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.
Jamie Dunphy
Attention is ordered.
Good afternoon.
I am calling to order this meeting of the Portland City Council.
It is 2 o'clock, uh, 2:02.
On Wednesday, May 6th.
Keelan, can you please call the roll?
Keelan McClymont
Kanal?
Sameer Kanal
Here.
Keelan McClymont
Porto-Guiney?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Here.
Keelan McClymont
Ryan?
Dan Ryan
Here.
Keelan McClymont
Koyama Lane?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Here.
Jamie Dunphy
Here.
Here.
Keelan McClymont
Aviles?
Candace Avalos
Present.
Keelan McClymont
Smith.
Loretta Smith
Here.
Jamie Dunphy
And can we please call the— read the rules of decorum?
Keelan McClymont
Thank you, Council President.
Welcome to the Portland City Council.
To testify before council in person or virtually, you must sign up in advance on the council agenda at www.portland.gov/council/agenda.
Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's webpage.
Individuals may testify for 3 minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise.
Your microphone will be muted when your time is over.
The presiding officer preserves order.
Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others' testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed.
If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given.
Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting.
Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass.
Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually.
Thank you.
Your testimony should address the matter being considered.
When testifying, state your name for the record.
Your address is not necessary.
If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent.
Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Colleagues, our first item is agenda approval.
Item number 5, document 2026-155, has been requested to be pulled from the consent agenda for discussion by Mark Porras, a member of the public.
This is authorizing borrowings of not more than $95 million in anticipation of the Fire and Police Disability Retirement Fund levy for the fiscal year '26-'27.
I had placed this item on consent because it's a relatively straightforward matter that needs to be law by the end of the fiscal year to keep FPDR whole throughout its collection cycle.
We do this borrowing for FPDR every year, but usually from internal services— sources.
Due to the budget crunch this year, we have to borrow externally.
Normally, an item pulled from consent is placed at the end of the agenda, but in this case, I think it would be worth getting it out of the way at the top of the regular agenda so that we can be done with it and move forward.
Thank you.
Would councilors agree to this placement?
Okay.
Are there any other requests to amend the agenda, to reorder items, or to reschedule an item for a future meeting date?
Okay.
So I would like to move to have the pulled item moved to the top of the agenda.
Can I have— is there a second?
Second.
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Is there any— motions to amend agenda are debatable and may be adopted by unanimous consent or by vote.
Is anyone— Discussion to the reordering?
Okay.
Do I have unanimous cons— oh wait, no.
Yeah, can I— yeah.
Do I have unanimous consent to approve the reordering of the agenda?
Looks good.
Your agenda is approved.
Keelan, could we please call public communications?
First up, we have public communications.
Uh, David Weither is our first individual.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Feel free to please, uh, introduce yourself for the record.
You're welcome to share your pronouns, and you have 3 minutes.
My name is David Guither.
I'm with Rodeo Cab, and I'm here on the issue of, uh, robo-cabs or AV taxis, depending on how you want to phrase it.
Uh, one of the problems with the implementation that's starting now, the PBOT has been working hard, as you probably will find out, a whole series of rules and regs.
But it's, as they say, mathematics is a house built on sand.
Well, these rules and regs are built on air, if that's true, because there's no law.
There's no state law.
There's no federal law.
So for example, if the Waymo company wanted to operate out of Gresham or Beaverton, they could pick up in Portland.
Who's going to stop them?
Yeah.
There's not.
The police are very busy now and don't have time to be chasing anonymous vehicles trying to find out if they're picking up fares without being properly licensed in the state— city of Portland.
Anyway, I— and the last time I was here, I enumerated at least 11 taxes and fees you're going to lose every time one of the 12,000 people who are registered and currently licensed as private for-hire workers in this city.
You're going to lose a lot of tax money that way.
The new tax that I hear about, the apartment or whatever, some sort of form of property tax for potholes— robots don't have apartments.
They may have a little building that they store them in, but they don't have apartments.
So that's Something you're going to lose also.
My suggestion is to have this issue on the ballot for November.
I looked into trying to do this with a petition.
First of all, you need 40,000+ signatures, which is daunting to begin with.
And it's just the timing.
You have to have it ahead of time, and it can't be done this time by an individual, but the council can.
You have magic powers, as you well know.
You can have whatever you want on the ballot, and you can make it an advisory vote if you wanted to, not necessarily a law.
But let's get the issue out of PBOT and the Waymo people who obviously have a serious amount of influence.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be so hasty in moving forward.
Now, it's true that, that in the past there have been a number of efforts to create laws, but they have come to nothing.
There's no law.
No state law.
Here's one stack of paperwork that was created by a task force.
Here's a very nicely packaged one also.
They created a law out of this.
And my suggestion is to— why doesn't the council with PBOT write a law yourselves?
Maybe we can get it passed so there's some basis for what is being done, so it's not just flying around out there in regulation heaven.
Thank you.
Anyway, thank you so much for your time, and I'll be trying to contact your staff and yourselves once you get through this budget process, which must be daunting since you have no money.
Thank you very much.
The next 2 individuals will come up together, Gary Darling and Talitha Mathis.
Welcome, come on up.
So I'm going to set the timer for 6 minutes and they will use the time how they— Sounds good to me.
And make sure to introduce yourselves for the record.
Good afternoon, City Council members.
My name is Talitha Mathis and I'm the co-founder of OnTrack Development.
Thank you, Mayor Wilson.
Good afternoon, Council members.
I'm here today to ask that you take the following information that I will share with you into consideration during the Planning Commission meeting set for May 12th, 2026 at 2:00 PM when discussing and making decisions in regard to the Columbia Corridor and the Industrial Lands Environmental Overlay Zone project that will have negative impacts on our possibility to develop on the site due to the expansion of the E-Zone.
My property is located in District 2 on the corner of North Marine Drive and North Canton Vine Avenue.
Which is in the Bridgerton neighborhood on the north side of Marine Drive and is zoned as a commercial mixed-use, not industrial.
Our development project is actively working to build homes that will be available for purchase, providing working families with the opportunity to secure stability, a pressing need in our community.
This initiative represents a significant step towards providing housing, which is in alignment with the City of Portland's housing initiative to increase the availability of homes for families and address the ongoing housing crisis in our community.
We began this project in 2021.
Thank you.
And have invested over $300,000 and 5 years of dedicated effort towards its success.
Our preconstruction costs have been funded by Prosper Portland, with our loan agreement expiring in January 2027.
Portland is currently facing a housing crisis, and the city has set a goal to build more homes for families.
Our project aligns perfectly with this vision, yet the recent discussions regarding the environmental zone expansion which will be addressed in the planning meeting on May the 12th, poses a significant challenge.
The proposed increase in the conservation buffer from 15 feet to 50 feet could render much of our site undevelopable.
We have previously submitted written testimony detailing the negative impact this change would have on our project, jeopardizing our goal of providing homes that foster community stability.
I urge you to recognize the significance of this project, not merely as an investment, but as a crucial step toward meeting the housing needs in our community.
Thank you.
By proposing owner-occupied housing, we can further enhance the stability of the neighborhood, which in turn supports the health of Green Space 2.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
And now, Gary, go ahead.
Hello, my name is Gary Darling.
I'm a civil engineer, and this has been my profession since 1997.
In 2021, our company, DL Consulting WA, began working with OnTrack Developers LLC on their Marine Drive project as their civil engineers.
The project is located within the Columbia Corridor and Industrial Lands Environmental Overlay.
As you continue to consider potential expansions of this overlay, and during your discussion at the Planning Commission meeting on May 12th, we respectfully urge you to please take our project into consideration When making decisions that will affect the viability of this very needed project in North Portland.
Over the past 5 years, we have worked very closely with the staff from Permitting and Development, PBOT, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, and with Multnomah County Urban Flood Safety and Water Quality District.
Our team has invested substantial time, energy, into bringing our client's project to fruition.
Due to the nature of the many layers of agency bureaucracy and time delays, we have reached out to multiple departments within the city in an effort to advance our progress at a strong and steady pace, and also to ensure that the environmental overlay adjustments will not negatively impact this project.
In response, we received a highly informative email from Stephen Himes of the Public Works Development Division, which provided us with valuable guidelines for proceeding with possibly vesting our site prior to the CCIL expansion.
We sincerely appreciate this assistance in clarifying our options and the necessary next steps.
However, if the site is not vested and the conservation setbacks are adjusted before the site is vested or permitted, my clients will lose most of the developable portion of their property, rendering the project unfeasible for development.
As we just stated, we respectfully request that you factor our project into your decision-making process, as it will significantly impact my client's ability to pursue a viable development or possibly any development at all.
I would also like to add that in my almost 30 years of being a civil engineer and working on projects in this city with the various bureaus, the most recent changes— when I say recent, I mean over the last few years— of the Public Works permitting concept approval process The bar is being slowly and consistently raised to a point where just a few years ago, concept or 30% approval was a matter of several months.
Now it may take a year or even longer.
I believe that our PBOT drawings for this project, which are close to but not, not quite yet have concept approval, are actually much closer to what would have been considered design level or 60% drawings just a few years ago.
We believe that we only need to address a few minor Water Bureau comments to obtain concept approval.
But I bring this up because I believe that the drawings should actually be granted concept approval immediately, as they are now.
And also, I would like to raise the hope that the powers that be will seriously take a hard look at streamlining the public works permitting process to make it much more efficient moving forward.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you.
And fantastic timing.
That was good.
Thank you.
Next up, we have Addie Smith.
Hello everyone.
Before Keelan starts my timer, I wanted to ask Councilor Smith, no relation, if she would provide me with the voting record for the councilors who voted in support of Hacienda receiving funding.
Last month she said that, uh, Councilor Avalos and Murillo voted in favor of funding for Hacienda.
And I wanted to see that voting record, please.
If she could get my email address from Keelan and send me over that voting record for all of the councilors.
Um, thank you.
And so I will, uh, start if you're ready, Keelan.
Hello, my name is Addie Smith.
Today is May 6th, 2026.
I am speaking before the Portland City Council.
I want to call out Willamette Weekly and Sophie Peel for their racist bias and partial reporting on the CEO, Ivory Matthews, at Home Forward.
What Sophie Peel and Willamette Weekly did not tell the public is that the chief operating officer, Ian Davies' salary, was also increased by 68%.
He also earns over $300,000.
Ian Davies, who actually is responsible for the operations At Home Forward as the Chief Operating Officer failed to do his job.
While he wasn't taking as many trips as Ivory Matthews, he wasn't doing his job while working from home or in the office every day.
Home Forward's debt service coverage ratio, meaning their ability to pay their bills and operate, dropped under his leadership as Chief Operating Officer from 2.36 in 2022, a healthy, robust Budget coverage to 1.10, where it currently stands.
He didn't visit any of the properties.
He didn't respond to any resident complaints.
He didn't perform any of his duties as Chief Operating Officer.
He must resign.
Not only must he resign, but so must Candy Sage, the Chief Financial Officer, and Kitty Miller, the Chief People and Culture Officer.
They both had salary increases of 59% and 74%, respectively.
Councilwoman Smith, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
And both earn nearly $300,000 each.
This does not include thousands of dollars in bonuses and additional compensation.
Meanwhile, they are all furloughing employees and people who've been employed by Home Forward for nearly 30 years and were still entry-level staff.
Home Forward's decline is due to all of them.
Ian Davey, Candy Sage, and Kitty Miller didn't need Ivory Matthews to perform their job duties and responsibilities.
These are adults who intentionally fail to do their jobs.
So while Ivory Matthews was traveling and networking, the board approved it.
The board reviewed her request for travel and networking and approved it.
Should she have been ensuring that her staff were doing their jobs?
Yes.
However, this shouldn't have stopped these adults from performing.
They knew what needed to be done and still chose to allow the organization I need a few more minutes, please.
Um, one more minute, please.
Their resignations are a must.
Again, I call on the board to hire me as CEO.
I am a certified financial specialist, a housing credit certified professional, a specialist in housing credit management, and more.
I've been in housing for over 30 years.
There are plenty of nonprofits in Oregon and Washington State that are fraudulent.
Where the corporate executives are doing the least work, getting all of the salary increases and bonuses, and on-site staff who are working in these communities doing all the work are being furloughed or laid off and not receiving any pay increases or bonuses at all.
The board must also terminate all contracts with third-party property management companies.
Thank you so much.
One more minute.
I, I gotta end you there, unfortunately.
Thank you.
You're welcome to send in any of the additional comments to us.
Next up we have Joel Meredith.
Hi, you guys, can you guys hear me?
Yeah, go ahead.
All right, uh, thanks for having me.
I've never done this before.
Uh, my name is Joel Meredith.
I live in District 2.
Uh, I'm here today to ask the city to start making a proactive effort to cleaning up tents and camps that are on major thoroughfare streets, really anywhere in the city.
Besides letting them sit and essentially fester and gather garbage.
And it seems like it's currently on the, uh, responsibility of residents to, uh, make complaints, and then they get eventually cleaned up.
Just today I was driving to work and I saw there's a tent underneath, uh, the Hawthorne Bridge on MLK Avenue, on 12th and Northeast Sandy, on Lombard and North Mobile or Mobile.
Thank you.
And up until a couple of days ago, there was two large tents that were kind of combined into one structure right across from the Arbor Lodge Safe Rest Village.
These are not secluded areas of the cities; these are right in the middle of the city, and I have a hard time believing that various you know police officers, city officials are not driving past these if this was.
A building fire, I think that some action would be taken so that damage would be mitigated.
That does not seem to be happening on here, and it's really kind of appalling.
I've grown up here, I've lived here my whole life, and it's appalling that we've let this city kind of become a trash heap for people who are setting up tents wherever they want these neighborhoods.
Uh, I want a safe place for my wife, my kid, my neighbors, and I know that homeless people are not inherently bad or anything, but they're in the wrong for setting up a tent on public property.
That is nuts to let that go on, and I'm sick of it.
We pay a lot in taxes for the privilege to live here, and I think there's a lot of compassion talk on this.
There seems to be a lack of compassion for people who are Thank you.
People are paying the taxes, voting, working, and keeping the city afloat, um, and having to put up with unsafe, dirty, um, situations in their neighborhoods.
And I think it's just pretty appalling.
Um, I don't really want to keep a bunch of your time.
I would— yeah, I just think there's a responsibility on the authorities in Portland to act more proactively, not let them sit I talked to someone from the impact reduction team.
They said they, they rate the camps on a number from 1 to 100, and 50 or 51 is when they start taking action.
I think just one tent on public property should automatically be a 51.
We should not, as residents, have to sit and just deal with this.
It's a little much to ask for us.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
That completes communications.
Okay, next on our agenda is usually our, uh, where we talk about federal updates, and also we're going to move into the city administrator's update.
Colleagues, I will just give one very brief federal update that we need to mention.
The Supreme Court last week, uh, gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Um, we have a lot of hard work to do as a community and as a country to move closer to justice.
Um, City Administrator Lee, you— turning to you for your monthly City Administrator report.
Colleagues, just as a heads up, we have 30 minutes scheduled for this item.
Okay, good afternoon, Council.
This month's report is grounded in a single theme of fiscal responsibility across the organization.
You will see a consistent focus on aligning our operations, investments, and service delivery With the financial realities in front of us while continuing to deliver results for the community.
What I want to highlight today is how the discipline is showing up in real tangible ways across the organization.
We're continuing to improve how the city operates by aligning services and reducing duplication.
A strong example of this is continued integration within our 311 bureau.
Thank you.
Where we are now unifying dispatch services across parks and transportation into a single 24/7 coordinated system.
This is about more than efficiency.
It's about creating a more responsive, consistent experience for the public while maximizing existing resources.
We are also making disciplined investments that deliver both financial and community value.
The PCF e-bike program is now live, expanding access to affordable, reliable transportation, particularly for low-income residents through a structured rebate program.
At the same time, broader PCF investments, including programs like energy-friendly homes, are deploying sufficient resources in a way that reduces long-term energy costs and improves housing stability.
This is what fiscal responsibility investment looks like— upfront strategy with long-term return.
We are also continuing to identify opportunities to reduce costs and better leverage partnerships.
A strong example of that is the Preschool for All partnership, which is now funding programs within city community centers.
Thank you.
And generating approximately $1 million in general fund savings that can be redirected to other priorities.
Also, you're seeing in Water Bureau's energy management efforts continue to generate ongoing savings and rebates, helping offset rising costs.
These are all types of structural improvements we need to continue in scaling as an organization.
Thank you.
In public safety, we're seeing measurable progress as well.
Portland continues to be recognized nationally for reductions in gun violence, reflecting sustained coordination and focus across our system.
At the same time, the Bureau of Emergency Communications has achieved accreditation, placing it in the top tier of dispatch agencies nationwide.
Which we recently recognized.
These outcomes matter because they reflect both performance and the trust in our core services as a city.
We are also maintaining a strong focus on oversight of our major capital investments.
Projects like Bull Run Filtration Project and our Columbia Boulevard continue to advance with clear attention to schedule, At the same time, we're strengthening governance structures, including independent oversight, to ensure accountability at the scale these investments require.
From a transparency accountability enhancement, this month's reports also reflects continued progress in this.
At council's request, we enhanced the claims reporting process to ensure that To include court type and docket information.
We introduced a new active contracts appendix that you will see in the back of the city administrator's report for visibility into the contract capacity across the organization.
There are important steps towards giving council clearer lines of insight into the risk spending and long-term obligations that we have.
Thank you.
As a city.
On an organizational leadership standpoint, which I will clap for this because this is my first big executive hire.
Finally, I want to highlight that we're welcoming the city's first Chief Equity Officer, which you've seen in my email, Latricia Tillman, who will start next week.
This role will be critical in aligning our equity efforts across the organization.
Thank you.
And ensuring we are delivering outcomes that reflect our values as a city.
In closing, I would like to say this as well before I close out.
As this council is aware, the hearing officer has heard the merits, uh, as it relates to the appeal.
Uh, that case has continued until today.
