this, I think, too, but just I'll do a really quick rapid fire here.
Thank you for putting it together.
I won't reiterate the congratulations.
But I join on them for Wafa and the Welcoming Week team and the New Portlanders Policy Commission.
Also wanted to shout out our new, no longer interim DCA for Public Safety, Bob Kazi.
And speaking of public safety, I appreciate the highlight of the 51% reduction in homicides from the first half of 2024 to 2025's first half.
And I'll also just mention for the public, there are a couple videos that PPB put out that you may want to look at that are relevant now.
Thank you.
I just wanted to echo Councilor Sameer Kanal's concern about the color-coded uniforms.
I think they're really important because they help showcase, and it's mentioned in the report, how you can visually differentiate to the degree possible between Portland police officers and other law enforcement agencies that may be operating within our city.
And then the last little rapid fire here.
Thank you for the detailed updates on the 2 Morillo budget notes.
And I think it's really important that we continue to remember that these budget notes are more than requests, that they're guidance on how to spend the money appropriated in the budget.
And I think that's just I think that's just an important thing given the events of this week.
All right, I have some questions.
3 Of them are just quick clarifications, I think.
The city awarded 45 awards to 42 contractors worth $32 million in the last month, and one PSF contract made up most of this.
My guess has been that this is part of clearing the large backlog that existed before that.
Is that why that number is larger than usual?
I would say that that's part of it.
Yes.
Okay.
Is there any— is there a single explanation for the other part of it or?
I don't have a comprehensive explanation why this number's bigger than it has been the last few months, except that we have had a number of contracts on hold being redone.
And as the Chief Procurement Officer mentioned in another meeting just earlier with me, that we'd gotten 30% through those.
So you can imagine, That aside from the regular flow that wasn't in flight, now those in-flight things that have been delayed are starting to be released.
So that would be my guess.
Got it.
You mentioned the Veterans Memorial Coliseum reopening.
Can we expect that we'll get the details of those events, especially the 3 of us in District 2, so not only we can attend, of course, but far enough in advance so we can help boost it?
I think this is a community asset that that people don't necessarily know what's going on with, and we'd love to help get 'em back out to it.
Certainly can do that.
Thank you, Councilor.
Thanks.
Last month we talked about discussion of IGAs, intergovernmental agreements, being part of this, as well as updates to IGAs.
I noticed that's not yet in this report.
Can you speak to that at all?
Is that in flight?
It's just, we'll get there next month, hopefully.
That's what we're trying to do.
I'm gonna reference that in a minute 'cause it relates to something later on.
Just flagging that, but I appreciate that it takes time to add things in.
Okay, a couple specific questions.
On page 24, there is a claim that's marked as Bureau Resolved for $175,000, $255,000 total listed as the mayor's office.
And it reads, quote, alleges ordinance criminalizing unhoused Portlanders is unreasonable, cruel, and unlawful, end quote.
And again, it reads as resolved.
Dan Ryan
Okay.
Unidentified speaker
Can you speak to what happened here?
Did we assert anything as part of that, or was it just a payout?
I will have to check.
I don't know the details of it, but I can tell you when the words Bureau resolved or has been resolved by the Bureau, often that's— the Bureau is able to work with the claimant on the issue without having to have the formal resolution of a claim.
And that happens occasionally.
It doesn't happen very often, you'll see, but it does happen occasionally.
So I can look into the details of that particular one.
Yeah, just to be a little more specific, the things that I thought were unique about this one, other than the subject matter, is that A, it was the mayor, the Office of the Mayor, which is a bureau from the perspective of where we categorize things, is a little different.
Uh, B, that it's a claim filed in 2023 that I'm guessing is based off of our policy then.
And I'll note that elsewhere in the report you noted that we are— we have, uh, increased our, our sweeps.
We're over 20 a day at this point.
Um, and that's, um, just— I think if, if there was a, a statement made directly or indirectly with relation to this as it relates to the 2023 level of sweeps, and then we are also increasing the level of sweeps.
I'm curious about how those 2 things interact.
Tracy Warren
Okay.
Unidentified speaker
Uh, so, and whether or not we could expect more claims of this nature in the future.
Um, on the last page, there's a fire truck body repair that's marked as coming out of Commissioner 2.
I know that, and that there's Used to be in the old form of government, commissioners over Fire Bureau, all that.
And did it— so my question is, was that authorized by the outgoing commissioner given the date on this, or is that just something we're doing clearing out the old accounts?
Because I know those accounts existed and don't exist anymore.
I don't know the answer as to whether that was from a previous— obviously the date would imply that it was a previous Action, but I don't know the nature of the action, so I can get back to you.
And just to be clear, I strongly support repairing the body of a fire truck, which is what this was, and at $25,000.
But given that it was August 21st of this year and we don't have commissioners anymore, that's what piqued my curiosity.
Okay, so the part that isn't a clarification, I want to uplift this conversation again that came up from Councilor Smith, but has also been, I think, touched on by a couple other colleagues, Avalos and, and the Vice President.
Um, I, I think the expectations that we're trying to convey here, first, is that we're not learning about things in the media, um, as it relates to the city's financial situation.
I am not constantly, but more than occasionally, in a position of saying, yeah, I learned about that I learned about that in OPB.
Or I learned about that in another news outlet, not just OPB.
But, you know, and I think that's a little bit frustrating.
I understand, I'm very familiar with how encumbrance carryovers work in the ARPA context.
Everything that DCA Morrissey said makes sense to me.
We could either encumber it or give it back, basically.
Or sorry, we could carry it over or give it back, basically.
In the case of other encumbrance carryovers, It was very common to, uh, to, to carry that money over.
Program carryovers are different.
We haven't talked about that side of things yet, uh, and that's usually where the bulk of it is, um, in my experience.
And I'm, I'm curious about that.
But I guess— and this maybe relates to something Councilor Dunphy said too— if it's at the level of readiness where the mayor can know about it, it's at the level of readiness where the council I have no problem with that.
Okay, thank you for that.
I'd also like to ensure that there is a gap between when we hear about money being available and when there is a defined usage for it already.
Because what ends up happening, this relates to Councilor Smith's point, is that not only do we end up with less of our appropriation authority, but then we get We get blamed for council changing the priority when in reality the priority was never set in the first place.
I understand that legally we can always change it, but from the perspective of narrative, uh, that's being shaped here, if, if it's saying, for example, if you hypothetically found $11 million today and you said, council, there's $11 million, what would you like to do to it— do with it, sorry.
Um, that's a different conversation than we found $11 million We're putting it to fill the $11 million gap.
Would you like to deviate from that plan, that course of action?
And I think that is legally not a concern at all, but it is, I think, sort of shaping the conversation.
Well, let me— if I'm hearing you correctly, Councilor, it sounds like you— I won't speak— I won't say you speak for the whole council yet, but you've— you're suggesting that there be, I guess, some preliminary conversation about a budget proposal before the proposal's made.
Because as far as the way the budget process works, the executive branch proposes.
Sameer Kanal
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
And the legislative branch disposes.
So what I'm hearing is you would rather not have the executive branch propose Because it sets the stage for council change and how that's perceived.
Am I hearing you correctly?
No, I don't think it's that broad.
Sameer Kanal
Okay.
Unidentified speaker
I think it goes back to the way that Councilor Avalos put it, which is a combination of, you know, the fact that whenever there's a council priority, there's never money, and whenever there's a mayoral priority, all of a sudden here's money.
And so it's the idea that we found it, but it's already gonna go to the city.
And sometimes you'll find money.
I hope that there's money in the couch cushions.
I hope sometimes where it's there, it doesn't necessarily correlate with an unexpected negative on the ledger.
Yeah, and I appreciate that.
The example is an interesting one that you give about the $11 million.
If in fact $11 million did appear My understanding of budget law is that it could be applied to the mayor's proposal because it was approved by council as an appropriation level that included the $11 million.
So it's an interesting example, which brings up other issues about the ability of the executive to be flexible within the appropriation.
Tracy Warren
Sure.
Unidentified speaker
And appropriation sets an upper limit for And so what flexibility does the executive have within the appropriation level?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay.
Unidentified speaker
And so it's a question, and I think it is an interesting dialogue that the council should have with the mayor about that.
Okay, so just to wrap this up.
And oh, by the way, I do agree with Councilor Avalos's point, and we will try to work about how we can get more real-time information about where we are financially.
Okay, so just to wrap this up, the OPB article that's been referred to, when in June did the city become aware?
And specifically, was it before or after June 18th?
I do not know the—.
Jonas Biery
I would love—.
Unidentified speaker
I'm not aware of that.
I would love to give— I don't care what the exact date was.
I'd just like to know if it was before or after June 18th specifically.
That's the date we voted on the budget, just to— to clarify that.
And the, the last piece of this relates to the IGAs, which is, I think, a part of this too.
If we're in a position where, where we weigh in on IGAs is only at the end of the fiscal year on debating whether or not to continue any funding related, any budgetary impacts of it, but the IGAs are just happening, let's say, in, in October, um, without us being aware of it, then we're in a position where all we can do is either end an existing thing that's been negotiated without our, not merely approval, but sometimes not even our knowledge.
And I think that's a challenge.
So part of the reason for asking for this information on the IGAs is to ensure that there is transparency prior to the 1 to 11 months later question.
This is not a big deal when it's within the fiscal year and the money's already been appropriated.
It's not actually a concern at all in that context for me personally, but I did want to flag that for the future.
So that's just the full circle on that.
Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, Councilor.
Colleagues, we have about 2.5 to 3 hours of content left.
Councilor Dunphy and Councilor Smith, can you take 1 minute each for any follow-up points you have?
Absolutely.
Briefly, I would like to request a follow-up Briefing about lawsuits, specifically just a little bit deeper dive into this chart and also understanding how the city deals with follow-up with employees that are making dumb choices that lead to expensive lawsuits.
I'm seeing a lot of truck hit parked car, things like that.
And second, I would like to get a follow-up briefing on this building energy efficiency grant program that is being administered by Prosper.
Um, my team had some additional questions and I would love to ask those not here.
Absolutely.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you, Madam President.
I just wanted to go back to what, um, Councilor Kanal said, and I'd like to know about when we learned about our gap in the budget because there's some— a lot of misinformation going on.
June 5th, we passed the, um, Albina descendants, uh, settlement with a 12-0 vote, and we're hearing in the newspaper that they were the cause of the gap.
Well, we passed the budget on June 18th.
There were millions of dollars worth of settlements that were passed in this last fiscal year, so to pick out one as the reason why there's a gap is totally inaccurate.
Councilor Loretta Smith, Yes.
And it's misleading.
And I need us to be very clear when we're talking about revenue.
The revenue that we expected to get in from the business licensing tax, we did not get in.
The money that we expected to expend on healthcare benefits has quadrupled.
So those are, are some of those gaps that we need to speak about and not really individualize and minimize.
The council's directives and try to identify places where you think that it might get the most rise out of folks, because it's not fair.
Thank you.
Colleagues, I believe that is the end of questions for the city administrator.
Mr. Jordan, thank you.
I think that there's a lot of follow-up from this conversation that we'll need to have.
Items 5 and 6, which were on the consent agenda, were pulled off of the consent agenda and are now at the end of the meeting.
So I believe that moves us to our regular agenda.
Rebecca, could you please call the first regular agenda item, item 7?
Item 7, pay settlement of Hillary, Hillary Rossio and Colleen McDonald bodily injury lawsuit in the sum of $150,000 And colleagues, because settlements, um, given the time frame they run on, generally don't go through committees, we don't have a committee staff summary or a chair report.
We have gotten briefings to everybody about this settlement, but we do have our attorney and claims analysts here, and I believe our DCA for public Thank you, Madam President.
First, I appreciate all the information that has been provided here, including the attachment that has the 1-year and 5-year information for claims related to this bureau.
The information we got had a lot of information about— that started a conversation about how we can avoid recurrence.
I don't believe this is a question you might be able to answer, but I am aware, and this is public information, that there was a recommendation that the officer involved was found— should be found out of policy, but I don't know what the outcome was of that.
So my question is, was there a— was that finding upheld, or that recommendation upheld, I should say, by the bureau?
Or was there an overturning?
This is a topic we've brought up in, in other settlements in the past, including the Manny Clark case.
So I wanted to just see if there was a, just a quick yes or no on that one.
Well, risk doesn't get directly involved in discipline personnel matters, even those that arise out of an incident that results in tort liability.
But my understanding is That the discipline that was recommended occurred.
And I fully understand why risk specifically can't.
I think our underlying question is how do we know we're not gonna have this exact same case in a year, in 5 years, whether it's what Councilor Dunphy mentioned about a lot of trucks clipping parked cars for PBOT or parks or whoever, or whether or not it's something like this.
And so I think the, Underlying question for, if that's possible to verify, that's why I was asking.
So I don't know if DCA Causey knows it.
You don't have to come up if you don't.
I don't want to put you on the spot, but.
It's like we do have the DCA coming forward, and I'll note, colleagues, that we do have one person signed up for public testimony as well.
Good morning.
For the record, Bob Causey, DCA Public Safety, and I don't have detailed information about that, about this specific incident, but it is on my list.
You know, with these types of incidents, obviously they're very expensive.
I don't even want to call them settlements or mishaps.
They're mistakes, and we need to be able to correct our mistakes and be a learning organization.
And it's my intent, and I I know it's Chief Day's intent to work together to make sure that we do create that learning environment, that we have process improvement so that we don't face these types of settlements in the future.
I don't have specific information about discipline of this particular employee, though.
Is that something that you'd be able to get for us?
I don't know, but I can certainly, I can certainly look into it.
I think this might be something that falls into the previous conversation too.
I feel underprepared to close the book on an item without knowing whether or not we're going to just be doing this again.
I'd prefer to have that information to feel 100% prepared is what I'm trying to say.
Sameer Kanal
Understood.
Unidentified speaker
But I appreciate the information you have been able to provide.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Zimmerman.
So really, my comments are to the co-chair of Public Safety, Councilor Kanal.
You have the full right to bring this matter in front of your committee if we want to talk about employee conduct or policies of the Portland Police Bureau, but I think that once again you're losing the point of a settlement agreement, and I don't think that the administration should be asking— or answering, excuse me, Questions that are better laid at the foot of a policy debate, or as it involves employee decisions or employee discipline, I think we need to be more clear-eyed about what we do and don't answer in this forum.
This forum is for the decision about whether or not we settle with these plaintiffs.
And instead of making this a time for— A public comment forum.
A larger point, I would encourage the Policy Committee for Public Safety to take up this matter if it is considered a serious matter enough that, uh, there needs to be change in policy.
But that would be inappropriate in a settlement decision before this council right now.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you for that.
I will be supporting the settlement and, um, I hope the plaintiffs find relief having resolved this matter after 2 years.
But I do have a question in my head.
How might this incident have gone differently had the arresting officer used their lights and sirens before performing a PIT maneuver?
It's, you know, as we're looking at these, some common sense will go a long way in many of these cases.
And so Since we can't be the arbiter of who has common sense.
But as my mother says, that common sense is just not common anymore.
And we think about these things, and maybe we can take up some of these ideas and policy changes in the Public Safety Committee.
I sit on that committee, so I would, I would like to talk about some of these things.
Councilor?
If you're willing to bring them forward.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Avalos?
Yeah, I just wanted to comment that I disagree that this is not an opportunity to daylight what kinds of policy issues need to be addressed.
I think the whole point of having this forum, especially at the full council, is so that we can assess the situation and look at what are the areas that we need to do to Hopefully prevent more settlements, because this is continuing to be a huge strain on our budget to have to pay out millions of dollars for the police when they keep hurting Portlanders.
