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.
Mitch Green
Good afternoon.
Jamie Dunphy
I am calling back to order the council.
Work session on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 8th.
I'm going to first turn it over ever so briefly to CFO Jonas Biery.
Jonas Biery
Great.
Thank you, Council President and councilors.
Good afternoon.
For the record, Jonas Biery, City's Chief Financial Officer, here with City Economist Peter Holzman, who's going to share a few slides with details about the most recent general fund forecast.
That document was published and also distributed directly to council offices on March 24th.
We previewed some of this information at prior budget work sessions, at the spring town work session last week.
Also, just note for those following along online at home, the presentation that we're going to have today was distributed to council late yesterday afternoon and is available publicly on the work session page on portland.gov.
Before handing to Peter, I just want to spend a couple of minutes framing up some facts about the city's forecasting efforts.
The city's forecast objective is to estimate revenues and expenses as closely to accurate as reasonably possible, using assumptions based on verifiable data and economic trends and informed by specialized economic expertise and experience.
Forecasts can be a very tricky thing.
When projections are too high, Forecasts can be villainized because revenues were lower than projected and spending needs to be adjusted.
When forecasts are too low, they can be villainized because not enough revenues were put on the table initially to support timely decision-making.
Because inputs to forecasts are highly variable, and we'll hear about some of this today, changes are inevitable, especially in an organization as large and complex as the city.
Often changes to the forecast result from externalities that are outside the city's control.
For example, global volatility and unexpected state or federal legislation can impact the forecast in sometimes unpredictable ways, and we'll hear about some of that today, and we already have.
Additionally, recent city forecasts have been impacted by never-seen-before reductions in property tax values or reduction in property tax value growth that developed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It's because of this expectation of change that the city economist provides multiple updates to the forecast throughout the year.
One of my favorite wonky quotes, which some of you, maybe all of you, heard me say before is, all predictions guaranteed wrong.
I love that quote because it's sort of a cheeky nod to the fact that it's impossible to expect perfection in forecasting.
Forecasts will be imperfect by their very nature, but hopefully minimally so.
I'll also preview, we'll hear more about this in a moment, but I'll preview that the 5-year general fund forecast remains balanced over that 5-year period consistent with current city policy.
However, it's important to call out that the forecast is based upon current appropriation levels or CAL.
Not current service levels.
We know— or CSL.
We know that CSL expectations are typically higher than Cal.
So if that trend continues to hold true and nothing else changes, we can expect some amount of gap next fiscal year despite the current forecast appearing balanced at zero next year.
Lastly, and as previously discussed in this room, I'm on the very front edge of working on a 5-year financial stabilization and recovery plan, and I expect that effort will provide support for future council discussions and deliberations about long-term forecasts and finances.
And look forward to sharing more with you as that work begins over the next couple of months and over the summer.
With that, I'll hand over to Peter.
Thank you.
Peter Holzman
For the record, Peter Holzman, City Economist.
And can we go to the next slide, please?
So this shows my favorite least favorite graph, which is about economic uncertainty.
And so in forecasting and economics, we differentiate between risk and uncertainty.
Risk being something that's quantifiable.
You have a probability of this thing happening.
And uncertainty being we have no— we generally don't know the range of—.
Mitch Green
Peter, sorry, and I hate to interrupt, but I wanted to start before we jumped into this.
I just need to get— I just need to say something.
Earlier in this chambers, in these dais, there was a characterization of another bureau As engaging in malfeasance because one of my colleagues did not like the answers that they were getting, has been frustrated.
I think we've all been frustrated with the changing balances of the housing-related stuff, but you guys are doing hard work.
Jonas, you said it yourself, all forecasts are wrong.
I can't let something like that go stand without correcting the record.
The people who work in the Housing Bureau are some of the hardest working, and they devote their hearts and souls into this work.
And so if we have an issue with our bureaus, we have an issue of accountability.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you.
Mitch Green
That needs to stay at the level of leadership.
We can talk about needing to change our organizational structures.
We can talk about the need for oversight.
We never just wholesale critique a bureau as being corrupt or engaging in malfeasance, or in previous situations, like maybe you're doing a bad job as the city economist.
I'm just going to rebuke that.
If I hear it again, I'm going to rebuke it again.
And I just— I needed to say that before you guys launch into this, because this is going to be a heady topic too.
Thank you for allowing me to jump in.
Olivia Clark
Thank you.
Eric Zimmerman
Thank you.
Peter Holzman
And just to continue, so I just distinguish between risk and uncertainty.
We have a way of tracking uncertainty, which is basically how often it comes up in newspapers, periodicals, and that sort of thing.
And this is the index from the mid-'80s.
And as you would expect, during COVID economic uncertainty was at an all-time high.
It was also at an all-time high last April when I released the April forecast, largely related to the tariff announcements and the uncertainty that that created for both economic policy, financial markets reactions, and things like that.
You'll note that while it is not at those levels this April, it is reaccelerating.
And so I just wanna flag that as important context because basically this chart shows all the many ways that I could be wrong by things that are not in my, like I'm not assuming, I'm not assuming a recession, I'm not assuming—.
Loretta Smith
Inflation.
Peter Holzman
Some sort of further escalation of geopolitical conflict, anything along those lines.
And so as all those possibilities exist, it sets the context for the forecast that I'm gonna present today.
And so we can go to the next slide.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Council President, can I ask a clarifying question about that slide first before we move on?
Angelita Morillo
Yep.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
I am wondering if what we're looking at here is a look forward, a look back, or a point in time and what I— Point in time.
So just to clarify that, the top of the blue line is where we sit today based on the reality on the ground today, meaning we are not making any projections about what we think could happen.
But it is also not a backwards look where the last month on here is, for example, February, and we're saying this is what the uncertainty was in February.
Peter Holzman
It is literally the top point of that line is yeah, and just because your question, I think I should explain the methodology a little bit, which it's basically tracking how often economic uncertainty is mentioned as a major risk in periodicals and things along those lines.
And so those are daily.
And so this is an aggregate of the last 365 days.
Loretta Smith
So it's not a snapshot.
Peter Holzman
A daily measure.
That is, I believe it's weekly.
So this week we are at this level.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So to that end, that means that there are not adjustments looking back after the fact to say, oh, we got it wrong, uncertainty was higher or lower.
It is literally a metric of how often do people talk about uncertainty as a condition that matters.
And therefore it is, in a sense, maybe a look back of a day or 2 because it's a reflection of what has just occurred.
Peter Holzman
Yes, exactly.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, thank you.
That's helpful.
Peter Holzman
All right, now next slide.
And so while I know we're here to talk about fiscal year '26-'27, I think this is a good opportunity to talk about the current year deficit as well.
Sometimes in my effort to daylight every small change to the forecast or trend muddled by fiscal years or accounting idiosyncrasy, I think I might have missed an opportunity to better highlight a relatively simple story.
House Resolution 1, otherwise known as the Big Beautiful Bill, passed in July after the April 2025 forecast, which set the budget.
The Legislative Revenue Office at the state estimated the impact to the state revenue similar to the ones that make up the business license tax.
So it's a portion of the personal income tax and all of the corporate excise tax at $362 million for the current fiscal year.
I worked with LRO, Legislative Revenue Office, over the fall and tracked returns in October and November to estimate the impacts of House Resolution 1 to the City of Portland's business license tax revenue.
I estimated that the state's $362 million translated to about $21.4 million for the current fiscal year for the City of Portland.
This analysis was completed after the fall TAO in November, December.
And again, I was waiting in part on final returns.
And then there was also discussion of disconnecting earlier.
And if they had disconnected, if they had formed a special session and disconnected earlier.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Peter Holzman
They could have actually impacted tax year, the previous tax year, and we wouldn't have felt it in the current year.
And so as a reminder, current year revenues are expected to come in $17.1 million below the April 2025 forecast, which is less than the estimated impact of HR 1 on the current fiscal year.
So I think it is fair to say that based on these estimates, had HR 1 not become law after the April 2025 forecast, there would be no current year deficit.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
Peter Holzman
I do also think that this ties back to that opening slide on uncertainty because in April of last year, my number one concern was not federal tax policy of this kind, it was federal tax policy of the tariff kind.
And that was my primary concern.
And that kind of shows the range of potential outcomes of things that could disrupt the forecast is that it's not necessarily predictable what it could be.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Peter Holzman
And then I, I, since the slide is up, let me explain the rest of it.
Um, first of all, the impact of HR 1 broken down by type is shown in the, the table below.
You'll note that the bonus depreciation section is grayed out and that the totals at the bottom do not include that.
That is because the state's partial federal disconnection disconnected from that provision specifically.
So this March forecast update includes that disconnect.
And the other, this is the business license tax forecast going forward.
One of the reasons we are on track to get $220 million is in part related to the tariff story.
The tariffs, while it did not have the impact I anticipated or may have anticipated, it did shift some revenue forward between fiscal years and also has reduced underlying liability.
And so you'll see—.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you.
Peter Holzman
That I'm actually anticipating and forecasting we collect less business license tax revenue next year.
Next slide.
So the March forecast is really an update.
It's almost a changelog compared to the much longer and more detailed December forecast release.
And so these are all of the changes that have occurred since the December forecast and they're rolled into this.
On net, it is a positive, but there's a lot of, you know, canceling out of different effects.
And so I'm just gonna hit on like the big ones and if there's any questions on any of them, please let me know.
First of all, business license taxes, that is directly related to that $5.3 million.
That is the federal disconnect.
Loretta Smith
Okay.
Peter Holzman
$1 million more next year.
That is in the forecast.
You'll notice that there's negative $3 million on utility license and franchise fees.
Last time I came here, I talked about the other category, the 150+ other utility franchises.
And previously they had, or last fiscal year, we got $16 million from that group.
I had previously had forecast $13 million because, you know, Some, we get back payments and things like that.
We're on track for about $11 million.
And so that is mostly me accounting for the current year tracking of utility license fees.
Most of the other ones are smaller adjustments, but I'll also note that the current appropriation level or CAL, there's been expense reductions.
The biggest one of those is that because of the ongoing cuts that we need to take, we no longer have to do a general fund transfer or a transfer to the general fund reserve to meet our 10% threshold.
And so our 10% threshold doesn't change by the amount that was previously anticipated.
And so we do not have to make that transfer anymore.
The net of all of this is an improvement of $2.5 million in fiscal year '26-'27.
Next slide.
So this is what this all means in terms of the 5-year balanced forecast.
As a reminder, this is, Current appropriation level, not current service level.
My forecast by financial policy is current appropriation level.
And that $50.1 million is made up of $35.6 million in ongoing cuts and $15.1 million in one-time cuts.
I think the other thing I would flag on this is that it's balanced in fiscal year '27-'28.
Raymond C. Lee
Okay.
Peter Holzman
There's not a whole lot of room in '28-'29.
The $1.8 million is a very thin gap.
But the other piece of better news is that in fiscal year '29-'30, there is significantly more available revenue anticipated.
This is largely due to pension obligation bonds falling off.
We'll have completed paying those.
And so that's $19 million of that.
Next slide.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Peter Holzman
And then, so what's next?
So this shows current year business license tax collections and what is anticipated for the rest of the year.
You'll see the bump where we got the larger payments in September, October that were for prior years, possibly tariff related.
What is next is that in May, if we get revenues above or below expectations significantly just for business license taxes, I will come to Council and basically give a revenue update on that in early May.
At this time, I don't anticipate that happening, or if I do, it would be a relatively small positive amount.
But going back to that first slide on uncertainty, it applies here as well.
And then last slide.
And finally, and just to circle back on the uncertainty question, these are a few recession probability odds that I grabbed.
And I think 2 things I would note is that they're sort of all over the place.
No one really can agree.
Again, tying back to the uncertainty slide.
And 2, a recession is not in anyone's baseline, which I think is important because it is not in mine either.
And that may change in the coming months, and I hope it doesn't.
But a little bit of good news, I guess, is that no one is expecting currently a recession.
And that is all I have.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Peter.
Jonas Biery
Excellent.
Jamie Dunphy
Colleagues, questions about the presentation?
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
I have 2 questions.
Thanks for the presentation, Peter.
I really appreciate that you led with the EPI or the, I'm sorry, Economic Policy Uncertainty Index.
I appreciated Councilor Pirtle-Guiney's questions.
I think I wanna make sure I connect the dots for folks.
Did you lead with that because It is a direct explanatory variable or perhaps a way to contextualize volatility in the BLT?
Peter Holzman
It's primarily tied to BLT.
Jonas Biery
Yeah.
Peter Holzman
I think that's the most direct connection is there's a lot of aspects that influence business license taxes that are not necessarily in the city's control or have to do with anything, and it has to do more with international and national and federal tax policy or situations.
And so that is a big reason why, yes.
Mitch Green
Thanks for just level-setting that.
I think for all the good things that we're trying to do to bring folks back downtown to kind of activate stuff, we are facing that headwind of just a random variable shock almost every day.
I'm very concerned about the looming energy crisis.
Our stockpiles are pretty good in North America, if you look at Southeast Asia, that's an indication of what could be coming our way if this situation in the Middle East doesn't resolve itself very soon.
Dismal science, right?
The other question I have is the 20— if you go back to the slide that has the '26-'27 forecast, it might just be the table of numbers.