Uh, we are anticipating not hearing a judgment on this until a couple of weeks The hearing officer has that capability to review and take everything under consideration before we get a report out on that.
One thing I would like to say in closing though, we're still aligning our services, we're still investing, uh, with discipline, we're still improving our transparency, and we're making the hard decisions necessary for long-term stability for our organization.
And I welcome any questions that council may have at this time.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you, City Administrator.
Colleagues, any questions for our City Administrator on his report?
Councilor Kanal.
Thank you, Council President.
First, just a couple quick notes.
I really appreciate the shout out to OVP and Ceasefire, the work of the entire public safety system.
The report from the Center for American Progress shows that we have nearly doubled the rate of decline in shootings The gun violence rates, gun victimization rates, 56.7% reduction in the last 4 years as compared to 29.4% nationwide.
And I think that's really worth praising everybody involved in that.
Also wanted to take the opportunity to thank, as you mentioned, Judith Mowry, but also Jeff Selby for their work leading the Office of Equity and Human Rights.
Excited to welcome Tricia Tillman over as well.
Also really appreciated the shout out to Marisol in there about the Community Resilience Team at PBEM and the Office of Small Business, which hit a year.
Aye.
Thank you, Mayor.
I think that your hope expressed in the report that they can do more for small businesses is something that I really wanted to highlight, especially given the ideal placement of the Storefront Support Program, in my view, is there and resourcing the office to truly provide support to small businesses around the city, especially those in Lloyd Center.
And I wanted to ask a couple questions.
On April 13th, Microsoft Copilot, launched for all employees on April 13th, and it says here excluding police.
And I'm not suggesting that it should have been or it shouldn't have been.
I'm curious what the rationale was for the, the, the why it was rolled out in the way it was in, in that context.
I don't know if our BTS or DCA over that group is here.
If my recollection is right, it's their systems that they're operating with and the, and the information that they have in their system And its ability from a safety standpoint to be able to be integrated into AI software.
So we're still evaluating that component of it and wanted to make sure we had all those things in order before we opened up a pilot program for the police bureau, especially with the safety-sensitive information that they have.
Okay, that makes sense that they obviously have a different system and that makes sense that it wouldn't necessarily be together.
Every— to a lesser degree, but of the same type.
The concerns around that apply actually elsewhere as well.
There's sensitive information that all city employees have access to.
Again, not to the same degree as police, but I would like to— I would have loved more engagement on that process with, you know, the elected representatives instead of it being done through administrative rule.
I just wanted to flag that while we were on it because I think that answer actually illuminates why Pausing that in the other places would be helpful.
This is maybe for later.
In the budget note tracker, Canal 13 says it's complete, yet we never got a comprehensive proposal for what a package delivery fee would look like.
This got rolled into the PBOT conversation that involved the TUF, the street damage restoration fee, but then that's where all of it went.
It was like we're looking at all 4 of these together, which is separate from the budget note, and then it ended up where we're just getting these 2 proposals.
So I just was Hoping you could help me follow up with PBOT on that and get the information that I hope was created by then.
Okay, thanks.
And then you, you mentioned in the report engagement with people living in vessels on the Willamette, and I wanted to just ask, what does that look like?
As it says, Portland Solutions staff and outreach team members joined the Department of State Lands to engage by boat.
And offering services.
I know that we often use the phrase offering services as a euphemism for sweeps in the Portland Solutions service, their work.
So what does that look like in practice?
What I can do for that, Councilor, I know Portland Solutions is coming up and they're— They're literally coming up.
She can address it now.
We can address it during that time as well.
Whatever works best for you.
Yeah, yeah, happy to.
Just quickly, Councilor, and I can also follow up with you later.
So this was an initial pilot kind of project that's in partnership with the Department of State Lands and our outreach team.
So the folks that are doing that city outreach on the ground just to talk to folks, see if they'd be interested in shelter or maybe some other kind of service on the water.
So some of these folks had housing or a different apartment and also had a vessel on the water, but some folks didn't.
So really just offering some services.
2 Folks expressed interest in shelters.
That was great.
We can follow up with them.
But there's also a collaboration with Department of State Lands and the Sheriff's Office because of the River Patrol and all the different aspects that are on the water.
A lot of different jurisdictions involved.
We wanted to at least offer some services.
So that was just a first step, but I think there could be more engagement going forward.
Sure.
Thanks for that.
Does the suite of services that are being offered, are they comparable to what you would offer someone who might be living in a tent on a street, or is there a difference in any way on that?
Yeah, no, I believe— I wasn't with them when they approached folks, but I believe they offered any pod shelter that was available, but also overnight congregate shelter.
So it'd be similar.
Yep.
Okay, thanks.
I think I'll pause there because I see other people in the queue.
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Green.
Thank you, City Administrator Lee.
I always appreciate the update.
I'm just going to follow on to Councilor Kanal's questions about the budget note tracker.
I appreciate the tracker.
I will note that Green 10 is highlighted as green and it says it's complete, but we did not get every 6 weeks a briefing that said so.
I don't want to go back in time and revisit that.
I understand there's been a lot of constraints facing the city, but I think as we go into the next budget and we're contemplating new budget notes, if we're not able to execute on that, we probably not— green's probably not the status quo code.
So just wanted to flag that.
The other piece I have a question about, as I was reviewing the contracts, which is very helpful to have that up there, Urban Alchemy's contract began in March of 2023, and that's a total Total of $90 million is the contract, and it looks like to date we've spent just over $55 million on that contract because there's roughly $35 million remaining.
I'm asking this question because I understand that they are our contractor for the alternative, the task sites.
The issue I'm having is today there's some reporting that there's been 85 complaints to the ombudsman about serious issues of misconduct at Urban Alchemy— drug dealing, sexual harassment.
That's not true.
Yes.
Theft since the beginning of that contract.
And our ombudsman was able to substantiate 6 of those.
42 Of those complaints were referred back to Urban Alchemy's grievance— internal grievance process.
And they, you know, we don't know what the status of that is.
And so we're about to make— we're about to be asked to make budget decisions to renew this pot of money.
I really need to know that we're doing the proper oversight on this contract.
I think I just read this news literally an hour ago.
I'm sure y'all are still trying to grok it as well.
I needed to raise that because that's a serious concern for me.
Thank you, Councilor.
We'll look into it.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Councilor Murillo.
I have not read that news yet, and maybe you can forward me an article.
Um, thank you, Council President.
Thank you, City Administrator, for your report.
Um, just flagging again, and we've already discussed this, that, uh, last I wanted to look into the city's contracts with Celebrite.
The police bureau has tracking and surveillance software that I wanted to look at how much those contracts cost and what exactly the scope of their work is in using those.
So looking forward to getting that information, especially as we're approaching a very difficult budget cycle.
The other thing that you, I think, briefly touched on, and it may have just passed me, but I wanted to get more clarity on where we're at with the detention facility update.
Yes.
My understanding is, um, there was— so I'm reading through it and it says that there was an appeal scheduled for May 5th.
The appeals process is still ongoing.
Do we know what the— how the hearing went yesterday fully?
And not yet.
I've been asking a million questions too to get how the hearing actually went.
Uh, we haven't heard— gotten any new information as it relates to it since there's a continuation.
Today, I'm hoping to get an update after this continuation, if it concludes today, to kind of get an overall update of where we are and kind of the time frame they are anticipating to take on deliberation of that from the hearing officer.
Um, do we know roughly how long that will take, or— What they told me was a couple of weeks minimum, so that's what we have today.
Okay, appreciate that.
Thanks for the additional clarity.
Yes, thank you, Council President.
Um, I was really happy to see the action being taken to address the derelict boats on the river.
Um, also just happy to know we're offering them services, so thank you for that.
Um, Sky, I, I knew that, but it was good to have you come up and say that.
We passed them every dragon boat practice, and there were quite a few until this week.
This week we only saw one.
I think we're going to have to start So I'm really happy to hear that you're providing safe and stable housing off the public right-of-way.
I'm also excited to see we have 11 new recruits that became firefighters and got their yellow helmets recently.
That's exciting.
And finally, I know it's always improving, but thank you for the active contracts dashboard.
It's really helpful to see that.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Kanal.
Thank you, Council President.
Just a couple more.
Um, I was hoping to, to get a little— I have 3 things.
One, one is, um, about a couple other budget notes that are marked as ongoing, no pro— no timeline specified.
Uh, Kanal 08, but also Mayor's proposed number 4, um, which is about overtime reduction.
I understand that the action may be ongoing, but there's, uh, a deliverable in it, and we've also received information about budget notes expiring at the end of the year.
So I want to make sure that we can get some idea of when we would receive a deliverable in the next month and a half on those.
I know in the case of, uh, Canal 8, it's designed to inform the conversation that we're having right now without the information, which is on how to reduce management bloat through consideration of changes to the director and deputy director, uh, classification series.
Um, but is there a way to understand the timeline for the deliverables on something where the work is marked as ongoing?
Council, I'm pretty sure we can develop something to follow back up with council as a whole of kind of what that outstanding work is and the time frame of that.
So we can follow up in the next week or so with some kind of, uh, update on that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Administrator Lee.
Um, on page 23, it's line 7.
This is the, uh, the closed claims.
Um, there's a, uh, a claim that was Alleging that a person was injured while sitting in the back of a PPB vehicle that is marked as claim denied.
And I'd just like to get— this is the, the main time we get to see this information— just try to get more information on that and why the claim was denied.
There's some things in here that are settled, and, you know, I imagine these are when a tort claim notice is filed.
And so just trying to understand what happened there.
I know that was relatively recent, just trying to, to get to that.
Um, Follow-up?
Yeah.
Last thing I wanted to just say, thank you for the inclusion of Appendix F. I've been asking about this for a number of months now, and I know as soon as you came in, this was a priority for you as well.
Now, the number I'm about to say is inclusive only of contracts that cross the fiscal year, but does include the money that's already been paid out.
So if we're in year 5 of a 10-year contract, it includes the 4 years we've already paid.
I don't want to say that, but when we talk about contracts, there are— and whether or not there is enough of them that there is money to be found there.
There are $8.1 billion in contracts that are noted in Appendix F. And if you go to the active contracts report that it links to online, you can scroll down and see it all.
Of that, $3.775 billion, with a B, dollars are remaining to be paid.
And that excludes the ones that are expiring by June 30th of this year.
Okay.
Year.
So some of these are perfectly legitimate.
Most of these are perfectly legitimate at the level they're at, and I'm not trying to imply anything else.
Um, I do appreciate, uh, Councilor Green's question about what looks to be the, uh, 8th or 9th biggest contract in here, um, uh, which is the Urban Alchemy one.
But, um, when we talk about this in the, in the context of labor, when we talk about this in the context of budget, I just wanted to make sure that that number was there.
And that's a number that maybe wasn't well known until this appendix was included, and now it's all out there.
So I really appreciate that, uh, Administrator Lee.
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Avalos.
Thank you, City Administrator.
Um, I also had a question about the budget note tracker.
I see that for Avalos 8, which is about protecting workers from future healthcare cuts, that was, you know, last year for this fiscal budget.
But the way I'm reading it, it says factored into FY26 Does that mean you're automatically planning to do that?
Because I was planning on introducing another budget note to keep that going, or are you all just adopting that moving forward?
Let's discuss that more.
I would love to hear what you're planning on introducing, and it could be something that's incorporated into it.
But what— I guess, what does this mean though, if it says that it's factored in?
It's factored in that we're still looking at it, and it's worked into our budget currently right now.
But if you're looking at amending anything or doing anything extra, No, I wasn't looking to do anything extra.
I guess maybe I was just surprised.
I didn't realize that it was— you were just— so did you guys just decide to copy it into this next fiscal year?
Is that what— how I'm reading this?
I believe so, but let me verify to be 100% sure.
Okay.
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Thank you, City Administrator.
That looks like all of our— all of our questions.
Thank you very much.
Can we please move to the consent agenda?
Yep.
And as a reminder, one item was pulled, uh, item 5, document 2026-155.
I'll call the roll on the remainder of the consent agenda.
Kanal?
Noting that I did not pull the appointments off the consent agenda for Councilor Ryan, I vote aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
The consent agenda is approved with a vote of 12 ayes.
Thank you.
Can we please call item number 5?
Item 5, document 2026-155, authorize borrowings of not more than $95 million in anticipation of the fire and police disability and retirement fund levy for FY 2026-27.
Thank you.
This is the first reading of a non-emergency ordinance.
Um, colleagues, we have a very, very full agenda today.
I'm not going to limit anybody's time, but I would like you to— if folks As we are asking questions just broadly throughout the day, if we could try to stick to around 5 minutes.
You can get in the queue as many times as you want, but I wanna make sure everybody has an opportunity and we have a hard out at 5 o'clock today.
So take it away.
Welcome.
Good afternoon.
I'm Matt Gierach, debt manager of the city.
I'm joined by Stacy Jones, deputy director of FPD&R.
I think we had some slides to accompany the presentation.
I can pull those up unless, um, they're an attachment to the, uh, to the item.
We'll pull them up for you.
Okay, um, so we are bringing forth this ordinance, uh, to provide short-term funding for the FPDNR fund for the beginning of next fiscal year.
As background, FPDNR Tier 1 and Tier 2 benefit payments are funded on a pay-as-you-go basis.
And FPDR Tier 3 members are prefunded through the Oregon PERS system contributions.
The funding source for these payments is a dedicated FPDR property tax levy per the city charter.
This levy is separate from the city's general fund levy.
Per city charter requirements, the city only levies enough property taxes that are needed to pay requirements of the fund in that respective As a result, the fund does not maintain a sizable July 1st beginning cash balance for each fiscal year.
Since FPD&R property tax collections begin in late November and the fund pays benefits monthly, this results in a projected negative cash balance during the July through November timeframe, as you can see in the chart on the right, top right.
Thank you.
To address temporary— the temporary funding deficit each fiscal year, the city issues short-term debt obligations to provide temporary funding during the deficit period.
These short-term debt obligations are typically referred to as tax anticipation notes and are widely used by local governments around the country for this very same purpose, which is addressing timing differences between tax collections and related expenditures.
Next slide, please.
Uh, this next slide provides an overview of the short-term borrowing.
Uh, the amount will not exceed $95 million of funds.
Uh, the note will be secured by both the FPDR property tax levy and the city's full faith and credit, which includes all legally available general fund resources.
However, it will be paid from the FPDR fund Levy resources.
The note maturity date will be June 2027, roughly 11 months from the date of issuance.
The interest rate is estimated to be approximately 3.1%.
And because the city will be able to earn interest on the borrowed funds in excess of the borrowing rates under the federal tax code, the net borrowing— the net total borrowing cost is projected to be about $300,000.
Thank you.
With council's approval, the Public Finance Division will negotiate and issue a short-term note with one of the city's banking partners this coming July to ensure that the fund resources are sufficient.
And that concludes the presentation.
Thank you very much.
Colleagues, are there any technical or clarifying questions?
Councilor Knoll.
I'm— I think this is a, a technical or clarifying question.
Can you, um, thank you for the presentation.
Can you explain why the amount is $95 million?
Um, received some testimony, and it's the written testimony showing that it was $45, $38, $45, and $50 the last 4 years.
Just wanted to understand the reason for the amount changing in a pretty significant way.
Do you want me to take that?
Yeah, that'd be great.
So just again for the record, I'm Stacy Jones.
I'm the pension and finance manager over at FPDR.
Yes, the amount is larger than it has been in the past, but I would point out that it is about 1/3 of our tax levy and we need it to get us through about 1/3 of the fiscal year.
So it makes sense from that point of view.
But we have a slightly smaller beginning fund balance than usual this year, so that's part of the explanation.
Another part of the explanation is that we're still in the ramp-up Where we are funding 2 generations of pensions simultaneously.
So every year our expenses are gonna be higher, at least until the early 2030s.
But the most significant reason for this 1-year jump is that we are now reimbursing the general fund for PERS contributions that our fund makes on behalf of sworn employees hired before 2007.
We're making those reimbursements on a monthly instead of a quarterly basis.
So it used to be that we never paid the general fund a dime until we got all of our property taxes, and now we have to make, you know, tens of millions of dollars of payments before we get our property tax receipts.
But that's a good thing for the general fund, which is now earning that interest.
Just to follow up on that last piece, does that mean that you would normally be paying Q1 or Q3 in September, and then after you get the tax receipts, you'd be paying the second with that in December, and now you're paying 4 or 5 So we actually, until this past year, really never even made that Q1 payment until November because Community Safety Division didn't usually bill us until November.
And they would bill us in November for July, August, and September.
Sometimes they billed us in October, but almost always it was November.
And by then we had enough property taxes.
But now CSD, well, I guess it's not CSD anymore, Public Safety Service Area is billing us really in a very timely manner.
So I guess the question is, In a really timely way at the end of every month.
And we're shipping that money over to the general fund every month.
So that didn't used to be part of our cash flow projection at all.
And now we have, you know, that $30 million-ish in expenses that have to go out the door before we get any property tax receipts.
So that is a legitimate process change that has just happened in the last year, and that's really beneficial for the general fund.
Thank you.
Thanks.
I think that's all my clarifying questions.
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
I think that covered the questions I had as well.
Thank you.
Great.
Councilor Green.
Thank you, Council President.
Um, I wasn't going to ask a question, but then you said something that piqued my interest.
Um, so you said we're in the ramp-up period, and that ramp-up period will continue until the early 2030s.
Is that what I heard?
That's what we're estimating right now, yes.
So that means there's a ramp down?
Yes.
And when would the ramp down be at parity of roughly today?
Parity of roughly today?
I'd have to pull up an analysis, which I'm not sure we have time for that now, but it would probably be, off the top of my head, 5 to 10 years after that.
So right now we've pegged that date as 2033 specifically, but of course it can move around.
And that'll be the moment when all of our FBOs FPDR 2 pension plan beneficiaries are retired.
Okay.
But there hasn't been significant mortality yet in that population.
And our entire sworn workforce is FPDR 3, which means they're all prefunded and we're paying their PERS contributions.
So that's the moment of peak expense.
We think we're gonna hit that moment in 2033-ish.