So if we're going to actually resolve the problem, then we need to daylight these issues.
I agree that we could bring some of those back into the committee, but I think that there's some miscommunication, or maybe not— there's not good process right now for what that looks like, right?
Because the settlements get put on the council agenda.
Candace Avalos
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
Maybe there's a discussion that could be had about doing a pre-version, because like, like Council President said, it didn't come to a committee, so we don't have a committee report because it's not structured in that way.
Maybe that's a discussion we can have about settlements all going through the committee first so that those policy discussions can happen there.
But in general, I just want to state that I think it's important that we communicate to the public that it is our intention, by having these, these discussions in public, to identify policy areas that we need to fix so that we don't continue to bankrupt the city with these settlements.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
And I'll, I'll note for folks listening that we send settlements through a different process because once a settlement agreement is reached, there's generally pressure from the parties that we're settling with to move very quickly.
We do briefings for councilors so that my colleagues have the background information they need to be able to make a decision on whether or This is a case that we would support settling, but we do leave the policy discussions to the policy committees to decide if they'd like to take those up separate from the settlement in order to keep that decision about whether this is a case we want to settle and how we can change policies to ensure that they don't continue to happen slightly separate.
That we do sometimes ask questions here about what What might have changed or not so that we know how to follow up in those policy committees.
Councilor Kanal, did you have some follow-up?
Thank you.
Yes.
So 3 things.
First, I agree with Councilor Smith, and I should note that the question over discipline is actually not even about the officer who performed the PIT maneuver.
The question is actually about the officer who lost track of the car that led to the mistaken identification So I actually really appreciate Councilor Smith bringing that up because there's a broader question here over the person who actually did the maneuver.
The second piece is that this is, I think, exactly as the council president said and as Councilor Avalos referred to as well.
It's about determining whether or not we're continuing to spend money.
This is not just about this individual case.
It's about $150,000 in this case, which is going to be an expense.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
That is tax dollars.
And yes, the question of whether or not we're going to incur it now is about these 2 plaintiffs in this specific incident.
But the question over are we going to keep spending it over and over and over again, or a different amount, maybe it's $130,000 next time, maybe $180,000, that's all very relevant.
And while I will say I would be very comfortable bringing these conversations in part to committee on the patterns that we've seen, Thank you.
That may occur as opposed to discussing specific incidents.
We do not have the time in committee, and that's not for my co-chair and I, our lack of asking.
We have asked many times to have more time.
I've also offered to pay for the costs related to holding another committee out of my office budget over and over and over again, and I would love to get a yes to that.
And actually, the Public Safety Committee is important enough in my view to meet weekly.
Having said that, I do think that there is a broader comment here, which is that this council has changed how we talk about settlements.
We have started to look at them as part of a pattern.
We have looked into putting the data into the exhibits that show not only the 1-year pattern for each individual bureau, whether it's Parks or PBOT or Police or the Water Bureau, but also the 5-year plan to see the trend.
And that is threatening to some of my colleagues.
And so there is a determination to put that as far into the back room as possible, to have that outside of the public view as possible.
And that is unacceptable.
We did that for a reason when we started here, to daylight the amount of money that we're spending on these settlements.
We spent $20 million on one bureau, and I don't even think this is the highest bureau, by the way.
There's more claims if you read the city administrator's report coming out of transportation, coming out of parks, coming out of other bureaus.
Councilor Smith brought this up in the context of one of these settlements allegedly blowing a hole in our entire budget.
But there was a bigger settlement that was about— that had nothing to do with Albina, a bigger increase to the city's payout of a settlement.
Anyway, the city's portion of it that also occurred that same month.
And we need to be talking about the fact that we have a city that is And so I understand that that might be something that doesn't align with the politics of at least one of my colleagues, but I think it's really important that we do this in public.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Ryan.
Yes, thank you, Council President, and thank you earlier for reminding us the process that we have gone through with this.
And I just want to take this moment— didn't know I'd have to do this—.
But I want to thank the city attorney for her work.
To thank legal for the briefing we had last week on this issue.
A lot of these questions were asked, and I just want to say you did a very good job holding that room.
And I just want to acknowledge that that did take place.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Zimmerman.
Thanks.
I don't disagree with the need for the conversation.
My point here is to the Council President's point, which was You know, we're in a position where we can settle, and it sounds like we've had employees work on a settlement with other parties.
And I think today's goal, and whenever we get these, is to put a finality to that settlement.
And if we want to adopt a policy to, once that settlement is inked, to then dive deeply, I fully support that.
But I think that by turning settlement items on the agenda into Thank you.
If we don't pursue policy debates, we risk the— we risk having a settlement process that ends in settlements, which is the goal in a lot of these where our staff has brought what they consider to be their best recommendation forward.
So I don't disagree with the need for those debates.
I don't disagree with the need for policy improvements or trend analysis, etc.
I do disagree for the forum from which it occurs.
And that's, that's the only point I'm saying.
I have similar questions as Councilor Smith, and I asked those in our, uh, in our one-on-ones, uh, that we had previously this week.
So I appreciate that.
With respect to how we all manage our committees, we all have a lot to do.
We all have the burden of the gavel, and how we manage that time rests on us.
And I will keep it at that for us to manage our own time and Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Knoll, I see that you are back in the queue.
I want to make sure that we have the opportunity to hear from the member or members of the public who are signed up to testify.
Do you have a quick comment before then?
Make it very brief.
I would like to just rhetorically ask for anyone to weigh in on whether or not we should drop the conversation about police settlements, the conversation about ICE, the conversation about the National Guard, The conversation about how to continue lowering our homicide rate, the conversation about how to address property crime, the conversation about how to prioritize overtime and our budget sustainability in public safety.
Which thing should we be dropping from the Public Safety Committee absent additional time?
I'd love to get any input on that.
Councilor, I hate to have this debate on the dais, but I will note that you have been approved for an additional committee date, and I believe you're Your co-chair is working to figure out what date that will be.
Thank you to all of our staff for being here.
I know most of those questions were not directed to you, but we appreciate you being here to answer questions should we have them.
I think we're going to move on to hearing from members of the public now, and if there are additional questions from councilors after that, we will pull you back up.
So please don't go too far yet.
Rebecca?
We have one person signed up, Mark Porras.
Mark is online.
You can go ahead.
Welcome, Mr. Porras.
Thank you.
Can you hear me?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yes, we can.
Unidentified speaker
Fantastic.
Morning, Council.
My name is Mark Porras.
I use he/him pronouns, and I'm with the group Portland Copwatch.
We understand that the parties have come to an agreement, and we have no objection to the city writing a check for $150,000 to settle this bodily injury and civil rights violation lawsuit.
We hope Ms. Rosio and Ms. McDonald have recovered from their injuries, and we also hope this is the last time the city will pay money to someone harmed The last time we appeared here to testify on a Portland Police Bureau settlement was on August 7th for the $3.75 million wrongful death settlement to the estate of Manny Clark.
I bring this up because, like in Mr. Clark's case, this was also the result of a pursuit where multiple PPB officers and vehicles were chasing or following the wrong vehicle.
Mr. Clark, a Black man, was shot in the back and killed by PPB Officer Satoff on November 19th, 2021.
Thank you, Deputy City Attorney.
2022, Despite the fact that police had information that they were to be chasing a car occupied by white men.
9 Months later, on August 29, 2023, Ms. Rossio and Ms. McDonald were subjected to the dangerous PIT maneuver that you are just not really discussing today.
This may be hard to comprehend.
However, it is important to note that 4 months after this particular incident, in December of 2023, Chief Day announced that PPV would be loosening their restrictions on car chases.
In this case, according to court records, and as you might have heard behind closed doors in an executive session, a PPB officer on a motorcycle doing traffic duty by the 205 Bridge spotted a silver sedan that was speeding.
He was able to identify the driver as an unknown race, male, baldish with short black hair, about 6'4, slender, wearing a black t-shirt and gray shorts, and as the sole occupant of the vehicle.
Skipping ahead again from court records, 10 miles later on Southwest Bertha Boulevard, A PPV vehicle without lights and without warning violently struck the plaintiff's vehicle, forcing it into a hard spin and wrenching both of the plaintiffs' bodies.
Immediately thereafter, a second PPV vehicle struck the plaintiff's car in the front.
The car was brought to a hard stop, pinned between 2 PPV vehicles.
The plaintiffs were never ordered to pull over or given a chance to comply.
The plaintiffs were also not 6-foot-4-inch baldish men.
Back to the court documents.
Even after determining plaintiffs were not suspects, the officers refused to let plaintiffs leave the scene.
Thank you.
They insisted on holding them for approximately 20 minutes until a sergeant could arrive and clear the scene.
We've heard time and again that PPB is a learning institution.
What did PPB learn from the bungled car chase and tragic shooting of Manny Clark?
What did PPB learn from this bungled car chase?
What factors did Chief Day take into account when, 4 months after this incident, he loosened PPB's restrictions on car chases?
Should this be revisited?
We're grateful for the continued publication of claims data in the City Administrator's monthly report.
We have not yet investigated the 2 other claims attributed to pit maneuvers in there.
Neither have we looked at the 6 claims attributed to PPB using spike strips to damage vehicles.
Publishing this, the claims data, is a good first step of the city.
We look forward to seeing this transparency.
And apparently there was some accountability maybe for this incident.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We appreciate your feedback.
Rebecca Dobert
That concludes testimony.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you, colleagues.
Is there any other discussion on the settlement and whether or not we should support this settlement before we move to a vote?
Okay, seeing none, I'll note that this is a first reading of an emergency ordinance, so we will vote today.
It takes 9 votes to pass.
Rebecca, could you please call the roll?
Green.
Mitch Green
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Avalos.
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Smith.
Aye.
Kanal.
Aye.
Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Morillo.
Angelita Morillo
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Novick.
Steve Novick
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
And the ordinance passes with 11 aye votes.
Thank you very much.
Rebecca, could you please call the next item on the agenda?
Item 8, initiate foreclosure action on 1541 WI/SW Market Street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
And colleagues, I'll note that we've been moving through our kind of seasonal process around foreclosures There are 4 items that have not yet been dealt with by the property owners and are coming before us on second reading today for a vote.
Seeing no one in the queue for discussion on this item, Becca, could you please call the roll?
Green.
Mitch Green
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Avalos.
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Smith.
Aye.
Canal.
Aye.
Ryan.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Ordinance passes with 11 aye votes.
Thank you.
Could you please read us our next foreclosure item?
Item 9, initiate foreclosure action on 1541 Southwest Market Street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
Thank you, colleagues.
Seeing no one in the queue for discussion, we'll move to a vote.
Rebecca?
Aye.
Green?
Mitch Green
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Zimmerman?
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Dunphy?
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Smith?
Aye.
Knell?
Aye.
Ryan?
Dan Ryan
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Koyama Lane?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Murillo?
Angelita Morillo
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Novick?
Steve Novick
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Pirtle-Guiney?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Ordinance passes with 11 aye votes.
Thank you.
Could you please read us our next foreclosure item?
Item 10, initiate foreclosure action on 3821 Northwest St. Helens Road for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
Thank you, colleagues.
Seeing no one in the queue for discussion, we'll move to a vote.
Green?
Mitch Green
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Ordinance passes with 11 aye votes.
Okay, we're gonna move on to the, I think, final foreclosure item now.
Item 11, initiate foreclosure action on 5130 Southeast 84th Ave for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
Colleagues, seeing no one in the queue for discussion, we will move to a vote on this one as well.
Green?
Mitch Green
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Zimmerman?
Steve Novick
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Avalos?
Dan Ryan
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Aye.
Loretta Smith
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Nell?
Loretta Smith
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Ryan?
Dan Ryan
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Koyama Lane?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Murillo?
Angelita Morillo
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Novick?
Steve Novick
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Pirtle-Guiney?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
And the ordinance passes with 11 aye votes.
Thank you.
And once you have a minute to take your breath— I know that was quick— could you read us our next agenda item?
Agenda item 12.
Item 12, authorize Bureau of Transportation to acquire Certain temporary rights necessary for the construction of the Northeast Shaver Sidewalk 102nd to 115th Avenue project through the exercise of the city's eminent domain authority.
Thank you.
And colleagues, this came out of the Finance Committee.
We have Christopher Herr here with a committee staff summary.
Good morning, Madam President, Madam Vice President, councilors.
For the record, Christopher Herr, Council Operations Policy Analyst, and I serve as staff to the Finance Committee.
The ordinance before you, document number 2025-330, was considered in the Finance Committee on September 8th, where it was referred to full council with a recommendation to pass.
The ordinance authorizes the acquisition of certain property interests as identified in Exhibits 1 through 57 necessary for the completion of the Northeast Shaver Sidewalk, 102nd to 115th Avenue project.
The ordinance grants the Portland Bureau of Transportation, PBOT, the authority to use eminent domain Thank you.
The ordinance authorizes PBOT to enter into negotiations pursuant to Section 9-108 of the city charter and in accordance with eminent domain procedures provided for in Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 35, Eminent Domain, Public Acquisition of Property, to acquire these interests if voluntary agreements cannot be reached with property owners.
The ordinance further authorizes PBOT staff and the City Attorney's Office to negotiate with affected property owners regarding compensation, and if negotiations are unsuccessful, the city may initiate and pursue condemnation proceedings Yes.
The ordinance also authorizes PBOT to evaluate the continuing necessity of each acquisition and, as appropriate, reduce or abandon any acquisition identified in the exhibits.
Additionally, it authorizes the creation of a subfund in an amount estimated to cover just compensation for each property interest, and if necessary, funds may need to be may be deposited with the court where legal proceedings are initiated.
Full impact statements on this item includes a financial and budget's impact and analysis and community impacts and community involvement.
There was no verbal or written testimony on this ordinance prior to committee action.
This concludes the committee staff summary.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Councilor Zimmerman, do you have anything to add to that?
Sidewalks to schools requires a little bit of land.
It passed unanimously.
Thank you, Councilor.
Colleagues, are there any technical questions?
I believe, uh, Rebecca, do we have anybody signed up for testimony?
Rebecca Dobert
No one signed up.
Unidentified speaker
Okay, so let's take any questions then about this agenda item.
Councilor Dunphy.
Thank you.
Yeah, um, this is right by my house in Parkrose.
This is fantastic, and all of the neighbors are very excited.
There are a number of little Street signs in people's yards saying sidewalk coming soon.
And selfishly, I'm excited about this because my daughter will now have a space to walk to her middle school on a sidewalk on a road that has a bus.
It is a scary street.
That said, there has been a question raised by neighbors, and I don't know if anyone here can actually answer this or not, but it comes to assessed property value.
Obviously, having infrastructure makes your property worth more money.
Jamie Dunphy
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
A lot of my neighbors are house rich, cash poor, and are worried about whether these infrastructure improvements will raise their taxable— their property taxes in the coming years.
Do we have anybody who knows how these things work who might be able to help us understand what the impact might be?
I see a combination of folks coming up, including Deputy City Administrator Donnie Oliveira.
Priya Dhanapal, why don't you bring up whoever from your team might be able to talk about past practice?
I'm not sure that we have our finance experts in the room.
We have an appraiser and a former tax official over here.
We do have a councilor who is a former appraiser and tax official who could help as well.
But let's let the DCA kick us off and then we'll come to you, Councilor Zimmerman.
Priya Dhanapal
Good morning.