We'll do it.
Raymond C. Lee
Okay.
Mitch Green
I think there was— yeah, that one.
Um, does this forecast include the expected incremental revenue, uh, from the BLT that we're expected to get from the Moda Center transaction?
Peter Holzman
No.
Mitch Green
The Trailblazers transaction?
Ruth Levine
No.
Mitch Green
Okay.
Do we have a sense of how much that is expected to be?
Because I mean, it's a known value, it's a single transaction, so we should be able to know roughly what it is.
Jonas Biery
Yeah, Councilor, I'll jump in and answer that question.
Um, I won't be able to give you a number for that because under taxpayer confidentiality law, we can't comment on tax liability of any specific taxpayer.
So I know that's not a satisfactory answer, but from the advice from the city attorney is that we should not, from at least the seat I sit in, not codify a number on that.
Mitch Green
I understand that you've got that guidance from the city attorney, but that law is designed to make sure that we're not revealing of a traded sector some competitive advantage, but there's just one— it's obvious that it's—.
Jonas Biery
Yeah, so let me— I'll answer the question this way without a number.
I mean, I think the expectation is at some point a transaction will occur that will result in a tax liability that will, ergo, result in a large payment related to that.
Mitch Green
That was reported in the press, right?
It was like $4.28 billion, right?
Jonas Biery
I have heard numbers reported in the press, yeah.
And I think there's some numbers that folks have done where they've— there's been numbers publicly stated and you can do the math.
The reality is we don't know what that actual tax payment is until it comes in and it's audited.
So I think there's a— there's been publicly discussed expectation, and we don't carry that in the forecast just as we, you know, any large— we can't predict any— the timeline or outcome of any specific large, you know, revenue income stream beyond what we see in the trending.
So the expectation is, my understanding is that when that revenue stream comes in, is audited and verified and received in our coffers, then that amount is—.
Mitch Green
We're not going to forecast it.
We're gonna wait for it to accrue.
And if it— is it generally true if a transaction happens in the current fiscal year, we could expect the revenue in the next fiscal year?
Is there that kind of a lag?
Peter Holzman
The lag is not necessarily predictable, which is one of the reasons why I don't include it in the forecast because things can get challenged and—.
Jonas Biery
And also possible that that could come in over, you know, More than one tax cycle depending on how, you know, it's structured by the property, by the individual taxpayer.
Mitch Green
Okay, so thank you.
I think that's about all I needed to level set.
I just didn't know if that was already being assumed in here or not.
And so if we're going to talk about the uses of those funds, it's just I need to know if we're going to double count the use of those funds, if we're— if is it on balance sheet, is it off balance sheets?
But I think I understand what you're trying to thank you, Councilor Green.
Jamie Dunphy
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you, Council President.
Peter, it's good to see you.
Candace Avalos
Good to see you too.
Loretta Smith
Um, franchise fees.
We got it.
We all got an email from PG&E that said that they were raising their, um, their rates.
So since they're raising their rates, are we gonna raise our rates, our franchise fee rates to them?
Peter Holzman
Yeah, so we don't raise the rates to them, but we get the— so if they increase fees by 5%, then that passes through to the city because we charge them 5% on their revenues.
Loretta Smith
Okay, just curious.
The other thing I see, the, the BLT was, uh, forecasted at $212 million, and now it's forecasted for March for $217 million, which is a nice jump from December, what we thought it was going to be.
And we always have this conversation about when we need to fill a gap.
The first thing that I hear from yes.
From CBO and others and Jonas, we were down on BLT.
But when I look at the numbers, it doesn't appear to look that way.
It looks like we actually have increased our numbers in the BLT from the original forecast.
Uh, so does that have a bigger impact on what— how much we're going to have for the general fund for our budget?
Keith Wilson
Yes.
Peter Holzman
And so let me rewind a little bit.
That $5.3 million is directly connected to the federal disconnect.
So since the state passed the partial federal disconnect, that is what was added back basically as that provision.
And short answer is yes, that just directly.
And this kind of, This slide goes through all of the changes of that.
And the net is that it's $2.5 million better because some things got a little bit worse and some things got a little bit better.
But on net, $2.5 million better.
Loretta Smith
And I have 2 last questions.
We're in such a global predicament right now, and we have started a couple different wars.
Do you include that kind of thing when you're forecasting what's happening on the federal level?
Because I'm really concerned.
Every day I hear a different thing from our president.
He's saying he's going to blow things up, blow up civilians.
I mean, I don't know what he's going to do.
We could wake up all dead tomorrow morning and not know it.
But he concerns me in how we actually are able to keep our assets safe.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Loretta Smith
Improving instead of going up instead of going down.
Peter Holzman
I hear your concern and I completely agree.
And actually, could we go back to the first slide?
Sameer Kanal
Okay.
Peter Holzman
So that was kind of how I opened my presentation was talking about the massive amount of uncertainty that has been created both last April with tariffs, this April with geopolitical conflict, and also it just, Huge legs.
Huge legs.
And it is a real forecasting challenge.
I don't include any specific scenarios like that in the forecast, in part because there are so many ways that anything could play out.
And not just talking geopolitically, but also talking recession or AI bubble bursting or things along those lines.
But that is one of the many ways that my forecast could go wrong.
Loretta Smith
Okay, well, I appreciate it, and it's— although it's not where I would want it to be, but it is looking better.
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah, thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Council President.
Um, I want to start with a question totally separate from anything we've talked about, um, on the forecast line, it says that your forecast on transient lodging taxes is down by $1 million.
Is that based on actuals that we've seen in the first quarter of the year, or is that based on projections for summer travel or something else?
How concerned should we be?
Peter Holzman
So I was projecting some growth in both occupancy and average room rates.
I have not seen that growth.
These in the most recent data, I've actually seen a slight decline is the most recent trend.
And so I basically reduced the forecast to next year to be, it's the same as this year.
Dan Ryan
Okay.
Peter Holzman
Until I see actual data that shows improving, then that will then flow into the forecast.
How concerned should we be?
There is a lot of factors that influence that.
And I mean, a big one that I spoke about last time is reduced travel from Canada.
Loretta Smith
There's—.
Peter Holzman
And it's really hard to compare year to year sometimes as well because we have events at different times and things along those lines.
In general, I wouldn't overweight a $1 million adjustment and worry necessarily about that.
I would worry more about the longer-term trend, which is that the last 3 years there really hasn't been any improvement.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
And your projection that there might be, I think, has left folks a little optimistic.
And it sounds like we're not necessarily projecting a decrease at this time, but we are putting off the increase.
Peter Holzman
Yeah, and as a reminder, summer travel is the biggest time for us.
And so that, I think post-summer would be the time that I would update and potentially increase that forecast again.
Jonas Biery
And Councilor, if I can just jump in and note too, I think it's important context.
Peter's probably too modest, but I mean, a lot of work is spent collaborating with Peter's colleagues at the county, at Metro, PSU, the state, regionally to make sure that we're sort of sharing information about some of those expectations.
For example, the VFTA, the Visitor Facilities Trust Account, relies heavily on that transient lodging tax.
Revenue stream as well.
And so there's a lot of activity to make sure that we're having that collective dialogue and being as informed as we can about those, those long-term assumptions.
Dan Ryan
Can I just want to jump in for a sec to say that when I talk to people close to this issue, they say until the convention center accounts start going up again, that we're not in a good place.
The majority of our lodging tax comes from big successful conventions.
And they're struggling right now to book events.
They're looking better about 2 to 3 years out.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah, that's a trailing indicator.
Dan Ryan
They're in kind of a very deep valley at the moment.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah, that's a trailing indicator because they book so far out.
I'm saying this so it's on the record in this conversation.
They book so far out that what we're seeing now are things that for the most part were booked 2 or 3 or 4 years ago, except for the small things that book just a year out.
So we're still seeing—.
Dan Ryan
Luckily, we got a lot of bookings in 2019, and we still lived off a little bit of that, but we have not done well since.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
We now have the tail from 2021 and 2022 that we're experiencing, and we expect that to tick up in the next couple of years.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, next question.
Olivia Clark
The—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
You mentioned that the projections are based on CAL, not current service level.
And we have an increase in the expected CAL on the slide after this.
If we were looking at current service level instead, and I'm just, I'm still a year in wrapping my head around how we do our projections and how this new CSL fits in with CAL that we still rely on.
When we think about CSL and how these projections could be affected by that.
Do you project the angle of the CSL line to divert and continue to get farther from Cal, or do you project CSL to be higher than Cal but maintain the same angle as it increases into the future?
Peter Holzman
I understand the question.
I will say I don't project anything with current service levels because it's Council adopted as one time.
And yes, I think Ruth is probably better to answer this one.
Ruth Levine
Sorry.
Ruth Levine, for the record.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
We don't have your mic yet.
It's still red.
Angelita Morillo
There we go.
Ruth Levine
Thank you.
Ruth Levine, for the record, budget director.
I mean, I think it really depends ultimately on quite a few variables that, you know, things like, you know, the cost of labor negotiations, the cost of health benefits going into the future, that will be in Cal going forward.
Choices around things like things we buy with our internal service funds, money.
So all of those will impact it.
I think the— it's really hard to say.
There's also So this like kind of step function in the gap, right, from the one-time money, like the gap, the line is really higher above it.
So I think it's, um, hard to say.
The part I can speak to is that we're trying to capture more.
So things like the Internal Service Fund rates, we're trying to do a better job at capturing those so that that doesn't surprise us as like a gap between Cal and current service level.
But I think going forward, the— this forecast for Cal on the total expense line will inevitably increase in the out years.
But to some extent, that is, you know, impacted by council decisions that you all have control over.
I think some of the external variable risks to the forecast are more on like the health fund, on the health benefits side, just with the cost of claims and things like risk insurance rates, things that we don't have as much control over as a city.
Those are kind of the main risks there.
But yeah.
Jonas Biery
And apologies to keep jumping in, but I also would just note that the delta between those two, the sort of the legacy, you know, there were very good reasons why Cal was established in policy as the baseline, you know, 20-plus years ago.
And the world has changed.
And so I mentioned up at the top the kind of 5-year stabilization plan project.
And this is an example of one of the types of things I think might be a topic of that work is to identify how do we, you know, better align in a policy and practice perspective so that we don't necessarily have 2 separate and competing sets of assumptions to facilitate making these decisions and making it a little more clear to support transparency in decision-making.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, thank you.
I'll look forward to seeing that.
Final question on the same slide.
In '29-'30, you talked about a— I'm not going to call it significant, but a meaningful increase in available ongoing revenue based on some pension obligation bonds fulfilling.
Is that $25.6 million accounted for in the $830.3 cal in 2030-31?
Or if that $25.6 million is fully allocated, will we have a deficit in 2030-31?
Peter Holzman
Great question.
That gets into the weeds of how this table's constructed.
It is basically assumed that that $25.6 million will be allocated to ongoing programming, and that makes up the $830.3 million, includes that.
So there is no new deficit.
It's that we will not only— And that's how the balancing works is that it needs to be balanced over all 5 years.
And so yes, at this time, if there are no new labor agreements, no new ongoing costs, and current appropriation levels hold like that and revenues hold like that, we will be allocating $25.6 million of new revenue, of new ongoing in '29-'30, largely related to pension obligation bonds.
I will say there's a lot of ifs in that statement, but—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
A lot of ifs that we know will not actually be negatives.
Peter Holzman
Probably.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Those things will all happen or change.
But under the projections, which is all we can work with, the neutral $0 million available ongoing in 2030-31 means that we have allocated the $25.6 million to ongoing program.
We don't have anything new extra in '30-'31, but we're not running a deficit from that allocation.
Peter Holzman
Yeah, and I'll just say me putting the $8.2 million in one-time versus ongoing is just a choice.
I could have put that in ongoing as well, but because I don't project out the next 5 years, uh, I— it feels incorrect, like an incorrect assumption to put it in ongoing because I don't know if I— the next 5 years of revenue can support it.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Council President.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Thank you, Council President.
I saw your email and eventually we'll get to the priorities, right?
Candace Avalos
Mm-hmm.
Dan Ryan
This question is looking at expenses.
There it is.
I guess the slide is up.
We're spending more time on revenue 'cause that's what you focus on.
Now I see your friend up there, Jonas, who has more, he sees everything of course.
But on the expense side, I started to get a little bit like yours is definitely, A forecast.
It's an economic forecast.
Everything you said, I was a minor in economics, a minor, so I kind of followed everything you were saying.
So yes, true.
On the expense side, it's usually a little bit more certain, I would think.
And Jonas, I'm not tracking what I'm seeing here.
So next year you have one number and then it goes down quite a bit.
Olivia Clark
Yeah.
Dan Ryan
In '27-'28, and then it jumps back up again.
I'm tracking that.
I'm trying to figure out, were those numbers that you're really attached to talking about right now, or is this too soon?
Peter Holzman
So for that first—.
Dan Ryan
Is this still the economist that will talk about our expenses?
Peter Holzman
Yeah, and just because this table's my fault, That's right.
So the— I think you're looking at the total expenses CAL line.
That is before the decisions that you will make or Council will make, which includes that $35.6 million of ongoing cuts.