And then after that, there's kind of a couple of years that are fairly level and then mortality starts to happen in the FPDR 2 population.
Those direct pay-as-you-go pension benefits start to fall off, and the FPDR 3 essentially remains stable because the whole workforce is now FPDR 3.
I mean, there'll be wage increases and probably PERS contribution increases 'cause those never seem to end and things like that.
But we will no longer be phasing in a population.
Right now we have more and more PERS contribution folks every year 'cause every new person we hire is a new FPDR 3 member.
And we have more and more direct pension benefits 'cause every new retiree is an FPDR 2, FPDR 3, or FPDR 4.
Thank you.
FPDR pension plan member, and there's not a lot of mortality in that FPDR 2 population yet.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah, it helps.
And I'm— let's hope that we delay the mortality as long as possible, right?
We would never wish for mortality.
No, no, uh, I, I just— I wanted to make sure that I understood that because I think it's been described— we've, we've raised these questions a couple times in a couple different ways, and that this sort of period of cost is just temporary and it's going to go down.
But I don't— it's It's going to continue to go up for a few years and it's going to stay up for a pretty long time.
I've looked at the actuarial charts, so I just want to make sure the public understands that this is going to be a significant obligation for decades.
Precisely.
And, you know, I'm happy to come, and Peter, the city economist, would be happy to come and talk with you all in more detail about it.
I know it's a topic that's come up several times.
But, you know, the bottom line is that this generation of tax is being double burdened because they are simultaneously funding pay-as-you-go pension benefits to current retirees, and they're also prefunding pension benefits for FPDR 3 members.
So this generation of taxpayers is double burdened.
They're taking— it's a rare occurrence, I think, of one generation taking a hit for a future generation.
And then in future generations, future generations of property taxpayers will have much lower bills as a consequence.
Thank you.
Since council shifted to a pre-funded plan in 2006 when the plan was reformed.
Uh, thank you for that.
That's all I have right now.
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Keelan, do we have anyone signed up to testify on this item?
We had 2 people sign up, uh, George Washington and Bernie Bro.
Looks like George is joining us online.
George, can you hear us?
George, we can't hear you if you are speaking.
We can see you.
Can you hear us?
Okay, we can't hear you yet.
No, you might, you might try to call in.
There's a phone number that was provided in your invitation.
No, we still can't hear you.
No.
Why don't you troubleshoot if you want to try to call in?
We'll, we'll go and see if the next testifier is available, and then we'll circle back to you.
Okay.
Um, Bernie Bro.
Okay, we still can't hear you.
It's still not working.
I'm sorry.
Do you have the phone number to try to call in?
No.
Let's see.
You're welcome to submit written testimony, and we can make sure that gets added to the record.
Yeah.
Apologies for technology failing us.
He's going to call in, he says.
All right, wait just a second.
Okay, okay, we just resent the number.
Okay, oh, it's the rest of them.
Okay, colleagues, as we are waiting to see if, uh, the this person can call in.
Is there any further council discussion of this item?
Okay, seeing no one, unfortunately there are technical difficulties.
We're not going to be able to have our folks come testify.
We are going to move this item to a second reading.
Oh, sorry, Kanal, if you wanted to— There's further debate, right?
I, I just called it.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Okay, Councilor Kanal.
Thanks.
Sound is not working.
Is the sound working now?
We just heard you.
There you go.
Go ahead.
There we go.
Appreciate you guys spending all the time to troubleshoot with me.
Sorry about that, uh, simple human error.
Um, needed to click on my bottom left corner.
If this happens again, bottom left corner, uh, unmute on the actual app rather than on my picture.
So appreciate your time.
Okay, good afternoon everybody, councilmen, councilwomen.
My name is George Washington, named after a real American patriot rather than the paid patriots that we see down at the Portland Ice facility.
I'm here to oppose The borrowing and calling out the destructive failure of your fairy tale ideology and leadership, if you could call it leadership.
You're asking to borrow up to $95 million, and we just heard testimony that, you know, it was a word salad of the excuse of why that number's so high.
And also in quarter 1, if you're barely paying those, you know, obligations in November, if I did that as a business owner, you guys would come after us, right?
Thank you.
Whether it's tax property, you put a lien on our property, stuff like that.
So it's just unacceptable.
You're asking to borrow $95 million for the fire and police disability retirement fund.
This is taxpayer money, our money, not your money to spend like a spoiled snot-nosed brat and treat it like an ATM with your failed socialist experiments.
And it's got to stop.
Portland doesn't have a revenue problem.
We have a spending problem driven by fairy tale ideology that fund— that seeks to defund the police and our firefighters, if you will, coddles criminals and prioritizes illegal immigrants.
Yes, illegal immigrants and radical leftist protesters like we see at the ICE Portland facilities, uh, in organizations like Antifa, over law-abiding residents and local businesses.
And like was mentioned earlier by someone here in this panel a minute ago, Businesses are leaving the area.
It's not a safe environment for businesses in general.
Uh, try and keep track on time.
Look at the ICE facility in Portland, for instance.
It's not, it's not even mass deportations or anything crazy going on over there.
It's a handful of DHS personnel doing basic work, yet the city allows violent, crime-ridden, uh, enforcement-free zone to just manifest.
And not only is it hurting the residents that might be on your side, right, they're probably super liberal, it's, it's affecting small local businesses that are closing.
Violence is rapid.
Residents suffer basically nonstop chaos, whether it's noise, uh, people thinking because they wear a vest they could stop traffic.
It's getting insane down there.
This is becoming a national joke.
Portland's becoming a joke.
Um, and not to mention the filth.
Thank you.
What exactly are these patriots even protesting down there?
It's an empty building that's boarded up.
Someone mentioned the boarding up earlier in a different thing that I was watching.
It's boarded up because people are attacking the building.
It looks like crap.
And lastly, if you don't mind, I'll skip through all of it.
I'm gonna just go to the end.
Stop stealing from the essential services to prop up the failed socialist ideology.
Enforce the laws on the books.
To solve the impro— I'll skip this.
Go to the end.
I, I think that you guys need to figure out the money situation and stop trying to ask for more money and creating problems.
Portland deserves a hell of a lot better than this pathetic council of radical ideologues.
And stop fucking around with our money and do your damn job.
Unfiltered and raw.
Thank you very much.
That completes testimony.
Thank you.
Councilor Kanal.
Uh, a hard act to follow.
I can't say I had FPDR as socialist on my bingo card for today, um, but I appreciate, uh, everyone who wrote or testified in.
Um, I, I did want to highlight, um, just a couple things that there are.
Uh, Councilor Green's question I thought was really important.
Um, about 1/3 of the city's portion of property taxes goes to FPDR right now.
That, that That number will increase, but also the percentage will increase.
Somewhere in the 2030s, it'll top out.
The estimate that I've seen is close to about 40%.
And then if that's the same number of years from now until it gets back down to present levels, we're talking about 6, 7 years after that.
So it will be 2039 before that portion of the property tax bill declines, right?
Because that's the amount of years from now till '22 or '23.
I think they also mentioned, staff mentioned that it might level for a couple years before it goes down.
So we might be looking at 2040.
And I, I just wanted to push back on one idea here, which is the idea that, um, we are doing something generationally towards the next generation.
It's exactly the opposite of that.
We are currently seeing this generation of taxpayers burdened because of earlier taxpayers not pre-investing in their retirees then.
And that's the way the plan was structured.
We're actually restoring some of the generational equity here if we can find a way to alleviate some of the costs.
And I encourage everyone to read the rest of the written testimony and also the other written testimony we've had on FPDR over the years to see.
And I know that the staff has also expressed some interest in pursuing this.
Related to this item, $95 million is a lot.
It is disappointing that that is not able to be borrowed from within.
I think that's a great point.
That's the only thing that I would mention here that relates to this particular item.
In '22-'23 and '23-'24, we did do that.
It's only that the last 2 years we've been able to borrow from parks.
And I hope that we are able to think about that in the future.
That's the only thing that I think can occur.
So I'll wrap it up there.
I know we're okay.
I guess that became a question.
Yeah, I just want to clarify.
So we did look at the Interfund.
And it's actually worse.
The internal borrowing rate is higher than what we can achieve externally because of the tax exemption.
So— And that's because inter-fund borrowing, we have to have— you would have to pay as the borrower the interest equivalent to what the investment income of that money would be.
Yeah.
So the investment income anticipated from parks by not lending it to FPDR is higher than the rate you can get on the open market in private.
Is that correct?
That's right.
Why was that different the last 2 years?
It has to do with the way that the investment portfolio works.
So as investments mature in the investment portfolio, they're reinvested at current market rates, and it's just the— it's the interest rate path of which the internal treasury portfolio performs.
So some combination of investment yields for parks going up relative to the last 2 years and interest rates in the private market going down has made those lines cross.
So now it's a better deal to go to the private market.
Is that correct?
That's right.
Yeah.
So there's kind of a lag that happens between our treasury portfolio versus what happens in the market because we're buy and hold, we're a buy and hold investor.
Okay, that answers the question that I didn't know I was asking, but appreciate you coming up to do it.
I, I do think we should have the broader conversation related to FPDR at some point soon, and maybe I'm giving myself a task as the Committee of the Whole chair to get that time scheduled.
Um, but thank you.
Thank you much, Councilor Kanal.
Colleagues, this item now moves to second reading.
Thank you very much for being here today.
Please call item number 9.
Item 9, document 2026-039, amend Chronic Nuisance Property Code to address human trafficking, gun violence, and administrative challenges.
Amend code chapter 14B.60.
Colleagues, this is the second reading of a non-emergency ordinance.
Is there council discussion?
I have some.
I put myself in the queue already, but go ahead and get in the queue.
And I'd like to just start us off.
First of all, colleagues, I want to thank you all.
This book— this bill has seen a lot of work, and it is substantially better than it was every time we've seen it.
I want to get a few pieces on the legislative intent on the record.
People in my neighborhood constantly say— and they say, I call and I complain about these properties with drug use, crime, fires, and nothing happens for years.
And that lack of a function of— that's— that lack is a function of capacity as well as tools.
But from what we've heard, it does seem like a better tool would help.
That said, this exact law was at the center of a pattern of racist enforcement against Black-owned businesses in the 2010s.
I'm hesitant to give power back to it, but a complaint-based nuisance code by its very nature has to be broader than the actual expected back— Right.
Bad activity.
So you— because you know you won't catch every bad thing that happens at this site, so you write the law for a large physical radius, a long timeline, and a small number of violations that— so that if you know a site has problems, you have a good chance of catching them.
That's how it works.
A lot of places will be in violation of the letter of the law, but not everywhere that gets a bunch of nuisance complaints is going to get follow-up from PPV.
Not every business on a 200-foot block where there are nuisance problems We'll get a letter.
PPB gets to decide what they think is an adequate abatement plan and if the problems have been abated.
And there is inherently discretion built in, and the community allows discretion to those who it trusts.
I want to dig in on that abatement plan piece.
Here's how this used to work.
A property owner would get a letter from the police bureau saying you're a chronic nuisance property, write back to us telling us how you're going to fix it.
The owner then had to write back with a plan.
That, quote, the chief of police or the precinct commander agrees will abate the nuisance.
If the person fails to respond to that language, PPB could move to have the city attorney enforce.
And in some situations, that practically meant that PPB would simply not respond to the property owner's abatement plan on the grounds that it was inadequate in the commander's eyes, then say that the owner had never responded as required by code, and then enforce a closure item after a 10-day reply clock ran out.
That got to count as due process.
This maneuver closed a Black-owned bar on 82nd called Seasonings back in 2011.
Some of us remember that that became— because it turned into a federal lawsuit.
Councilor Novick, you've fixed a lot of these problems.
You gave PPB this menu of reasonable abatement options and required that they offer them to the applicant up front.
You made it so that the owner's reply doesn't have to be deemed adequate to count as a reply.
You gave PPB guidance to consider financial capacity when proposing abatement measures.
Great work.
But PPB and the owners still have to agree on a course of action within 60 days, and that means there is still a negotiation.
So, Councilor Novick, can you state for me on the record that you sincerely believe Portland Police Bureau will engage in those negotiations in good faith and not solely to achieve a preordained outcome?
I do.
And if it would be helpful, I think that Assistant Chief I'm not sure if Hughes is here to talk about and who he'd be willing to talk about how they plan to use it.
I also want to say that in— there was an amendment that Councilor Koyama Lane and I proposed to have regular annual reporting on the implementation of this, of these amendments, this law as amended, and any equity impacts.
That amendment failed.
What I plan to do at the end of this year as CABS chair is ask for a report from the bureau on how this law is being used, which will include any equity impacts, but also what is the— what has the back and forth been with the property owners?
Um, were they given a full and fair opportunity to develop a plan jointly?
Um, and obviously last year I might not— next year I might not be CAPS chair, I might not even be here, but I would recommend that the next CAPS chair and whoever, whatever the council president appoints the next CAPS chair, continue that practice.
Every 6 months we get that kind of, that kind of report.
And now we do have Chief Hughes here.
Do you have any thought— could you share with us how the department would plan, or how the bureau would plan to use this tool than currently does?
Thank you, Councilors.
For the record, my name is Brian Hughes.
I'm the Acting Deputy Chief of the Portland Police Bureau, and I grew up in the organization as a neighborhood response team officer, so I'm very familiar with the chronic nuisance law.
I also know that it was sparingly applied during my time as a Neighborhood Response Team officer.
And since it has been looked at and revised, we have not used it a whole lot.
So I really appreciate you coming back with more of an intentional approach in how the tool is used.
It was my experience that it wasn't used much back when I was a Neighborhood Response Team officer.
But going forward, based on the amendments put forth by Councilor Novick, It appears to me that there are checks and balances in place through the City Attorney's Office, and the Police Bureau is merely documenting where probable cause exists to believe a select group of offenses has occurred.
And when it comes to precinct commanders working with the city on developing abatement processes, it appears to me that there are also checks and balances in place through the City Attorney's Office to Chief Hughes, actually, the revised ordinance says that it'll be the city administrator's designee who will be involved in the discussions with the property owner, but it may be that the city administrator will designate somebody in the police bureau because that's been the past practice.
If it is somebody in the police bureau, do you think you can assure us that that person will engage in good faith discussions with the property owner and have a back and forth to try to achieve an abatement plan that's agreeable?
Yes, I can assure you that will happen.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
And thank you, AC Hughes.
I actually— you queued me up perfectly because that is what I was trying to establish, you know.
But I want to return very briefly to the issue of discretion and trust.
You're right that we've fixed this in a lot of ways, but we do have to talk about trust because back in 2011, the PPB member whose discretion led to the closure of Seasonings was the commander of what was then called Drug and Vice Division, a man named Mark Krueger.
When we make the wrong decisions about where to place trust and grant discretion, the results can define a generation of public attitudes towards police and public safety.
The stakes are truly that high.
So, Councilor Novick, I plan on supporting this legislation today, but I want to tell you that my support is rooted in the belief that an agency can change, that it can grow, and that it does not have to repeat its history, and that it cannot do that unless we give it the grace to try.
So my expectation is that PPB will be very scrupulous in keeping records on how this code is utilized, will be very prompt and forthcoming in those records when this council returns to to check on how this is going.
If we have— if we have to fight PPB to get clarity on how it's using, I will be the first vote to constrain and repeal this at the earliest possible instance.
But for today, I will be a yes.
So thank you.
Councilor Avalos.
Thank you.
I don't have that same confidence you do.
Um, I want to start by— and thank you, you, you don't have to stay up there.
Thank you.
Um, I want to start by thanking the survivors, the advocates, and the community members who have continued to engage on this issue.
These are really difficult and deeply personal conversations, and I really appreciate everyone who's come forward to share their perspectives and their lived experiences.
And I also want to be clear that I share the urgency around addressing human trafficking, But after several committee hearings, multiple rounds of amendments, and continued discussion, I remain concerned that the heart of this ordinance is still fundamentally the same.
I don't have the same confidence in the police to not disproportionately impact the communities that I represent.
And at its core, this is still an enforcement-driven policing model.
Councilmember Smith, I would ask you to based approach.
And for me, the central question has always been who ultimately experiences the consequences of that enforcement.
Because what I continue to hear from community members, including those with the lived experience that we've been hearing from at the dais, is that policies like this can push people further into the margins, into less visible and more dangerous situations, and further away from services and support.
So I appreciate the amendments that were made in response to concerns raised by council and the public, and I appreciate the efforts to clarify things like the timelines and the notice procedure, standards of proof, and language around victims versus buyers.
But respectfully, those amendments do not resolve my core concern.
For me, this is not primarily a drafting problem.
It is a framework problem.
The question is not whether the ordinance has become slightly narrower or more procedurally refined.
The question is whether this model actually reduces exploitation and trafficking.
Or whether it risks displacing harm while increasing vulnerability for the very people that we are saying we want to protect.
And I still have not heard convincing evidence that this approach meaningfully addresses that concern.
In East Portland especially, we have to acknowledge that interactions with law enforcement can carry very real consequences for immigrant communities, communities of color, undocumented workers, tenants, and vulnerable women navigating survival.
That reality has to matter in how we design policy.
And I also remain concerned that we continue to default toward enforcement mechanisms in response to deeply complex social and economic conditions rather than investing more heavily in housing stability, victim services outreach, economic support, pathways to safety that don't depend on increased contact with enforcement systems.
So at the end of the day, I believe that this ordinance risks creating unintended harm while giving the appearance of action, and for those reasons, I will not be supporting it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Thank you, Council President.
Parents, schools, neighbors are waiting and waiting for us to improve our tools ASAP to help victims of sex trafficking.
Mostly this action is about doing something for the voiceless, the children and youth, all gender identities who don't have the agency to advocate for themselves.
The testimony from adults who are violently abused as children and youth was the story.
The pain they have gone through, the trauma they currently manage— they were so brave to come here on Wednesday night, March 13th, to tell their truth.
I believe them.
That was some of the most courageous testimony I've experienced in my 5 and a half years on this council.