Unidentified speaker
For the record, this is Priya Dhanapal, DCA for Public Works, and it's my understanding I'm understanding from my team that it does not impact, but I'm going to let them take— go into the details.
Definitely.
My name is Marty Maloney with PBOT Right-of-Way.
I'm a project supervisor.
So it's kind of tough to answer your question.
It's a little bit subjective.
I know with the assessments, it's usually—.
That's Multnomah County that actually handles that.
There is studies that there is some sort of an increase if you actually add infrastructure.
In front of the properties, but I cannot really tell you exactly what that would be.
You know, so I'm sorry to not be able to really answer it, but there is a little bit, I guess you could say.
If I can jump in just a little bit.
So this is a public improvement.
It will be on public property, not on private property.
It may at some point in some indirect way affect real market value of the property, but it should not affect assessed value of property.
So it shouldn't affect a tax bill.
Thank you.
Thank you all.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
We have—.
Unidentified speaker
We do have some additional questions, so please don't go far.
And I'm gonna look to Councilor Zimmerman.
If there's anything wearing your previous hats and expertise that you want to add to that explanation, please go ahead.
Yeah, Mike nailed it, right?
It will increase people's values potentially, but Oregon law does not allow that to directly affect the taxes that one would pay unless they were in such a deep compression that they are paying on their real market value, which almost no properties in Portland are doing right now.
So I would, I would tell your neighbors to not worry and enjoy the increase in their value with, with the same taxes.
Thank you.
Anything further, Councilor Dunphy?
Okay, Councilor Avalos.
Yeah, I don't have a question, but I just wanted to show my support for this investment in District 1, where, as we know, we are lacking in safe sidewalks.
And this project specifically reflects years of advocacy from the Parkrose community, including Councilor Dunphy here, our proud Parkrose councilor.
And this is going to make our communities safer for students and families and neighbors to walk, also improving the transit access is key.
And of course, we cannot forget the impact on the environment, which is another area that we need to continue to increase our efforts in D1.
But this is the kind of equity-focused investment that East Portland absolutely deserves.
So I just want to thank PBOT and all of the community advocates for helping to bring this project to life.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
This project is really great.
I see how it's thoughtfully created with safety, schools, and overall setting, including trees in mind.
As Councilor Dunphy mentioned, even for his own kid, this is a key school route for kids to Parkrose Middle and High School, and know that it was a specific route that was highlighted in the Safe Routes to School outreach process held throughout 2017.
I saw that the plan incorporates steps to connect property owners and residents this fall, to connect with them, which is great, and also am excited that The plan incorporates options for protecting existing trees to support tree, uh, that support tree health and updating existing stormwater systems to improve drainage and filter pollutants in this on the street.
And I also appreciate seeing the ADA compliance in there with the curb ramps.
This is just a great project shaped by great planning, coordination between bureaus, engagement with the community.
To meet the needs of our constituents, and I'm excited to see more projects like this from the city.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Madam President.
So everybody knows how I feel about sidewalks.
This is amazing, and I'm deeply passionate about expanding our sidewalks in District 1, and I'm glad that it's fairly close to you and the Safe Routes school, uh, Councilor Dunphy.
Um, and needless to say, I will be supporting this project, and I, I will be enthusiastically supporting this project.
And also reminding folks, on November 17th, SIP, the Sidewalk Improvement and Paving Program bill, it is going before the Finance Committee on November 17th.
So thank you, and thank you, PBOT, for all that work, because it makes a big, big difference.
Thank you, Councilor.
Colleagues, I am not seeing any other discussion.
This is a first reading of a non-emergency ordinance, um, so we will bring this back at a future meeting, probably our next meeting, uh, for a vote.
Thank you very much.
Rebecca, could you please read our next agenda item?
Item 13, authorize the Bureau of Transportation to acquire certain temporary rights necessary for the construction of Northeast 122nd Ave Safety and Access Beach Street/Wasco Street project through the exercise of the city's eminent domain authority.
Thank you, colleagues.
This is another, uh, similar issue, a different Street that came through the Finance Committee.
Christopher Hare, could you please give us the committee staff summary?
Hello again.
For the record, Christopher Hare, Council Operations Policy Analyst, and I serve as staff to the Finance Committee.
The ordinance before you, document number 2025-366, was considered in the Finance Committee on September 22nd, where it was referred to full council with a recommendation to pass.
The ordinance authorizes the acquisition of certain property interests Yes.
The ordinance grants the Portland Bureau of Transportation, PBOT, the authority to use eminent domain pursuant to Section 9-108 of the City Charter and in accordance with eminent domain procedures provided in Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 35, Eminent Domain, Public Acquisition of Property, to acquire these interests if voluntary agreements cannot be reached with property owners.
The ordinance further authorizes PBOT staff and the City Attorney's Office to negotiate with affected property owners regarding compensation.
If negotiations are unsuccessful, the city may initiate and pursue condemnation proceedings to determine just compensation or resolve other matters appropriate for judicial review without expanding the jurisdiction of the court beyond those determinations.
The ordinance also authorizes PBOT to evaluate the continuing necessity of each acquisition and, as appropriate, reduce or abandon any acquisitions Additionally, it authorizes the creation of a subfund in an amount estimated to cover just compensation for each property interest, and if necessary, funds may be deposited with the court where legal proceedings are initiated.
The full impact statement on this item includes a financial and budgets impact and analysis and community impacts and community involvement.
There was no verbal or written testimony on this ordinance prior to committee action.
This concludes the committee staff summary.
Thank you, Deputy City Administrator Donnie Oliveira.
Thank you.
Thank you, Christopher.
Councilor Zimmerman, anything to add?
Just like sidewalks to schools, safety improvements on 122nd require a little land, and it passed unanimously.
Thank you, Councilor.
Um, Rebecca, as we plan for the discussion, has anybody signed up for public testimony here?
Rebecca Dobert
No one has signed up.
Unidentified speaker
Okay, great.
So why don't we move into a, a full discussion?
Councilor Avalos?
Yeah, thank you.
Um, just wanted to express similarly my support of this investment, but in particular I wanted to just daylight that over the last year during my constituent days, I've knocked on a lot of doors along 122nd, and I heard often that speeding traffic and unsafe crossings were putting their families at risk.
In fact, when I was knocking on doors, the cars were speeding past, and so they're like, you see, this is what's happening on our streets.
So these signals at Beach, Russell, and Broadway are going to make one of our busiest arterials And this is about saving lives and responding directly to what District 1 neighbors have asked for.
And lastly, I'll just say, I think that I'll flag for PBOT.
I often hear on the doors about these speed issues, and I have— my team has been working with you all to talk about ordering speed safety studies.
But in general, just know it might be a little bit of a wait.
Candace Avalos
Councilor Herbold.
Unidentified speaker
Time to look at what are our speed safety studies going on for District 1, and maybe we need to increase some on specific roads that I've heard, um, because I'm getting, um, people are coming to me with specific streets that have a bunch of potholes and have, um, unsafe speeding that they want addressed.
And so just know that I'll be following up with you all on, um, ordering those studies.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Dunphy.
Thank you.
Uh, yeah, kudos for this.
This is fantastic.
Jamie Dunphy
122Nd Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Walking is scary.
People die.
And this will directly lead to better results for the community.
The northern part of this stretch of this project in particular is really scary.
The area where 122nd goes under I-84 is really not walkable, is really not passable by people with strollers or with wheelchairs.
And this, I hope, will lead to some really important infrastructure improvements.
And I'm just grateful for every dollar we are spending east of Thank you, Madam President.
I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, PBOT, for the progress and the significant improvements, infrastructure improvements that you've made in District 1.
I see these investments as critical to giving these communities meaning and grounding, especially after we passed Vision Zero.
I think it's important to reshape how we view this important district.
I think it's one of the most dynamic districts in the city.
And that being said, the fact that we just did a grand opening for Mill Park with the Portland Parks Bureau, this is very exciting to me.
This is, this is good stuff that we're doing to make sure that District 1 has the same opportunities, infrastructure, infrastructure, um, and use of city properties.
But I do have one question.
Do, do you foresee significant lane closures on 122nd as a part of this, this project if it's approved today?
Do you see— Donnie, do you have somebody from your team who could answer that question?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
Um, We have Brian Poole from PBOT here to answer the question.
Thank you.
Hey, councilors.
For the record, Brian Poole.
I'm a capital project manager with Portland Bureau of Transportation.
We will have some lane closures only for temporary traffic control, and that would really just be where they're setting the foundations for the signal poles and doing the necessary cuts into the pavement for the ramp rebuild.
But they would not be permanent.
So once the construction was done, it would—.
But will this be during the day or in the evening?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
During the day.
Unidentified speaker
Okay, okay, great.
And we usually have restrictions in place.
So during the busiest times of travel, the contractor's not allowed to work.
Okay, okay, excellent.
Thank you so much for the work that you all are doing.
I'm loving it.
I'm loving this, Ms. Priya.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Of course.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you all.
Colleagues, I don't see any other questions or comments in the queue.
This is a first reading of a non-emergency ordinance, so I'm going to move this to second reading, likely at our next meeting on the 8th.
Rebecca, could you please call agenda items 15 and 16?
Oh wait, wait a minute, we need to do 14 and 15.
14 And 15, I believe we're doing those 2 together.
Rebecca Dobert
Yes.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Item 14, declare property at an unnamed road off Northeast 33rd Drive as surplus and authorize the Bureau of Transportation to dispose of the property by sale to WPC Marine LLC.
Item 15, vacate a portion of an unnamed road near the intersection of Northeast 33rd Drive and Northeast Marine Drive subject to certain conditions and reservations.
Thank you.
And colleagues, you may have seen these previously on a council agenda item and then they were pulled back by the Bureau.
There was a little more work that they wanted to do.
So these have now come back through the Finance Committee.
Christopher, would you like to give us the committee staff summary?
Yes, thank you, Madam President.
Once again, Christopher Herrick, Council Operations, service staff to the Finance Committee.
So the ordinances before you, documents number 2025-01-01, Thank you.
Thank you, Mayor.
Councilmember Sawant.
Second.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Aye.
Motion passes.
Ordinances 2025-250 and 2025-251 were first considered by the Finance Committee on June 23rd and referred to full council with a recommendation to pass, as the president identified.
However, they were referred back to the committee after the 40 Mile Loop Land Trust raised clarifying questions, and the ordinances were then heard again in Finance Committee on September 22nd and once again referred to council with a recommendation to pass.
The ordinances declare a city-owned 1.1-acre Thank you.
Councilmember Sawant, the ordinance authorizes the city to declare a 1-acre parcel of land identified as tax lot R705263 and located near Northeast 33rd Drive and Northeast Marine Drive as surplus property.
The ordinance authorizes the Portland Bureau of Transportation, PBOT, to sell the property to WPC Marine LLC or its successors in interest.
As part of the sale, the city will retain a 20-foot-wide easement for an existing storm sewer line to ensure maintenance access for the Bureau of Environmental Services.
Additionally, a 30-foot-wide trail easement will be preserved for future development of the Marine Drive 40 Mile Loop Trail.
The property's current market value is $310,000, representing discounts deducted for the trail and sewer easements and remaining street vacation processing costs.
Any sale proceeds will be allocated to PBOT's FY 2025-26 budget.
In conjunction, the ordinance document number 2025-251 Second.
Rebecca Dobert
Second.
Unidentified speaker
Motion passes.
Item number 7, vacates a portion of the adjacent unnamed road near the same intersection of Northeast 33rd Drive and Northeast Marine Drive.
The full impact statements on these items includes financial and budgetary impacts and analysis, economic and real estate development impacts, community impacts, and community involvement.
One person provided verbal testimony in committee during the September 22nd meeting, and one person submitted written testimony prior to committee action on on September 22nd.
General themes of testimony included the surplus property and street vacation process and the Southern Trail easement and its potential for accommodating future developments of the Marine Drive 40 Mile Loop Trail.
This concludes the committee staff summary.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Councilor Zimmerman, do you have anything to add?
I don't.
Thank you.
Okay.
It passed unanimously.
Great.
Colleagues, we do have a few people signed up for public testimony, so let's take any technical questions now save our comments and broader remarks until after public testimony.
Councilor Green?
Okay.
Councilor Ryan?
Oh, sure.
Thank you, Council President.
This is a procedure question.
I think I know the answer, but maybe I don't.
This, when I first look at these last items, I would think, oh, maybe this is in the Transportation Infrastructure Committee.
And yet I get that it's vacate.
So I probably know that Councilor Zimmerman and Councilor Clark have dialogue when they kind of cross over like that?
I'm just curious.
So asking for a friend.
These items that— it most often happens, I think, between Finance and Transportation, but there are other areas like this as well where there's some overlap.
But it's not a question about the policy.
It's not a question about our policies around where and when we vacate things or what roads we Mm-hmm.
Those policy decisions have been made, and the question before us is really one of the finances and the implementation of that policy.
Those items go to the Finance Committee, and my request to the staff bringing those items forward is always that they give the chair of the appropriate policy committee a heads up so that if that item is going to be moved forward, chair wants to take the opportunity to also have a discussion and a review of the policy decisions, they're able to use that moment to have that discussion as well.
Thank you, Council President.
I thought— I think this daylighting was necessary.
Thanks.
Absolutely.
Always happy to have those conversations.
I know sometimes they get lost in the shuffle of all the other things we're doing.
Why don't we hear from members of the public, and then we'll move back to Jared Wadimal and Walter Valenta, you can both come to the testimony table.
Rebecca Dobert
Jared, you're up first.
Unidentified speaker
And we are taking testimony on both of these items.
I believe some people have signed up for both.
Please feel free to provide your full testimony right now.
Okay, thank you so much, Madam President.
My name is Jared Wadimal.
Managing Director for Waldemar Properties, and we're the owner of the property in question.
WPC Marine LLC is our entity.
So I'm in town today and wanted to show my support for this and just thank the staff for all their hard work and thank all of you for, you know, working on this.
And I think this makes a lot of sense for you as the city and us as the property owner.
So just thank you for your time.
Thank you for being here.
And making sure that we know that you all are supportive.
Go right ahead.
Hi, my name's Walter Valenta.
I'm on the 40 Mile Loop Land Trust, and we're here to support the proposal.
The 40 Mile Loop was originally proposed by the Olmsted brothers when they came to Portland to do the master plan in 1905.
They're the ones that designed Central Park, and all the cities decided that they wanted to have that sort of effort here.
And that's where the original 40-mile loop came from.
Then in 1983, Barbara Walker and Multnomah County and the City of Portland revisited that, and we came up with the current configuration, which is really more 140 miles of a looping trail throughout the whole county.
So the Springwater Corridor is part of the 40-mile loop.
Forest Park is part of the 40-mile loop.
The Barbara Walker—.
Forest Park.
Land Bridge over Burnside was named in the honor of the founder.
And we are about 80% complete on this loop.
All the easy parts of this loop have been done.
So now we're in the hard parts.
And they rely on people like your property because we dovetail off of other people's work to build this thing, to save the city money and to do things.
So first off, we want to thank you.
Thank you.
You really stepped up to help on this.
And we know we asked a lot and the city asked a lot, but that's how we have to do it.
After this, then it's gonna go to the Port property and they're gonna pony up 'cause they've been really good.
But then it connects up to the new levy safety program that you guys are approving funding for as well because they're gonna build part of this 40-mile loop 'cause that's how we're doing it, increment by increment.
Like this.
And even though we rely a lot on people's proposals that they're going to develop property or build something to dovetail off of, we are still going to need the city to help in little pieces because there's going to be missing pieces even with this.