If you look at the bottom line, that is where we need to be in terms of what the available resources will support.
The total expenses after accounting for adds, cuts, and one-time spending, and I probably should have made that more clear, is $742.5 million, which is the amount of revenue that is anticipated for fiscal year '26-'27.
So it's total expenses before ongoing reductions.
And then the line at the bottom is after the ongoing reductions, and that's where you get you made sense.
Dan Ryan
And the exercise, when I looked at it, it looked like, well, we had to match our expenses 'cause we have to balance our budget unlike the federal government.
And so we did that exercise by balancing it.
But this presentation's been explaining our revenue side, but we haven't explained our expense side.
That's all.
And I don't need to do that here, but I But think it's important to understand to that.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Dan Ryan
Me it just felt like we were filling in the cell on the spreadsheet to make sure it matched the revenue that comes in.
Jonas Biery
Yeah, Councilor, to some degree, I mean, the words you just said are true, right?
Dan Ryan
That's all I can go from.
Jonas Biery
Yeah, we forecast the revenues and then we have to build a budget that fits within the expected resources we have.
Ergo, in this year, a reduction to get to the $742 million.
And then just to be clear, you know, The $767,000 in '27-'28 is an increase above that $742,000 number for the current year.
Does that make sense?
So it's not— it does show revenues are continuing to increase from $742,000 in '26-'27 to a projected $767,000 in '27-'28, et cetera, based upon CAL specifically and the sort of technical vagaries of how that Is that helpful?
Dan Ryan
Yeah, I don't think I'm going to take any more of our time up on the expense side.
I think we're going to have plenty of time to dive into that.
So I'll let it go.
But I think today's presentation from our economist is about the revenue.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
And I will make more comments on that later.
Jamie Dunphy
Yes, sir.
Candace Avalos
Great.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor.
Uh, Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
I want to piggyback on what, um, Councilor Ryan was talking about.
Um, when we were in the previous committees, um, I was the chair of the Labor and Workforce Committee, and there were 450, um, people who are current employees that were eligible for, um, full 30-year retirement.
Are there any policies that, um, that we have around retirement and being at full retirement and what that looks like?
I know that's a huge deal because we have to pay out vacation time on all those employees and convert some of their sick time into time that we have to pay, but just in terms of expenses It would be helpful to see what those expenses are.
Are they FTE expenses?
Are they external services, internal services?
I'm just trying to figure out where that count is.
And the other thing I would really like to see, I've been asking about it, but I'd like to see, and I think this number reflects it, but I just don't know what the breakout is.
Jamie Dunphy
Yes.
Loretta Smith
Of our debt service over the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 next 5 years.
It would be great just to see when does debt service drop off and how does that impact these, uh, total, um, total expenses and total resources, just so that I can see what, what it looks like.
What are we paying in total debt service right now?
Peter Holzman
Let me, let me take the, the second question and then I'll pass it to the first.
So the, the debt service I have been including, and I, I should I should start including in presentations because it's a question I get asked a lot.
The general fund debt service.
Loretta Smith
Yes.
Peter Holzman
So I have a table that breaks that down.
And as I mentioned, a big reason why we have available resource in '29-'30 is related to debt service falling off.
Loretta Smith
And that's what I was thinking that was, but I didn't see where that was coming from.
And that was gonna be my next question is that big jump.
In '29-'30, a debt service, lack thereof debt service.
Peter Holzman
Yeah, so it's related to about $19 million of pension obligation bonds falling off and then just a little bit of other revenue.
But that's the big piece.
And I can get you that table.
We do a lot more debt service than just what's in the general fund.
I mean, the Water Bureau and all those do that, but—.
Loretta Smith
But I would like to see that too.
I'd like to see the total debt service even in the restricted funds.
Because that's important.
That helps me to understand if there are things that are going on.
It's not just this.
This is a pension obligation fund, but the debt service that's in those big departments like the water, transportation, parks, those kind of things.
Jonas Biery
Yeah, yeah, Councilor, we certainly have that information.
It's published in a few different places at various points throughout the year and happy to redirect you to those.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Jamie Dunphy
Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks.
There's a few things that I think have come up that I wanna make sure there's room to discuss in the appropriate space.
So just mentioning for the future, I think there's a conversation about internal rates.
There's a conversation around trying to anticipate what our long-term paths on a few of these things are.
But one thing I wanted to circle back to that Yeah.
My colleague asked about here was the transient lodging tax.
And if you can go back to that slide, I'd really appreciate it.
Yeah, so this one shows the reduction in the forecast, but as part of the conversation, Councilor Ryan mentioned that there's a conversation specific to the convention center.
What I'd love to know is how that data can be broken down further to understand geographically, size of hotel, whatever sort of information that that can be broken down on at least those 2 levels.
If there's other levels, that would be helpful.
As a person with event planning experience, including here in Portland, I can say that there is a lot of— kind of actually similar to many of our other problems We have incentives to come here for the first time, but not a lot to help you when you're already here.
And we also don't have a lot of help for event planners who are trying to scale.
So this is a challenge that I think could be highlighted.
I was intending to talk about this in the earlier conversation today, but obviously we went over time to try and use some of the TLT money that we're already collecting.
To reinvest into helping some of our events who like to stay here continue to do that.
Because if it's actually— the parallels to other conversations are really high here.
If we're able to bring in some new business but maintain all of it, we will do better.
Whereas if we are bringing in new business but we are losing our existing business, we will be spinning our wheels.
So I would love to understand that a little bit better.
Peter Holzman
Is that Yes, there is revenue by location.
It's normally split between like 4 business areas, 4 or 5.
The big ones tend to be around the airport and downtown and then other areas related.
I believe our revenue division can get more granular, but the convention center also, we have pretty good data on that too as well.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay.
Jonas Biery
Yeah, I was just going to add, as part of the VFTA, the Visitor Facilities Trust Account, those projections which are managed by the county, the collector of the transient lodging tax has a breakout for it specific to the convention center hotel, but the revenues that they collect under that broader tax, TLT, regional TLT, and a forecast that's a little more tied to projected activity at the convention center.
And so that's a really good proxy of expectations relative to convention center activity over the next few years.
And so that's certainly something that's available.
And then, yeah, happy to explore getting additional data by other disaggregation.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, that'd be super helpful.
I think over time it would be something that might be worth trying to develop more tools for that to understand, because there is a difference between an event, some, you know, meeting space revenue from bookings that include a meeting space component or not, I guess, is the question I'm looking at there.
The other thing I wanted to mention—.
Dan Ryan
Mr. Kanal, while we're on this, I'm used to work sessions being a little more conversation.
Is that okay?
So I'm glad that we're having this dialogue.
The reason I wanted to bring that up earlier is because when I was with a group of hotel, motel owners and managers and restaurateurs, I wanted to hear how exciting March Madness was 'cause I saw a lot of tourists here.
And they said they experienced a little bit of bump, but they all agreed that it was mostly around the big conventions that influenced their numbers more so than a big sporting event for a few days.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, that makes sense.
Dan Ryan
And so I think that we're onto something that we really need to stay tuned with, um, the convention center data.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, I think, um, we, we talk a little bit about—.
Dan Ryan
And then summer travels is down.
Raymond C. Lee
Yes.
Dan Ryan
And some of it now we're, we're experiencing at the, at the, at the gas station, if you will.
But, um, it's also for other reasons.
And I think our reputation is down, so people don't travel here like they used to.
Sameer Kanal
And I think the, the reputation—.
Dan Ryan
And they all talked about that.
Sameer Kanal
Um, is going to— it's going to be a trailing indicator in both But it's going to be more— the trail will be longer for events, but we will see it manifest more quickly in people who might be in Spokane and choosing, or somewhere, you know, broader regionally, and might be choosing whether to spend a weekend in Seattle or a weekend here or a weekend in San Francisco, that kind of thing.
Which is why I think that separation of meeting space versus not.
And it's interesting that you mentioned the sports piece because that might be a sort of Yeah.
I think that's a third category that otherwise gets lost in the sauce with the things that— with the larger events.
Because often if a sports team is coming here, they'll book a meeting room to do a group meal or something, even though the primary purpose of their visit is not to do an event in the hotel.
But instead, that's just a secondary thing before they go to the arena or something.
So I think those are— whatever we can do there would be helpful.
The other thing, I read the OPB article that I think you were referencing about Canadian tourists, which by the way is 3.5 times the second biggest chunk of our international visitors by dollars.
29%, I believe, was the stat.
And I also know that maybe more than any other location, there's a component of exchange rates.
To this.
And so I'd love to understand not only in the context of other, the sort of new and emerging terrible things that might affect our relationships with the rest of the world, but the existing ongoing things that might be good or bad on a given day.
Obviously, if the Canadian dollar is stronger, then they will have more purchasing power to come here or wherever they might go in the United States.
So I would love to understand that a little bit better.
I don't know if that's something that falls into your purview.
Steve Novick
It does.
Sameer Kanal
Shop in the slightest, or if it's something that might be— and part of the reason I'm asking you this question is I have yet to get a straight answer as to who owns the tourism portion, because I keep getting Prospera Travel Portland, or— but who in the city owns this is a question I don't get a straight answer to ever.
Uh, and that's not on you at all, that's, that's more this box.
But I'd love to understand if that data exists anywhere, or who would be the, the person My interaction would be with how that impacted our TLT revenues.
Peter Holzman
But beyond that, I don't know.
And I would say that it would be very hard to pull out that specifically from the broader TLT conversation, separate of the tourism question you asked.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, that's super helpful.
Either the mayor or the city administrator may have any information on who should I be going to in the administration to talk about tourism.
Keith Wilson
Sure, Council President.
I sit on the Visitors Development Fund, and it's primarily a Travel Portland-generated table, and it has county, metro, and the city.
And we're talking about how do we bring in or attract conventions and other tourists and such.
So there is that table.
It's It's just, I think Councilor Ryan hit it, reputationally we're in that sort of doldrums, and then also nationally we're just not a destination for international travelers right now.
Sameer Kanal
But we're working at it.
Keith Wilson
I mean, we are definitely talking about it often.
Sameer Kanal
I appreciate that.
That's all good news.
But who in the administration owns it?
Because that's Travel Portland.
That's the mayor's office.
Maybe there's council involvement that I'm not aware of, but I'd love to be a part of that.
Dan Ryan
That's a—.
Sameer Kanal
My background has a lot of that.
So if so, but yeah.
Raymond C. Lee
I know mostly it'll be in our Community and Economic Development portfolio under Donnie Oliveira, who would be responsible for that information.
Since there is a group, a combination of different entities that are housing that information, he would be the main point person for us to gather that.
I'm not for sure if we have a main focal point in our city as a person or division within our city that is tracking that type of information.
Typically, that's more in your economic development arm of your organization.
That is with, uh, in our case, is with Prosper.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, so that's, that's something that I'd like to see an in-house conversation with because it's— I don't want to be in situations where it's counting on someone who happens to agree or, or putting a request into the void.
And often in the conversation around tourism, I've been— this is an over a year-long set of questions that I've been having there.
I don't want to get too far afield.
We'll have the Committee of the Whole to talk about all this stuff later.
But there was a thread leading off from the TLT here.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, and I'm grateful for having a mayor who speaks positively about our city, something that we have not always had.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
That to help with the reputational piece, by the way.
But I am looking forward to that being a larger percentage of our revenue stream in the future and want to have that conversation in the appropriate place.
Thank you, Council President.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Mr. President.
Because we're on the transient lodging tax line item, Peter, I do have to clarify something.
And I'm not trying to make your job any more difficult than it already is, but how do you go about forecasting that?
Like, what's your general methodology?
Peter Holzman
Yeah, it's relatively— I say this, but it's relatively simple where you just take the number of rooms that you expect, the average occupancy rate, and this is— I use publicly available Travel Portland, Travel Oregon data to track and kind of come up with an estimate of our occupancy rate.
And they also provide average room rate.
And I know our tax rate.
You can just multiply all those together by the number of days in a year and you get a pretty close estimate.
I, generally speaking, true it up to what we actually receive.
And where the forecasting component comes in is changing average room rate.
We're not building a lot of hotels, so I don't really change the number of rooms available.
Keith Wilson
Okay.
Peter Holzman
But it's really changing average room rate and average occupancy rate.
And right after COVID, for example, we saw a big spike in the average room rate even though the occupancy rate wasn't there.
That died relatively quickly and both have been up and down but relatively flat for the last 3 years.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Mitch Green
So I think I've got a pretty good handle on that.
So you're not trying to sort of like do a hedonic pricing, like forward-looking, Oh, the cost of fuel affects flights, then affects the vacancy or the occupancy rates and that sort of thing?
Peter Holzman
You could get to that level of detail when forecasting the specific average room rate or occupancy rate, and I will look at that sort of thing, but I don't have any built-out model in part because the actual data themselves are modeling assumptions.
Mitch Green
I appreciate that.
Because this is a work session, I am going to request to share my screen because I think it's important for us to think through because it's a non-trivial share of our income.
So I'm just going to just try to do this.
I hope it works.
Dan Ryan
Here we go.
Mitch Green
This will work.
Can you guys see that?
Jamie Dunphy
Yes.
Olivia Clark
Okay.
Mitch Green
So what I've got on the screen here is PLATS, S&P Global Energy PLATS has an index for jet fuel price.