We must take action and reward their willingness to share their stories.
This action is for you.
We can and should be helping.
Thank you so much, Councilor Novick, for your patience and your persistence to get this across the finish line.
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
I appreciate the work that's gone into improving this ordinance and want to acknowledge Councilor Novick's responsiveness and openness to feedback.
I want to thank him for hearing my concerns and concerns about the language.
Perspective in our private conversations and for recognizing the complexity of this issue.
For me, as the first and only Asian American woman on this council, I have complex feelings about policies that intersect with how Asian American women are perceived, particularly in discussions related to human trafficking.
And these issues carry a broader historical context, including the violence experienced by Asian American communities in the Atlanta spa shootings, for example.
So for these reasons, I will be voting no today.
I understand that this is likely to pass.
I respect the work that's gone into it, but wanted to briefly share my perspective.
Thank you, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Thank you, Council President.
Colleagues, we have before us a difficult piece of our law, and And as my colleague, our council president, shared, this is a piece of our law that has been used in terribly racist ways.
It has been abused by disgruntled and often racist neighbors.
And because of that, it's rarely been used in recent years.
And that's a problem.
As a councilperson, a legislator, a lawmaker, I don't believe we should riddle our books with unused laws.
Especially when we've heard some significant concerns, significant concerns brought forward in part by youth in our community, high school students asking us to make a change where this law could, if used appropriately, be an important tool.
Councilor Novick, I appreciate the The time you took listening to community members who testified, your colleagues who shared concerns, and bringing forward changes.
Rarely do I see our iterations outside of committee and at full council as this responsive and successful.
I appreciate the support from those of you who voted for the amendments that I brought forward to try to address even additional changes that I hope will help to mitigate some of the risk associated with this policy.
I want to specifically call out changes to the types of nuisances this code will cover following the updates.
I want to specifically call out the work to ensure that we don't criminalize victims and to support property owners in Working with service providers and advocate groups as an allowable mitigation measure, because in doing so, when we pass this and update the law, we can actually help to increase safety by incentivizing property owners to work with those advocate groups, which I think is exactly what we want to be doing more of.
When I first read this, I wasn't sure if I would be able to support it or not.
And seeing the work that has gone into trying to mitigate the risks, I am willing to take the risk today in supporting it.
Part of my willingness to do that is based on hearing that I am not alone in wanting us to keep a close eye on how this is used to make sure that we are moving forward in supporting our community members who need us to have this tool on the books and not using it in ways that, um, allow people to abuse it, that allow people to abuse it against their neighbors, or that allow the city to use it in inappropriate ways.
Councilor Novick.
I think this is work that we will be able to be proud of, and I would look to our law enforcement agents, but also to the city administrator, because ultimately, Mr. City Administrator, you will decide who is in charge of how this is implemented and enforced, to say that I hope I can stand by that statement.
I hope that you work with this tool in a way that protects members of our community and provides support, and not in a way that does harm.
I look forward to voting yes.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Councilor Novick.
Thank you, fellow councilors.
I just wanted to take this opportunity to recite some things that Esther Garrett of Safety Compass, which does crisis intervention and stabilization services, for victims of trafficking, some points that she had that I got from her that I don't know if she had an opportunity to say in front of committee or the full council.
One is, I asked her what her response is to the question, if you drive sex trafficking out of hotels, will it happen in more dangerous places?
And she says, I would respond that the question is built on a false pretense that there are significantly less safe places than hotels on 82nd Avenue.
And she said that hotels have been the scenes of homicides and Stabbings, forced drug use, rape, and other types of serious crimes occurring every hour of every day.
I also asked her to talk about what happens when the police go out on missions, the human trafficking unit, and some missions might be in response to reports that we get, partly driven as a result of this law.
And she said when Portland Police works missions in 82nd, They involve a Safety Compass advocate.
We do follow-up support with survivors they've identified in the city.
We work alongside PPV in person in this approximately once a week.
When we meet with providers, they are not cited for prostitution.
They're offered hotties, hand warmers, ChapSticks, toiletries, and if they want a safety plan, they're offered rides to the ER or the Safe Center, detox, and emergency shelter if interested.
Everything's survivor-centered, meaning it's at will.
All services are free and confidential.
Thank you.
The model was created by people with lived experience, and many organization reps are able to use that life experience to work from a peer-based perspective.
So I just wanted to raise that to address concerns that we've done our level best to address, that this ordinance will result in targeting sex workers as opposed to traffickers and sex buyers.
And so I just wanted to be sure I got out there before we Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Green.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Councilor Novick, I think we had a conversation.
I said I'm going to support your amendments to this because I think they improve the underlying, but I may not support the underlying, and it will depend upon sort of the balance of what we have discussed today.
I can't support the underlying today largely because I am worried that if we address it through these These sites of location, it doesn't do anything about the underlying risk to those being human trafficked.
Appreciate the comments that you got just now, but I put that in the context of, you know, this budget that we're about to adopt and consider cuts $320,000 from the Victim Services Unit.
And it's really hard for me to adopt an enforcement piece We're also closing precincts that offer walk-in service, all except for Central Precinct, and that's oftentimes a place for folks who feel like they need help and support to escape an abusive situation go.
And so I think this is going to pass.
So if we're going to move in this direction as a body, then we need to resource the parts of our budget that go to address these safety concerns for those most vulnerable.
Councilmember Dan Ryan.
I just, I needed to raise that there.
I do appreciate your willingness to, to kind of get in the mix with all of us and adapt and be nimble on your original designs.
I do think it has improved the, the product from your initial conception.
And, um, yeah, that's, that's my piece.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Councilor Novick.
I just wanted to say what I meant to say earlier, that of course this legislation is not just about sex trafficking.
It provides a tool that can be used in cases where there's You know, drug trafficking or violence or other unsavory behavior in properties.
And the fundamental question is, do we think that property owners have some obligation to take steps to keep their properties free of crime?
And I think that they do.
I know that there's some people on this council who think that property owners have an obligation to keep their properties occupied, and I suspect that most Portlanders would think that property owners have Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Knoll.
Thank you.
I have 2 questions.
One is for the legislative intent piece to Councilor Novick.
How do you intend to measure if this has an effect?
And I'm talking about metrics that aren't surveillance-based or any of the other abatements beyond the surveillance ones, but if we're seeing reductions in human trafficking, So outcomes, not outputs.
I think that most legislation that we pass, it's hard to say precisely what difference it made.
I mean, you were talking earlier about the success that we've had and Ceasefire has had in reducing gun violence, and we have had a dramatic reduction in gun violence in Portland.
In the past few years, before that, we had a huge increase in gun violence that wildly outpaced what most of the rest of the country was seeing.
So there's actually no way to know whether the efforts of ceasefire and other parts of our system, which I strongly support, made the difference, or if it was just a regression to the mean.
I don't know that we're going to see metrics that show whether Councilor Murillo's.
I think that in most of our cases, we're not in a position to say we will have a report that definitively proves how big a difference this made in a couple of years.
We can only make educated guesses as to whether something makes any difference.
Well, I appreciate that candor and, and that answer.
I would point out that the 3 neighborhoods that have seen the most arrests in the last year, The biggest reduction in gun violence are the priority neighborhoods funded by the Byrne Justice Grant at OVP and Safe Blocks.
So in addition to the normal reduction that you see citywide, you actually do see it more where it's a focus area.
So I want to strongly push back on that narrative, but that's outside the scope of this, so we can debate it another place.
Council President, you mentioned there was an individual police officer who exercised discretion, and that resulted in the closure of the bar seizings.
I believe you said 2011?
I believe that's right.
The name you mentioned was Mark Krueger.
If someone was maybe— if that name rang a bell, but maybe we don't know why outside of the context of seasonings, why would that be?
Yeah, that was a police officer who got in trouble for having a penchant towards some Nazi paraphernalia and some other troubling racist behavior.
Yeah, I encourage everyone to— it has only one E in it at the end there— to search the OPB article on that, um, and, and, uh, the, the public display aspect of it.
Um, but to the underlying, and then just to, to actually speak to this because that's also a little bit outside the scope, um, I want to say thank you to everyone who made a meaningful contribution to, uh, this policy and who has tried to make a meaningful contribution to human trafficking and other nuisance issues.
I really do support the work of, of the people, the advocates on this issue, and appreciate their contributions, as well as those who are speaking to related but different issues like the broader conversation around sex work.
Regardless of whether you and I have the same beliefs on this ordinance, I, I too recognize the problem that human trafficking exists.
I think it's very important to discuss.
I really do want to thank Councilor Novick and his team and all the councilors who've taken part in it.
Councilor Novick's team came into this with good faith, and I think they've been very responsive to the concerns around this that have not altered the main thrust of the document but have made improvements to I want to distinguish here between the code as it exists today before the ordinance, before this proposed action on the one hand, and the code as this proposal seeks to change it.
Most of my concerns with this code are actually about the current pre-ordinance code.
But I also know that there is clearly stated legislative intent to improve the code through this ordinance with the stated intent, including as recently as today, that it be used more frequently.
In other words, my concerns with the current pre-ordinance code are largely academic.
But if this ordinance passes and the code is improved more often, those concerns that it does not address are not academic at all.
Councilor Novick's proposal, both as it was originally put up and as it's now been amended, makes significant improvements to the pre-ordinance code.
But for me, it's not enough.
And largely because I believe this is the wrong tool to serve as the primary tool to address human trafficking.
I proposed last June, and this council passed a budget note that instructed the Portland Police Bureau to move overtime dollars towards a list of community needs that which we copied and pasted from PPB's budget request last year, a list that included human trafficking.
And yet we also heard throughout the discussion on this ordinance that the human traffic team— human trafficking team testified that a couple of years ago they had overtime dollars And they do not this year.
The impact statement for this notes that opposition was expected from motels, and we heard a lot of skepticism or opposition about the ideas that motels can be held accountable for the broader human— sorry, broader social problems and crime problems like human trafficking, or the limitations of the current enforcement responses.
At our first full council meeting on this, a woman who co-owns a motel also spoke about the risk associated with being perceived as collaborating or even simply calling Law enforcement.
She called police and was threatened for it with a gun, and requiring such an action will put more people at risk.
I also note that these are the workforce and ownership—a workforce that is disproportionately people of color, a workforce that is disproportionately immigrants, noncitizens, a workforce that is disproportionately South Asian American.
The last thing I want to mention is the guilt by association concern—the idea that holding people responsible for what happens 199 feet from their door.
If someone has patronized your business is a very big risk to take, and certainly it constitutes guilt by association.
The idea that this code's discretion will be used to protect those people has not been borne out by recent years' evidence.
And I recognize that some of my colleagues with different lived experiences than I have are willing to take that risk.
I am not.
For those reasons, I will be voting no on this, but I appreciate the work that's gone into it.
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Zimmerman.
Thank you.
I appreciate the dialogue and the discussion from, from all members.
I think these are important points and notable.
You know, having spent a lot of time at Multnomah County, who really led, frankly, in our, in our human trafficking discussion and brought the City of Portland to that discussion, I feel like I've got some pretty clear eyes on this.
And, and I'll just be very clear, my vote in support today makes no bounds about the idea that this will in any way reduce anybody in terms of human trafficking.
I'm taking a vote in support of this today because I do think that for, for unfortunate reasons, that has been the topic that has generally driven most of this discussion.
But the support that I've got today is all about, I think, the rights of neighbors, the rights of people who live nearby problematic areas, be them, name the item that is the nuisance.
And I, and I recognize that this has gone into really one lane of discussion.
But when I think about the high school principal coming, I mean, how many high school principals have come?
Not very many.
I think one since we've been here.
High school principal comes to, to participate and, and testify in the original committee meeting.
That's not lost on me.
It's not lost on me that I've had similar discussions with the principal at Lincoln about things that are completely unrelated to human trafficking, but they are definitely related to nuisance properties.
And I'll throw one out there.
It's not a hotel.
It's the McDonald's on Burnside, right?
I think this will help us in that, in that fight.
Thank you.
Councilor Dan Ryan.
So, um, yes, this has gotten some attention within that, but I, I have spent way too many years, been at way too many victim panels, gone to too many of the DA's John School, uh, uh, hot washes for like, how did it go, to think that somehow this is the magic pill.
It's not.
But for those who want to be bad neighbors, this will make it harder for you to continue to be a bad neighbor, and that Thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
Councilor Morillo.
Thank you, Council President.
Just to help advance the record here, Mark Krueger was a police officer that instituted a Nazi shrine on Powell Butte, and then he got 2 weeks without pay as his punishment because the police union contract made it impossible for him to be fired.
And so he ended up working after being reinstated into a different unit for a very long time until he retired.
And that is the reality of the systems that we are dealing with and how difficult it is to hold our police accountable when some of them overstep.
Those are systems that I hope we will change together, but those are systems that are very much still intact.
I really appreciate the discussion we've had.
I appreciate the amendments that came forward.
I appreciate the work that the mayor and the city attorney have done.
Thank you.
And it is also not lost on me that the vast majority of councilors here who are people of color, who are Black, who have different lived experiences with police, are having a different reaction to being told that we need to trust that this is just going to not harm the people who are being harmed.
Councilor Loretta Smith.
Our communities when, when we are not being guaranteed that.
And I think that when I hear, don't worry guys, we'll test this out and then at the end of the year we'll get a report back and get more information on whether or not it harmed your communities, I feel like maybe that means that it needs to go back to committee and be worked on a little bit longer because there's no need to rush it through.
Councilor Loretta Smith.
Through if we're not sure that it's not going to have those intended impacts.
I do appreciate, Councilor Zimmerman, you repeatedly saying that this is not actually going to address human trafficking, because that's the reality.
Every major national organization that talks about human trafficking and who deals with these issues, the number one things that they talk about to address these problems are economic stability for victims so that they are actually able to live lives, uh, free of the power dynamics that come when you are economically disadvantaged.
So because of that, I appreciate the work that's gone into this.
I appreciate that— I trust my colleagues when they say that there will be watchdogging on this later on.
I will also be engaging in that watchdogging, but at this time I cannot advance this forward.
But I am appreciative of the responsiveness of Thank you, Councilor Morillo.
Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, Keelan, can we please call the roll?
Keelan McClymont
Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
No.
Keelan McClymont
Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Aye.
Keelan McClymont
Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Aye.
Keelan McClymont
Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
No.
Keelan McClymont
Morillo.
Angelita Morillo
Aye.
Jamie Dunphy
No.
Aye.
Keelan McClymont
Clark.
Olivia Clark
Aye.
Keelan McClymont
Green.
Mitch Green
Nay.
Keelan McClymont
Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Keelan McClymont
Avalos.
Jamie Dunphy
Nope.
Keelan McClymont
Smith.
Loretta Smith
Aye.
Keelan McClymont
Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
The ordinance passes with a vote of 7 ayes and 5 nos.
Colleagues, the time is currently 3:40.
We have, uh, about 40 minutes left today.
And we have 3 items left, so I just want to note that we are almost certainly not going to be able to make it to item 12.
Uh, no, we've got an hour and 40 minutes.
Oh, I'm sorry, an hour and 20.
I still don't think we're gonna have time.
I mean, regardless, yeah, my math is bad, my facts are correct.
Um, we almost certainly will not make it to the masking and, uh, law enforcement identification item.
Um, it is my intention to put that at the top of our next meeting.
Um, I am going to give us a 10-minute restroom break, and we will be back here at 3:50, and we will move on to item 10, the arts tax.
And we are back.
Keelan, can we please call item number 10?
Item 10, document 2026-147, amend arts tax code to provide tax relief, promote Sustainability of Arts Access Fund, define critical terms, and respond to community and audit recommendations, amend Code Chapter 6.10.
Colleagues, this is the first reading of a non-emergency ordinance.
We have Christopher Hare here from Council Operations to give us a committee staff summary report, and then I'm going to turn it over to our sponsors, including myself, for some opening remarks.
Christopher, take us away.
Good afternoon, Council President and Councilors.
For the record, Christopher Hare, Council Operations Policy Analyst, and I serve as staff to the City Life Committee.
The ordinance before you, document number 2026-147, was considered in the City Life Committee on April 28th, where it was referred to Council with a recommendation it be passed.
This ordinance amends City Code Chapter 6.10 that governs the Arts Education and Access Income Tax, as detailed in Exhibit A.
The amendments revise definitions to improve clarity and scope, including adding new definitions to support newly Thank you.
Introduced code provisions.
The ordinance updates allocation language by directing that 95% of arts education and access tax revenues be dedicated to Portland's K through 12 students and/or underserved communities, and that 5% be distributed through grants and sponsorship to nonprofit organizations and schools providing arts programs and experiences specifically serving those same populations.
It also adds a requirement that school— schools document any year-over-year underspending of funds received, including the school's reasons for underspending and its plans to use Yes.
Plans for use of any ending fund balances.
The ordinance modifies the Arts Access Fund Oversight Committee structure by reducing membership from a range of 10 to 20 members to 5 to 11 members and establishes specific representation requirements, including 2 members who are parents or guardians of Portland K through 5 students not enrolled in the same school district, 1 member representing arts organizations with annual budgets under $1 million, 1 member representing arts organizations with annual budgets over $1 million, And at least one at-large member.
It further directs the mayor and city council to ensure geographic diversity and representation of underserved communities as newly defined in the chapter.
It requires the Office of Arts and Culture to provide administrative support to the oversight committee, including training, staffing support, and providing timely access to relevant information.
The ordinance adds a requirement for compliance with state income tax laws and guidance and increases the tax from $35 to $50 imposed on each city resident Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mayor.
This ordinance establishes a new exemption for taxpayers whose adjusted income does not exceed $40,000 for joint filers and $20,000 for single filers, with these thresholds indexed to inflation using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, or CPI-U, or a comparable index if discontinued, along with rounding guidance for indexed amounts.
The Revenue Division is required to publish any indexing adjustments by November 15th prior to the applicable tax year.
The ordinance also authorizes deductions for dependents based on federal poverty guidelines, income steps published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, clarifies filing requirements and due dates for annual tax returns, including provisions for extensions granted by the Revenue Division, and makes additional technical amendments to ensure compliance with tax law and improve clarity.