This will create another big hunk of the 40-mile loop along the Marine Drive Trail.
So we're here to support that.
We think the trails make Portland great and we're proud to be part of this.
We've been an organization for 42 years.
Thank you.
And we want to complete the loop.
So thank you for your help.
And thank you.
Thank you very much.
I know there were some questions about how this fit with the loop, so it's good to have you here as well to offer that support.
Rebecca, do we have any further public testimony?
Rebecca Dobert
That completes testimony.
Unidentified speaker
Okay, thank you both.
I think we'll move in.
Oh, Rebecca, I see somebody with their hand up.
Why don't we move to— I think we need to get you formally signed in.
So why don't I hear from our next councilor while our staff get you signed in, and then we'll take your testimony as well.
Yeah, if you want to work with Rebecca right there.
And Councilor Green, go right ahead.
Thank you, Madam President.
I plan to support this.
I supported it when it came through the Finance Committee, and I heard it But I want to highlight this specific action as what I think is a really good example of how our new form of government should work.
It iterated, it went to a committee, there was some discussion, it went back, and there was some reworking, and there was some dialogue with the public that was facilitated through this committee structure and the bureaus.
This was a case where there was a meaningful pinch point between the parties involved and also the interests of the city.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
And through that negotiation and sort of the conversation that had happened, we got to a place that I think makes everyone better off, which is what we want, right?
I also think about this from the standpoint of land use.
We've got really important conversations emerging with the economic opportunities analysis right now, which is all about do we have sufficient capacity for our types of land use, but in particular industrial land.
Here's a very low— I think that's a great point.
Low-hanging fruit thing that we did to expand the capabilities and capacity for one parcel of industrial land that, as it currently sits, is limited because there is this city right-of-way that runs through it.
And so I raise all that because it's those little choices that we're going to make that are not always on the surface that big of a deal, but they add up to being a big deal over time.
And so—.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Thanks to everyone involved in this.
Thanks to the parties for, for having that good faith discussion and giving us a lot to think about.
So I'm definitely going to be supporting this.
Thank you, Councilor.
It looks like we're still getting our last speaker signed up.
Testimony's concluded.
We're good to go.
Oh, okay.
Um, and I will move to my remarks.
Uh, colleagues, when this first When this first came to committee, I had some questions about how this interacted with the 40 Mile Loop Trail and some of the other development that needs to happen in this specific area at this intersection, which lies actually at the intersection between my district and District 1.
And I was assured, yes, those things were fine.
We found out then that there were some potential pinch points, some rub points, as Councilor Green mentioned.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
So this was reworked, and I just want to offer my gratitude.
I know that the folks who had originally had some concerns were working with staff at PBOT, and I was told that they were especially grateful for the work of Kevin Ballick, Matt Groom, Zeph Wagner, Lance Lindahl, and Sarah Johnston for really being collaborative and helping to find solutions.
And that the work that both the city did and that the 40 Mile Loop group did with Marine LLC, with the company that is acquiring this property, which employs 88 people, by the way, in our city, was very collaborative as well, and that everybody was working well together as they moved forward.
So I just wanted to give that shout out and my appreciation that we have come up with a solution that I have the misfortune of following the thank you with pretty much all the same thank yous.
I also just want to pile on and say ditto, and I'll leave it at that.
Thanks.
Colleagues, this is a first reading of a non-emergency— of 2 non-emergency ordinances.
Is there any other discussion?
Seeing Discussion none, we'll move forward with the first reading.
Before we move them both to second reading?
Okay, seeing none, these will come back likely at our next meeting, though that agenda is starting to get pretty full, um, for second reading and a vote upon their passage.
Colleagues, we have about an hour and a half of meeting left, so I want to give us just a 15-minute break so that our staff can take a quick pause before we keep going, since we do have that much time left.
So I'm going to call a brief recess.
Let's be back here at 11:58 to reconvene the meeting.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
11:58.
Unidentified speaker
Welcome— oh, welcome back.
We are going to— I don't know if this is on.
Okay, there we go.
Welcome back.
We are going to re— uh, restart our council meeting today.
I believe, colleagues, we are on agenda item 16.
Rebecca, could you please call the agenda item?
Item 16, establish a charge to fund city payment of the flood safety benefit fee to the Urban Flood Safety and Water Quality District.
Thank you very much.
Christopher Hare, would you like to give us our committee staff summary?
Claire Adamsick
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
Hello, it is me again, Christopher Hare, Council Operations Policy Analyst, and I serve as staff to the Finance Committee.
The ordinance before you, document number 2025-365, was considered in the Finance Committee on September 22nd, Where it was referred to full council with a recommendation to pass.
The ordinance establishes an Urban Flood Safety and Water Quality District reimbursement fee to be assessed by the Portland Water Bureau and collected through customers' regular water, sewer, and stormwater utility bills.
This fee will reimburse the general fund for contributions to the flood safety benefit fee, currently estimated at $5.3 million.
The ordinance introduces a new line item on all customer utility bills.
The residential rate is set Yes.
The fee is set at $1.20 per dwelling unit per monthly billing cycle.
A discounted rate will be applied for qualifying low-income customers consistent with existing discount programs for water, sewer, and stormwater charges.
For nonresident accounts, the fee will be calculated at 0.9% of the net utility bill.
The total first-year revenue from the fee is projected at $7,186,085.
With $5,741,158 as revenue after accounting for undercollection, low income, and administrative costs.
The full impact statement on this item includes the financial and budget impacts and analysis and community impacts and community involvement.
There was no verbal or written testimony on this ordinance prior to committee action.
And that concludes the committee staff summary.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Councilor Zimmerman, anything to add?
Yeah, thanks.
Let me just check, is there a staff presentation on this or is it going to remain at the committee level?
The staff presentation is going to remain at the committee level, but we do have Jonas here if there are specific pieces that we need to make sure everybody sees.
Great.
So given that, I just want to highlight a couple of things.
So this is an important ordinance for us today because Yes.
You may have remembered previously you used to see things like the drainage district, right, a bunch of special districts.
Their funding models from eras bygone really stopped being effective.
And if you understand the geography of Portland and the way that our levy systems and everything works together in North Portland to keep Portland A dry and unflooded area, these drainage districts really matter.
A couple of years ago, legislation moved this into a single entity, and we are now in the first year of that at this point.
That's really important.
But one of the mechanisms for funding here is what this deals with.
And this takes a bunch of small districts and aligns them into a single district.
And this is how residents of Portland and Given that, there are a couple of models that you are seeing presented today in terms of the city staff's best attempt at how to collect these fees in a way that has as minimal effect on individual and is related to, you know, the size of accounts, et cetera.
So, Councilor Herbold, I think you're going to be the first to speak.
Eric Zimmerman
Thank you, Mayor.
Unidentified speaker
Where we no longer see the tax bills for the drainage districts, we now see this fee coming up.
And so, you know, Jonas is available to go into that, but this is what the Finance Committee tackled when the staff brought this to us.
And what you will see is for residential, a flat rate, and for some commercial, a percentage rate.
I have also emailed you all I have a proposal, an amendment that I have, that Jonas helped me write and that I'm going to propose today.
In case our collections for 3 years are in excess of what needs to be collected, that it automatically triggers a recalculation so that we don't find ourselves in a situation where we have deep overcollections like we've seen in some things recently in our community's history.
So I've sent that amendment to all of you, and once the discussion gets going, I'll propose that formally here in a few minutes.
But it's a bit of a confusing item and not— never fun to add something to a utility bill.
And yet this is probably the best mechanism I think that the city has to be able to collect this in a way that, one, our system is already set up to do that and not overthink a new a new style of collection or payment.
So I'll leave it at that, Madam President, and we can move into if there are technical questions and whatnot.
But please review the materials as they've been sent forward.
Thank you, Councilor, for that overview of the discussion.
That's really helpful.
Rebecca, do we have anybody signed up for public testimony on this item?
Rebecca Dobert
We do not.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
We do not?
Rebecca Dobert
No.
Unidentified speaker
Okay then, colleagues, let's take technical questions and any other Yes, thank you, Madam President, and thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
That was very helpful.
I still have questions about what some examples of alternative options that were considered other than adding the fee to the monthly utility bills that could have worked.
I just wanted to hear what other options we had and why they weren't feasible.
I think it's best to look to our staff on that.
Great, uh, thank you all.
Uh, for the record, Jonas Biery, the city's chief financial officer.
Jonas Biery
Sure.
Unidentified speaker
And maybe just to give a little more context that brought us to this point, there's sort of 2 budget notes that got us to this solution.
So in '24-'25 budget, there was direction to form a work group that looked at a variety of different options.
And so I'll answer your question, Councilor Ryan, as to sort of what options were looked at.
That then directed us towards this on-bill solution.
And so there was a budget note in '25-'26 to proceed with the on-bill, which is what the proposal is here.
There were a suite of other options, you know, unique, kind of the whole universe of possibilities, right?
Is it a new structure, a new unique bill to some combination of payers, whether that be utility customers, Right.
Property tax owners or homeowners, other mechanisms.
Other new types of fees that we could create that are add-ons to other existing fees.
The challenge that the workgroup identified is sort of one of first making sure it's a legal mechanism.
Second, finding a tool that's equitable, that it sort of shares the costs appropriately among both—.
Jonas Biery
Property owners.
Unidentified speaker
Both kind of types of beneficiaries of the existence of the levy and equitable in the context of, you know, our low-income and low-income residents and folks who need that additional support.
And lastly, kind of balancing the ability to administer the fee at a relatively low cost.
So for example, creating a whole new construct on top of the billing and fee constructs we already have is both expensive and sometimes complicated.
So it's a long answer to your question, but essentially that workgroup looked at everything that was potentially feasible and then continued narrowing down those options to what best met those characteristics of legal, equitable, and efficiently administratable.
That was an appropriate answer.
Workgroups, have complex problems to solve.
And but just for the record, so it'll be $3.60 every quarter that a resident will see on their bill?
Jonas Biery
Correct.
Unidentified speaker
An additional $3.60?
Correct.
For a residential customer, single-family residential customer with a quarterly bill.
Those of us that pay this bill, we all saw the big increase just recently.
And so that's an add-on.
And when will that show up on our bills?
Yeah, so the direction in the budget note and Authorization in the ordinances that that would be effective July 1st, 2026.
And I do just want to be clear for folks watching that while it shows up on the utility bill as the collection mechanism, it is not a utility resource.
It doesn't touch the utility system.
It's collected via that existing mechanism and it'll go directly essentially into the general fund where that payment is then made.
So while I acknowledge, we all acknowledge it will feel like it's a utility charge because of the tool that it shows up on.
It is not a utility revenue.
It doesn't touch the utility bureaus.
And what other municipalities are involved in this?
Fairview, Troutdale, Gresham?
Gresham, Wood Village, Multnomah County.
I think that's all of them.
And 2 of them, I forget which ones, but 2 of them already use this mechanism, this on-bill fee mechanism to collect this specific charge.
There are also a couple dozen other cities around the state, at least, who collect this— not this specific fee, but use this mechanism to meet other fee obligations.
And is their decision similar to ours, to their residents?
Because we're in a shared responsibility here, correct, with other municipalities that pay this bill?
I would say that the statute that creates the obligation to make the payment to the district Essentially defers to the local jurisdictions to identify the best mechanism for them to pay.
And so this would put us consistent with at least 2 of those jurisdictions.
I think the county is the only remaining that still pays directly from their general fund.
Okay, I think getting the information on what the other municipalities chose to do with the same situation, I assume that they're all gonna land in the same place, but I'm curious.
Yeah, gimme a second.
I can, it's in the presentation here.
I can give you the details on which cities do what.
If I can put my fingers on it.
So Gresham and Wood Village have a new line item for FSB on their utility bills.
And then—.
The same amount?
It's comparable.
Yeah, I think one of them might be slightly higher.
We know we obviously, we structured ours to minimize the, to only collect the minimum amount that was necessary to meet the obligation.
I think they're all around it.
I'm officially taking up too much time.
I don't wanna take up too much time, but I'd like to know what the other ones are.
Yeah, I believe they're both Gresham and Wood Village are within between $1 and $1.50.
So we're within that same range.
Yeah, thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Dunphy.
Thank you.
Councilor Ryan asked a lot of my questions that I was trying to get at, but I'm looking at the— if I'm reading this correctly, the city general fund has already contributed towards this.
Upfront, and is the expectation that this collection will reimburse the general fund, or is it just an ongoing new general fund element?
Yeah, good question, Councilor.
So '24-'25 was the first year that the city had this payment obligation.
It was paid directly from general fund discretionary.
In '25-'26, current fiscal year, the budget includes a payment for this fiscal year.
So this full fiscal year will be paid for from that general fund discretionary amount.
Starting July 1st, if this ordinance proceeds, that will not be paid any longer ongoing.
It will not be a general fund expenditure and it'll be paid from collections via this fee.
Those funds will transfer into the general fund.
The general fund will still then make the payment, but it will come via this revenue stream.
But there's not an expectation at this time that the utilities will be reimbursing the general fund for the $5-ish million that went from '24-'25?
Yeah, no, correct.
This is just ongoing beginning July 1st.
I-1.
It just shifts the revenue stream so that it comes from this fee rather than from any other source.
Great.
And then Councilor Ryan was starting to get to this also, but are there other wholesale customers that we have from the Water Bureau that are not adjusting their programs?
Is there any other effect to our wholesale customer program that we don't know about?
I would have to defer to the Water Bureau on I don't know that— I mean, I don't think there's any impact to the fee, the charges for those wholesale customers as a result of this relationship.
Great.
Yeah, that's—.
Oh, and second, in this circumstance, I mean, you know, I appreciate that we have different calculations for residential versus for non-residential, but the bulk of this collection will be coming from residential customers.
Primarily the 4 cents per day rather than the fee or the percentage increase.
Is that correct or has that— am I backwards?
Look, I'm trying to pull up that spreadsheet.
I'm not sure off the top of my head how that split comes in buckets between total residential and total non-residential.
Give me a second.
If you want to continue, I can try to come back and look that up and try to come back to that.
Are you sure?
Yeah, Jonas, if you want to just follow up with me later, I'm happy.
Yeah, great.
Yeah, yeah, happy to do that.
Thank you.
Okay, perfect.
It sounds like we'll get some follow-up there.
And I saw DCA Dhanapal standing up, but maybe if we can get follow-up from the Water Bureau to Councilor Dunphy in the future, that would be great.
This is a first reading, so we're not voting today, Councilor.
Thank you, Madam President.
Colleagues, I just kind of wanted to share some of my thinking in the discussion we had in the Finance Committee when we talked about this.
I sometimes put the old rate-setting utility guy hat on when I look at this stuff, and I put That's a good thing, right?
So when I first saw the proposal, I said, okay, great.
This is a cost recovery rate setting structure or fee setting structure that's designed to offset essentially the unfunded liability that we now face from this new Flood Safety Board fee structure, which the City of Portland doesn't set that rate.
There's another board that sets this rate.
And so we are responding to that rate.
And so then we have to choose how we do so in a way that has the kind of the social costs in mind.
And what I see here was an effort to make the payment obligation scaled for every resident on a per-door basis.
So you'll see the rate be slightly higher as a percentage of a bill for multifamily.
But if you break that out and do the math on a per-door basis, everyone's basically paying the same amount.
It is an in-rem fee, which means that the dollar change does not change unless we change the rate schedule.
So if a bill goes up, the proportion relative to the bill will fall over time.
So I think that's important to note, except for the industrial or the non-residential customers.