And you know where I'm going with this, Peter, is since the, um, since the oil war that the president has pulled us into, uh, by— for unknown reasons, um, the, the price of jet fuel has spiked, uh, extraordinarily.
And I've just— every day I read a new article that says airlines are now raising a baggage fee, or they are now, um, going out and trying to secure contracts in the forward market, futures market, to try to lock in based upon expectations that this is going to continue to go up.
And so I guess I'm really concerned, and I don't know if there's much we can do about it because these are external global impacts.
This is a global energy market.
But I am concerned that we're going to have a leading indicator from this that's going to put a serious drag on our lodging, transportation lodging, line item.
So if you have a heuristic method that sort of is scenario-based that says, well, let's suppose there's a bad case that we need to think about and plan for that you don't necessarily explicitly model at the level of a hedonic pricing approach, I would encourage us to maybe consider that because I think that's coming our way.
Peter Holzman
I think that's a great point, Councilor.
This ties very well in with, again, that economic uncertainty slide because not only all the things you mentioned, but they're cutting flights.
And that's probably the bigger concern because we're not a major hub or anything along those lines.
So yeah, it's certainly a risk.
It's not necessarily a risk I want to put into the forecast until—.
Raymond C. Lee
Yeah.
Peter Holzman
It continues on a little bit longer and we have time and we see how it plays out over the summer, which is again the biggest time for revenue.
But yeah, great comments.
Mitch Green
And I appreciate that.
And I think that's kind of more for this body to think through.
And it's more for, you know, Jonas, when we do this financial get-well plan working group and we're thinking through the 5-year plan is When we make decisions that draw down reserves or we make decisions that sort of draw down contingencies and those contingencies are based upon risk assessments, I hope that we're thinking about some very difficult to model risks that affect probably directly this lodging revenue structure, but maybe indirectly some of the others through the BLT.
So I'll stop lecturing and I'll yield at this point.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Professor Green.
Jonas Biery
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
And you may have talked about this before I, I, I was here.
Just curious, where is the line item for the $7.8 million that, um, our Portland Housing Bureau, uh, receive— is receiving or going to receive from, um, the Ritz agreement?
Peter Holzman
I, I, that— I do not believe that's going to the general fund.
I believe it's going, um—.
Loretta Smith
I see Michael here.
I know he signed it.
I saw his name on it.
Is, is that in this year's, the 7.8?
Excuse me, I'll let you come up.
Jonas Biery
Council President, councilors, Michael Bonaccord, interim director for the Portland Housing Bureau.
Councilor, the the negotiation process is ongoing, so it would be if we come to an agreement and the money is sort of finalized and secured, it would be added in a TAO, I would imagine.
Loretta Smith
So are we going to do a budget modification once we get the $7.8 million?
Or I thought the $7.8 million was already a done deal.
I thought you signed off on it in March.
Jonas Biery
No, there are ongoing negotiations.
Loretta Smith
Okay, so that would be really good to know because that's not something that we're really expecting, and that's a nice piece of general fund money, a one-time— I look at it as one-time-only money.
So can we go ahead, Ruth?
Peter Holzman
Just to clarify again, it's not general fund.
Loretta Smith
It's not general fund?
Yeah, it's going to housing.
Candace Avalos
Is it housing?
Loretta Smith
It's for the rental.
The inclusionary, because they were supposed to be having affordable units over there and they had to pay us in lieu of having those units.
Am I correct?
Peter Holzman
That's correct.
Loretta Smith
Okay, okay.
So I should have explained that in the beginning.
I know people are wondering, what is she talking about?
That's good.
But I do want to know, And I'll, and I'll ask occasionally over the budget cycle if we've gotten that $7.8 million in yet, because I want to make sure that we account for it in this coming up fiscal year, '26-'27.
Um, we have a gap, so I'm just— I know it's housing money, but it still can offset our budget in some kind of way to pay for those things.
Jonas Biery
It will, it will definitely be known when we come to an okay, I appreciate you.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Colleagues, very quickly, time is currently 3:30.
We have a hard stop at 5 o'clock, and we still have to move to the second half of our item this afternoon, which is discussing council priorities through the budget.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Very briefly, I just wanted to chime in on the conversation that Councilor Kanal had with I believe that is part of the very broad charge for our City Life Committee.
And if there are conversations that you'd like to make sure we are having that are not currently being had, let me know.
I'd be happy to make sure that we dig in on the topic more this year.
Thank you, Council President.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Councilor.
Loretta Smith
Okay.
Jamie Dunphy
Seeing no one else, thank you, gentlemen.
Colleagues, the format for the rest of this afternoon, first I'm going to turn it to the mayor to see if he has any updates about budget process or anything he'd like to share with the council first.
And then the remainder of our afternoon is in response to Resolution 37732, which was when we adopted our budget calendar.
There was an amendment specifically, explicitly requiring council to hold a work session in front of the mayor in order for us to be able to express our— what cuts we find acceptable and what cuts we find unacceptable.
I'm going to turn it over to Mayor Wilson to start.
Keith Wilson
Council President, thank you so much.
A few words.
Thank you for having me, council colleagues.
As you all know, we are in a challenging financial position, far more challenging than last year.
We have hard and important work ahead to close the looming funding gap.
Virtually every program will take at least some cuts.
In order to lessen the pain for crucial core services, other programs will need to take a far more painful reduction.
I know many of these programs are important to you and they benefit our community.
I'm sorry for that.
This is a reset moment for the City of Portland, and how we show up for each other matters.
We can't just tell each other what we want to hold harmless.
That isn't a realistic option in our current situation.
Instead, we need to come to each other with open hearts, creativity, compromise, and most of all, with the willingness to put forth meaningful and specific sacrifices.
Those specific cuts must include program areas that are important to us personally.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Keith Wilson
I promise we'll get through this and that we have far brighter days ahead.
We see signs of a renewed and resurgent Portland everywhere.
We may have less funding to work with, but we have the same underlying obligation to foster a safe, activated, prosperous community.
And thank you, and thank you for all that you do for Portland.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Mayor.
So colleagues, we're now going to enter into an opportunity just where folks can have I would love it if— let's see, we have 90, about 90 minutes left and about 9 of us on the dais.
So let's try to aim for 10 minutes apiece.
Folks can tell the mayor specifically what your priorities might be, what cuts you find acceptable and which cuts you find unacceptable.
As the mayor said, this is a cut year.
Nothing is gonna be held harmless.
But, and while I'm sure much of the mayor's budget is already sort of proposed and ready to go with some futzing on the margins.
I think this is also a good opportunity for us to preview what those red lines are going to be for us each, what amendments might be coming forward from each of your offices if it's not reflected in the mayor's budget, and a general discussion about prioritization.
So feel free to jump in the queue and I'll start with Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman
Thanks, Mr. President.
Mitch Green
And Councilor Smith.
Eric Zimmerman
To the mayor and city administrator, it's no easy task to propose a budget, a balanced budget in a year like this.
And so I recognize the position y'all are in.
So it's an interesting time to weigh in on the cuts when we don't know what the cuts are.
But I think it is helpful, and I've always believed this in my career, of kind of outline where those priorities are.
So I think this is a valuable exercise.
So that you have all the decisions or information to make decisions, Mayor.
I think one of the challenges that governments often face are, do we make across-the-board cuts or do we make targeted cuts?
I'm not a particular fan of across-the-board cuts, usually because in the time of doing that, there is a crisis or a part of our civic life that is not going well.
And so if you do across-the-board cuts, I believe them to be—.
Angelita Morillo
I agree.
Eric Zimmerman
Uh, kind of erroneous in terms of what our focus is or our improvement area or our, um, you know, key indicator of success.
So, um, there have been times where I've seen that occur, and I'd say those were the— they were good times but for the budget situation.
I don't think that's where we're at, meaning I'm very comfortable with targeted cuts because a targeted cut Or a greater targeted cut versus everybody cut that's equal means that you're highlighting the key areas that you want to prioritize.
And I actually think that that's important for Portlanders.
I think it's important for this council.
So I'll be more favorable to a plan that says, here's what I'm prioritizing, and because I'm doing that, I'm recognizing that I'm putting a larger cut in other areas versus an across-the-board percentage.
So if that's what we see I think I will respond to that favorably, even though I admit there will be some areas that, that either will not exist or they will take such significant cuts that it's going to be a significant emotional event for some folks.
But I think, I think we still are in crisis time, and those conversations we had last year about what do you focus on in crisis time, I think we're still present with a lot of that.
And so for me, I Those areas that I hope you are preserving wherever possible, Mayor, of course, are in the livability and cleanliness areas.
Anything we can do that we think will increase the amount of capacity, the capacity of units available for people to live in.
So housing capacity, which really gets at that affordability matrix.
I think a year or 2 ago, I think people were talking a lot more about public safety, but I think affordability is front of mind for so many people in a way.
Because I do see some significant improvements that have happened in the public safety and livability realm because of your efforts, because of all of our efforts.
And then of course protecting those, the public safety areas.
I'm looking for, I'll say slight system improvements in how our neighborhood associations get to participate and weigh in and work with us.
Angelita Morillo
Yeah.
Eric Zimmerman
But I don't foresee significant budgetary changes.
I just see more of a direct recognition of the role in which they play in the community that you might be able to articulate.
So I say that because I'm going to be— I'm going to take seriously all system-type approaches when I put those in the category of none of those will be easy decisions, I'm sure.
Candace Avalos
Right.
Eric Zimmerman
I'm not going to— or perhaps it's a red flag to use or a red line to use the council president's— the cute headline type of cuts or kind of the silliness cuts of proposing, you know, I want to— if we see those types of things get put up, I'm going to react a little differently because I'm not sure that they really fall into a fixing of the system approach.
And if you look at that forecast we just looked— cute headlines aren't going to save us.
We've got to have a system of like, what are we reducing?
What are we no longer investing in because we've changed what our core lines of business are?
Those lines of effort where we spend our time, they matter.
And I think that safe roads, safe public space, livable public space, public safety apparatus that actually picks up the phone when you call 911.
That actually gets there when they dispatch, that is building homes, that isn't stopping you at the permit line.
Those are our core functions.
And everything else kind of falls in the extra category.
Making this new government work is a core function, right?
Setting up this government to work was a big part of our duty in this first year.
Thank you.
Dan Ryan
Yes.
Eric Zimmerman
Steps backwards in that realm will not be met favorably.
And then lastly, I just will say, I guess looking at— I'm approaching this budget differently than I've ever approached any budget in my career, which is I am not bringing a list of things I want to fund because I think the system is so dire and our number is so dire, but I am coming with a list of things I want to protect that are, I think, going to be in the areas based on what I've seen you portray to the public.
So that's very different than normally, I think, of the way a district councilor thinks about stuff.
But I am putting that guardrail on myself, and I'm hoping to have those be considered core functions by you and your administration.
Councilor I welcome the opportunity, if you see it, if there's something that's not working, instead of leaving it on life support, pull the plug.
Meaning, if we see a cut of some program at a 50% or more, I'm really going to actually have the question in my head, not how to restore it, but does it need to exist?
Angelita Morillo
Thank you.
Eric Zimmerman
So I share that very publicly because I want to give that opportunity of if there's something that's not working, we're keeping it there for the sake of tradition or the sake of previous councils tried to do it and it's just been languishing for a long time, but it's not producing results.
If you are seeing that from the administration, I hope you'll share that with us so that we can take significant change there.
Because in order to preserve the lines of business that are core, We may have to fully abandon some lines of business that are not, and I don't know what that looks like from your chair.
What I'm giving you is an invitation that if that opportunity exists, I, I will listen to it, uh, without being reactionary on how to restore it, right?
And I think that that's a real change.
And I want to share with my colleagues, based on the last Steering and Oversight Committee that I went to with Multnomah County, we got a pretty good and in-depth report on quite by the numbers on how SHS, how Medicaid funding, how our system works with permanent supportive housing versus Oregon State Hospital and the mentally ill and the co-occurring and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And most of my career in government has been based upon where governments have generally said, what are we not doing really well at?
And we have tried to put resources at how to be better at that thing.
But that last assessment by Health Share and by the county, I think, has solidified me in the position of I'm interested in funding the things we're good at at a higher level, meaning we can— we are doing well, by members of our community who are, who are facing homelessness from a poverty-only position, and we shouldn't have anybody who from that perspective isn't supported.
I think we can do better there.
But what we were also seeing is that our, our system in this community of permanent supportive housing is probably obscuring the numbers for what— of people who the Oregon State Hospital probably is the most responsible entity to be caring for.
And so if we are not— if we're putting a lot of money at an area we're having a really bad outcome for, I want— I'm going to look to be supportive of stopping that until we figure out what the problem is, because right now it ain't working.
And that was— that really jumped off the page.
And after a year plus of that, I think I'm to that position of money after what works, recognizing that someone's not going to be at the table.
Candace Avalos
Right.
Eric Zimmerman
But I'm not going to do things at a lower quality to ensure that something that we're really bad at is at least at the table for the sake of saying it's at the table.
I think that we've got to get serious about what we're good at.
So I just share that, Mayor.
You have a tough job coming up.
Colleagues, I know we're all going to come about this from 12 different perspectives.