The ordinance also establishes several reporting requirements, administrative actions, and future planning efforts.
The Office of Arts and Culture must report within 30 days of the effective date on plans to reintroduce a grant funding factor prioritizing arts organizations serving K through 12 students in underserved communities, including a cap limiting any single grant to no more than 30% of the grantee's annual budget in the fiscal year 2026-27 general operating support cycle.
A report is required by September 30th, 2026 on implementation of the arts education framework and review of school district agreements to ensure appropriate use of funds.
A further report is required by September 30th, 2027, evaluating potential use of sponsorship to support arts activities not covered by general operating support, options for strengthening teaching artist programs in public schools, and associated fiscal impacts.
The Revenue Division is directed to report by December 30th, 2026, on plans to replace mailed paper tax returns with reminder postcards and to evaluate the feasibility of prepayment options for By February 15th, 2028, it must report on the first year of tax collection under the updated structure and recommend any necessary code changes to support the financial stability of the Arts Access Fund.
The ordinance allocates $1.15 million from the Arts Education and Access Fund, Fund 223, in coordination with the City Budget Office to increase the fiscal year 2026-27 Revenue Division budget and add 2.0 full-time equivalent positions to implement and administer the Arts Access Fund.
Second.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Dan Ryan.
Councilmember Herbold.
Thank you, Mayor.
I would like to thank the city staff for their work on this ordinance and for the opportunity to speak to council.
This ordinance would make significant improvements to Portland's arts education and access tax model and explore potential pathways for broader adoption, including possible integration with state tax systems.
The full impact statements on this item includes financial and budgetary impacts, community impacts, and community involvement.
12 Individuals provided verbal testimony in committee.
On April 28th, and five people submitted written testimony prior to committee action.
General themes of testimony included concerns that the art tax is regressive, burdensome, and misaligned with its original intent; suggestions to reform, including automatic low-income exemptions, reduced penalties, and consideration of a more income-linked structure; concerns regarding insufficient revenue, reduced grant funding, and financial strain on arts organizations; discussion of competitive grant.
And interest in funding allocations based on effectiveness and fiscal responsibility.
Reference to prior advocacy efforts and interest in changes to oversight and implementation processes.
Emphasis on arts access as a core component of education and community life, including the importance of representation in arts instruction and equitable access for diverse communities.
Comparison to more robust pre-1990s arts education systems to highlight perceived declines and interest in reinvestment in long-term arts education.
Second.
Improvements, interest in having changes to the tax determined through a public vote rather than council action, perspectives supporting elimination of the tax and shifting responsibility to state funding for schools and voluntary donations for nonprofit support, positive impacts of art education, citing benefits such as improved student outcomes, engagement, confidence, and opportunities for self-expression, particularly for underserved students.
And that concludes the committee staff summary.
Thank you.
Thank you, Christopher.
Colleagues, just as an FYI, I've invited Revenue Bureau Director Thomas Lanham and my policy director Evan Hoffer here.
There's a few things that have come up since the committee hearing that we want to clarify, just to tell everybody that didn't— wasn't specifically asked.
But first, I'd like to turn it over to Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, who is the chair of City Life and heard this item.
Thank you.
Would you like me to speak as a co-sponsor also at this time or keep those 2 things separate?
Okay.
So colleagues, I think that committee staff summary, which was very thorough, covered most of the conversation that we had in committee.
I want to speak to the policy before us just a bit though.
When I spoke about this in committee, I actually brought some of my kids' artwork to talk about the real-life impacts of art education.
My staff told me I could not bring the walrus back today, but I hope that it help to humanize the policy and expand our thinking on this a little bit more for those who were able to watch the committee deliberations.
We are at a time when nationally school districts are cutting critical arts programs and educators, and in Portland, though our school districts are facing significant cuts, we have a built-in commitment to the arts.
That commitment funds not just arts education but also allows some amount of money to go to arts organizations doing important work in our community.
But as we all have heard and probably experienced personally, the arts tax as it exists today is annoying to pay, annoying for low-income filers to apply for exemptions, structurally about as regressive as can be, eminently insolvent, not to mention seriously Burdensome for folks who are barely making an income.
This legislation makes meaningful improvements to each of these concerns, and most importantly, it raises the threshold from the absurd $1,000 a year to $20,000 or $40,000 of Oregon taxable income.
And I want to be clear that when we say Oregon taxable income, that's income after potential deductions.
So the number of folks who this affects is actually much more than that.
The legislation makes the tax simpler by moving to a standard single and joint filing status system and getting rid of paper returns with complex income definitions and poverty worksheets, which are frankly dehumanizing, frustrating, and confusing for people to fill out.
If you make less than the amount of Oregon taxable income, you don't have to file rather than filing only to ask for an exemption.
It is compelling to me that between these 2 changes, 41% of Portlanders will be totally exempt from the tax.
And while I've heard from many people concerns that this is still a regressive tax, It is much less so after these changes.
It also addresses the solvency issue.
And when our council president came to me and said the arts tax will not be able to fund arts teachers in schools in just a few years, I took note.
But by making a one-time back-looking inflationary adjustment and then pegging this to inflation going forward, we ensure that we can continue to support students in our communities.
Colleagues, the Arts Fund is far from perfect, and this ordinance does not solve all of the problems.
But as with everything we do, we can't let the best be the enemy of the better.
So I hope today, as you hear from community members and learn a little more details from our experts, that you find it compelling to support arts education for our students, to ensure that this is something that we continue to prioritize in our community, and to do so in a way that is a little less dehumanizing for our lowest income earners, a little less regressive for all payers, and that keeps pace for years to come.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
You know, uh, colleagues, I've been saying this for a while, but I, I have found something to be And I'm going to say it again.
Portlanders love the arts, they love kids, and they hate the arts tax.
Voters approved this tax back in 2012.
It was the first local option non-property tax that we ever did as a city, and I got to tell you, it shows.
This tax is a pain to pay.
It's extraordinarily regressive.
It's running out of money due to inflation, and it has had long-running governance issues My co-sponsors and I are bringing this bill to address those 4 issues, and we're doing it within what I believe are the 4 corners of the tax that voters approved nearly 15 years ago.
But we are massively underinvested in the arts in Portland.
A lot of that is that we're downstream from a massively dysfunctional and underfunded state-level art funding system.
I think that's a fair point.
This arts tax would have given $4 million additional— $4 million more per year to arts organizations if it had been indexed to inflation from the beginning.
Currently, the City of Portland is investing a total of $100,000 annually into the music industry.
We have no citywide approach to events management.
We have no plan for how to invest in our city-owned arts spaces and venues.
And this bill won't fix those things.
This is here to just make sure that the hole that is— we are trying to keep the hole from getting bigger and to take the pressure off from carrying the pressure of carrying that off of the poorest Portlanders.
So this is the beginning, not the end.
It is a fix.
It is sensible, straightforward, technical, and long overdue.
Let's move it today and pass it.
With that, I'm going to turn it over to— well, Councilor Koyama Lane is also a co-sponsor on this.
But doesn't have any opening comments.
So thank you.
I'm gonna turn it over to my policy director, Evan Hofer, and to Revenue Division Director Thomas Lanham for a brief presentation.
Hi folks, we'll keep this real quick on my side, just letting Revenue Director Lanham clarify some matters.
So I'll run through here.
All right.
So this is the arts tax.
That is what we are already aware of.
It has funded a lot of teachers and schools, as you see here on this slide.
The approach to the reform here is to honor the structure and the intent of the tax as approved by voters, respond to issues, act by council ordinance, and maintain continuity of funding year over year from the past to the future.
And we'll attempt to address those problems in a number of ways.
Thank you.
Thank you.
As we understand here, the Arts Tax 101, just the basic structure, there are 3 tranches that this pays from.
It starts with administrative costs of collection and then pays into schools and then pays into arts programs.
Just to be clear from the committee staff summary, that 95/5 breakdown is within the arts programs themselves.
And we can check the text on that exactly, but that 95% is not oriented towards arts programs.
Yes.
That is sort of larger-scale arts programs that benefit the city with a focus on underserved communities.
And then the 5 or above is programs that must target the underserved communities.
Essentially what we're looking at from a solvency perspective is that receipts have been flat since 2017.
Educator salaries have gone up and collection costs have gone up.
The arts tax started running out of money for artists last year.
There was a 44% cut in the last fiscal year that we backfilled in the last TAO.
We're about 5 years out from seeing significant cuts to schools as well.
There have been a number of reports asking for programmatic improvements.
I think we're going to have to take a vote on this.
From the Oversight Committee as well as from the auditor's report.
They essentially align, consider indexing, define high-quality arts education, et cetera.
And those things are addressed here as follows in front of you.
And now let me turn it over to Thomas.
Good afternoon, Council.
I'm Thomas Lanham.
I'm the Revenue Division Director.
I'm going to speak to about 4 or 5 different topics very briefly.
I just want to touch upon The definition of income, that's a fundamental shift that's occurring with this change.
I think everyone can understand that the fixed rate going from 35% to 50% is pretty straightforward, that the threshold of $1,000 to $20,000 or $40,000 for joint filers is straightforward.
But I want to walk through a couple of slides on income, talk briefly about the directives that are in the ordinance, discuss briefly the criticism about the difficulty paying the tax, and then finally touch on the revenue forecast and the ending fund balance.
So this slide, just the basic takeaway from this slide is that we are currently using 2 definitions of income.
One is essentially a gross income feature, all income that is taxable legally in the state of Oregon without deductions.
So when we say $1,000 of income in the current structure, that means every, essentially every form of taxable income.
It doesn't include Social Security, but virtually everything else.
In the new world, when we— if this is passed under using Oregon taxable income, there will be numerous deductions and exemptions so that, as you see in a future table, $20,000 of taxable Oregon taxable income is more than 20 times the $1,000 threshold now, if you will.
Thank you.
So these multiple income definitions also include the family of poverty exemption that exists.
And as been stated earlier, requiring people to actually affirmatively complete a form declaring that they're exempt and including information about those that are in their household.
We're moving away from that with these changes.
And only people that actually have Oregon taxable income above those thresholds would be required to file and pay.
So what's broken about the current tax is you might not have a federal or state filing requirement, but under the current arts tax, you actually do if you earn $1,000 of income.
Let's go to the next slide.
So as I just said, $1,000 of income, you must pay unless you're in a household with a poverty exemption.
So some examples on this slide: seniors on limited or fixed income generally must pay.
These are these 1 to 4 person household figures are— that's the actual poverty guideline.
And just would note that Oregon minimum wage is $33,904.
It's $16.30 an hour.
That's the annualized rate.
So someone below minimum wage is actually currently required to file and pay even with the poverty exemption.
And so moving to this Oregon taxable income concept will provide Broad-based relief to over 200,000 taxpayers from having to pay this tax.
Next slide, please.
So the first table here on this slide just shows the number of people that are currently expected to file.
It's over 532,000.
It's every adult 18 and over, period, in, or in Portland, uh, whether they're exempt or whether they owe, they're expected to file under the current structure.
Into the new structure, that number of expected filers drops to 318,000.
And so that's your difference of 214,000 people that no longer have any obligation to the City of Portland under this tax.
And I'll say that again, they don't need to do anything.
Don't need to file, don't need to pay, no exemption.
We handle all that administratively on the back end using Oregon taxpayer data provided by the Oregon Department of Revenue.
The second table shows the reduction in the number of payers.
So you can see in the, the third from the right column, the reduction in payers is about 147,000 people would no longer have to pay.
That number is a subset of the 214,000 mentioned above.
Let's go to the next slide, please.
Very busy slide.
All I wanted to do on this slide is highlight for you 3 examples of taxpayers And go through again the, the concept that $20,000 of Oregon taxable income, it doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that to get to that OTI number, you've already subtracted a lot of income, a lot of deductions or exclusions to income.
So in the third example on the far right, you've actually got $60,000, almost $64,000 of income.
$64,000.
From a pair of joint filers, after some very reasonable deductions and exclusions, they're actually at $38,500 in that example.
They would not pay this tax.
Let's go to the next slide.
There are 3 directives in the— in this ordinance, one of which is that the Revenue Division will report back regarding the transitioning from mailing tax returns.
To postcards and the feasibility of prepayment options for taxpayers.
We'll talk a little bit about prepayment options in a minute.
As to postcards, we did try that in 2014.
I can't call it a success then, but the world has moved on.
We may be able to put a QR code on postcards and, and try to make it easier for people and reduce that actual mailing out of tax returns to individual households, which Which encourages people, by the way, to reply back in paper.
Also to work with the Office of Arts and Culture to create a reserve policy.
And finally, to report back to council by February of 2028 about the first year of collections.
The reason that's so far out is the changes before you now would actually impact tax year 2026 that we're in now, which is due in April of '27.
We then receive data from the Oregon Department of Revenue for the balance of '27.
Thank you.
And do some enforcement work.
So we won't really know until the first quarter of '28 how we did for tax year 2026.
Next slide, please.
Just a few things about paying the arts tax.
I think there's been a lot of statements made, uh, there's a lot of different ways to look at whether it's easy or hard to pay.
This is just some data.
78% Of arts taxpayers pay electronically.
Using either products like TurboTax or online on the Portland Revenue Online platform that we have implemented.
It takes the average logged-in taxpayer 54 seconds to pay their arts tax.
By logged in, I mean they're— they have an account on our platform.
They've already populated their name, their address, their Social Security number, and other basic information, including ACH payment information, which is cashless.
Thank you.
And maintained in the system.
So the point being, for the, for the 65,000 Portlanders that actually set up a pro account, an Arts Tax account, the payment experience is very straightforward, very simple.
Those that don't have an account need to spend a few minutes entering information.
That's a 5-minute— takes about 5 minutes to do that on average.
In 2022, we had a consultant review top to bottom our payment experience.
For taxpayers.
They made some recommendations, and those recommendations were all implemented.
Finally, unlike other income taxes, there is no credit card convenience fee for paying the arts tax.
This is the entity or the agency's effort to recover merchant fees, bank card fees that are charged for using bank cards.
We don't charge that on the arts tax.
So that's the only income tax you'll ever see that I'm aware of in the country that doesn't charge a convenience fee.
So it's not perfect, but I just wanted to lay out some data about the payment experience.
Again, here you can just see that all of the ways that you can pay the city arts tax are replicated across the Oregon Department of Revenue and the IRS.
So there are no differences there except prepayments, which you are directing us to go take a look at.
There are a lot of pros and cons to prepayments.
I won't get into that.
Into that today, but we'll bring a report forward about, about that later.
Let's go to the next slide.
Okay, uh, and so again, all income taxes have a separate freestanding tax return.
The reason for that is they're often structured differently.
Combining them all onto a single unified statement or, or return, while that sounds intriguing, sounds like a good idea, it can be problematic.
There are experiences that people can have using, again, third-party products like TurboTax, which have a wizard kind of environment that help to make it feel like you're not really doing 3 tax returns.
But in the end, you'd still have to do 3 tax returns.
That's what's happening in the background.
So it's been suggested that it should be combined with other income tax forms.
I get it.
We would love to be able to do that, but there are some complexities there.
The Oregon Department of Revenue has turned down our request to have this It's placed on the Oregon Form 40 on multiple occasions.
The supportive housing services and Preschool for All taxes that we also collect in the Revenue Division, only 14% of our taxpayers have to file those taxes because they have a much higher income threshold.
So there's a trade-off in asking people to wade through portions of a tax return that don't apply to them.
So again, I'll just stop there, but there, there are trade-offs in terms of confusing potentially tax Taxpayers who currently only have to file one return might now have to go through essentially 3 returns combined into one.
I think the filing reminders are probably another thing that stands out about this tax compared to others.
We do do an annual all-household mailer.
The reason that we do this is because this tax is unique.
It's easy to forget.
It's not like other taxes.
It doesn't feel like other taxes.
It's not.
But in fact, mechanically it is like other taxes, but that fixed $35 or maybe, maybe in the future $50 assessment can feel very different.
And so we found that if we don't do some kind of physical reminder every year, we have lower compliance, substantially lower compliance.
Let's go to the next slide.
Only a few more slides and we'll be done.
So, um, I just want to talk briefly about the revenue forecast.
We have put together a forecast for the revenues.
We do anticipate that tax year '26 will essentially be revenue neutral to the current tax year or the previous tax year, tax year '25.
That is to say, there are hundreds of thousands, over 100,000 people no longer paying, but those that remain pay more.
And so we've designed this to try to track inflation from 2012 to land in a spot which is essentially Essentially revenue neutral today, and then indexes going forward, indexes the threshold, indexes the rate as well.
So there won't be bracket creep where slowly over time people that— I guess what I would like to say is that in the future it won't be $20,000, it might be $22,500 or $25,000.
It will slowly go up.
Let's go to the next slide.
So there's been a lot of discussion, I think, in the community and the media about the arts tax fund balance.
Just briefly, this is a model of what the fund balance looks like over a 5-year timeline.
The red dashed line at the bottom would be the fund having a zero balance in that moment of time.
The black stars on, on the graph indicate the moment in time When the city's annual comprehensive financial report snapshot is taken.
So at that moment in time, it just so happens that that is just a month and a half or so after our tax filing deadline.
And so obviously we've collected the bulk of the taxes and we're sitting on what looks like a pile of stagnant cash over 5 years.
If you look back in the annual comprehensive financial report, It always looks like we have between $8 and $9.5 or so million.
But as you can see here, that balance is actually quite dynamic.
We spend it down in the fall and winter, and then we collect it in the spring and so on.
That's how the cycle has gone.
So we're spending the previous fiscal year's arts tax dollars in the current fiscal year.
This has been a very conservative approach.
It's an appropriate approach.
Thank you.
It's a best practice approach, but we may have another option that we can exercise.
Let's go to the next slide.
This is what that same chart looks like if we allow ourselves to spend down one time about $3.5 million of that projected ending fund balance.
The fund is in a deficit position temporarily during right around the middle of the fiscal year before it should recover.