And that's pretty common in a rate-setting environment to say, look, part of this is like capturing the benefits of also the service being provided.
And for our industrial and commercial customers, there's large economic benefits associated with having a city that doesn't flood.
So when I thought about all this together, I thought, okay, this is pretty reasonable.
The sort of monetary impact is also de minimis.
And then it's still eligible for, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jonas, but for the low-income discount program.
Is that true?
That's correct.
It's eligible under the same criteria as the utility bill low-income program.
Great.
So, and then we had some really good, I think, robust discussion on, you know, how do you then adjust this over time?
And that gets to what the councilor to my left is going to introduce in a little bit.
And I think that gets me to where I need to be on the amendment that's going to come forward as sort of a reasonable structure to revisit and say, are we right-sized on this fee?
Structure, and is it really capturing our true cost to the board as a whole?
So that's what I said at the Finance Committee, and that's what was my thinking since then.
And so I just wanted to share that for folks who didn't have the benefit of that experience.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Kanal.
Thank you, Madam President.
So first off, I appreciate this conversation from both Councilors Zimmerman and Green.
When I first read about this, My first question was what happens to the extra money?
And, you know, we've seen in other collection schemes around the region what— how that is affected when public— how public opinion is affected when its collection is greater than expected.
I did want to ask, there was a workgroup created.
Was there any community engagement on it?
Were there ratepayers on the workgroup?
Yeah, the work teams.
Good question.
These were internal teams only.
So there is— and so the couple of touchpoints have been both because these have both been via budget notes.
That is an opportunity for public input.
I don't think we received any specifically on those.
I understand there's a lot going on in the budget.
But— and then we have, along with the Water Bureau, given a presentation to the Portland Utility Board.
Um, uh, in advance of, of this fee, kind of a preview of, of what was to come.
And I believe that's scheduled to come back to the Portland Utility Board with an update, uh, next week or at their next meeting.
Um, then one of the next major steps, uh, will be to start doing that outreach.
There was sort of a— we discussed a little bit at Finance Committee, a little bit of a chicken or, chicken or egg.
Uh, you know, do we do all of that community work, uh, and then come back with a proposal to council that's less Less supported, or do we come back with sort of our best guess at something that's realistic and meets those, the criteria I mentioned earlier, and then do that outreach?
And that was very, you know, obviously that's a difficult balance to thread, a difficult needle to thread.
So there were not— short answer, there were not community members on those work teams.
We do have the community engagement officer as a member of the current work team, and she'll be working with the Portland Water Bureau to help communicate this Okay.
I think this gets back to the question of whether or not we as a city understand the difference between community engagement and communications.
I think talking about communicating this out is not something that is the same thing as engagement before a decision is made.
I feel uncomfortable without having consulted ratepayers at all.
I think that's a fair point.
For something that won't take effect till July of next year, which means there is time to do this engagement.
To have that be— that seems cart before horse to me.
I'm going to ask a couple semi-technical questions here.
You mentioned in one of the slides it shows that about $1.4 million is spent on the collective of undercollection, low-income discounts, and administrative costs.
Mitch Green
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
That is all rolled into the cost of the fee because you're deducting it from the gross revenue here in order to get to the $5.7 million that's being collected.
Is that correct?
Yeah, it's a little bit— it's a great flag, Councilor, that the way those are accumulated is a little bit misleading because the low income, you know, for example, the low income will only collect the amount net of the discount.
So we're not collecting that and then giving it back.
Similarly, under collections is just a placeholder estimate of the amount that will not be collected.
So that the number that's listed as the gross is sort of not accurate reflection of what the gross amount that will come into the city.
It's the gross amount that would be produced if we didn't have those other things that exist.
There is a delta above the $5.3 million or $5.5, I think for '26-'27.
Dan Ryan
Yeah.
Unidentified speaker
That is essentially cost recovery to the Water Bureau.
So it's calculated to allow some cost recovery for the Water Bureau.
And I can try to find that amount.
I don't know it off the top of my head, but it's a small and reasonable percentage to accommodate them for the work that they're doing to administer the fee.
Yeah, I'd love that.
But then a follow-up is great.
My question really is, is that paying for the customer service portion and the work that the Water Bureau is going to have have to take on.
Jonas Biery
That's correct.
Unidentified speaker
And the other technical question is, what is the collection mechanism in the event that there is underpayment?
Does it work the same way as water and sewer?
Yeah, essentially, right.
If someone doesn't pay, yeah, then it would go through, assumingly, that same process.
There are some— I'll acknowledge there are some updates to sort of the administrative rules to acknowledge this new fee.
And so there is a little bit of that work to do between council authorization and making it effective July 1st to make sure that those rules and policies are appropriately updated.
Okay.
And then I'll just want to clarify something Councilor Green said.
Was your point about the percentage distinction in terms of how we're charging commercial— I don't know if that was the intent of what you're saying or just a conclusion I drew from it, that you're saying over time the commercial portion will— of the portion of the aggregate dollar amount collected paid by the commercial ratepayers will increase relative to residential over time, as long as inflation on this exceeds 3%.
Is that correct?
Yeah, that's about right.
I think more accurately to what I meant would be that the residential stuff is not indexed.
To rise with inflation.
It is gonna be constant in a current dollar sense.
The 0.9% piece for the non-residential will rise, but it just, it's just gonna be in proportion to the utility bill, which may or may not be at higher or lower than the rate of inflation generally.
Sure, sure, sure, sure.
Thank you for that.
And please always feel free to keep that hat on that you were talking about earlier.
Yeah, so I guess the concern I have broadly with this, it seems like it's well thought out, it seems like it mathematically makes sense, is just the lack of connection with the bill payers on this.
It seems a little fast on it.
I do generally support the concept of the amendment that we're about to hear, by the way, as well.
But I would love to know, I'm not surprised to see that, you know, it's Wednesday morning.
I'm not surprised to see no one's test side of the room.
To testify on something that maybe isn't the best-known proposal that might chip in on, on their— someone's, uh, overall bottom line.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Zimmerman.
Thank you, Madam President.
So, um, there's a great graphic that is involved in your presentation in front of you, and, and for a little bit A little bit of my next minute or so will be a public education moment.
But, you know, we have 27 miles of levees in Multnomah County that reduces the risk of flooding to 13,000 acres, 7,500 residents, 2,500 businesses, and calculated at about 59,000 jobs.
And I think it's helpful as we all understand our system, right?
When it rains or there's snowmelt, we watch the Columbia River rise.
Eric Zimmerman
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
And Marine Drive in large part is the levee, if you are unaware of it, blocks that river from encroaching into the airport, for example.
And then at the same time, it maintains 12 pump— this system maintains 12 pump stations through our sloughs and canals to make sure that water gets to rivers and rivers stay out of our town, right?
And so I think it's— it is a big system.
Eric Zimmerman
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
And when we think about where the levees are located, I think any person can, can note that if you just look at how we interrelate with our community for more than about 10 seconds, you realize we all have a vested interest in this levee system being healthy, functional.
And by the way, it has been under a significant microscope since Hurricane Katrina, which placed on a lot of new federal regulations and important rules with respect to levies and their standards.
And so there's a lot to this.
It was not a perfect approach.
No approach like this is ever going to be perfect.
I do appreciate to the staff, one, the robust conversation with all of us on finance.
I appreciated that we went into some of the nuances and that there is a bit of what I'd call a— I think it's a fair It is the most fair that I've seen in terms of the presentation for how to calculate this rate.
And in theory, to Councilor Green's point, Councilor Kanal's point, as Portland grows in its residential and more doors are up, we see more and more where if it's $1.20 per door, that we may see where we increase our collection past what maybe is needed and what the City of Portland has built.
I think that's a fair point.
And because of that, I want to introduce the amendment that I sent to you all recently.
And the amendment reads, future increases, future changes, if any, to the methodology, rates, and charges can be considered and approved by the council on an annual basis.
Change here is any potential excess amounts collected from the flood safety benefit fee will remain available to pay the urban flood Safety and Water Quality District's fee in future years.
If for three consecutive fiscal years the annual amounts actually collected from the Flood Safety Benefit Fee after administrative costs exceed 10% of the amount the city's annual required payment to the Urban Flood Safety and Water Quality District, staff will prepare an ordinance for council consideration.
To adjust the fee in subsequent fiscal year to avoid continued overcollection.
I would propose that as an amendment and would appreciate a second.
Mitch Green
Second.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Koyama Lane, are you in the queue to the amendment?
Okay, colleagues, is there any discussion of the amendment?
Okay, seeing no discussion of the amendment, Rebecca, Could you please call the roll?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Councilor Zachary Ratajkowski.
Mr. Ratajkowski.
Opposed?
Motion passes unanimously.
Councilor Jamie Dunphy.
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Councilor Mariella Morillo.
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Councilor Janice Herbold.
Unidentified speaker
Aye.
Councilor James Freeman.
Aye.
Councilor Brian Ryan.
Aye.
Councilor Jaime Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Councilor Mike Nowakowski.
Angelita Morillo
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Councilor Jimmie Lee.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Councilor Janet Rivera.
Aye.
Councilor Kenny Womack.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Councilor Jessica Garcia.
Aye.
Councilor John Fairbanks.
Aye.
Councilor Marietta Silva.
Aye.
Councilor Steve Novick.
Thank you.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
I was just going to add that things like the great flood in 1894, Vanport flood, Willamette River flood in 1996, so all reminders that this is really important.
We're prone to flood risk and just want to echo what I heard earlier from my colleague that You know, just as this inter-bureau working group, workforce group met and encouraged and identified that it's important that we have improved community engagement and customer education moving forward.
Thank you, Councilor.
Colleagues, is there any other discussion of the agenda item?
Okay.
Councilor Zimmerman, thank you for bringing that amendment forward.
I know you had discussed that in committee.
Colleagues, seeing no other discussion, we are going to move this to second reading, and we will hear it at our next meeting.
The next 3 items on our agenda moved through committee together, and I'm going to ask the clerk to open them all together so that we can, um, have our discussion and take testimony on them as Rebecca, could you please call agenda items, I believe it's 17, 18, and 19?
Item 17, adopt the Public Street Plaza Program framework to support the creation of a permanent Public Street Plaza Program.
Item 18, authorize exception to Title 17 Underground Wiring Districts Code to allow for the placement of decorative lighting across Portland Bureau of Transportation designated pedestrian plazas and the Skidmore Old Town Historic District and the New Chinatown/Japantown Historic District.
Item 19, amend transportation fee schedule for FY 2025-26 to reflect changes in the plaza use permit program.
Thank you very much.
And Claire, I believe you have a committee staff summary for all 3 of these.
Please go right ahead.
Claire Adamsick
Madam President and councilors, for the record, Claire Adamsick, Council Policy Analyst and staff to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
The resolution and 2 ordinances before you, documents 2025-361, 2025-362, and 2025-363, were all heard in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on September 22nd, where they were referred to council with recommendation of adoption and passage.
The resolution, document 2025-361, directs the creation of a permanent public street plaza program and adopts The resolution directs PBOT to adopt administrative rules and refine fees for plaza use and report to City Council on its progress in implementing actions outlined by the framework within 5 years.
It further directs PBOT staff to explore funding strategies for developing new plazas or upgrading existing plazas and requests partnership from Portland Parks and Recreation to develop a strategic plan for the city's public spaces.
And enhance services districts to develop public-private stewardship strategies in support of long-term plaza operations and maintenance.
The resolution also requests specified city bureaus whose work intersects with the plaza development— with plaza development to work with PBOT to advance plaza upgrades and collaborate in instances where city code changes are necessary to facilitate successful installment or operation of public street plazas.
The first of the 2 ordinances Document 2025-362 authorizes an exception in Portland City Code Title 17, which is underground wiring districts, to allow for PBOT to place overhead decorative lighting in designated pedestrian plazas, and in this specifically in the Skidmore Old Town Historic District and the New Chinatown Japantown Historic District.
The ordinance clarifies that all decorative lighting installations will be subject to city required reviews, approvals, and permits.
The second ordinance, Document 2025-363, amends the transportation fee schedule to align with changes in the plaza use permit program.
The full impact statement on these items includes financial and budgetary impacts and analysis, economic and real estate development impacts, and community impacts and community involvement.
Two people testified during the committee meeting on September 22nd.
There was also invited testimony.
One person submitted written testimony on.
These items prior to committee action, and two people submitted written testimony prior to council agenda posting.
The general themes of the testimony the committee heard included the benefits of standardizing the process for proposing and approving new street plazas and encouraging broader community involvement, livability and safety improvements through the activation of public spaces, concern that street closure for street closure for public plazas may have potential negative road congestion and safety impacts.
Enhance relationships between community members, local artists, makers, and other businesses through street plaza development.
And finally, potential integration of plazas with green corridor planning and the possibility of planting larger shade-producing trees in more permanent plazas.
And that concludes the committee staff summary.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
This committee hearing was chaired by Councilor Clark, who is absent today.
Councilor Morillo, do you have anything you'd like to add for us?
I believe you're vice chair there.
Yeah, this was my favorite committee meeting ever.
We got to talk about plazas and fairy lights, which is everything people like in the world.
So I highly recommend advancing all of this.
But all kidding aside, I think a lot of these programs, you know, are meant to beautify our public spaces, make them safer with public lighting, and I think achieve a lot of the goals that we had discussed about activating public spaces, closing streets, and just enhancing the vision that the City Council has put forward.
So I highly recommend all of these things.
I don't think they went through the committee with any issues that I recall, and hopefully this can be quick.
Thank you, Councilor.
And Rebecca, I believe we do have public testimony.
Is that correct?
We do.
We have 2 people signed up.
First is Alex Morell.
Good morning, Chair and council members.
This topic has a big spot in my heart.
Rebecca Dobert
Please stand.
Unidentified speaker
This topic has a big spot in my heart.
Um, I'm Executive Director of Dream Big City, 27-year owner of a small business, Stickers Asian Cafe, and a Portland native born just blocks from the plaza that we opened.
I have an office right on 9th and Taylor, and outside it was a very dark place with drug dealing, guns, violence.
People were scared to walk through that street.
I had a vision, 4 in the morning, to instead— I love the plazas all around Portland.
They're beautiful.
They support businesses, community, but I wanted to shine a light on the darkest area and bring love to it.
And so I proposed to PBOT about opening an outdoor community center built by the community for the community, and it worked.
We're about 3 and a half months in.
PBOT has a team of people that are amazing.
I've worked with probably 8 to 10 people in PBOT, and they've been creative.
Eric Zimmerman
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
They've like said yes, they've said no, and they've just really saw a vision of making Portland a special place.
We're now, we're months into it.
We activated it.
We had support with Central Eastside Industrial Council.
I built a team of people.
We probably had 100 volunteers.
Also, my previous past, I helped I helped found Creston Skate Park.
We transformed an abandoned tennis court into what became a $5 million skate park project that's still years in the making.
By contrast, we got the permit for Dream Plaza at 3:00 PM and had it activated by 10:00 PM that same day with a basketball hoop, skate ramps, PBOT barriers, PBOT picnic tables.
We did it for $25,000, not $5 million.
Thank you.
We turned a block once avoided for drugs and guns into a safe hub now drawing 200 to 800 people daily.
Some days a 6-year-old will be learning how to drop in on a skate ramp.
Others will have a stroller pass through.
People will grab lunch and eat it at picnic table from a neighboring business.
The businesses come and just are so excited to just bring love to the area.
And we're able to bring safety.
I love the police.
But we're able to do it without police.
We do it through community, through people.
I just really believe in this program.
We've had over 30 sponsors, business sponsors that have donated money and time.