I know I'm approaching this budget in a very different manner.
There's your 9 minutes, Mr. President.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Council President.
I don't think I will need more than half my time.
Mr. Mayor, this is not a surprise to you.
Number one red line for me— we made a promise to voters last summer.
We said we are referring a parks levy, and if you support this, we will make sure that certain services within our parks are maintained.
Olivia Clark
Aye.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Bottom line, we cannot come in less than a year later and break that promise.
I understand everybody's going to take cuts and there will be some things within parks that need to see some reductions, but those things that we promised to voters would be funded if they passed a parks levy must be funded.
Otherwise, we all lose credibility with the people who supported us when we asked them to dig a little bit deeper.
I want to talk about long-term impacts of cuts.
I agree with my colleague that we should be looking at targeted cuts, but I want to make sure that where we are making cuts doesn't have a first-year cost savings at the expense of a second and third-year cost Thank you.
Loretta Smith
I will—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I'll be using that lens when I look at the budget you bring to us.
I'll flag 2 things that I will look at critically because of that lens, but it's a broader lens for me than just these 2 things.
The first is our community violence prevention programs.
We know that many of the things within that category perhaps not all, but many of them reduce costs in the long run.
And to take short-term cost savings there, knowing the cost growth we will see when violence increases, that's not a 1-year cost savings that I can support.
Similarly, we know that there is often pressure to reduce internal costs thank you.
So we can cut costs and then contract out work to make sure we can still do the same things.
Sometimes we can do that in the short term at a lesser rate.
Often cost savings come from offloading assets or from one-time cost savings for not having to upgrade assets, and those things almost always end up costing more in the long run.
I want to make sure that we are not devastating our own workforce to try to save costs in ways that will then not only leave more Portlanders unemployed, which has a cost to us, but leave us with costs to make up for that as contract costs grow in the future.
So that principle— what are the long-term impacts?
Do we have a year-one cost thank you.
So the principle of a year or 2 of cost savings, but a year or 2, 3, 4 cost growth is a critical one for me.
Those are 2 examples where I've seen public entities go awry on that principle in the past.
We were asked to look at both cuts and revenue, and I'm not going to propose revenue increases, but I just want to talk about some principles there.
I am concerned that there are a lot of places where we are looking at revenue needs that end up shifting costs from a broader to a narrower base.
And I am concerned that we are becoming more and more reliant on fees that generally have a flat rate, maybe with some exceptions, but that our tax system is not as progressive as we like to think it is.
I don't think I can say we have to hold a bottom line on those 2 things right now.
But I do want us to look holistically at the changes that we are asking Portlanders for in the fee and tax and other revenue space and make sure that the collective impact of our decisions doesn't end up putting continuously more and more pressure on working families in our community.
At the expense of broader and more progressive revenue-raising measures.
I think I'll end there so as not to dilute the impact of those things.
Thank you, Council President.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you, Council President.
Um, I thought we were going to have a conversation, so I haven't heard you respond to any of the things that you've heard.
Olivia Clark
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Okay.
I don't have any just outstanding things that I need other than things just to maintain what's already been in the budget.
I'm always going to fight for putting resources in our underserved youth for summer jobs, period.
Steve Novick
Yes.
Loretta Smith
Uh, given.
And I'm really concerned about the apprenticeship programs and the pre-apprenticeship programs that are expected to be reduced.
I've gotten lots of text messages from Andrew McGough and from Work Systems that they've received letters already, and I thought that was odd.
The other thing that is, that is really brewing under the, you know, surface are the, the neighborhood associations and the, uh, district coalition offices, and that they're currently being asked to send back an RFP, um, that will include other nonprofits to be able to, to manage what— manage the relationships with the neighborhood associations and how they do their work.
They basically pay for all of the, uh, fest festivals and their insurance and those kinds of things, and they're behind in getting their resources.
I met with them this past Saturday and they wanted a sit-down with, um, the city administrator to, to go over it, and I told them that I would ask you about it, um, this week, and this is what I'm doing because I think we need to sit down first before we, um, talk to the mayor so that we understand clearly what, what it is that, that's different in how we do business.
Um, the way they're being asked to do business, they, they reduce the district coalitions from 7 or 8 now down to 4, and that's in, uh, the community engagement.
The interaction that they've been having with our community engagement officer has not been a positive one.
They're not getting the answers that they— consistent answers about how they go about, why are they being asked to do it this way, is there a possibility to change.
There's a lot of institutional information on how they do the business that they do within the neighborhood association.
So that has always been an issue.
I've watched it over 30 years.
But with this new change, there are new ways for them to get their money.
They're getting their money late.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yes.
Loretta Smith
And as a result, if District 1 Coalition had not put some money in reserves, they wouldn't be able to put on all the festivals and get the insurance for this spring and this summer.
So that's a problem.
And I know it feels like it's minute, but it's important to them.
And there is a kind of a rift between what they consider, um, white homeowners and, um, diverse renters and who and how they run the neighborhood associations.
And so there has been countless, you know, meetings in the past about being inclusive, and I rec— I Yes.
I pointed out to them on Saturday that I was the only— me and my staff were the only diverse folks that was sitting around the table, and that we can't have renters and homeowners fighting.
We need to get you all information so that you can make the best decisions about what we're doing as a city.
So that— there's an undercurrent there that I wanted you to know about, and I'll work with you yes.
Um, City Administrator about getting a, um, a roundtable meeting with them.
The other piece that's really concerning is, um, the overnight shelters.
I'm just so concerned that we're not going to be able to pay the full freight for the overnight shelters because we don't have the money.
And I know you've been working hard talking to other counties Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Mayor.
I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who's been working to try to get additional resources.
But everybody's talking about the homeless infrastructure.
It is no question that our city has been beautified as a result of the work that we've done over this last year.
It has changed.
It has changed in a big way.
Even in my neighborhood, it's changed.
And everybody recognizes that.
I recognize that.
And so, oh yeah, the District Coalition folks said they wanted me to tell you thank you for cleaning up because the streets do look better.
They did tell me to tell you that too.
So, and I agree with that.
But I think we have an issue around how we're going to pay for those one-time resources.
And I don't know, I'm glad I don't have the first look at it and to make those very important cuts.
Raymond C. Lee
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
And you're going to have to make some cuts.
And I, I, I would rather try to live with some of the cuts that you're going to make now instead of saying that during the year we're going to, we're going to make those cuts and we're going to realign during the year.
It just puts us so behind.
I just wanted to let you know that, that, that's, that's a problem.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for being here.
This is an important set of conversations.
I'm going to do some dittos.
Wait, let me set my timer here.
I'm going to start with a ditto on Councilor Smith.
You talked about the need to make sure we're supporting those neighborhood associations on their insurance and sort of their— they have a minimum viable money that they need that if they lose that, They cease to exist.
You know, we can have our critique of that model.
That's a— that's an interesting philosophical discussion to happen, but I know a lot of good things happens out of those neighborhood associations.
So I, I'm going to want to not cut that deeper into the bone.
Um, I'm going to ditto everything that Councilor Pirtle-Guiney said.
I think that you hit, uh, I think the core of my top lines.
I just want to reaffirm very directly that we did make a promise to voters I knocked doors for the levy personally, and I told them at the doors that we were going to— we were not going to lose service delivery on that.
And I'm not going to go back on that in the budget.
I'm not going to support closing fire stations.
I'm not going to support cutting public safety specialists.
I'm not going to support cutting Portland Street Response.
Those are things that are going to yield long-term savings in our public safety investments.
Peter Holzman
Thank you.
Mitch Green
And if we cut those now, we're going to lose a lot of progress.
I'm not going to support using the Portland Clean Energy Fund as an ad hoc budget plug.
We've seen some glimpse of how that might work.
I'm a hard no on that at this point.
We just amended the Climate Investment Plan.
We just went through a robust community process.
And so to come in in the budget and add in some other stuff there, that's not going to work for me.
I'm not going to support cutting the auditor's budget beyond 3%, which is what she's agreed to, because I understand that we all need to share the load in this thing.
There's no magic money tree out there.
But that's an independent branch of this government with a duly elected official that needs to carry out her charge.
And I worry about the city council and the mayor bringing forward cuts to undermine her ability to execute as the auditor.
That, that startles me.
Um, so I, I, I, I won't support a cut beyond 3%.
Um, things I will support, because I know that we've got to find the money, um, I will support pulling forward in time our expectations on what the business license tax revenue is going to be from the transaction of the Trail Blazers, which is $40 to $50 million.
I know Jonas couldn't say it, but I can because I've seen it in the press.
Um, I will, I will support Using that money to backfill the things that we know are one-time costs, because that's a one-time revenue.
I'm not going to support the same level of the shelter model that you proposed last time.
You know, we can— we have to have further conversations on what the right size is, but I think it's too expensive, and I don't think we need that 1,500-bed capacity.
In terms of the impact reduction program, you know, I'm going to take some heat for saying this, but I think we need to cut deeply into that We have a legal requirement to do a minimum amount of sidewalk campsite clearances.
We have a Creek settlement.
I think it's the Creek settlement, ADA settlement.
We've got a lot of settlements, so I'm mixing my stuff up.
But I know that there is a mandated minimum level of that work that we need to do, whether I like it or not.
We need to execute to that.
What I worry about is that that's just a cost basis in our budget that continues to grow because, you know, you might, you might clear some folks out of downtown, but you're continuing to throw away their stuff over and over and over again, and it's, it just burns cash.
Um, so I think that there's, there is a right level of spending there.
Whatever we approve in the budget, I want to make sure that we are spreading that resource across the entire year so we don't come in later in a fall towel and say we need, we need to, uh, I'm also deeply worried that if we continue down that same path, we're going to push people into Forest Park because they're driven out of downtown.
This is what I've heard from some folks who are thinking about going deeper because they're worried.
And that introduces a very unacceptable fire risk to me and my constituents.
I do support looking at the number of senior executives that we have in the city, the deputy directors, the deputy city managers, the deputy city attorneys, the deputy city managers' Councilors.
The directors, you know, deputy city administrators, and asking the question of whether we need to continue funding those at that same level.
I know you guys are doing span of control work right now.
I know you guys are already thinking about that, but it's going to be really hard for me to accept the budget that cuts into our rank and file if we have just allowed and validate— validated sort of bloat at the top.
That's going to be a red line for me.
Councilor Kanal, you've raised this many times in many different settings, but I don't think that we've really done a satisfactory deep dive on the EMS contracts that we have.
I know that we've done some little stuff here and there, but if there are planned-for consultancy external contracts that are buried in some contingency funds that are waiting to be spent over the course of 5 years, let's do an evaluation on what can wait, what doesn't need to happen next year, and let's cut into those.
Steve Novick
Thank you.
Mitch Green
I think there's probably a lot to be gained there.
And again, similar to what Councilor Zimmerman was laying out, there's nothing comfortable about this budget, and everyone's going to hate it in some way, shape, or form.
So I sympathize with you even though I'm pushing back on your shelter plan.
I really do.
I think that various times in this council, we've adopted budgets that have 5-year plans in them or have long-run plans in them.
And so Our bureaus have planned through contingency balances resources to execute on some of those plans.
And if there's not work that's already started, or if there's work that can be pivoted at a big cost savings, let's have that discussion and let's see if there's something that we don't spin up that already hasn't spun up.
I know you're looking under the hood.
I've said, I've said sort of my broad strokes here.
I'm still digesting what we saw last week.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Mitch Green
Um, and I'll try to do my part in offering more specific suggestions as we get further down the road.
So, um, I'll leave it there for now.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Thank you, Councilor Dunphy— or President Dunphy.
Mr. Mayor, let me start this thing.
Mr. Mayor, CA Lee, I am counting on you.
And as has been mentioned, something I have said in my career for decades No targeted cuts.
I think across the board cuts are actually lazy, and please be strategic.
I expect to see bold restructuring to find efficiencies, the efficiencies in this new form of government we were all expecting.
The voters didn't expect to pay more for the new form of government, but that's exactly what we're currently experiencing.
I started asking in 2024 for a plan to make the operational efficiencies That the voters asked for in the change of government and thought that would happen after they voted for it.
I asked for that in 2024.
It didn't materialize.
I said, let's give it a year.
As you can recall, I asked for it last year at this time.
So this is my 3rd year hoping for a reasonable request to make more efficiencies in our enterprises finally granted.
As such, for the 3rd budget season, Please make it a priority to evaluate this.
We built out the DCA level of the city and didn't take offsetting reductions in the bureaus at the same time.
Again, I brought this up in the old council.
I brought it up last year.
I'm bringing it up again.
There are some efficiencies in there.
They're not going to feel good, but it's why we're here to make these bold decisions now.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Dan Ryan
Since this work was not done by the former administration, I am counting on the two of you.
I want to see this restructuring for efficiencies in the operations as part of this proposed budget.
The expected desiloing, and that means at the DCA level, was as promised to voters again in the charter, the right-sizing of a new structure.
That's really complicated, but people have done this in the past.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Dan Ryan
When they restructure and they make these efficiencies.
And yes, it turns out to be cuts, usually at the upper management level.
And please, while you do it, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
Give us something.
Another priority for the mayor's proposed budget that I hope to see is that we change our practice about how we give out money through grants to nonprofits.