Uh, we've seen some pretty stable revenues over the years.
I don't anticipate that we're going to have a year where we're unable to snap back to get to a positive cash position by year-end, which is required by state budget law.
Uh, so this is a framework that we can use essentially to bridge, uh, to the— until we get to inflation-adjusted dollars, trying to hold, uh, Make sure that we're able to continue to distribute some money to arts organizations.
And that's all the slides I have.
Thanks.
I'm happy to answer questions.
And we'll be available to answer questions, but I think we can call it good at that.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you both for your presentation.
Colleagues, are there technical or clarifying questions before we move to public testimony?
Councilor Avalos.
Councilor Green.
Yeah, thank you, Director Lanham.
Um, so what would be the case for allowing it to go negative?
Why, why would we do that relative to the current practice?
Is it just so the public sees us spending more money earlier?
Well, so we did have a dramatic cliff that we experienced last year.
I think the disbursements to the Arts and Culture Office dropped from about $3.5 on average in the preceding years to around $2.1 or $2.2 million.
And so we can use this as a tool to kind of bridge that, to try to hold a $3.5 million line until such time as the inflation-adjusted dollars begin showing up.
So we may be able to use it as a shock absorber, as a matter of policy.
Okay, that's helpful.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Councilor Novick.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I think that a lot of people might be confused thinking, wait a minute, I think the median family income, median household income in Portland is something like $90,000.
How can 41% of families be making less than $40,000 even without— even after deductions?
Can you just address that for a bit?
And how can that be possible?
Yeah, I mean, medians and means and modes, there's different ways of chopping and slicing data.
So there are some very high earners that are dragging, you know, that median up.
There are just a tremendous number of people that are below $20,000 and $40,000 of Oregon taxable income.
And I think, you know, that's— these are the tables that we pulled from the Oregon Department of Revenue when we looked at these figures.
But median is in the middle.
It's not— mean is average.
It just— The numbers, I guess, are the numbers, but it just strikes me as bizarre that if median family income is like $90,000, then 41% of people would be below $40,000.
Well, that would be all income.
That's the other piece.
So when we talk about median family income, that's all income, all in.
And Councilor, there's also the factor of currently individual requirements to pay and individual income versus family income.
And so that may also be skewing the numbers from what you're expecting.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Kanal.
Thanks.
Uh, I want to follow up on both of those questions actually.
Um, so is the— does the proposal actually do the last slide?
That I got a little confused there on that.
Uh, previous council budget action.
When you say the last slide, you're referring to the chart that talked about the fund balance?
Yes, the change from the second to last to the last.
That change has already occurred.
The council adopted a change in the TAO.
So there was an increase of about $1.6 million in the technical adjustment that just occurred a month ago or so ago.
And then in the current budget going forward, I believe the city administrator has placed $3.5 million to the arts office in that budget.
So yes, it's been implemented, but not in this ordinance.
Okay, and there's no further change to the target fund balance?
No.
In this.
Okay, that, that's— thanks.
Uh, and then to Councilor Novick's point, so my understanding is if, if we're reducing by 41% the number of, of filers and we are increasing the amount they file by 42.7%, that we're at a 15.8% reduction in the amount of money we raise.
Are you anticipating higher levels of compliance?
Is that why it's revenue neutral?
How do we get to that point?
No, uh, so I don't— we could look back to the table if that's helpful.
I don't know if we could go back to the table, but— One moment.
Those percentages, I don't think that works the way that you may be suggesting.
So there's been a lot of analysis Uh, of the data, and the number of remaining taxpayers that are paying the higher rates of $50 or $100, uh, make up the difference.
Okay, I'm gonna follow up on that, uh, before we take the final vote, I guess, next week.
But, um, I'll move on here.
Uh, I wanted to ask another— I guess it's maybe not technical, so I'll wait.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Councilor Clark— Vice President Clark.
Uh, thank you, Council President.
Um, so I want to make sure I understand that if they're joint filers, they only pay one $50?
A joint filer would pay $100.
$100.
Okay, they each pay.
Okay.
Um, and I don't know if this is technical, but can you briefly, um, mention what What were the issues that the city auditor outlined around the arts tax?
Yeah, I'm happy to do that.
Looking back to the audit here, first, the city has only recently begun adopting standards for high-quality arts education.
So these are high-quality arts access and high-quality arts education are essentially the deliverables of the fund.
Yes.
And that we did not have any sort of centralized understanding of what constituted high-quality arts ed.
Now, the city has started developing that over the course of the last year.
There was just a pilot year that was completed with Portland Public Schools, and its first year of full implementation is starting very soon in September for something called the Portland Arts Education Framework, which are sort of some basic standards around what we expect Yes.
— That we expect is necessary for quality arts education to occur.
So that is introduced into code as an administrative rule that can be referenced as what constitutes high-quality arts ed.
Also, RACC and the city had not taken sufficient care in managing agreements with school districts and had potentially been overbilled.
The process of revising those IGAs One round of that has completed, I believe, last year.
And another round in the response of the city administrator to the auditor is scheduled for the following year to ensure that some of those tightenings happen and some of that insight occurs.
I believe those IGAs had not been reviewed since essentially their inception prior to last year.
So we're making good progress in that sense.
Thank you.
Also, neither Councilor Rak nor the city had ever adopted a definition of underserved communities, which is essentially those to whom these dollars were intended by the voters to serve.
There is a little bit of a definition in the existing code which refers to people who are underserved by existing arts infrastructure.
We worked with the city attorney to create a definition of folks who face barriers in access to arts experiences that can be used in sort of a number of different metrics to prove that you're finding folks who have trouble getting into spaces where there's art and making it easier for them to do so.
That's for the funder as well as the providers to be able to come to that together.
And then finally, that the fund oversight Committee was not particularly well-defined.
Membership was not defined.
Membership very large.
There were quorum issues, mostly when it was under RACC.
And similarly— and also the responsibilities of the Office of Arts and Culture to that body had not been defined.
So the code again sort of touches on all those things, shrinks the size, gives us some sense of who should be on it, what kind of service they need from the city, et cetera.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
I appreciate that.
Thank you, Vice President Clark.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I have a, a technical question, um, Mr. President, and it's for the attorney.
Do we have a city attorney here?
I believe Ken McGarry is with us.
Yeah.
Voters approved this art tax in 2012. at $35 per person.
This ordinance raises the tax to $50 and indexes it annually.
Can the city attorney explain to me on the record the legal basis for council increasing a voter-approved tax without sending it back to the voters?
Thank you, Councilor.
Uh, Robert Taylor, city attorney.
I'd be happy to talk about this in executive session if you'd like, but we have reviewed this issue.
This council, if it wanted to, could refer this to the voters.
It is not required to do that here.
As of— We, the city has— we believe the city has authority to impose this tax when the voters approve it.
Approve it.
They are exercising their legislative authority as voters.
This council has concurrent legislative authority, and so this council can make changes, and these changes we believe are consistent with the original.
Is that— and I'm just trying to figure out if that's in code, that we can unilaterally change this tax from 35 to 50 and It can change and adjust for inflation.
That is in our code.
Is that what you're saying?
We, we believe council has the authority to pass this, yes.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Green.
Yes, uh, thank you, Mr. President.
Just because Councilor Novick raised the statistics question, um, if you have a distribution of 10 observations Yes.
10 People with income and 4 of those make $20,000 a year and the rest of them make $90,000 a year, 40% of that distribution is $20,000 a year.
It's just the middle of the income distribution.
And so that's how you get to a situation where you have— and I chose 90 because 90 is the median income.
That's how you get to a situation where you have a very high share of people who make significantly lower than the median income because it's not a symmetric distribution.
It's concentrated and lumped in the lower part of the distribution.
So I don't think that was very helpful, but I had to say it.
Well, I, you know, so if we go back to the slide that had the 3 examples, I mean, I think it's really important to understand that we're not talking about, you know, apples and oranges.
Median family income is all income, all in, from all sources.
The numbers that you see on this slide are only all in, all sources at the, at the top of each of these sections, income before deductions.
And then you get into deductions.
So with the median family income statistics that you see published, there aren't deductions, there aren't exclusions, it's just all in.
So I'm assuming that's going to be the difference.
And then Councilor Kanal, I think to your question, I thought about it a little more.
We will be in a place now where with a joint filer, you may have had a primary filer and a secondary filer or spouse that are now paying together $100 on a joint return.
If one of those 2 filers had been below $1,000 previously, Then you wouldn't have received 2 payments from that household.
You would have only received one.
Okay, so I think that might be part of the answer.
We can dig into the rest.
Okay, thank you.
Um, do I still— I see Councilor Smith.
Are you still— is that Legacy?
That's okay.
Councilor Kanal.
Thanks.
Yeah, and I figured out the rest as well, which is that the, the statement about 41% of folks being exempt is not 41% of the current, uh, tax base being exempt.
It's 41% of the total.
Total, right.
So there's already some people that are being exempt, that are exempted.
So there's a 31-point-something percent reduction that nets out to just shy of, of, of equal revenue.
And I think what you just explained makes sense.
That's right.
Um, I, I did want to ask a clarifying question to something Eben said.
Um, and, and it— this relates to some— I was going to— this is the thing I was going to wait I was going to save it for after, but because I, I may float an amendment to this, I wanted to, to mention it before, which is the oversight committee.
Um, the ranges we've agreed, old council, new council, as a best practice that, that membership of volunteer bodies should have a fixed number.
Um, that's in the ABC project, and there's a reduction from 10 to 20 as the range to 5 to 11 as the range.
And I just wanted to ask why, what the thought process was, the sort of reasoning behind that.
Sure.
And then I'll have a comment.
As for the size, basically it's in response to what the kind of quorum numbers were historically and when there were problems with keeping seats filled.
Obviously, the body is now fully within the city rather than somewhere between the city and RACC.
And so our capacity to be responsive and keep seats filled may simply be better moving forward.
And indeed, it's a stronger board than it's been already.
I would say that when it comes to moving to a fixed number, we'd most likely be open to that.
Okay.
Because you had already settled on the 2 ranges, and I'm just mentioning I may make this proposal, after testimony.
Um, you've already— the, the existing range is 10 to 20.
The proposed range is 5 to 11.
The only odd number that meets both of those is 11, and there are currently 9 members, so you wouldn't be reducing it below the current membership, um, if you went to 11 or 9.
So I, I, uh, did file with the, the clerk's office an amendment that would simply make it 11, um, and I may propose that Fixed memberships are, as I said, a best practice, but also I think having the diversity that you laid out, which I really, really support, by the way, and I appreciate you writing that in, I think that is also a best practice.
It's really hard to do that with 5 people checking all those boxes, whereas I think having a larger group allows you to actually achieve the thing that code is requiring you to achieve.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Keelan, can we please move to public testimony?
We have 15 people signed up.
I will call people up in groups of 5.
Blake Shell, John Goodwin, Beth Lewis, Edwina Cain, Kimberly Armstrong.
And for folks who are waiting for the children's levy, I need to note that we are unfortunately going to be leaving Uh, here at 5 o'clock today, and so we will almost certainly not have enough time to get to the children's levy item today.
It will be— that and the, uh, following items will be moved to the top of our next meeting agenda, which is next Wednesday.
Point of order.
Is there a way that we could stay at least 30 more minutes until 5:30 to get this finished?
Because it doesn't make sense for them to come all the way here and then come back again.
It's too much.
I mean, they're here.
Let me see if we can get our staff to stay until 5:30.
Okay.
And in the meantime, welcome up, folks.
Please introduce yourselves for the records.
And Blake Schell had a family emergency, so I'm going to read the testimony on her behalf.
My name is Evan Lewis, and I work with her for Portland Arts and Culture for Equity.
So here's her statement.
Good afternoon, City Council.
I'm Blake Schell from Oregon Contemporary representing Portland Arts and Culture for Equity and Portland Arts Leaders, groups Thank you.
I'm speaking on behalf of 45 specific organizations that sent a letter to council to express our collective enthusiastic support of the proposed amendments to the Arts, Education, and Access Fund tax.
It is unprecedented for a group of this scale, including groups with budgets under $75,000 and our city's 5 largest institutions, to join together with such a singular unified response to the impacts of Portland's arts ecosystem.
While the arts tax was visionary at its inception, it was fundamentally flawed because it was never indexed for inflation.
This led to a steady loss of revenue that created a state of scarcity that will only grow in the next 5 years.
The previous city government and the transition to the Office of Arts and Culture exacerbated these issues, pitting large against small groups and leading to a loss of the very access goals the tax was meant to serve.
We saw the impact of this broken system clearly last year with a shift in funding tiers prioritizing budget size over equity.
And access.
45 Organizations lost funding despite their deep commitment to arts access to underserved Portlanders across the city's district.
Dozens of organizations and hundreds of individuals spoke out and formed Portland Arts and Culture for Equity as a result.
These amendments are a critical course correction that will restore the tax's original intent, adjust for inflation, and finally allow for inclusion of new organizations in our funding pool.
The arts are a quantifiable engine for our city's prosperity.
In Oregon, the arts generate $829 million in annual economic activity, including tickets, dinner, parking, childcare, and more.
Beyond the dollars, the arts are the only economic driver that are also emotionally and mentally healing, create empathy and increase voting and participants, and bring people together in person.
In short, the arts are the answer for the times we find ourselves living in.
Finally, we want to express our deep gratitude to Council President Jamie Dunphy.
For years, Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, councilors.
My name is Beth Lewis, and I'm the Director of Development at Portland Opera.
I'm testifying today in support of Council President Jamie Dunphy's resolution.
Proposed amendments to the Arts Tax Code Chapter 6.10.
For many residents, the tax is confusing, difficult to comply with, and disproportionately frustrating given its relatively small amount.
The administrative burden and penalties have created resentment that undermines the very programs the tax is meant to support.
When people feel alienated by the system, they are less likely to engage, less likely to comply, and less likely to support arts funding in the long run.
Council President Dunphy's proposal offers a path forward by addressing these structural issues and making the system more fair, more transparent, and more workable for everyday Portlanders.
Reform can improve compliance, restore public confidence, and ultimately create a more stable and sustainable funding stream.
The arts are in a funding crisis, and no one understands that more than Portland Opera.
As you know, we're in a $5 million, 16-month SOS fundraising campaign, Keep Keep Portland Operatic, Save Our Songs, Secure Our Future.
We've been part of the cultural fabric of Portland for 61 years, and we're doing everything we can to ensure we're here for the next 61.
Without this much-needed arts tax reform, including indexing it to inflation, we risk losing the very institutions that make Portland vibrant, and we also risk losing the next generation of arts lovers by failing to sustain arts education in our schools.
We don't have to choose between supporting the arts and fixing a flawed tax.
We can and should do both.
I urge the council to adopt these amendments to the arts tax code.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much.
Number 5.
Oh, we're going in order.
Okay.
Hi.
First, thank you so much to the council for the opportunity to testify today.
I'm Edwina Kane.
I'm the director of advanced and special projects at Portland Center Stage.
I not only work in District 4, I live there as well.
I'm testifying in support of the proposed amendments to the arts tax code.
The arts play an integral role in the community, not only through the artistic programs that we publicly present, but also through the work that we do in lifting the public education system.
The most recent data arts survey just released earlier this week noted that that more than $150 million are invested in the Portland economy from arts organizations across the community.
This includes both visual and performing arts organizations with budget sizes ranging from less than $250,000 to over $10 million.
Each of these organizations plays an essential role in the arts ecosystem in our community.
PCS alone offers employment opportunities for 350 individuals, including 200 of which are artisans and artists.
In addition to the public performances we offer on our stages, we serve over 7,000 students, of which 6,000 are attending student matinees, which are either highly subsidized or wholly free.
We also offer nearly 100 free community programs which serve over 9,000 individuals.
All of our colleagues offer similar opportunities throughout the community, and all of these programs provide invaluable services for Portland residents.
As the cost of delivering these programs has grown exponentially over the years, smaller arts organizations in particular have faced increasing challenges with an arts tax that has remained flat since its inception.
The amended arts tax code will ensure that all arts Thank you very much.
My name is John Goodwin.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I am honored to speak with you today.
My name is John Goodwin, and I'm the Director of Community Philanthropy at the Portland Art Museum.
My friend and colleague Stephanie Parrish, the museum's Director of Learning, is also in the room.
She and her team are at the forefront of welcoming thousands of young visitors to the museum every year.
Council President Dunphy and the entire council, thank you very much for the opportunity to talk with you about the proposed ordinance amending City Code 610.
As you know, the Art Access Fund provides critical funding for our city's arts and culture ecosystem.
For arts organizations, funding has declined at an alarming rate.
At the museum, these dramatic reductions are impacting us harshly just as our visitation is increasing, just as we are attracting more people downtown, and just as we demand the programming is growing.
In November, when we celebrated our newly expanded campus, 40,000 people enjoyed the museum for free.
We're doing everything we can do to remove barriers to access through programs such as the free First Thursday.
Thank you.
And quarterly community free days.
We expect to serve more than 300,000 visitors this year.
Of those, more than 100,000 will visit for free and at a significantly reduced price.
10% Of our adult visitors earn less than $30,000, and children 17 and under are always free.
School tours are also free.
Nearly half of the school visits to the museum are from Title I-A schools.
That's to say that schools with high percentage of students from low-income households, as the amount that we receive from the Arts Access Fund declines, it makes it even more difficult for us to provide these vital services to our most vulnerable children.
Every year we present the Heart of Portland, the celebration of student creativity that perfectly highlights the impact of the Arts Access Fund.
Last month we welcomed over 3,500 students and families to that I hope that you will stop by to see us.
I know several of you have memberships, so we hope that you'll do that.
Decades ago, long before I joined the museum, I'd watch from my office window as children climbed out of school buses parked outside the museum.
As they approached the building, many seemed apprehensive, unsure of where they were or what to expect.
Not anymore.
Today, they skip through our beautiful new transparent spaces, see art that looks like them, and sprawl across the furniture happily exhausted from discovering great art.
This is the real impact of the arts tax.