By voting to adopt the PBOT Public Street Plaza program, you'll keep Portland at the forefront of creative community-led public spaces.
Let's dream together, Portland.
My dream is to bring a map out and find the darkest spots in Portland and do this Portland Dream Plaza in all these other locations.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here.
Next we have Thomas Gatley.
Thomas is online.
You can go ahead.
Thank you.
Um, yeah, my name is Thomas.
With my partner Greta, I co-own and operate a gym called Lone Fair Fitness on Stark and 28th.
I'm also the chairman of the Kernside Business Association, so I'm here Speaking on behalf of about 150 now neighborhood businesses and as a District 3 resident, since Councilor Koyama Lane and Sprout joined us to repaint Ankeny Rainbow Road and cut the ribbon in the spring— many thanks for that, Councilor— the Kernside Business Association and our partners have run 3 to 4 events every week on the plaza, including bicycle happy hours, free public workout classes, live music collaboration with Curbside Serenade, comedy with And as the mayor will testify, we've even had some pretty lively public debate on the street.
At a rough estimate, these events have brought about 4,000 folks out to mingle and enjoy themselves over the course of the summer, and many thousands more come to the plaza over the course of the week to sit under the shade of trees and pergolas to drink coffee and have a snack.
Thank you.
Eat, work, and socialize.
Conservatively, if we assume about 10,000 visits over the summer spending $20 to $30 each nearby, we're talking several hundred thousand dollars of sales for small businesses in the immediate area, all of whom pay tax to the city and employ dozens of local people.
That's a pretty phenomenal return on $20,000 or so of city investment in purely economic terms, and that doesn't even begin to cover the social and mental health benefits.
Our street plaza on Acadia and 28th has become Thank you.
Thank you, Mayor Wilson.
This is a bit of a town square for Kerns, Buckman, Sunnyside, and Laurelhurst.
Community is just a word thrown around online until people can regularly see, recognize, and break bread— or croissant in this instance— next to one another.
And I think plazas play that role.
They help us to realize, whether we're renters, homeowners, or business owners, whatever our age, origins, or politics, that the things we have in common are so much more abundant and so much more important than the things which divide us.
So thank you to Greg Raisman and to the whole team for giving us a foundation upon which to build a better, safer, more socially dynamic, and more prosperous neighborhood.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Rebecca Dobert
That completes testimony.
Unidentified speaker
Okay, colleagues, I suspect that there's a lot folks want to say here.
Councilor Dunphy?
Yeah, thank you.
I have 3 things to say.
First, this is fantastic work.
Fantastic and so aligns with my core thesis of why I wanted to run for office and empowering communities to activate public spaces in a way that actually drives community safety.
That it's unreasonable at this point for us to assume we will ever be able to hire enough cops to get the kind of safety that people think they want, and that people being around the public and being around each other is actually how we achieve that.
So I think this is fantastic, and I'm really.
I'm really excited to see this.
I am really excited to see this eventually come to District 1.
Um, the— I know that it is not for trying, and I know that it is not for, uh, the energy and the enthusiasm of the staff at PBOT, but there is a glaring hole in this map, uh, that very clearly shows there are no plazas in District 1 as of this moment.
So my office is ready to help make those connections happen, find those community groups.
Um, we are all 3, I'm sure, ready to, to make that That's right.
That said, I do have a couple of specific questions.
The first, and this is not only for PBOT, but this is broadly, I'm asking this of every permitting bureau, but the fee schedule for permits.
I'm looking at, is this, what are these fees?
What is the guiding principle behind these?
I'm imagining some of these are circumstances look great and are really going to be cheap and affordable for some community groups, but for some certain types of uses, it seems a little shockingly expensive in certain circumstances.
Could you tell me a little bit about how we came to these numbers?
Absolutely.
So the fees that— Do you want to introduce yourself?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Oh yes, thank you.
Unidentified speaker
For the record, Sarah Picliozzi.
I lead our public realm and street activation team with PBOT.
Lean forward.
And lean forward.
Rebecca Dobert
Okay.
Unidentified speaker
Um, so businesses and organizations that have been activating the plaza through outdoor dining or events have been using existing fees in our Exhibit B that don't really fit how the space dynamics and the rules and so forth, or even the type of work, um, within a plaza.
So for events, um, the The small events will continue, even with the new proposals, to be free.
And those have been done through an email, our small plaza activation form.
What we're trying to do is create more clarity and consistency for the organizations.
So they're like, do we do a small reservation form in the plazas, or is it a community event?
And our community event fees are really designed to close down streets.
So that is staff time for traffic control plans.
It is about parking removal.
It is, you know, all of that sort of things.
So part of it is just recognizing we've already closed down the street and the amount of work is much less.
And so those fees are much less.
For the outdoor dining, what we're doing here is recognizing that we want outdoor dining in plazas.
And it is a great tool.
It brings people.
It activates the streetscape.
I think the it's important to recognize that space.
And, um, the fees that businesses have been using have been through the outdoor dining program, which are really designed for parking spaces.
And so they're based on 20 feet length and 8 feet deep.
But we have plazas where we can allow you to go 20 feet deep, but it might be narrower.
So, so we're just looking at a square, uh, foot rate.
They're all based on existing fees.
Um, just thinking about what is that mechanism.
And then again, really trying to simplify it.
So We know we're talking— we're not talking about complex pieces, so we're removing application fees and some of the sort of the space fees, trying to simplify it and encourage both of those activities.
That's—.
I mean, that makes sense.
I will just note that, and maybe I'm misreading this, but it's wonderful for— that if I'm a neighborhood association or I am a local nonprofit and we want to do a fun event, that this very clearly says like this is a way we can do it for relatively cheap.
Jamie Dunphy
Mm-hmm.
Unidentified speaker
In East Portland, we don't have the most robust network of really strong community neighborhood associations, right?
They are poorly attended east of I-205.
Our nonprofit groups are there and they are doing their best, but it is often a tough situation.
And often some of the best community organizers we have are actually business districts and individual businesses, Which by my reading on this would put them into the for-profit potentially category?
Jamie Dunphy
No.
Unidentified speaker
No?
Okay.
No, no.
It's the nature of the event, not the nature of the—.
Jamie Dunphy
Correct.
Unidentified speaker
Organizer?
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah.
Unidentified speaker
Okay.
Similarly though, if I'm looking at this, you know, again, for some of these for-profit events, it makes sense that the fees would be high.
I'm imagining though, if a small ticketed community event of under 500 people, if it were a, concert to happen.
Surprise, I'm talking about music.
I'm looking at this chart, it looks like it would be somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000 for that space if they had, say they sold alcohol there, which is a lot higher than it would be to rent a music venue.
Do we Have a process to sort of either right-size that or to, as we are expanding this, is there going to be an opportunity for us to be able to problem solve and identify some of these sort of pinch points where maybe the system makes sense on paper, but in reality there's like a conflict there?
Absolutely.
And so in the resolution, when we say next step is to develop administrative rules about the expectations in terms of plaza use permitting, It also says refine fees because we recognize that we have the next opportunity when we submit fee schedule before the June budget.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay.
Unidentified speaker
So absolutely, and we'd love to learn more about those examples that you're talking about.
Building off of that same question though, I believe I'm reading in this that there's a report back every 5 years, which means that this council will not be in office, I mean, like, Like either some of us may be back for another term or not, but that extends it pretty far beyond that.
This is basically our only bite at the apple at this moment.
Why the 5-year report back?
You know, I don't recall.
And by no means were we hoping this would be this council's only bite at the apple.
So certainly if there was—.
And it seems like there is really strong council interest in this, we would be happy to come I would love to have a report back with an understanding of how this is going and also an opportunity to sing the praises of the public space activation and the community partnerships that this will lead to.
I would sure hope that this is not the last time we get to talk about it.
So—.
I was just going to add real fast that we do an annual survey every year and then an annual report.
And so we also anticipate that we'll be reporting on our progress annually.
But I agree, if we can come back.
Great, thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
And without the benefit of Councilor Clark here, I might turn to Councilor Murillo and just suggest that when that report comes out could be a good time for your committee to take this topic back up.
Councilor Avalos.
Yeah, thank you.
And thanks, Councilor Dunphy.
You said a lot of what I was gonna say, but I'm gonna reemphasize some of the points But I'll start by first thanking all of the community partners, staff who put a lot of work into developing the framework, which I think is the key here.
This vision for plazas as welcoming, people-centered spaces is something that I strongly support, and I think that they really play an important role in strengthening community connection, right?
So, but at the same time, I need to be honest that I'm disappointed that during the pilot phase, not a single plaza was in District 1.
And for me, what that means is And so the lessons learned from the pilot, the challenges, the opportunities, even the framework pillars themselves are not informed by the lived experiences of East Portlanders.
And that is a huge gap.
I am committed to making sure that changes.
I know that District 1 residents deserve access to these kinds of public spaces.
If anything, I think they need them the most.
Councilmember Herbold.
And our communities have unique perspectives that need to be part of the program's growth.
So, you know, I think the framework sets us on the right path, but its true success is going to be measured by if we can include the voices of communities historically left out, meaning District 1.
So I guess my question is, you know, saying all of that, can you tell us more about why no areas were chosen in District 1 and what your plan is to correct that in the future?
Thank you, Councilor Loretta Smith.
I'll jump in.
So Art Pierce, Deputy Director for Planning Projects and Programs here at PBOT.
I think it's— in our committee discussion, we did talk more about how this is just but one, maybe a marquee program, but one of a number of programs that we offer.
And so what we found in East Portland, often play streets, so play space, we actually have a mobile play facility that we were bringing out and deploying in East Portland.
And other types of space creation was more popular and what was requested in East Portland.
By no means do we think that this shouldn't be deployed in East Portland.
Plazas make the most sense when there's a compression of space need.
And so East Portland has more space, has larger streets, has a different sort of urban character.
I don't think we have the right tool yet for what makes sense.
I think we do.
Yes.
And a lot of the place creation activity has happened in park settings in East Portland.
And I think we need your collaboration to figure out what is the right tool and the right place creation setting.
I could picture a more linear plaza setting in some East Portland streets because we have wider streets that for Vision Zero reasons and other reasons need to become narrower.
And so what kind of place creation could be the remedy to that space?
What kind of street greening can be the remedy in those types of spaces.
But absolutely, we really— we haven't highlighted publicly today.
As of today, we put out a call for proposals by the plaza team.
And so we're looking for proposals from throughout Portland for testing new plazas and really hope for your collaboration to get some proposals with community groups in East Portland.
Yeah, thank you.
I appreciate that.
And I'm curious too if there are any resources or technical assistance you think that PBOT will Absolutely.
In fact, one of the resources is next to me, Greg Raisman, who's been a big champion of placemaking at PBOT.
He ends up being deployed into these conversations to really experiment and co-create with those community groups to decide, is this a— what kind of painting project is this?
You'll notice all throughout the city there's a lot of place creation through paint and artwork.
Greg's been an engine of that whole process for many, many years, and that's a good place to start.
Yeah.
I think that's a great question.
So a great place to start is a street painting effort together.
Community gets to meet each other, gets to be excited about doing more.
And then you talk about, should we close down the street, you know, over a weekend or over a summer or then throughout a year?
It has to be sort of iterative steps.
So we have a plaza team that can jump in and essentially work with whoever's interested, a resident or a business group or a community group, to start to ideate what might be the play.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Green.
I'll try to be brief here in the interest of time, but I just want to thank the team for all, all of this good work.
Um, so urgent and necessary.
And I think just kind of speaking to the fees, rates, uh, and charges, Exhibit B, it's really good to have this delineation on plaza use fees because as you guys have mentioned, you've been repurposing other Fees to kind of accommodate that on sort of an ad hoc basis.
And this really formalizes it, which provides clarity.
I do wanna offer some comments.
This isn't— I think what I heard very clearly is there's some empowerment of the administrative rulemaking to make some adjustments as necessary and for council to consider adjustments as necessary.
But just wanna offer something for consideration at this time.
Mitch Green
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
And this is going to sound wild coming from a guy who introduced a hot dog cart ordinance recently, but I think the vending carts in plaza rate is too low.
Mitch Green
Mm-hmm.
Unidentified speaker
And I think $150 per year for a small business enterprise that would probably generate, you know, a meaningful amount of revenue is a little light.
And I understand that maybe as its first go, it might be good to start with some low fees.
But that gets to the other conversation we had about the overall cost recovery for this program.
And if we're able to sort of right-size our fees based upon ability to pay, then we're going to be able to offset the costs in other places that I'm hearing from my colleagues.
So I would just offer that as well, and then I'll just leave it at that.
So thank you so much for all the good hard work.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Ryan.
Yeah, thank you for that presentation.
Of course, I think we all wanna get behind this vision, and so it is a resolution.
I do need to share some feedback I received yesterday when people saw this item regarding experiences I've had with existing pilot street plazas and just wanted to daylight some of that info for you and give you some feedback.
It's, let me find up above, where did it go?
This is related to Darcel Plaza area.
They're highlighting the issue of the growing street plaza that you're all working on in that area.
It's adjacent to one that Parks has been working on now for some time, Darcel Plaza.
And the local surrounding businesses felt completely left out of any decision-making process that's taking place with that adjacent plaza.
And so do you have any— can you tell me why that is?
Sure.
Do you have an answer?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Sure.
Unidentified speaker
Hi, for the record, I'm Tiffany Swift.
I'm a senior planner with PBOT.
I think with the Darcell Plaza, because it is so closely related to the parks project, some of the early engagement came out of that when it was A couple years ago, there were like bigger public events, and a lot of that feedback that came for the Parks Plaza fed into now the Peabody Street Plaza.
It is a relatively small project, so we are— we haven't had the big formal public engagement that is more traditional in a planning process, but we have been working with local community groups who have interest in the area.
As well as local businesses.
But thank you for the feedback, and we'd love to hear more and make adjustments because it's not built yet.
So if there's—.
Yeah, there's some really engaged leaders in the community, especially the local businesses right around there that have been working on this.
And so it came as a surprise to them when they got the information.
So when the city has willing partners that have been stepping up for years, you gotta, you know, we gotta keep them engaged.
As you know, Clean and Safe, who They're the partner that you could reach out to.
It's pretty easy to get in touch with them.
I think in general, I think we have to consider that it takes a lot of maintenance to do these plazas in the long term.
So that's probably my other concern is regulating, modifying the rules and getting the community to take ownership.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
And we need the right people in place to manage them.
So since we have a deferred maintenance challenge at our city, we want to make sure that these are really thoughtfully put together and that we really have the right people in place again to maintain them.
If it's the community, empower them.
Let them know that they're it, and then figure out what that resource looks like.
But I really worry that we won't get this right if we don't have this plan in motion.
Thank you.
Sure, you could not be more right and accurate.
This has been an underlying concern for the team as we are entering into each of these enterprises.
We are asking a lot of the adjacent businesses and the adjacent community in that enterprise of co-creation.
And to make that sustainable, we have to have organizational mechanisms that can bring forward, you know, human power energy to bring eyes on the street and maintenance support, but also financial resources that are outside of what PBOT is able to provide.
And so actually in our presentation that we brought to the T&I Committee, we even have some illustrations of sort of roles and responsibilities and sort of which entities we think make sense to take on different elements of the plaza spaces.
Where is it PBOT as the landlord makes sense for us to be the provider of those services and what spaces it makes sense for an adjacent business association or an enhanced service district One of the things, the gaps that we're realizing is that we don't currently have good organizational models to create the sort of friends of a plaza group.