That takes needed resources from every bureau and office in the city's enterprise.
This is a service organization.
Our customer service must always go well beyond the bottom line, and I'm proud of that.
And we are not a foundation.
I think the public would be shocked to know how much of their tax dollars that we are giving to nonprofits rather than using them to directly fund our city's services.
Olivia Clark
Thank you.
Dan Ryan
I will call out some exceptions to this.
The voters approved the Portland Children's Levy.
The voters approved PSF.
The voters approved an arts fund.
Those were created specifically to fund programs often run by the nonprofits to deliver specific community-focused services.
Loretta Smith
Like Councilor Kanal's repeated point about stop the cuts, we are stop not proposing to cut services.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
Spending, stop sending out money for professional contracts.
We need that same challenge on the money going out to the general funds of the nonprofits.
Now let's talk about the federal funding we received during COVID That big infusion of one-time federal funds created a system of passing dollars from the city to the nonprofits.
That's when this exploded.
The system is now entrenched.
Although the money is no longer there, the federal dollars to our city coffers have dried up.
In fact, much of the earlier conversation about rent vouchers were financed by that COVID windfall.
I don't want to reopen the debates, but had to mention that.
And we all knew they were, they were not sustainable after the COVID windfalls.
We need to use our city operational dollars to fund City operations, and I want to scrub the agreements we have that are funded by the city's general fund.
Those who are paying taxes rightly expect that we have responsiveness to our city services.
There were some agreements on this actually when we met as an elected body doing our priorities.
You'll find those, they're there.
We got to some basics as a group of 12 who don't always agree with each other.
I agree with you.
But there were some similarities on some.
I need to see these bold and rational decisions when you deliver your proposed budget.
Thank you, Mayor Wilson and City Administrator Lee.
You are the dynamic duo that we have been waiting for.
Please impress me and all Portlanders.
Thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr. President.
I wanted to follow up on one of the things that Councilor Ryan just said about how we've added a new level of administration with the DCAs and haven't made countervailing cuts.
And I talked a while ago to a former bureau director who said that, you know, it used to be under the commission form of government that the bureau director was sort of the public-facing person and the person who dealt with the commissioner, and the deputy sort of ran the bureau day to day.
Now that the individual directors have a different role, do they still need deputies?
I'm not going to target any particular bureau, but I just think that's a, that's a reasonable question, question to ask.
Um, the public needs to know that the vast majority of the general fund goes to police, fire, parks, and other public safety, um, entities such as the community violence prevention folks that Councilor Pirtle-Guiney was talking about, Portland Street Response Etc.
I do not want to cut any of those things, but we probably are going to have to cut them.
In terms of— one thing I want to do is second what Councilor Pirtle-Guiney said about I do not want to cut the community violence prevention entities such as Ceasefire.
When it comes to the police, I hope that we can avoid cutting out the special missions to address particular types of crime which the public really values.
The special missions to address street racing, human trafficking, stolen vehicles, retail theft.
One thing that the police do that I'm on record as saying I question is drug interdiction.
Not breaking up open-air drug markets, which I think they should be doing, but trying to interrupt the overall, you know, international flow of drugs, which I think We're pretty bad at.
When it comes to parks, as Councilor Pirtle-Guiney said, we made a promise to voters that if they pass the levy, we maintain the parks.
I am not going to say right now that I'd support closing fire stations in order to preserve that promise.
I suspect there will be some cuts to parks.
One thing I will say is that in some circumstances, Raising recreation fees, although unpleasant, might be a reasonable option.
When it comes to fire, all of the choices are incredibly unpleasant.
There are— I wouldn't be surprised if the mayor comes out saying that some— there's some fire stations got a lot fewer calls than others.
So I wouldn't be surprised if the mayor comes out with a budget that says we're going to close down the fire stations to get the the problem with that is that then you're saying to a neighborhood, if your house catches fire, it's going to burn to the ground.
And I don't want to say that to anybody.
On the other hand, another possible cut to fire is cutting the 2-person medical vehicles.
And we could say that that's not as core as fighting fires, but those medical vehicles save lives.
And they're not as expensive.
So I have no brilliant suggestions as to what to— as to how to cut fire.
I think that it's harder than anything else.
Uh, so, uh, do they have anything else to say?
Uh, no, that's about it.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Uh, Mayor, I put myself in the queue.
Um, It is easy to list off things that I don't support cutting.
I'm going to list some of those, but I'm going to start by saying things I do support cutting.
And some of these are going to make me deeply unpopular.
But I will start by quickly saying I had a meeting with the District 1 Coalition office, and almost every neighborhood association in District 1, plus an additional 50 15 nonprofits or NGOs that are serving, specifically serving populations in East Portland.
And I said explicitly to them, we have to cut the general fund.
That is police, that is fire, that is Portland Solutions, homeless services, and parks.
What are your red lines in this room?
What are the things that you absolutely need me to not cut?
And over and over and over again, the only thing I heard in the entire meeting was do not cut parks.
Honestly, I was genuinely surprised.
One person who's particularly mad about the fire department suggested we gut the fire department.
I don't— I'm not advocating for that.
But I was surprised that the folks in East Portland who are most on the ground in the neighborhoods are advocating so strongly for parks as a public safety tool that when we let things— when we let the grass get overmowed, if we are, you know, overgrown and we don't mow it, if we let yes.
We plant trees and we let them die because we don't water them.
If we allow these public spaces to rot, they become attractive nuisances for bad behavior that degrades the broader neighborhood.
The example of Ventura Park was brought up to me where the— for over 3 years, the bathroom was chained shut.
When the bathroom was chained shut because it was broken and we weren't fixing it, parents stopped bringing their kids to the park.
When the kids stopped coming to the parks, tents started showing up.
When the tents started showing up, more tents started showing up.
At some point, drug dealing and violence showed up in the park and it became unusable.
When we fixed the bathroom, most of those problems went away.
So my community is telling me very clearly, please keep parks as whole as possible.
That said, I think that there are some really thoughtful reductions and discrete reductions within the cut packages that are proposed here around community centers, around tightening the margins.
I understand that we, you know, I I think the community centers are vital community public safety.
But I think that there are some thoughtful ways we can reduce some of the hours and really identify who we are saving and who we are serving.
I'm going to say something unpopular that my council colleagues in District 2 will not appreciate.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Pool.
Jamie Dunphy
I'm going to talk about the pool center.
I'm going to talk about the aquatic center.
Because in a moment where— not— in a moment where we are talking about which of our precious public assets we have to get rid of, I can't— I don't know.
It doesn't make sense to me for us to this year, in a moment where we are in a tough spot, to prioritize new items.
So I would be supportive of delaying the opening of the North Portland Aquatic Center.
And I apologize to the 3 of you.
You can fight me later.
I think that there are some really thoughtful proposals in this package around public safety overtime reductions, some staffing models, some efficient uses of available technology.
Some cuts around material purchases for playgrounds and pools makes sense to me.
I have some questions around a proposal in here that is— it's actually an ad package, and I have no idea if it's a real thing, but—.
Peter Holzman
It's not.
Jamie Dunphy
There's a $350,000 set aside for an Analyst 4 position around the transition of the P5 venues.
I want the P5 venues to transfer.
I'm not sure why that position would cost $350,000.
Additionally, I'm hoping that you would consider looking at additions to the revenue collections staff.
I spoke with the Revenue Division Director who's told me that if they were to hire additional revenue collectors, they would bring in more money than they are— they cost.
So there is an opportunity that especially around arts tax and around some of the other taxes that we are having a harder time collecting, additional capacity will actually lead to further collection.
I don't know how to materially do that, but that is a thought.
And I will say I cannot myself justify voting for I'm not supporting the overnight shelters if we are laying off a single public employee in order to do that.
I know that you are working hard to find ways to support this and right-size this overnight shelter system right now, but it cannot be my priority.
Saving what we have here as a city and our employees has to be my priority.
Cuts that I don't support.
I am still vaguely disturbed by a piece of information I learned from the Bureau of Transportation that they add a cost multiplier for maintenance in East Portland because it is further away from the maintenance facility.
I want to make sure that as we are doing thoughtful reductions, the aggregate effect is not disproportionate to reducing East Portland.
When we add nice things, sometimes East Portland still gets the less benefit.
And when we start cutting, for example, last year when there was a proposal around parks maintenance, half of the parks that were being proposed, I don't believe by you, but half the parks that were being proposed for cut of maintenance We're east of I-205.
We have very little and we need as much as we can get.
I want to add my support to what Councilor Smith and Green were saying with regard to neighborhood support programs like the neighborhood associations and the coalition offices.
I care a lot about what happens to children from the hours of 3 o'clock until 8 o'clock at night.
I started my career I spent a year working in middle schools, and I saw explicitly how teenagers who don't have something to do in the afternoon will find something to do, and they often get themselves into trouble and set themselves onto lifelong paths that they cannot correct.
Programs like Teen Force, Sun School, Summer Free-for-All, they literally save lives.
I have kids who are alive today because of Teen Force.
Similarly, I think that we've made a lot of really thoughtful progress with regard to some of the non-police public safety responses.
The police are our most expensive, most highly trained, most specialized tool in our toolbox.
And items like CHAT, PSR, PS3s are able to reduce the burden ultimately over time on them so that they can go do the jobs that only cops can do.
And we don't need them stopping traffic for car accidents and things like that.
As the economy is collapsing around us, workforce development programs feel obviously very important.
And as part of that, similarly, I'm urging this body to think broadly about the Office of Arts and Culture as a tool for economic development.
It needs to be considered an extension of our economic development work.
If we treat art as something precious, And something that just fulfills our soul, then of course it's the thing you want to cut out of the budget because it's disconnected.
But with diminishing dollars for Prosper Portland to invest in economic development, we're not going to build a new, you know, building anytime soon.
Light economic development through the existing music and arts scene are a way that we can get people safely out of their homes and into the public square and spending money and going to restaurants and going to shopping and all the things.
Councilor Dan Ryan.
Lastly, I will say we need to make sure that we do not accidentally spite our future efforts by cutting PP&D, by cutting permitting and development staff, where I know that's not general fund.
It is obviously revenue division.
Their revenue is dependent on their own collections.
But we got to make sure that all the good work that this body is doing to encourage and demonstrate to the private sector that we are ready and open for for business, that there's somebody there to take their business when they come.
So very quickly going through my list of other things.
Oh, one other additional cut that I saw proposed in here was a grant that the city gives to the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office.
It's a nice-to-have, but we are not in nice-to-have years.
And so I would encourage us to cut that.
Peter Holzman
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
And additionally, I'll also voice my support that the cuts to the Auditor's Office beyond 3%.
Wanna make sure we are doing what we can to respect our fellow elected official in the execution of her duties.
So those are my very brief list of things that I care about.
Thank you very much.
Councilor Clark.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Council President.
Can you hear me okay?
Dan Ryan
Yep.
Olivia Clark
Um, I want to thank the mayor, uh, and the administration for creating this opportunity for us to share our thoughts about the budget, not just with you but with each other.
It's been valuable for me to hear all of you, what you have to say about your priorities, about your thinking about things.
So I, I really appreciate that.
I'm going to circle back To the issue of the city's core functions, that's what drives me, and it's really that back-to-basics theme.
I talk about it all the time.
I talked about it during the campaign.
I think that we in Portland have had a— our desires really don't match our pocketbook, and now we really do have to get back to basics.
And for me, one of those basics thank you.
The first thing that comes to mind when I think about police is really keeping us safe, improving 911 response times, keeping the streets safe with more eyes on the streets.
And, and that happens in lots of different ways.
But if I had a red line, mine would be no cuts to the number of police officers that we have.
We're already understaffed and we're experiencing retirements that we can barely keep up with.
I would offer a counterpoint to my colleague, Councilor Green.
I'm very— a strong supporter of the impact reduction program.
It's very important to me and to the neighborhoods in District 4.
I would offer a thought that I think in this process we need to do everything we can to improve our systems management, whether that's span of control, whether that's looking at asset management differently, and also tracking what it is that we own and what can we dispose of.
What can we offload as a city as well?
And we've talked about that in my committee in regards to, to some of our streets.
I think the core alignment process is good.
It's one of those system improvements that you really expect to come out of charter change.
I'd like to echo the support for neighborhood associations.
I'm really happy to hear many of my colleagues saying the same thing, that we need to support the neighborhood associations through the district coalition.
I think they're vital.
They provide services.
They bring value, whether it's a neighborhood emergency team, festivals, or whatever it is.
They bring a lot of value to us.
And I would echo Councilor Smith's comments regarding their dissatisfaction.
Candace Avalos
Councilor Smith.
Olivia Clark
With their relationship with civic life.
Um, I think it's important to leverage their efforts and really to support volunteerism across the city.
And I've been an advocate for looking for opportunities for public-private partnerships, not just offloading assets, but as the mayor likes to say, how can we make our assets sweat?
I think that as a city, we need to be looking to making the parks sweat more, and we need to be more entrepreneurial when it comes to our parks and our assets.
And I know that in the past I've heard Councilor Zimmerman talk about programs that used to be in the parks that engage neighborhoods more, maybe looking out for their, their parks, more eyes on the parks.
I don't remember what that was called.
Loretta Smith
Parks for All.