Stable, consistent, and sufficient operating support for arts organizations is critical to sustaining the impact envisioned by the arts tax.
Thank you very much.
Please come see us where everyone is an art person.
Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, Council President Dunphy, Council Vice President Clark, and members of— sorry, members of Portland City Council.
My name is Kimberly Armstrong, and I have the pleasure of serving as superintendent of Portland Public Schools.
So I also acknowledge those who work and serve in our schools, and of course those who send their children to us.
Portland Public Schools strongly supports the proposed ordinance amending the arts tax.
Portland has always valued creativity, opportunity, and community, and the Arts Access Fund reflects those values in our schools.
These funds directly support certified elementary teachers and, and middle, and ensures in high High school.
And ensure students across our city have access to music and visual arts as part of a well-rounded education.
We see the impact every day.
Arts education helps students build confidence, connection, and belonging.
We see students who struggle to engage in other settings come alive in music, drawing, theater, and performance.
We still— we see students gaining confidence by performing in front of their peers, expressing themselves through visual art, and finding joy and connection through creativity.
For many students, the arts are where they feel successful and seen.
We also know that districts across Portland are facing serious budget challenges.
We are one of those districts.
Without stable funding, arts programs and positions are increasingly at The proposed changes in the arts tax are critical because they help protect these opportunities for students and ensure the fund remains sustainable for the future.
This ordinance also strengthens equity and accountability by helping ensure students across all neighborhoods continue to receive consistent, high-quality arts instruction.
For Portland School District's This funding is essential.
It helps ensure every child, regardless of background or zip code, has access to meaningful arts education and the opportunities that come with it.
We urge the council to support this ordinance in continuing investing in Portland students' future, and we could also use funds in the present.
And so I would love to follow the conversation on the fund balance because we do have significant needs now.
Thank you for your leadership and commitment to our young people.
Thank you.
Thank you all very much.
Next up, next up we have Vicki Payne, Angela Bonilla, Alicia Chavez, Jennifer Falco, Michael Lopez-Sorrell.
Thank you, folks.
As you're coming up, I want to let my colleagues know we've gotten permission to stay until 5:30.
5:30 So we can get into the— as much testimony from the children's levy item as possible.
And some of our colleagues are gonna have to leave, and that will be okay as long as there's 7 of us here to hear testimony.
So go ahead and jump on in, and please introduce yourself for the record and take it away.
All right.
Hello, uh, my name is Angela Bonilla.
Good afternoon, uh, city councilors, Council President Dunphy, Council Vice President Clark.
I'm the current president of the Portland Association of Teachers, and I'm speaking in support of the changes to the arts tax as a PPS educator for the last 10 years.
Every year around this time of approving the PPS budget, I hear the same questions.
Why are there so many cuts to visual and performing arts educators?
Where's the arts tax money?
Isn't that supposed to fund our arts programs?
And this year is no different.
We have cuts all across the board, including to arts education for some of our youngest learners in pre-K. We also have cuts across the city.
For example, Buckman Elementary is an arts-focused school that is losing arts staffing.
And because of these realities, the questions persist.
And as a Portland resident, I've also been frustrated with the annoying separate tax I have to pay after my state and federal taxes.
But I swallow that annoyance because I know in theory that this will support arts education across our city and in the 6 school districts that call Portland home.
And it will help put core into core enrichment, as arts are not just an extra or a dessert to the meal of education, but an integral part of a student's education.
For many students, arts are what keep them coming back to school when they hit the difficult years of middle and high school.
And what I share with these families and educators is the reality that we've seen over The arts tax has not risen to match the rate of inflation, so it does not fund as much as it originally intended to.
The arts tax funding does not require that it be spent solely on staffing, so the district could reduce arts educators but still increase art fundings and arts events.
That arts tax funding doesn't just go to PPS but to other school districts and nonprofits, as the arts are a lifelong and citywide commitment.
And most folks nod solemnly or share Well, that sucks.
Why, why do we pay the tax if it doesn't keep our arts educators?
The lack of clarity, the diminishing funding, and the inadequate requirements have harmed the public's faith in this tax and our ability to advocate for arts in public schools all across Portland districts and to ensure that funds that come into our districts go directly to supporting arts.
And I believe the proposed amendments will address these very real concerns.
Councilmember Loretta Smith.
First, it commits to reducing the tax burden on our lowest-income residents while raising and indexing the rate of the tax.
This will help stabilize our funding year after year, especially for if it is used for staffing.
It also clarifies key terms.
It helps the arts tax funding specifically target the populations and programming it intends to invest in.
It clearly defines arts educators, and it also confirms that underserved communities are not about who they are, but about being systemically excluded from accessing arts education.
It'll also clearly define standards for spending in the 6 districts who receive the funds.
I know educators at PPS want more transparency and accountability, and this amendment will help to do that.
So please vote in favor of this amendment and help the arts tax fulfill its original purpose of supporting the arts in our city for all people.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Hello, good afternoon, Council President Dunphy, Council Vice President Clark, and fellow councilors.
First of all, I want to say Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all the educators here today, those working here in City Hall, uh, across the city, and those who may be watching this testimony from home.
My name is Alicia Chavez.
I am the current vice President of Portland Association of Teachers and president-elect.
Prior to my role as vice president, I was a kindergarten through second grade special education teacher for nearly a decade, and long before that, I was a kid who dreamed of becoming a Broadway star, whose favorite subject was choir and drama.
Art was my first love.
It was how I made sense of the world, how I built confidence, and how I found joy.
In my day-to-day.
While my dreams of being a Broadway star never happened, I got to relive that in my classroom.
My paraeducators affectionately call me a walking musical.
But more importantly, I saw the same transformation through art happen for my students.
For many of my students, traditional instruction can be really limiting, but through art, whether it is music drawing, movement, or storytelling, I saw my students find access points to relate to their peers.
Art created pathways where there were often barriers.
Art gave my students a way to communicate when sometimes communicating was hard.
Art builds fine motor skills, social-emotional skills, and truly gave them a sense of belonging.
I remember one student in who during the school day would completely shut down, but during art class he came alive.
He would paint or draw these wonderful things, often sharing stories and his interests through his work.
And because of this, we used art for math, drawing little blocks for learning addition, or using drawing to understand his learning in reading.
Art didn't just engage him, it gave him the power he knew he had.
That's what this ordinance is about.
It's about ensuring every single student in every single school in Portland has access to these life-changing opportunities.
It's about equity, because without stable funding, it will be our most vulnerable students who lose access first.
We talk a lot about preparing students for the future.
The arts teach creativity, problem-solving, and As someone who once dreamed of the stage, and as someone who has seen the power of art in the classroom, I know that this is not extra.
This is essential for all of our students.
Please support the art tax amendment because our students and educators deserve nothing less.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Good afternoon, Council President Dunphy, Vice President Clark, and members of the council.
My name is Michael Lopes-Ajao, and I have the pleasure of serving as the superintendent of the Parkrose School District in Northeast Portland.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
I'm here to express my strong support for the proposed ordinance amending the arts tax to— and to share what these changes are going to mean for students across Portland, especially in East Portland communities like Parkrose.
Aye.
Opposed?
Aye.
Motion passes.
Arts education is fundamental to student success, like many of my colleagues here have said today.
In our schools, the arts give students a place to belong, to express themselves, and stay engaged in learning.
And for many students, especially those who often don't see themselves reflected in traditional academic settings, the arts are where they thrive.
At a time where districts across Portland are facing significant budget challenges, these opportunities are increasingly at risk.
Risk.
We're making difficult decisions about staffing and programming, and without stable dedicated funding, arts education is often one of the first areas to be reduced.
That's why the proposed updates to the arts tax are so important.
By adjusting the rate to reflect inflation and indexing it moving forward, this ordinance protects the long-term stability of the Arts Access Fund.
Without these changes, we are already seeing cuts to arts organizations And we know that reductions to school-based arts educators could soon follow, directly impacting students' access to consistent, high-quality instruction.
In 2012, there was one music teacher for 4 elementary schools.
The kids got music for 25 minutes a week.
And today, there's a music teacher in every one of our elementary schools, and they receive over an hour of instruction in music a week.
That's because of this Yes.
This ordinance will also strengthen governance and accountability by clarifying what we mean by high-quality arts education and prioritizing underserved students.
That matters deeply in East Portland, where districts like Parkrose serve diverse communities and where access to the arts education must be protected, not left to chance.
For districts like Parkrose, this funding is not supplemental, it is essential.
It is especially critical as Parkrose and other districts in the region experience major budget reductions.
It allows us to retain qualified arts teachers and ensure that all students, regardless of background, have access to meaningful arts experiences.
These changes will make the Art Access Fund more equitable, more sustainable, and more impactful for students, and I urge your support so we can continue providing art education for our students and what— and give them what they need and deserve.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, all 3.
Vicki Payne is joining us online.
Vicki, can you hear us?
Hi, can you hear me?
We can hear you.
Okay, um, sorry, I'm not at my house anymore, uh, since I'm not on video.
My name is Vicki Payne.
I'm here today as one of the few people who's been paying paying this tax annually since its inception.
Thankfully, when I stupidly voted to pass this, I had finally broken into the world of office work and out of less than $20 an hour jobs.
I was just barely able to afford this every year.
I have always scoffed at the low exemption salary amount.
However, the changes you are proposing prove that nobody has any idea what it's like to make under $60,000 a year in the city.
Patting yourselves on the back to raising the bar to $20K when your report just showed that $33K is the minimum wage annual salary in Portland.
Why are we not at least using that number?
Um, but you know, in what corner of Portland do you have to live in to be able to afford an extra $50 every year on top of that, the normal cost of living at that?
It's just, it's not reasonable.
And weirdly, one salary doesn't give you the full lived experience of an individual.
Are they taking care of family members?
Are they supplementing income for a friend or a relative who can't afford their bills?
Were they previously in debt before they started making a new salary?
Uh, I can say that I've successfully struggled to survive in the city for almost 20 years at this point.
I'm obviously wondering why the hell I've endured surviving over actually living for so long.
And of course, we all know Portland and Oregon are hard to quit, but every year our electeds seem to be making that decision easier and easier.
I'm looking at the upcoming summer concert schedule and bemoaning the fact that I can't afford to buy a concert ticket right now.
Thinking about you increasing this tax and thinking about how next summer I will likely be in the same boat.
So I will forego putting money into the local economy and a few hours of my own enjoyment of life and instead give the city that doesn't work more money and continue being angry that a large percent of the city still isn't paying this tax, many of whom can afford it much more than I can.
Food for thought: why not fix the system and prove to voters it's effective before adding more layers on top of it?
Why not ensure everyone is paying first before upping the bill for those of us who've been diligently paying since 2013?
Thank you.
You were just able to push a transportation tax, and yes, it's a tax when you can't opt out of it, not a fee, into our water bill.
Where is the urgency to put this into the water bill to ensure those who can afford to pay are actually paying?
Because I can assure you there's a ton of tech bros on Reddit bragging that they've still never paid this tax, even with threats of it going to collections.
So maybe look at creating jobs that pay $60K or higher so we have more taxpayers that aren't hurting to contribute to this tax.
And P.S., most of us aren't happy to supplement our largest failing school system for their financial mismanagement anymore.
Thank you.
Jennifer is joining us online.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Jennifer Falco.
I am the mother of a Portland Public Schools senior, the chair of the Arts Access Fund Oversight Committee And a business leader with 25 years of experience, including fiscal oversight.
I'm here to testify as a member of the public in support of updating the Arts Access Fund.
The changes proposed to the fund build on the Arts Oversight Committee's 2025 annual reports, which notes that inflation between 2012 and 2026 dampened the fund's ability to provide the level of service Thank you.
Thank you, Mayor.
I'm here to speak in support of the changes to the fund because it does 2 important things for Portland.
As Dr. Armstrong and our other superintendent spoke about, the fund helps keep arts education in our elementary schools.
Between the virtual room and the room in Portland, what do we have, maybe 100 people, 150?
Every day, almost 27,000 and K-5 kids across the city are creating and learning in visual arts, dance, theater, music.
And not only do the results of these give us things like the walrus we saw in committee or Cornfish, which I have on my fridge over there, early arts education translates to positive life outcomes for our children.
More community engagement, fewer disciplinary problems, higher graduation rates, These are positive, real-world impacts.
The fund also helps to keep our arts ecosystem vibrant.
Each year, it provides millions of dollars to local arts organizations who deliver programs in and for our community, including our K-12 kids and our underserved communities.
These artists and arts organizations help make Portland Portland.
You know, we have a great city, and arts is a pillar of this community.
Thank you.
It's also an important part of our economic landscape.
The Arts Access Fund Citizen Oversight Committee— and we are a diverse group from all over Portland— meets regularly with our city partners to ensure the effective administration of this fund.
We report expenditures and impacts annually.
If you haven't read our reports, they're available to you on the Office of Arts and Culture's website.
I joined this committee in 2021.
It's my second term as Chair, and each year we've found that this fund does what it said it would do.
It provides dollars for K-5 educators and it supports arts organizations.
We've been working hard with the city to ensure that the fund is ever more effectively managed.
With the changes under consideration today, we will see that it continues to do so the first— for the foreseeable future.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Next up we have Brianna Linden, Astrid Linden, Danielle Milan Gonzalez, Viola LaForti de Vigo, Daisy Liang.
As those folks are coming up, I just want people who are still in the room to know we are going to— when we are done with testimony on this item, we're going to continue this item to an additional first reading at our next meeting, and I'm going to move to get as many people who are are here to sign up to testify for the children's levy to get through.
We will jump directly into testimony.
So welcome to the dais and introduce yourselves.
Go ahead.
Hi, I'm Brianna Linden.
I'm the executive director for Arts for Learning Northwest.
I testified last week in committee and I'm back with this full council with one of my children, the one that made the t-shirt I wore last week, who's a PPS student and will speak next.
Last week at the end of Prosper Portland's presentation, Councilor Zimmerman, you remarked That Portland's looking for those mechanisms that make the city awesome.
Comprehensive arts education is just one of those mechanisms, and I want to talk today about what it takes to deliver that.
I told you in committee what happens when a child encounters a teaching artist or a cultural artist, how it can be the first time they see their own culture as something worthy of learning from, worthy of celebration, and equally how important it is for children to engage with new perspectives in the languages of the arts.
What I want to tell you to— what I want you to understand today is those moments don't happen by accident.
They happen because organizations like ours make them possible, residency by residency, school by school, child by child.
And they only keep happening if you fund the infrastructure that delivers them.
Thank you.
At Arts for Learning Northwest, we served 40,000 students last year through 125 rostered teaching and cultural artists.
We handle the vetting, the training, the district compliance, the relationships.
The infrastructure already exists.
What we need to ensure that students have access to the rich diversity of artistic and cultural experiences that they deserve is sustained dedicated funding.
This ordinance opens 2 doors to support that work.
The report on granting priorities is an opportunity to ensure that arts education organizations, the ones already putting teaching art and cultural artists directly in front of children, are named as a distinct priority, not as an afterthought to general arts funding, but as a named commitment.
The report on teaching artist programming is a promise to Portland's kids We intend to hold you to it, and we want to help shape it.
We are ready to convene art teachers, teaching artists, cultural artists, and district administrators to make sure that the report reflects what Portland's children actually need.
The children I'm speaking for today will grow up to be Portland's artists, teachers, engineers, parents, and leaders.
What we give them now— the experience of being seen, of having their culture matter, of discovering they have something to say— we give them forever.
Councilmember Councilor Zimmerman, you asked for mechanisms that make Portland awesome.
Our children are a long-term investment in awesomeness.
Invest in them now by voting yes on the updates to the Arts Education and Access Fund.
Thank you.
Yep, just go.
Oh, okay.
Hi, my name is Astrid Linden.
I'm in 7th grade and go to Da Vinci Arts Middle School.
I was lucky to have lotteried into an arts-focused school, but not all kids get the same privilege.
I believe it shouldn't matter what neighborhood a kid is in or if they can lottery into a school that offers the arts.
All kids deserve to learn through art because it's a way to process emotions, imagine new ways of thinking, and express themselves.
It's a way to get what's on the inside out.
One of my primary art forms is writing, and often when I write outside of school, I get stuck.
Or there's something else to do.
School is a place I get to focus completely on what I'm doing.
Having my creative writing teacher, Miss Connor, to help me and guide allows me to do my best work and come up with new ideas.
Artists inspire kids by showing them what's possible, showing that they can be creative and accomplish amazing things.
Kids need to feel seen.
Artists show them that they are seen and that they are heard, even when they can't express themselves with words.
That's— there are so many other ways to communicate through the arts.
The past, the present, we learn about this in school, and though it is very important, supplying kids with the arts is how we invest in our future.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Hello, esteemed councilors.
I'm Danielle Milan Gonzalez, executive director at El Centro Milagro, the only professional Latino Latino arts, cultural, and heritage center in the state of Oregon and the oldest continually operating theater in the city of Portland.
In our 40-year history, we have implemented bilingual arts education programs across the state and the region.
We have also contracted and partnered with several state and county agencies starting with Washington County Sheriff's Department, where we created one of the first afterschool theater programs for Latino teens.
We partnered with the Oregon State Health Department, creating educational plays in Spanish about breast cancer and HIV that toured across the state.
We also partnered with the— Councilmember Herbold.
Multnomah County Health Department.
We created a play about teen sex trafficking, in fact, because as you know, the state of Oregon has the highest rate of sex trafficking of minors under the age of 12.
We presented that educational play in several schools.
And so it's important to note that while people are concerned about a 15-day increase.
It's also important to look at all the studies about arts education and the power of the upstream effect of keeping kids in school, of student retention.
We even conducted a unique case study that demonstrated a 40% increase in comprehensive learning through bilingual arts education.
So imagine what $15 can do to to keep teens in school, to keep kids out of trouble, versus all the money that is going to go for other state agencies.
So it's a small investment to make.
So thank you for your yes vote today on this amendment.
Thank you.
Thank you all very much.
Just for the record, I'm Councilor Green.
Councilor Zimmerman's a different person.
Thank you.
Um, good afternoon, City Council members.