And so that's one of the things that we are very actively exploring.
Actually had meetings—.
Was that yesterday?
Mm-hmm.
Yesterday, looking into how we might form some additional friends of plazas types of convenings where there can be co-investment from adjacent businesses and adjacent community members and a clear stewardship agreement around how to maintain the plaza.
Where is the sweat equity labor going in and where is their financial contribution?
Thank you, Art.
I liked everything you said.
My final follow-up question would be on Harvey Milk.
That's where that— is that a pilot that's been there now for a few years?
It is.
And in fact, you know, an exciting one.
You've noticed that we have repaved it this year and we're heading into, in the spring, an elaborate decorative painting of it.
So it'll be moving into a permanent plaza stage.
It's actually our first of our permanent plazas.
How many blocks are closed there?
Just one is getting the permanent treatment.
We had a temporary improvement, another block east, but that's not currently being proposed for permanent improvement.
And as the oldest gay up here, the Rest in Peace Scandals did close.
Yeah.
And then also the hotels on each side of that have also been complaining about that closure.
So I just need to daylight that here, that we have businesses that aren't always excited about this.
For some reason they tell me the truth, I think, that they show me their receipts and how the closure has impacted their business.
And whether it's Ace, whether it's, oh God, what's the one?
Mark Spencer.
Mark Spencer, yeah.
Yeah, we've been particularly working with Mark Spencer.
That was one of the reasons why we shrank the extent of the plaza there was in conversation with the Marks Spencer that there wasn't enough activations that could be brought into that space.
And so that's why we don't actually have that currently closed.
You just hit it right there.
So if we're going to close these down, we're going to paint them and make it lovely, but if nothing's happening, to what end?
Yeah, that is, and that is, I think, the civic call of this moment is we are calling on community groups, musicians and entertainers, people who want to do outdoor markets, People want outdoor playgrounds, all these kind of spaces.
PBOT has the platform, we have the street space to offer that, but we need the help of peer agencies and community groups to really make them successful.
As we humbly improve this, if you include those that are trying to make ends meet there, those that are providing businesses, they have to be your most enthusiastic partners because they have to see this as something that's helpful to their bottom line, not something that hurts it.
Right.
And I think we've We've had really good success with McMinimans in particular along that site where they are adjusting their whole usage.
You'll notice even— I think it's already set up that way now— they are using the sidewalk space and some of the plaza space as part of their outdoor dining arrangement.
And that's creating a better platform.
They used to be kind of an island where there was sidewalk space and then their dining space and then the plaza space.
So we're already adjusting the layout to really meet their business needs.
And because I have to leave because I have a previous appointment, I would support this if I wasn't Oh yeah, appreciate the conversation.
I add one thing, and that is just to reiterate, like, I think the example at Pride is perfect in our conversations with the Marks and Spencer Hotel, because while they recognize that closing that second block, there wasn't the activation to make it successful, our conversations with them are what else is in that toolkit that we have at PBOT, whether it's street painting, whether it's overhead lighting, other things where we can extend that sort of vibrancy.
So that's often how our conversations work.
And so we've had really, just really good conversations about it.
And also sort of thinking, how does that extend down to Jarsel Promenade?
And so thinking about the whole suite.
Too many of our hotels are now owned by banks.
And so this is a red alert issue.
Dan Ryan
Yep.
Unidentified speaker
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Kanal.
Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you for the presentation.
I think first off, the work that you have done, Sarah, Tiffany, the whole team is really important.
And I think looking at the great plazas we have in D2, St. Johns, Concordia Commons, Fenwick up in my area, both the need to support them and to standardize the processes makes a lot of sense to me.
And I also note that you have other work on your plate as well.
The outdoor dining structure, other street activations, right, are all within your team also?
Outdoor dining is actually in a separate team, but we work closely with them.
Sarah created the standards for that program, and then we have our peers—.
Sameer Kanal
Just on the side?
Unidentified speaker
Administering.
Of everything else you do?
That's impressive.
All right, well, I appreciate it, and I wanted to draw attention to that.
I do agree that we need to get street plazas out to D1 as well, and I want to uplift my D1 colleagues' points about the testing and learning.
I, I will also note that within D2, we have no plazas in the most diverse areas within D2.
So in particular, Albina, but also up in, uh, most of Kenton and in Portsmouth.
Um, so I think that, that, that applies here as well.
Um, I'd like to thank PBOT, all of you, for your commitment to working with the Public Safety Committee on the components of the plaza program that intersect with that side of it.
Looking forward to hearing, uh, from you at a future Community and Public Safety Committee meeting.
Um, I'd love to discuss further the timeline issue that Councilor Dunphy raised.
I'd also love it to be at the full council or any space where D2 is represented.
Um, and I'd float using a 3-year or 2-year timeline instead of a 5-year timeline in that, uh, clause and, uh, ask colleagues to comment if One more comment and a question.
On the topic of friends of, I hope that you're talking to Concordia in particular.
I know they're very active and I'm sure would love to share their thoughts and what of their experience can be, in their view, scaled up or extended out.
Question I have is about Dream Street Plaza.
Can you speak to what happened there?
Because this relates to some of our The comments I already made, but also about the processes by which you can scale down a plaza and/or bring it back.
So typically when we're looking at thinking about the success of plazas and how well they're doing, we, over the past year, we've been really trying to think about how do we standardize this in terms of our evaluation.
And so what does it look in terms of safety, in terms of traffic operations?
Are cars entering Do we have issues there?
What is the public safe— sorry, public support, adjacent business support, the general activation of those, the plazas?
There's probably a few others.
With Dream Street, we worked closely with the SoL District to—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
It was probably—.
Unidentified speaker
And Greg, you had a lot of those conversations, but probably at least 6 months, if not about a year, trying to think about how do they want to use that space.
Rebecca Dobert
Yeah.
Unidentified speaker
Look at that.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
There we go.
Unidentified speaker
Programming.
Oh, and then exactly.
So working with the Soul District in terms of how do they want to use the space, and then how can we help them in terms of really keeping that and keep it active and so forth.
And then in the end, we came to a decision with the Soul District that it just wasn't— it wasn't a space that they were able to keep Okay.
So I think then something that's worth thinking about here, because I think— I can't remember if it was on this topic or a previous one that Councilor Dunphy raised the issue that we have less formalized, less active organizations in parts of our city.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah.
Unidentified speaker
And so if the, if the, if the city is going to be Yes.
Because if the criteria for service for a geographical area is based off of a preexisting level of connectivity and activity within organizations, we're going to be retrenching patterns as opposed to disrupting those patterns.
And we won't be in a place of utilizing street plazas to help build the kind of community that we're trying to achieve.
And so I'm, I'm I'm wanting to, and I'm seeing your facial expressions.
I'm guessing you've had this conversation dozens of times from those expressions.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, right.
Unidentified speaker
And I'm grateful to see that.
But I am, it's not about this one, but I do see, you know, this is the one that within my district was within these areas that we're talking about that is serving a predominantly Black community, is serving predominantly Black businesses.
So I'm trying to understand And how we can get to a place where it's not dependent on the preexisting level of connection, active organizations, et cetera, but instead is helping to build that partially through the Friends of groups, but partially through the rest.
And I don't know if— there's a lot there to potentially comment on.
I think it's such a good question and such a good topic.
You know, a lot of it is us living in a constrained team.
Like, you're looking at the team that is doing all this work, essentially.
Which pretty literally is all here, or almost.
There's a couple other folks.
But, you know, so within the current sort of resources, we feel that we need to be really, I guess, constrained on what our role is versus what we are asking others to step in with.
I do think this is a very good deliberation on the part of the council about in environments that are less capable of bringing forward resources, what additional resources should the city be prepared Yes.
And which bureaus might have those resources?
Is PBOT the right player, or is it Civic Life, or is it— in what ways is it Parks?
Or what ways— like, we have a whole suite of city resources that we could deploy into the co-creation of these spaces.
So far it's been primarily PBOT with partnership with Parks, particularly for the greening and planting of some of the plaza spaces.
We would love, you know, sort of an all-in city approach into these spaces and figure out what are the right Right players to bring resources.
I do agree there's a ton more that we could do if we were bringing sort of the full heft of the city into these co-creations.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
And if— I understand that you don't directly make the budget request, so I will direct it this way to the administrator.
But if, you know, if this is a thing that is requested, it's something I'm prepared to support more resources to, because it is important to have one entity that leads Within the city, especially as we stop being 26 bureaus in a trench coat and start being one city.
Sameer Kanal
Right.
Unidentified speaker
And so I am concerned at the idea both that we are asking community partners to take on the level of work as a broad concern.
Rebecca Dobert
Right.
Unidentified speaker
I think we can be a city that does things ourselves too.
And I know you obviously do a lot already.
I don't mean to imply otherwise.
Sameer Kanal
Right.
Unidentified speaker
I think we can increase the degree to which the public sector is taking on this role.
Yeah, and I would say in particular what we're noticing— so 37th and Hawthorne was one of this year's sort of marquee new plazas.
I haven't talked to them directly, but I understand from the staff that team of community groups and business owners are pretty tired after a summer of putting on a great plaza.
And I think Kernside would testify the same, even though they gave great enthusiasm.
And I think I think it's testament to the fact that we need more resources to underpin this, not necessarily for the initial play, but for sustaining it.
People can show up for one painting, one block party, one weekend.
It's the day in, day out keeping a space activated and nice that's really hard to sustain.
Yeah, and I think, I believe that's the example that you gave, Sarah, when we talked earlier as well.
Yeah, I think that— so that's the broad part of it.
But the other piece of it is that, as you were talking about constraints, we— it's one— if there is a finite number that we can do, and that number might be slightly, slightly less if we were to concentrate resources, or instead of doing 2 in a place that they're already— or 2 places that they're already well supported and community groups exist, or one in a place where there's not that.
Sameer Kanal
Right.
Unidentified speaker
I think that we're in a position where it needs to be that, because otherwise what's going to end up happening is we're going to put plazas where white folks live.
Sameer Kanal
Right.
Unidentified speaker
And that is a concern I have, because it's already going to be less, right?
And so if, as you're looking at where the next 2 go, your options are to put one in a place that is underserved, And I am perfectly fine if that's in D1 first, but I'd love to be second on that list because of things like that.
And again, it doesn't have to be Dream Street specifically.
I'm not trying to— you know more about the context of that than I do.
But I do think that that's a concern that I think can be addressed by not looking exclusively at the sheer quantity of these plazas.
For sure.
And I think important to note that, you know, we already We, you know, in the evaluation process are really looking at exactly those dynamics and trying to put energy into those spaces.
And so the call for partnership proposals is, I think, well-timed.
Also, the resolution part of this package is specifically directing us with your authorization to connect more with other bureaus about how we could lean into this enterprise together.
And so we, you know, you are actually through deliberating this action Helping giving us the guidance to say, go talk to your friends.
We know all the people, we've worked at the city forever.
Go talk to your friends and see how much you can get them to lean into this co-creation together.
And so I think, you know, you're giving us that direction actually today or through this process.
Thanks.
I think we are also discussing the other items here together, but I will wait 'cause I've taken up a lot of time.
We are in fact discussing all of the items together.
I'll go back into the queue later for the other comment then.
Thanks.
Okay.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
The Public Street Plaza Program is such a great example of infrastructure that supports business, connectedness, community, traffic safety.
I want to encourage you all for this team to review the Age and Disability Inclusive Neighborhood Action Plan, which developed— I see nodding of heads.
Was developed by BPS.
Actually, someone on my staff, Alan De La Torre, is one of the authors.
And so would love to hear if DCA Dhanapal, any of the staff would be willing to possibly even work with my team.
I can offer him as support if that's helpful to ensure that plazas are inclusive to all ages, all abilities.
Councilor Colmenares, that's absolutely, we can do that.
Thank you for providing that resource.
Worked with Art in other spaces before and happy to do that here as well.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Madam President.
I just want to say, you all, I, I heard you in the, um, in the Arts and Economy, uh, subcommittee, and I just want to say ditto, ditto, ditto to everything that my previous District 1 folks said.
I won't repeat it, but, uh, we do need some, some access to some of these plazas in District 1.
But I do think that overall you all are doing a great job, and this is, this is amazing.
It's outstanding.
And that's the kind of, um, you know, these are kind of things that, that build community, um, with, with city dollars.
So I appreciate what you do, and thank you so much.
Thank you, Councilor.
I think I'm next.
I want to start by acknowledging the lack of plazas in District 1.
I know we've heard a lot about that, but when I first looked at the map, I looked and said, which are the official ones in my district?
And then I looked and said, oh my goodness, where is District 1?
So I'm glad to hear that that is part of the thinking you all are doing and that you're hoping to work on getting proposals from District 1 for this next round.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
I was so glad to see the report that you gave to the committee and hear that this has been a success and that we are moving forward.
I'm a big fan of the program and everything that it does for the community surrounding where these plazas are.
I hope that we can have more of them.
I also know that the program needs some stability and that we need to figure out how to both continue the co-creation model, which has been very successful, But also bring about that stability and that, that distance across the city.
They're both important.
I had a couple of questions about the fees that I'm hoping you can answer.
The examples that were in the presentation that you gave in committee showed 2 restaurants where fees were going down.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Mm-hmm.
Unidentified speaker
I'm wondering if there are any spaces where businesses surrounding our street plazas will see their fees go up that we should be aware of.
There are a few, and— but very few.
So we're talking about probably, I think we have maybe 35 businesses currently that are working that are— have operations inside plazas.
So for the most part, it's the same, if not a little bit less.
There's one example where we have a business that is very narrow.
And so if you think about the previous, uh, cost calculations based on parking spaces and linear length.
Very narrow but very deep.
So that is one where the cost will go up, not dramatically.
Again, that's all relative based on your operations and so forth.
Um, the other place where we'll see a little bit of, of difference is for folks who have been calculated as sidewalk, like sidewalk cafe seating, because that linear rate is $9 $9 per square foot.
Um, and we're using the same calculation for sidewalk and plaza street use, and that's partly because, one, we're still talking about commercial use of the right-of-way, but also not to incentivize the crowding of sidewalks, um, and really kind of have an open playing field.
So that's, um, so there's a few businesses that would fall into that category where they're taking a bit more than sidewalk, but it's They've taken all of the sidewalk in the past, but it's been at that lower rate.
Okay.
I suspect some of those might be in my district, in District 2.
It's Ankeny Alley.
Claire Adamsick
Okay.
Unidentified speaker
And that was one of our first plazas as well.
And really it was, okay, let's let these businesses take over the entire sidewalk.
Let's have people walk down the middle of the street.
So yeah, there have been some changes there, I know.
For businesses that have sidewalk seating but not seating in the plazas, will they see a change in their rates as we move to this plaza program, or will they still be paying the sidewalk rate?
And it sounds like if they're paying a new plaza rate, their fees will go up a little bit.
Is that correct?
That's right.
If they were only using the sidewalk, but I'm trying I'm trying to specifically think about your district, and I'm not seeing any.
I mean, I think there's also a lot of businesses where they may have tables out in the plaza, but it's, um, um, it— sometimes there are tables out, for example, in Concordia Commons, there are tables out there, but they are actually part of the public seating.
Yes.
And they are not specifically like only for that restaurant.
So there's, there's a little bit of gray area there.
Um, and so I, off the top of my head, I can't think of one where they've specifically thinking about— they've only paid sidewalk.
But we'll go back and double-check, and we can always, um, follow up with your office.
Great, thank you.
I am very supportive.