Olivia Clark
Not exactly park rangers, but some sort of neighbors that really have a sense of ownership of their parks and protecting their parks.
Lastly, I would just say, I know that Councilor Zimmerman brought up or mentioned behavioral health.
That's not in our bailiwick, but we certainly experience the downstream problems with having people on the street that don't have services, that don't have a place to go.
I know that whatever we can do working with the county or whoever to address behavioral health and the impact on our streets, it's not a line item, a budget item, but I think it needs to be, it needs to be really focused, maybe our legislative agenda or whatever.
But those are just my high-level comments.
I know there has to be cuts, but I hope we can be really thank you, Councilor Clark—.
Jamie Dunphy
Vice President Clark.
I keep doing that, I'm sorry.
Councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo
Thanks everyone.
Mayor, thank you so much for being here today, and I want to say I'm sorry that you're— we're all having to make these budget decisions.
I think it's an incredibly difficult time to be governing, and I appreciate everything that people have brought forward so far.
I agree with a lot of what my colleagues have said, so I'll just be fairly brief.
I agree with Councilor Pirtle-Guiney that we told the voters that we would be passing a parks levy so that we could preserve these services for the public, and I think that we have to keep our word and we have to do that.
I also agree with her comments about preserving, making sure that we are not doing temporary cuts to public safety prevention work in order to do temporary savings that are actually going to cost us down the line.
I'm specifically thinking about programs like the Office of Violence Prevention and everything that falls under that umbrella, because ceasefire and programs like that are what allow us to have a more diminished police force so that we can actually do some of that preventative work.
And we know that when it comes to gun violence, when it comes to sex trafficking, when it comes to all of those types of issues, if we don't do that preventative work, It's not actually going to be resolved on later down the line.
So I think anything that we can do to preserve our public safety prevention work is absolutely critical.
Um, I am also not going to be supportive of using PCF dollars to backfill other parts of the budget that are not applicable to PCF dollars, and I'm going to guard that fairly carefully.
I think that we have a lot of things that it has been flagged for its use, and Um, we cannot use PSF to address poor budgeting in other areas.
I, I don't think that's healthy for our budget or for the expectations of the voters.
The areas that I am comfortable cutting into— I agree with Councilor Dunphy, and I apologize to my colleagues in District 2.
I do think the aquatic center needs to be removed.
We should not be focusing on new assets while we are struggling to maintain the ones that we currently have.
I also think we need to cut— I got really crucified last year for offering to cut part of the Portland Solutions package, even a small part of it.
And the reality is we're probably going to have to have cuts to all of those things, including sweeps.
We were promised that you would find additional funding for your shelter program that had one-time funding before.
I hope that that comes into fruition, but I am not sure that it will.
Candace Avalos
Councilor Loretta Smith.
Angelita Morillo
And if that is the case, I agree.
I don't think we should be cutting into our city infrastructure to support these temporary shelter programs because that's not really in our bucket to be working on.
And I think the further we entrench ourselves in this system, the more concerns I have about its long-term viability.
I also believe we need to be cutting back on the grants that go to the District Attorney's Office.
These are dollars that we desperately need.
We need to beef up our infrastructure, so they can't be going to a different the last thing I'll say is that I think we really need to maintain PS3s.
They are an inexpensive part of our public safety system, inexpensive part of police, and we need to do everything we can to maintain that.
Overall, I also think we need to take a look at when we are cutting departments.
I think that we need to make sure we are not too management and top-heavy because we have a lot of people that do carry out the day-to-day work of the city and they need to be able to do that.
Councilor Smith, and actually interface with Portlanders.
And if we remove too many of those people, then we are going to lose the ability to give proper service to Portlanders and to get their questions and things answered in an expedient manner.
So my focus is really going to be on making sure that we're reducing how many contracts we are contracting out for and instead building state and staff capacity for the city of Portland.
These are all really tough decisions that have to be made, and I do not envy the task of having to present the first package, but, um, we are ready to, to help in that venture.
So thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Morillo.
Uh, Councilor Smith, you've spoken one time, right, so far?
Oh, okay, gotcha.
Uh, Councilor Avalos, uh, we cannot hear you.
Still nothing.
Dan Ryan
She said she'll be back.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay, Councilor Avalos, we'll come right back to you.
Councilor Green, you, you have spoken, so I'm going to go to Councilor Kanal, come back to you.
Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Council President.
So yeah, I appreciate everything that's been said before.
I think what I'm hearing, I'm feeling, and I hope we're all feeling a little validated by the fact that our colleagues have clearly listened to each other over the course of this last year and a half together, because I'm hearing stuff from people that I've heard from other people before, and I like that.
Big picture, I love the idea of recommitting.
I think one of the challenges that we have is that the core services the things that people largely view outside of our core services are often funded through a restricted pot of money anyway.
So it's not as though that's going to alleviate a concern with the general fund.
But I do really appreciate the theme of prevention and avoid being pennywise and pound foolish, to use Councilor Clark's phrase.
First, let me say I agree with the broad philosophical approaches of both Councilors Zimmerman and Pirtle-Guiney.
I agree with the critique from Councilor Smith that our investments in the Office of the City Attorney Office of Community Engagement are not currently yielding what we hope they would.
I agree with Councilor Ryan as well around grants, especially as it relates to non-restricted, you know, general funds and reducing the part of the city that acts as a foundation.
I have some acceptable cuts and some red flag cuts, but I want to start with the completely unacceptable cuts, meaning the ones that would change my vote on a budget.
And these can easily be simplified down to will of the voters.
I believe we owe it to voters to do what they told us to do.
This holds true for the parks levy.
I also knocked doors for that and I I know a lot of us did, and I agree 100% with Councilor Pirtle-Guiney here.
It also applies to the OCPA and of course PCF.
PCF is not for sweeps.
We cannot lose the fragile trust we're rebuilding with our community and our new form of government by taking a fund designed to help communities in need and instead use it to harm an overlapping list of communities in need.
And I also want to stress the will of council.
There are a few things that have been voted on last year that would have saved money that have not been implemented.
And I want to really talk through that because that's an important thing to talk about.
I have some lists of acceptable cuts and unacceptable cuts.
I also have some acceptable revenue options and unacceptable revenue options.
But I want to lead off with an investment that I think will save us money in the long run, which is awards for employees who find savings.
This is something that the Secretary of State's office in Washington State does.
This is something that's— there's chief savings officers in New York now.
I think if an employee comes up with a way to, uh, without losing any quality of service, save $400,000, a giant check for $1,000 to reward them and a photo op is a good use of our time and money.
Um, acceptable cuts.
I do think we need to have a conversation about overnight shelters and the conversation, um, around, uh, that in particular.
I, I, I noted the, uh, ombudsman's report today about, um, how the number of complaints about Portland Solutions, which includes but is not limited to that.
And I, I don't want to pin this on the shelter program, it's the broader, uh, strokes.
Had it at 27%, uh, and, and transportation at 28%.
Anyone who's followed along with the ombuds reports knows that, uh, transportation generally gets the most complaints, um, because they do the most different things.
Um, but specifically I'm talking about sweeps and the impact reduction program.
I want to double down on everything Councilor Green and Councilor Maria I do think that it's time to find the small amounts of cost savings, but still real ones, that we will have from incorporating Portland Solutions into the regular flow of the administration.
Either make it a service area or put it into the existing service areas.
I want to look at going into overtime.
I think we've done a really good job, and I want to commend both you as well as PPB and fire leadership.
I also know that they've both done a good job in hiring, so we should expect to see some overtime reductions as a result of that.
And this is where I think the council direction on how to spend overtime dollars is a conversation that I'll be looking at.
If they're spending it in line with council priorities, that helps me justify why they should continue to get it.
If not, it doesn't.
Contracts.
Grateful that many people brought this up.
I'll note that New York City just canceled a contract with McKinsey that they found they'd already paid $4 million to assess if trash cans were better than leaving trash bags in the street.
Jamie Dunphy
That's absurd.
Sameer Kanal
Mayor Muddati found that money.
Let's see if we're doing anything like that too.
Even that's scaled to Portland's budget size, I think it would be worth saving the money.
And I'm looking forward to the administrator's report including that so we can dig deep into it.
Contracted employees who could be converted to city employees for cheaper.
Protect 17 sent a letter.
I co-sign it.
And then span of control has already been mentioned.
Steve Novick
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Cuts I'd like to avoid: prevention programs.
Underfunding prevention at the expense of intervention only makes our future budget woes worse.
There's value to balancing those out.
Violence prevention like OVP and Ceasefire, crime prevention like Safe Blocks, Rose City Self-Defense, interventions that keep people from becoming houseless such as affordable and social housing and rent assistance.
And cutting— an unacceptable cut would be cutting the alternative shelter to fund overnight shelter.
Community safety programs.
Portland's in the process of building out a holistic community and public safety system.
We need to rethink how we evaluate what parts of those systems are core.
We need to maintain momentum in building out that system.
Obviously armed officers and firefighters are essential, and I'm not suggesting cutting there, but I really want to make sure we're talking about Portland Street Response, Chat, PS3s, park rangers, PBEM.
And I'll just highlight 2 specific programs: victim advocates at PPB, which are force multipliers for work in a particular sector of PPB's work, and the rescues, those 2-person response vehicles at fire.
I really want to make sure that we're not cutting those.
Those save money in the long run as well.
Candace Avalos
Equity.
Sameer Kanal
We cut OEHR down to the bone last year, so I want to see no more cuts.
I also want to point out that my attempt to save— to cut deputy directors last year included that I was trying to save positions in OEHR with that money.
I do want to look at the efficiencies we can find out of deputy directors, but I will be opposing any cuts to OEHR, including a cut to deputy directors in that space, if we don't add back positions there.
And then the last 2 categories, democracy, small donor elections, the auditor's office, Council operations and offices, security for the spaces Portlanders come to to take part in their government.
And I agree on the neighborhood associations conversation as well.
And then finally, the people that help us raise money and, and save, uh, save costs, volunteerism work, and people who help achieve private investment in public goods, in particular within the Parks Bureau.
On the revenue side, um, I just want to continue pushing back on regressive fee structures.
I think Councilor Pirtle-Guiney basically hit everything there, so we'll save some time and I won't go back through it.
And then I want to talk about 5 revenue options that I don't think have been brought up much, one of which will require a small upfront investment and start yielding a growing savings over time, which is FPDR.
And I want to be clear for those whose hackles are raised already, I do not want to change a single part of the benefit structure.
I want people to get what they are entitled to, what they've earned, and what they've agreed to.
However, I want to make sure that the way we pay for it also includes an investment component, and that might involve a small capitalization up front to start yielding some investment returns that can help defray those costs over time.
It's not going to cause— it's not going to save us a lot of money now, but it's something that I think is worth doing to save money in the long run.
And again, it wouldn't affect a single thing of what our retired firefighters or police officers are receiving.
The package delivery fee conversation, I'm excited to get back into that.
Both of the budget notes on commercial and residential vacancy fees were delayed coming out of SEDSA.
Those were supposed to be back on February 28th.
The reason people haven't heard back is that they're now delayed to February 20th, I believe.
Jamie Dunphy
Might be 30th.
Sameer Kanal
But that's that's, uh, cutting it close for this year's budget, and that's why I picked February 28th.
Unfortunately, we also saw that SEDSA spent $62,000 contracting out that work, which is deeply disappointing and not part of the conversation at all.
But if it works out and we are able to raise some money, I think primarily on the commercial side, if this works out, that's something that can help not only pay for the $62,000 but start defraying some costs.
And finally, Thank you.
Thank you.
Cost recovery.
So I brought this up a few times.
These are all pretty small things, but I think collectively they can do a lot.
I know you're already committed to most of this, by the way, Mayor, in particular on the cost recovery side.
But when we hire out police officers to staff, to block a road or something like that, it has impacts on wellness, it has impacts on overtime and things like that.
But it also— we want to make sure we're getting paid the amount that it costs us to do.
I think a bigger issue is the fire alarms.
We send out commercial fire alarms, often go off.
We have firefighters responding to that, or fire response to that, and BOEC obviously has to dispatch as well.
They're often false alarms, and we don't charge for that.
We've already explored this a little bit with the transportation side on the street repair side.
I love it.
I want to build off of that and do more.
And so anytime we are— because really what we're not when we don't do cost recovery, what we're doing is subsidizing an activity.
So if you don't charge enough for repairing the roads, you're subsidizing the utility to cut up the road.
If you don't charge enough for cost recovery for a fire alarm, you are subsidizing someone not having to worry about whether or not their fire alarm's working.
So these are the sorts of things I want to talk about on the revenue side too.
I don't envy your job doing it.
I appreciate that you're always willing to listen.
And thanks for the time.
I'm just before my window.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Avalos, coming back to you to see if it works now.
Candace Avalos
Yeah, does it work now?
Jamie Dunphy
We can hear you.
Candace Avalos
Perfect.
Thank you.
And sorry I'm off center.
It's just very bright here.
So thanks, everybody.
Really appreciate what I've heard so far.
I'll start with my dittos.
I love a lot of what I heard from Kanal just now and thank you, Councilor Morillo.
Earlier from Council President, you know, I'm going to second a lot of what you said for East Portland and agree too with, you know, Green, Morillo, I think Kanal as well, who said do not touch PSF.