I will be voting for this, but I also want to make sure that we all understand the implications for businesses in our district so that we know what feedback to expect.
So I appreciate you answering the I'm looking forward to supporting expansion of the program.
And I, while I don't think we need to shrink the official reporting period from 5 years down, I do think as we're in this first 5-year period, it's important to be open to iteration through the length of that period.
And I suspect that we might want to help with that iteration over the next few years.
So thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Great.
Unidentified speaker
And hopefully that helps provide one answer to you, Councilor Kanal.
I see Councilor Smith taking off.
That puts us at 7.
We do have 3 more votes, so if anybody else needs to leave, please let me know.
Councilor Zimmerman.
Thanks.
I just want to highlight this opportunity.
I think for— I've said often that I think there are things that we do in the city that have the ability to lean on the district councilors as a way to meet the district's hyperlocal Thank you.
I think it's important to note that Portland has a very different local culture, and that in the downtown, when we talk about these plazas, these are largely commercial.
And to say it's a neighborhood plaza is a nice tone, but often it's commercial, and it's very different from the other districts.
And I, I love the goals.
I love that we are opening them.
I love that we have these opportunities, and there's no one-size-fits-all.
We all know that.
There's no rule that must be applied.
It should be deferential to the street in question.
And I say that— I appreciated Councilor Ryan's comments because he noted a particularly challenging area in my district.
And before I was on the dais and I was working in the previous mayor's office, we all closed one of these together.
And I say that Because sometimes things don't go as we had hoped, and that opportunity shows me that we can be responsive, right, to a place where the commercial entities had left that block.
And I'm talking about Harvey Milk, south of— excuse me, not south.
Eric Zimmerman
East.
Unidentified speaker
East of— in my brain that is south, but it's not.
East of the hotel that Mm-hmm.
And it just, it wasn't working, right?
In fact, it was actually hurting because of the behavior that came into that.
And so I offer that up to the public, to other councilors and districts, is that we should keep trying.
And if we get great feedback that we need a change, I have faith that we can do that.
And I do have, you know, long-term goals that we take, you know, 12th and Harvey Milk all the way down to the plaza and our Plaza that I've been highly involved with in terms of what will that look like as a historic district.
And for the LGBTQ community, it is an area that we no longer have a single business or gathering space on in what used to be our most notable.
In fact, we changed the street name, for God's sake, and we no longer have those opportunities to gather as a community.
And that is That is significant to me in terms of other patterns, but I'm not giving up on the plazas.
I'm not giving up on the overall, I'll call it a boardwalk or whatever, that takes us all the way down that area.
So thanks for the work.
Of course I'm supportive and I'm also appreciative of your moments where you can lean on the district's specific needs for this model.
Eric Zimmerman
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
And include us in that because it's quite different from one neighborhood to the next and particularly from one district to the next and how we're going to do these well and deliver on behalf of Portlanders, not just those who live and work on that block, but those who come and visit those blocks.
So thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Kanal, did you have one or two more things?
Yeah, on the fees, I'll just say that I agree broadly with what the Council President, Councilors Green and Dunphy Thank you.
Nothing else there.
On the lighting, I just wanted to say I'm broadly supportive of this, but I also wanted to add that there's a piece to this conversation that's a little bit outside of the scope of this ordinance that I want to make sure doesn't get forgotten, which is that this is going to be reducing the length of time it takes to get lighting up, right?
And that's good.
And I'd like to make sure that when the built environment is shifted, That the permit exception and, and rapidization process is not a shortcut for public engagement.
And here I'm specifically referring to the St. Johns Plaza and the issues there with the, the bazaar, the boosters, that, that having, um, speed is good and having, um, a lack of engagement alongside it is a risk associated with that.
Um, that has cost a community group, not us, but a community tens of thousands of dollars.
It's cost us trust and goodwill.
And so I just wanted to, to kind of make sure that that was highlighted here, that we're also keeping in mind that the importance of doing a robust public engagement process that is not after we made the decision, but before and as part of it with multiple stakeholders.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Colleagues, I have not seen any other discussion in the queue.
Thank you all.
I know there were A lot of questions there.
We appreciate you being here, and appreciate all the work that's gone into where we are in the program.
We have one resolution and two non-emergency ordinances before us in this package.
I'm going to ask that we vote on the resolution today to give our folks something to carry forward after all of the questions we've peppered them with, and then we will bring those two ordinances back.
Uh, Rebecca, could you please call the roll on agenda item 17?
Green?
Mitch Green
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Timmerman?
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Dunphy?
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Kanal?
Sameer Kanal
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Koyama Lane?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Uh, Pirtle-Guiney?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
And the resolution is adopted with 7 aye votes.
Thank you very much.
Thank you all for being here.
And agenda items 18 and 19, we will move to second reading, um, at our next council meeting.
Colleagues, we have 2 agenda items left.
I'm hoping we can do them quickly so that we can let folks go on with the rest of their days.
I know I am very ready for lunch.
These are items that were on the consent agenda that were pulled off consent.
They are both reports.
They only need 7 votes, and there are 7 of us here.
Rebecca, could you please call the first agenda item?
Item 5, reappoint Bruce Broussard, Kelly Holtz, and Tim Larson to the River Community Advisory Committee for terms to expire April 12th, 2028.
Thank you very much.
And colleagues, we don't generally have committee staff summaries presented on appointments, so we don't have anything there, but Councilor Avalos, would you like to share anything with us?
Um, these appointments came through the Homelessness and Housing Committee.
Yes, that's right.
Um, I don't think there's anything important to share.
It was passed, uh, unanimously, and yeah, nothing else to add.
Perfect.
And Councilor Kanal, you pulled this item off consent.
Is there anything you'd like to share?
Yes, thank you.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you.
So I— the last time we had appointments, we discussed the need to ensure that we're not trying to do retroactive appointment.
And as you can see in item 6, the date has been updated to show it.
So I moved this from consent in large part to propose the amendment I've emailed out to everyone to standardize those dates.
I think it's a— it's not about the members in any way.
I feel no concern there.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
I think that it is important to mirror the timelines of the other terms, which happen to be in October, as well as to allow for their terms to start now and give the full 3 years and not try to go backwards in time.
So I did propose an amendment.
I filed it with the clerk.
I emailed it out to everyone.
I will read it and formally move it at this time.
And what it says is it changes the title to update the date from April 20th—.
Sorry.
2024.
April 12th, 2028 to September 30th, 2028.
And that would update the dates in all 3 of the rows of the table.
Currently says April 13th, 2025 to April 12th, 2028 to October 1st, 2025 to September 30th, 2028.
And again, this is standard with what we've done in the other document.
And then—.
Rebecca Dobert
Councilor Herbold.
Unidentified speaker
What we talked about, I want to say 3 weeks ago, but I'm not sure which meeting that last was at.
And I'd ask for a second.
Second.
Thank you, Councilor, and thank you for the second, Councilor Dunphy.
I am not seeing this amendment attached to the agenda item.
Does the clerk's office have it in hand?
We do.
Apologies, I'll check on that.
I just want to make sure you have the information that you need.
Um, colleagues, are there questions about these appointments?
Okay, Councilor Dunphy.
Yeah, um, for David, uh, the amendment that was just moved by Councilor Canale, is there any concern over that?
Do you have any reason to, uh, worry about the shifting of the dates to align with a 3-year term.
Um, for the record, my name is David Thiebaud.
I'm with Portland Permitting and Development.
I'm the division manager for inspections and the liaison to RCAC, and I have no objections at all.
I think it's a, it's a, um, it's a good move.
Thank you, Councilor.
I had a similar question, but I just want to ask something a little bit more detailed, which is I know that sometimes Sometimes there are staggered terms or terms that start and end on specific dates based on the needs of the committee or the work of the body.
For example, we have committees where their terms always expire on June 30th, or we have committees that have intentionally tried to stagger terms throughout the year.
Is that the case with this?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
With this entity, with this advisory committee?
And will we be impacting how these 3 terms align with the other timing for terms for the advisory committee if we make this change?
No, I understand.
I don't believe that it'll be— it'll impact adversely the committee.
This committee, the river community in general is a— It's a very old neighborhood, a very old community, but it's a very niche community as well.
And so most of the members are chosen from inside their ranks.
There's several bodies that operate around the city where folks are drawn from.
And so we, you know, regularly run into issues where people move or they, You know, due to age, they kind of, they kind of want to get out of that, that position.
And so then we go to the community and the community helps us find interested folks that, that want to serve their community.
Thank you.
I appreciate that context.
And Councilor Kanal, if this comes, this amendment comes to me with 6 yes votes, I will be a courtesy vote today to make sure that we can continue moving forward since we only have 7 people here, but I am very concerned with making changes like this broadly, given the questions that I just asked about the intentionality around how terms are sometimes lined up.
Councilor, are you back in the queue?
Yeah, in this particular case, I understand the concern if that were to be the case on the back end of the term length.
On the front end of the term length, I have a concern about appointing people in the past.
It doesn't necessarily align with what's actually happened in most of these cases as well.
And I don't want to re— to basically just repeat the conversation that the council had a few weeks back.
But, you know, in the event that there was a defined end date, I would 100% agree with you on that for these terms.
In the case of Those, and, you know, I am council's representative to the advisory board workgroup that's happening, and that is a conversation that's occurring there that I think will eventually end up being not standardized across all the advisory groups around the city, but standardized in the sense that each advisory group would be— would have a standard.
And at that point, I would have no concern with saying the end date needs to align with the end date that is appropriate for the recruitment process.
Thank you.
Pattern, all that sort of thing.
My concern is primarily on the front end, and in this particular case, it makes sense to go the full 3 years, um, just given when other folks' terms are up in October 2027.
Um, so there's a— there would be a, a, a pattern there.
So, but I, I, I understand your point.
Um, and I, I think, uh, I, I would agree with you on the back end of the term sign.
We can talk about the front end.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Colleagues, is there any other discussion?
Okay, seeing none, this is a report, which means I need— oh, I'm sorry, we are on the amendment, aren't we?
Okay, Rebecca, could you please call roll on the amendment?
Green?
Mitch Green
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Zimmerman?
Eric Zimmerman
No.
Unidentified speaker
Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Dunphy?
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Kanal?
Unidentified speaker
Aye.
Koyama Lane?
Sameer Kanal
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
And Pirtle-Guiney?
Unidentified speaker
Councilor, given that my vote would not make this pass, I'm going to vote no just so we can continue that other conversation.
No.
And yeah, the amendment fails with 5 aye and 2 nay.
Thank you, Rebecca.
Colleagues, is there any other discussion on the underlying report?
Okay.
Um, I know sometimes for folks who are being appointed, these seems like Like, seem like very formal discussions about things that are often unrelated to them as individuals.
So I do just want to offer gratitude to these individuals who are stepping up to be a part of this advisory committee.
And as we work through some of the technical details, that is not a reflection of our gratitude to the time that they're putting into our city.
With that, because this is a report, I do need a motion and a second.
So moved.
Second.
Jonas Biery
So moved.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you, Councilor.
Candace Avalos
Second.
Unidentified speaker
I think I heard Vice President Koyama Lane first there.
Okay, Rebecca, could you please call the roll?
Green.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Uh, Avalos.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Kanal.
Thank you, Cully, Timm, and Bruce.
I vote aye.
Councilor Moline?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
And Pirtle-Guiney?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
The report is accepted with 7 aye votes.
Thank you.
Could you please— and thank you for being here with us.
I know it was a long meeting.
Rebecca, could you please call what I believe is our last agenda item?
Item 6, reappoint Serena Stoudemire Wesley to the Prosper Portland Board of Commissioners Thank you.
And again, we don't have committee staff summaries here.
I believe this came out of Arts and Economy.
Councilor Ryan is not here.
Councilor Green.
I did preside over that meeting.
Oh, perfect.
Yeah.
Okay.
I had it written down wrong.
I apologize.
Okay.
Colleagues, this was a unanimous decision to reappoint.
We did have some discussion about the appointment of the Deputy City Administrator.
You know, values and commitment to economic development, Prosper Portland, kind of the— there's new leadership at Prosper Portland now.
And, you know, my decision, speaking for just me, was that, look, you know, what I see is an outstanding and excellent public servant with the values that we need in the city right now.
And it would be a crying shame if Cornell Wesley didn't have the ongoing benefit of her experience.
So I think that generally wraps up the mood and spirit of that conversation.
And that's about all.
Thank you very much.
Colleagues, is there any discussion?
Councilor Knoll.
Thank you, Madam President.
I'm excited to support this nomination and we'll vote on it I had— we were in the unfortunate position of having to do this in order to ask a question or even have the discussion around any of the underlying issues.
But I wanted to ask, with the group, not with the individual, but I wanted to ask if the committee could speak to the conversations around our broader relationship with Prosper and how our— there have been concerns about democratic accountability of Prosper, and this is kind of the only place that we get to do that.
So I wanted to understand better the committee's approach to that.
And perhaps Councilor Green, if you could speak to it, I'd appreciate that.
It's a great question.
I mean, we didn't probe too deeply into that during the conversation, but we did broach it.
First of all, the committee is the place where we do kind of the accountability and both small or lowercase and capital Okay.
Case oversight there.
What I heard, and I'll actually give Councilor Dunphy an opportunity to weigh in on this, what I heard was a commitment from Serena that she also cares about, you know, that relationship with the committee and takes it very seriously.
We didn't get into a discussion that went any deeper, I think, than like sort of revitalizing any kind of past conversations that we've had in this, this chambers.
But Councilor Dunphy, would you like to offer your remarks as well?
Yeah, just briefly.
You know, we did have a good chance to have a conversation about what accountable economic development looks like and the future of the relationship between our different bodies.
I'm excited to have that.
I think that regardless of the dynamic currently, Prosper Portland is going to benefit from having Ms. Stoudemire-Wesley on Staudemeyer, I lost her.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Lane.
Unidentified speaker
I did say it right?
All right, cool.
On this, she has an incredible amount of experience and great deep connections to the community, and I think that she will be the right kind of person to be on that board when we begin to finally have the conversation about what the right-sized dynamic between our bodies really is.
Great, thank you.
I'll leave it at that then.
I think you answered not only that question but the next couple I had.
And I'll just say it now so I don't have to say it later.
Thank you for your service and continued desire to serve, Serena.
Thank you, Councilor.
Colleagues, is there any other discussion?
Okay, I will just add that having known Serena for quite a while, I absolutely believe that what my colleagues who talked with her in committee are saying is Councilor Loretta Smith.
Thank you, Mayor.
I'm excited to reappoint Deputy City Administrator Priya Dhanapal.
I think that she is the case and that she will be a good person to help us navigate our relationship with Prosper Portland, Prosper Portland's continued relationship with community under a new executive director, and to really bridge a lot of different pieces that need to be brought together under Prosper Portland's work.
So I'm excited to reappoint her today.
This is a report, so I do need a motion and a second.
Mitch Green
So moved.
Unidentified speaker
Okay, thank you.
That was Councilor Green and Councilor Kanal.
Rebecca, could you please call the roll?
Green.
Mitch Green
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Avalos.
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Aye.
Unidentified speaker
And the report is accepted with 7 aye votes.
Thank you, Rebecca.
I believe that is the end of our agenda.
Is there anything else Okay.
And I will say thank you to Hope who was here from Prosper Portland.
We ended up not having any questions, but we appreciate your time.
Colleagues, thank you for sticking with us.
I know we got a little delayed there with all of the questions on the city administrator report at the top of the meeting, but I appreciate that we were able to get through all of our business today.
With that, I will end our meeting.
Um, and we will be back next week.