I've said enough.
You already know how I feel.
Overall, we need to protect the will of the voters and use their dollars appropriately.
I want to also echo The need to protect parks, and in particular, as I've already shared with you, Mayor, you got to fix the boiler at the East Portland Community Center.
It is unacceptable that that pool is closed indefinitely right now, and we are the only district that only has one community center, and we have the largest share of the city's children.
So you got to fix that at a bare minimum.
But like everyone else said, parks is what we hear the most about, especially Especially in East Portland.
That's also what rose to the top at my— what is it— my budget survey.
Agree with Councilor Pirtle-Guiney as it relates to protecting jobs.
You know, we don't want to hurt our workforce long-term to fix short-term problems.
And frankly, in this economy that is really fragile, we really need to do everything in our power to keep high-quality jobs.
That's going to protect the stability of the city overall.
Mitch Green
Councilor Smith.
Candace Avalos
Um, reflecting on what I heard from Councilor Zimmerman, I definitely agree to an extent as it relates to making hard decisions to cut things that aren't working.
But I don't think that all things that aren't working need to be cut.
And what I mean by that is I want to understand how we're measuring what's working.
I think that's, you know, so far from what I can tell, uh, in my year-plus at the city thank you.
So the success of programs is variable, and often the programs that are failing are due to not only a lack of resources but also a lack of political will to make them work.
So, and historically, those kinds of programs are the ones that most impact vulnerable communities.
So, you know, this is why I keep saying that I want to understand how we're measuring the services that we deliver as a city, and particularly I expect bureau directors to explain their vision and how they plan to execute it.
And, you know, by better— for us as legislators, by better understanding that, we can weigh those outcomes that we're fighting for, for our communities, against what our city is already doing, what they're good at doing.
Like Councilor Zimmerman said, I agree that we should, like, really invest more in what we're good at doing, but also where are we falling short for communities.
And obviously, I want to— I want to be able to participate in a discussion about making those hard decisions with the benefit of that kind of vision and more measurable outcomes that we can use to judge what's working and what's not, and therefore where we need to make hard decisions to cut things.
As far as broader priorities go, housing stability is the foundation for everything else, and we cannot afford to fall short here.
I think that my priorities are pretty clear based on how I've approached the investments with the unbudgeted housing funds, for example.
Right now, tenants, renters, they desperately need our intervention to prevent deepening the crisis on our streets.
So we have to keep investing in eviction prevention and rental assistance type things and all the kinds of wraparound services that keep people housed.
For transportation, You know, we need to ensure that our streets are safe and maintained at an equitable rate.
Again, that's something that East Portland and District 1 councilors are always going to harp on.
But we really just can't continue to take on projects and investments in order of price, but rather in order of least to most invested.
And communities that have historically been underinvested in, like East Portland, they cannot continue to sit at the bottom of that list.
This was something that was very much at the top of the East Portland Budget Survey as well that I did.
And particularly East Portlanders shared that they believe that the traffic and transportation inequities are a big contributor to their lack of community safety and feeling safe in East Portland.
They fear just walking around, right?
If you can't even just walk around, it's not just about crime, of course, that came up as well.
East Portlanders had shared in the budget survey that they struggle with walking around at night, but it's not just because of their fear of somebody hurting them.
It's also their fear of a car hitting them.
It's their fear of just not having the infrastructure to get from A to B.
And so I just want to elevate how important transportation justice is for community safety in East Portland.
Speaking of community safety, I think that we need to continue to invest in solutions that meet people where they are.
When we continue to put the burden on law enforcement to continually expand and push outside of their scope and work overtime, that is unfair.
We need to do our part to invest in the proven preventative measures like safe streets and clean parks, modern community spaces, and accessible health services.
Speaking of health, I really would like to see CHAT increase to a higher frequency, ideally 24/7.
If not this year due to obvious need for budget cuts, then I want to see a scaling-up plan for what that looks like in the coming years because CHAT is becoming more and more of an urgent need in East Portland.
Lastly, as it relates to just protecting our communities overall from the racial and social injustices that we're seeing, especially from the White House.
I did an interview this week with Noticias Noroeste, which by the way is the only Spanish language news station right now because Univision closed down at the end of 2024.
And I say that because people are really struggling to get information.
And one of the things that he said to me was that, you know, we were talking about the unbudgeted housing funds and he was like, okay, well, how are you going to get that information out to communities that don't speak English?
Because they are struggling.
Olivia Clark
Yeah.
Candace Avalos
To get access to resources.
So I just want to flag that as a continued need.
And as I said earlier, we now also are seeing that HUD is going to be denying a bunch of rental services to mixed-status families.
So again, putting yet another barrier in front of these communities that are already under attack.
And this particularly impacts children, often children who are citizens, by the way.
And so I think that the— and the other thing, the last thing he said to me was, you know, they were talking about like just broadly, you know, everything around immigration enforcement.
And the thing that he hears the most though is that people need food and a roof over their head.
That is the most urgent need right now.
So these are the basics for survival.
So I just want us to continue to think about how not only are we investing in those basics and investing and working in partnership with other governments, with organizations to reach communities, to share our resources so we can make the best use of them, but also to get that information out to people in a way that they can reach, right?
And we are just seeing these attacks on our communities becoming more violent, and their lasting impact is going to be really detrimental to our society and to our community's health.
And so we have to look at it from a health perspective.
I'm really concerned about a lot of families who are losing their breadwinners.
They're about to be homeless.
They have less resources because federal government is shutting them out.
It is our job as a city to step in where the federal government is clearly trying to hurt them.
So those are my priorities.
I know you have a tough job ahead, and I know I didn't give you perfect answers of all the things that you should cut.
I think it is kind of hard, as I've thank you.
I shared with you in the meeting as well to say what is the exact thing I should cut, because I feel like I will continue to say I would love for us to improve the kind of information that councilors are getting ahead of time.
I don't think that I have the tools right now to be able to assess all of the city's bureaus and their services and make thoughtful suggestions for things to cut.
So I know we're still in a growth year as far as trying to work out this system for how we do budgeting and how we legislate.
But I will continue to urge that we invest in our ability to have this information at our fingertips, to follow along while you're making your hard decisions so that by the time it comes to us, we are informed and we aren't just shooting in the dark.
We are able to be a partner to you in making those hard decisions instead of just a barrier because we are uninformed.
That's going to make your job harder.
So the more that your office, the city administrator, the budget office can do to give us more information, I think the better outcome for this entire process.
That's all.
Ruth Levine
Thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Um, Councilor Kanal just pinged me that he forgot one thing before.
I'm going to turn it to him, and then Councilor Green, you'll have the last word, and then Mayor, City Administrator, I'll turn it to you for the final.
So, Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, thanks.
Uh, first, I forgot to mention that I categorically oppose any pause to the North Portland Aquatic Center.
Sorry, Council President.
It's fine.
But we did give up on the Columbia Pool.
I want to be clear, the city did give that up.
Not we.
We, the city, at this moment is trying to give up on it.
So I want to really focus on ensuring that we're investing in the places that have these inequities and try to make sure that we're cleaning those up.
Dan Ryan
Thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
It's a perfect segue for me.
Uh, Council President, I, uh, I got back in the queue because I want to acknowledge that, you know, there is a difference of opinion among councilors in District 4 on some issues.
Um, with all the due love and respect to Councilor Clark, we, we'll get, we'll get along just fine no matter how we show up in this budget.
I suspect we won't be united like we are on the, uh, District 2, uh, North Portland Portland Aquatic Center, United Front, as oppositional to the council president on things like impact reduction plan.
That's okay.
Reasonable people can disagree.
Um, I, I am standing for constituents that we have though that have asked specifically for me to take this position.
So they're out there.
They may not be at your town halls, but they're at mine.
Um, I will say this, uh, you surfaced up something, Councilor Kanal, that I forgot.
Yes.
To motivate a little bit.
When I think about Portland Solutions, it's not that I don't like a lot of the things that happen from Portland Solutions.
I think they're doing great work.
I just worry there's some stuff I don't agree with, but I think I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
But I think what I'm really worried about is during the pandemic years, we created this ad hoc stand-apart organization that was designed to actually operate outside of the bureau.
And I have yet to see that get integrated into our— we've had this conversation, City Administrator Lee.
I've yet to see that get integrated into a way that's matrixed with our service areas.
So I don't want 5 service areas.
I want 4 service areas and a sort of way to have a span of control and a direct accountability that flows to the DCAs if we're going to have DCAs.
So there are things in Portland Solutions' budget that I support and I like.
Keith Wilson
I agree.
Mitch Green
It's not a wholesale rejection of the group as a whole.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Green.
City Administrator, Mr. Mayor, any final parting words for us?
Raymond C. Lee
Yes, I first off want to just thank the councilors for providing their feedback today as it relates to the things that are resonating with them as they have a very important decision point coming up As the mayor's proposed budget is— will be released to the city council and the public as a whole.
I would also like to say in this as well, just a thank you to the staff that helped prepare the information, that helped formulate the budget that the mayor is still working on and tweaking on, but will potentially be developed and presented to the city council.
As a way for us to be able to move this organization and this community forward.
You know, but I would like to level set in this as well.
You know, some of the things that I hear the councilors talk about, every city I've been in have talked about similar things as it relates to how we make decisions, how information is being disseminated, how we're tracking the performance of how we're growing.
And developing and improving as an organization.
Those are all things we all strive to do.
But I just want to remind us, we're still at the infant stages of where we are as an organization and figuring out what our rhythm is as an organization.
We will get there, no doubt.
I have no question in my mind in that.
But as we go through this budget process, We're learning too, trial by error, as we go through this and really work with councilors as it relates to the information that you're going to need to make the important decisions that you have to make as you look forward to adopting the city's budget in the coming year.
You have the full commitment of the administration staff to get you the information that you need to make those decisions, but we have a lot of tough decisions ahead of us.
A lot of tough decisions that were going to be made in the mayor's proposed budget.
And nothing is easy in these type of cuts when you're looking at roughly $169 million of general fund operations and services.
So as we continue to go through it, we're open to the suggestions and bringing back information that will help make thoughtful and deliberate and intentional decisions.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Mr. Mayor.
Keith Wilson
Council President, colleagues, thank you for this opportunity.
I thought it was very thoughtful.
I thought it was a great conversation to hear from you.
I think there's a lot of alignment.
I want to thank Jonas, Ruth, and your teams.
We've spent weekends, weeknights, an awful lot of work, and I've told others this is frankly professionally the hardest thing I've ever done.
To Councilor Zimmerman's point at the very beginning of this, he said he doesn't want to see cute cuts.
There's nothing cute about this budget in the sense that these are always humans we're talking about.
These are teammates, these are coworkers, these are families, these are friends.
And so everything that we're going to provide to you has been thoughtful, has been built with a scaffolding sort of approach because it's about shared partnership, collaboration that our city's Bureaus have got to work and collaborate together because not one can stand alone anymore with the new org that we put together.
So I just thought that this was a great opportunity to hear from you and want to thank you for that gratitude.
Thank you for the grace of this conversation, and we're almost there.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you much, Mayor.
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Thank you, President Dunphy.
One thing that wasn't lifted, and when we have conversations with the county on trying to get to role clarity and efficiency with housing and homelessness, when are we going to do that with public safety?
Half of the public safety services are at the county, but most Portlanders don't realize that.
And so our first responders struggle with where they're supposed to take people when many of the corrections have been closed, when treatment centers have been closed.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you.
Dan Ryan
When the DA's office has been defunded for about a decade, when we don't have enough district— when we don't have enough defenders, public defenders, so court cases can move, and then we're told that we just catch and release people quickly.
That's on the county, and the city gets blamed for that.
And we've never, in my opinion, I've been asking for this for 5 years, when are we gonna have that conversation with the county?
Keith Wilson
Council President?
Dan Ryan
Sure.
Keith Wilson
You know, I'm glad you brought that up, Councilor.
We have been having ongoing meetings with the judges, DA, sheriff, PPB, and our public safety officials on an ongoing basis because how we integrate together, it has to be a seamless system.
And when they have bottlenecks, we need to know.
And we're actually integrating that communication with, uh, real-time information back and forth now.
I, I agree with you.
It is something that's hurting our community writ large.
And so we really started that conversation.
I'm happy to say it's going well.
Plenty of room for improvement.
Dan Ryan
I hope in this budget process we hear how that's being actualized.
And since I'm on the public record and wanting to merge the city and the county, I'm very comfortable to push on this issue.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Kanal, last word.
We got 1 minute.
Sameer Kanal
I just wanted to agree on having the conversation and say, when we say we, I'd love it if we included somebody, you know, include council in that because I'm sure the county commission has at least some insight into it.
And it's sometimes frustrating not feeling like we have as much insight into the relationship building, at least in the public safety space, as maybe our colleagues on the commission over there do.
So I'd love to be a part of that conversation or have someone on council be.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Smith, 30 seconds.
Loretta Smith
Who is our, um, counselor on LPSIC?
Novick.
Novick.
So he's the person that you need to take those concerns— Novick.
Oh, because he— we have a LPSIC person that handles all of the law enforcement public safety stuff.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much, colleagues.
With that, we are adjourned.