I'm— go ahead, Viola.
Good afternoon, City Council members.
For the record, my name is Viola Davagal, and I'm a sophomore at McDaniel High School, and I'm here today in support of Document 2026-147.
Arts education is not just an extra program, it is an essential part of our schools and our communities.
For many students in Portland Public Schools, school is the only place where So they can access these opportunities.
Without these programs, entire creative pathways are closed off to young people before they even get the chance to discover them.
Right now, high school and college students living at home and working part-time with $1,000 of income generally have to pay the tax.
Raising the income threshold means low-income Portlanders, including many working families and these young workers, will no longer have to file to pay for the tax.
Second, these reforms improve accountability and organization.
This proposal directly responds to past audit findings by clarifying definitions, strengthening accountability measures, and making sure that funds are actually used in a way that voters intend.
And third, these changes help protect the future of arts funding itself.
Through my own experience in band, musical theater, and dance, I know firsthand how much the arts help students grow, not just creatively but socially, emotionally, and academically.
The arts help shape who I am today, and every student deserves the opportunity to discover that part of themselves too.
Choosing not to act is also a choice, and it's a choice to let funding fall behind, a choice to risk cutting programs, a choice to slowly undo something Portland voters overwhelmingly believed in.
The arts don't just create artists, they create confidence, connection, leadership, and community.
And those are the things that the city of Portland should continue supporting.
So thank you for your time, and I urge you to vote in support of document Thank you very much.
Uh, good afternoon, City Council members.
For the record, my name is Daisy Langille.
I'm also a sophomore at McDaniel, and I'm here in support of the reform on document 2026-147.
Uh, I believe that it is imperative now more than ever that we fund the arts through the taxation of the rich.
Of higher-income families.
In an age in which schools are overcome with an increase in AI usage and constant social media consumption, arts provide a rare opportunity for students— creativity.
When we give students outlets for a range of artistic mediums, we allow them to express themselves and find a unique form of innovation that is increasingly less and less present in a school setting.
Not only that, the arts allow students to voice their perspective.
Schools can often be a hard place for minority students or students who don't align with the status quo.
And yet through art, these students can find themselves.
It can unite them with like-minded individuals and allow them to display their authenticity and individuality, often for the first time.
When we take away funding for the arts, we are not just taking away supplies or classrooms.
We are taking away opportunities for students to find joy, creativity, and most importantly, themselves.
And given all this, we must pass this reform not only to fund the arts but also to take the burden off the Portlanders that are struggling and instead distribute the responsibility fairly and equitably to all.
I've lived in Portland for most of my life, and I've seen the economic disparities between neighborhoods, streets, and even houses.
It is time that we stop forcing the single parent and family barely getting by to carry the weight of our community.
I urge each and every one of you to fight for my future, the future of my peers, and the future of our community, and vote yes on the reform for Document 147 to amend the Arts Tax Code.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much.
That completes testimony.
Okay, colleagues, I'm going to continue this item to our next scheduled meeting.
Can we please call Item 11?
Thank you all so much for everybody who was here today.
Item 11, Document 2026-132, approve funding recommendation Colleagues, I'm going to ask, uh, Council Ops staff Christopher Hare to do a very brief committee staff summary report, and then I'd like to dive directly into testimony, and we will continue this item as well.
So Christopher, please take it away.
Uh, yes, for the record, Christopher Hare, Council Operations Policy Analyst.
I serve as staff to the City Life Committee.
The ordinance before you, document number 2026-132, was considered in the City Life Committee on April 14th, where it was referred to council with a recommendation it be passed.
The ordinance approves the funding recommendations of the Children's Levy Allocation Committee for small grants totaling $2,555,000 over 3 years to 12 organizations, as detailed in Exhibit A.
It authorizes the director of the Office of the Portland Children's Levy to enter into grant agreements with the approved organizations effective July 1st, 2026.
Second.
The ordinance also authorizes the director to terminate a grant agreement if a grantee is unable or unwilling to use city funds in accordance with the agreements.
In such cases, the director may reallocate the remaining funds by entering into a new agreement with a different grantee or by amending existing agreements, provided the total reallocation amount does not exceed the unspent balance of the terminated grant and the scope of the work remains substantially similar.
In addition, the ordinance approves 8% increases to 94 existing 3-year grants totaling $5,198,000.
Thank you.
The full impact statements on this item includes financial and budgetary impacts, economic and real estate development impacts, community impacts, and community involvement.
2 Individuals provided verbal testimony on the April 14th committee meeting, and 12 individuals submitted written testimony prior to committee action.
General themes of testimony included positive impact of the Portland Children's Levy grant, The importance of continued funding for afterschool programming, the significance of the proposed 8% increase in large grant funding in the current economic and political context, current— excuse me— concerns regarding accountability for both provider organizations and the city, including reimbursement timing and the need for providers to cover service costs, and suggestions to consider certain organizations as alternate grantees.
That concludes the committee staff summary.
Thank you, Deputy City Attorney.
Thank you, Christopher.
Can we call up our first panel of testifiers?
All right, I'll call folks up in groups of 5.
Um, each testifier will receive 2 minutes.
Uh, first up we have Jonas, Cassie, Rana, Usman, Eric Knox, Tiffany, Thomas Geiss, Aisha Carter.
If you're coming up, thank you so much for Thank you for your patience as you've been waiting for your time to get up here all day.
We've got a couple of— we've got a city council that turns into pumpkins pretty quick here, so we want to hear from you.
Take it away, jump on in.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, councilors.
My name is Jonas Kasi.
I'm the executive director of ECRC.
ECRC is a nonprofit organization established in 2017 to serve immigrant refugee community I'm here with my staff, mentors, project managers, also some parents.
I'm here today to express our strong support for the proposed 8% increase to the Portland Children's Levy.
First, I want to thank you for your continued leadership and commitment to investing in children and families.
Programs like PCL have been essential to our community's essential in helping organizations like us deliver culturally responsive services that truly reach underserved communities.
This increase is not just a number, it has a real impact qualitatively.
It allows us to improve the depth and quality of our mentoring and youth program.
We can provide more consistent support, stronger relationship, and better outcomes for youth who need guidance stability and opportunity.
Quantitatively, it allows us to expand.
We can increase mentors' hours, serve more youth, and reduce barriers that many families face, especially transportation and access to other challenges.
For many of the families we serve, even small barriers can prevent children from participating consistently.
This investment helps us address those gaps so youth can fully fully engaged and succeed.
Such impact does not only benefit individuals, youth, and families, it strengthens the overall well-being, safety, and the future of our city.
We see every day how mentorship, tutoring, and family engagement changes life.
With this increase, we can do more, reach more youth, support more families, and build stronger, more equitable future for our community.
On behalf of ECRC and the families we serve, we are grateful for your leadership, and we strongly support this proposal.
Thank you for your time and your commitment to Portland's children.
Thank you so much.
Hi, uh, my name is Rana.
I am the executive director of Portland Youth Builders, a, uh, pre-apprenticeship program down in Southeast Portland.
Um, we are first-year recipients of PCL funding, and I want to talk to you a little bit about the folks we serve and how we use PCL funding.
What I— a common thread that I hear from the folks that we serve is desperation and access, is desperation to be able to live and lack of access and where to find access to help figure out how to not be poor.
The things that we connect with PCL on, I'm going to read you a couple of goals: connecting children and youth with caring adult role models to support their well-being, Creating after-school and summer mentoring programs, promoting academic achievement, reducing the number of youth victimized by crime, increasing graduation rates, mentoring programs, supporting transition to college and a career path for young people.
That is what we do.
We have been doing that for 31 years, and with PCL funding, we've been allowed to expand our services.
So far, we've already served over 100 youth, and we are About 3/4 of the way through our grant.
We will greatly exceed that number, and we will happily exceed that number because that— there's need out there.
And this 8% increase for us would be huge, and moreover, for the communities that we serve that are poor communities looking to find access.
Our hope— our hope is with these funds, we'll be able to hire an alumni support person.
This person is specifically focused to work with folks that have graduated in our program.
What we see a lot in Portland is funding for initiatives, funding for new things.
This is an amazing way to continue to fund something that is a staple for people to become successful and work their way out of poverty.
And someone said it here before, investing in our young people is awesome.
Thank you.
So I hope you all feel the same.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Hello, councilors.
Good afternoon.
My name is Eric Knox, and I'm the executive director of HALA Mentors.
Um, May 20th, we're celebrating 13 years, and if you do the math, that's like 156 months.
That's 4,700 Days.
Days.
And that's roughly 6.8 million minutes we've been putting work on the east side, especially when we know the history of Black and brown families have been displaced and pushed out on the edges of the city.
And typically where I work, lots of organizations like ours are always under-resourced When money starts to shrink.
And we know this, right?
When the city catches a cold or when the city sneezes, the, the places like East County and Black and brown spaces catch a cold.
And we are fortunate to be first-time recipients of, of, um, PCL funding.
And through it, we're able to serve over 100 Black and brown youth in East County and in East Portland.
And so for organizations like us, longevity and capacity means everything.
Our work grows, our budget must grow alongside it.
And this is why 8% of PCL increase is so important to us.
It's not simply about maintaining programs, it's about sustaining impact and expanding reach and ensuring that organizations deeply rooted in community continue to serve young people who need it the most.
Black-led organizations, more than symbolic support or baseline investment, we need equitable, sustained funding that recognizes both the scale and need and the value of our work.
So we hope that you consider the 8% increase.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, councilors, for the opportunity to testify today.
My name is Tiffany Thomas-Geiss.
I use she and her pronouns.
I'm the Program and Services Director at Bradley Angle.
Bradley Angle is in our 51st year of providing services to survivors of domestic and sexual violence in Multnomah County, and we are the only culturally specific standalone organization supporting survivors of domestic and sexual violence and their children, as well as queer and trans survivors in the state of Oregon.
We are also one of the large grant recipient organizations that receive funding through the Portland Children's Levy.
These dollars are for our Healing Roots and Kinship programs, a tandem approach to addressing the impact of intergenerational violence on Black families.
We work with Black survivors of domestic violence as well as their children to restore safety, stability, and family trust in culturally relevant, specific, and sensitive ways.
We provide financial support for basic needs and housing stability, host support groups for survivors to connect, engage in art therapy and cooking classes that focus on culture and community, and host monthly family outings to remind our participants that they also deserve joy.
Youth participants receive one-on-one mentorship and support, lessons on safe adults and how to identify them, and culturally relevant space to process through the trauma they've experienced in their homes.
Healing Roots and Kinship are responsive, impactful, and the only programs of their kind that combine both dedicated space for survivors as well as their children to process, grieve, and reconnect after being impacted by domestic violence in their homes.
With cuts on every level of government to services across the board, the 8% increase being voted on today would ensure that we're able to continue providing a space of refuge, healing, and stability for Black families impacted by domestic and sexual violence in our community.
We're grateful for your support and look forward to doing more incredible and impactful work with these funds.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much.
Hi everyone.
Um, first and foremost, thank you so much for extending the time to allow us the opportunity to testify today.
I do appreciate that.
My name is Aisha Carter.
I use she/her pronouns, and I am Bradley Ingalls Development Director.
I'm going to do my best not to reiterate too much of what Tiffany just said, but for the last over 50 years, we have been serving survivors in Multnomah County since 1975.
Thank you.
Our commitment to serving all survivors has been and continues to be unwavering.
And we are especially proud to provide culturally specific services to Black and African American survivors, as well as LGBTQIA+ folks.
These critical dollars, as mentioned, support our Healing Roots and Kinship programs.
These programs work hand in hand to support both the parent survivor and the child or children affected in establishing safety and reestablishing family stability and trust.
They are unique in their approach of navigating the entire family dynamic impacted by the presence of violence in the home through mentorship, one-on-one advocacy, workshops that honor both healing and the importance of family bonding, providing financial assistance for essential needs such as housing and food support, and so much more.
These programs get to the root of the cultural elements in play within the As Bradley Ingalls Development Director, I see the funding cuts from every level of the government and their direct impacts on essential services overall.
We are witness to the continued reality that supports— that support for marginalized identities is less accessible than it should be and is oftentimes more at risk when funding cuts hit.
This is why this 8% increase being voted on today makes a tremendous difference in ensuring that we are able to continue to serve our community.
Continue meeting the increasing needs of our community and providing culturally specific care.
We thank you for your support of our impactful work and urge you to vote in favor of this increase to ensure that our services continue providing a safe haven for Black families in our community to work holistically to break the intergenerational cycles of trauma.
Thank you.
Thank you all so much.
Thank you.
Next up, we have Momar Al-Saidi, Kim Filla, Beth Kapsch, Fidel Ferrer, Faith Rose.
Feel free to— whoever wants to jump on and introduce yourself to the record, please.
Hi, Council.
My name is Momar Al-Saidi.
I work at Outside In as a grants and contracts manager, and I'm here in support of the 8% increased funding to the PCL large grants portfolio.
At Outside In, the PCL grant supports 3 program areas: workforce development, GED services, and mentorship for youth experiencing homelessness ages 16 to 24.
These are young people actively working to stabilize their housing, education, and employment pathways all at the same time.
Of these 3 areas, I'd like to take a moment and focus on GED services.
According to the Census Bureau, individuals without a high school credential face significantly, significantly worse outcomes, with GED holders earning about $3,100 per month compared to $4,700 for high school graduates, and only 43% of GED holders pursuing any post-secondary education compared to 73% of diploma holders.
This translates into long-term instability as youth without a high school credential are far more likely to experience persistent unemployment and lower lifetime earnings, reinforcing cycles of housing insecurity and well-being.
The need is further reflected in who— outside in Thank you.
Over 1,000 participants served this fiscal year utilizing the PCL grant, of which about 50% of participants self-identified as LGBTQ+, over 50% as youth of color, and about 21% as identifying with diverse gender identities, all of which are far higher— all of which are far higher concentrations than the general Portland population.
At the same time, funding is shrinking.
In the recent biennium, the Oregon Department of Education's Job and Work Readiness Grant was reduced from an anticipated 30 awards to about 15 awards statewide due to federal funding uncertainty.
Other similar funding impacts have been experienced outside in and with our peer organizations under the PCL large grants portfolio.
So we appreciate your consideration of this funding increase.
Thank you very much.
I'll just go for it then.
Sorry.
Members of the council, City Council, thank you so much for extending the time first and foremost.
My name is Fidel Ferrer and I am the executive director of Project Lido organization that focuses on opening pathways for programs that are culturally responsive for youth who face systemic barriers to achieve their full potential.
We do that through STEM-focused programs.
So I'm here to definitely be in support of the Portland Children's Levy increase of 8%.
And as an Afro-Latino immigrant, this work really, really deeply is personal.
And I know what it's like when you walk into a room as of right now where you, you don't see a lot of folks that look like you, but more importantly, that you're perhaps the feeling of belonging is not there.
That's why we are so deeply with this Portland Children's Levy increase that pretty much creates access for capacity and for mentorship programs and opportunities in the afterschool where kids, they feel themselves in the field that they want to see in the brighter future.
At Project Lido, we create a big impact when it comes to the community.
We are about like 500 to 600 year over year year students that they go through our programs and they build robots, that they are acquainted with technology, acquainted with AI, cybersecurity, and so much more.
And that happens throughout the Portland metro area, specifically in District 1.
In our organization, it's deeply a reflection not only for our Project LIDA organization, for so many other organizations that they're part of it— educators, nonprofit mentors, school and community leaders.
They're working tirelessly every single day to make sure that every child has academic identity, motivational resilience, and growth mindset.
So I urge you to vote yes on the increase of 8% in our Portland Children's Levy.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Good early evening, councilors.
Thank you so much for the time to speak with you today.
My name is Kim Villa.
I'm the Chief Family and Wellness Officer at POIC.
I am a licensed clinical social worker, and I've served the community at POIC for over 23 years.
I support the proposed 8% increase to PCL large grants each year.
POIC serves over 3,000 youth and families in our focus wraparound services, including education, employment and training, Community safety, and family and health.
We are honored to partner with PCL.
I've personally worked alongside with PCL staff and am deeply grateful for their consistent partnership and support.
Today, PCL supports our after-school program, hunger, foster care, and child abuse prevention and intervention.
Youth and families are coming to us with increasing Financial, emotional, and basic needs while state and federal resources are in decline.
This 8% increase helps PYC stabilize essential services, allowing us to meet rising cuts— costs such as rent, COLA, healthcare, transportation, and other business operations.
I deeply appreciate the increased investment capacity of PCL.
Thank you.
And wish all funders could offer this level of support.
This increase for the 94 existing 3-year grants is both timely and necessary.
This investment is critical.
Thank you for your leadership.
Thank you so much.
Hi, um, hi, I'm Beth Kapsch, and I am a licensed clinical social worker, and I work as the Director of Health and Wellness at POIC.
I've been serving youth and families in Oregon for almost 30 years, and I've been at POIC for the last 7 years, and I oversee the PCL programs at POIC and have seen directly the impact that this has had.
Earlier, some of the council members mentioned that really the way that we ensure Our most vulnerable community members' safety and stability is direct investment in these families, and that is exactly what these PCL funds do.
At POIC, we have a food pantry, and we have already this year given out more than 12,000 pounds of food.
This has impacted nearly 700 individuals.
We have a lot of families who come to our food pantries every week, especially as food costs are increasing.
We've been able to partner with local farmers so we can get fresh local produce to families, which also keeps these dollars in our community.
So it's like even expanding its impact.
We're able to support young parents and youth with foster care experience to reduce barriers to school attendance and also help them in that transition between high school and then what's next.
We can continue to support them even after they've graduated from our schools due to this— these funds.
And I really appreciate your support of the 8% increase.
Thank you so much.
Thank you all.
Thank you.
Faith.
Thank you all for being here and for staying to hear our testimony at You know, it means a lot to us.
My name is Faith Briggs-Rose, and it's my great honor to speak to you all today representing Wonderfolk as our interim executive director while our executive director is out welcoming his new baby.
What the Portland Children's Levy is doing in the community is truly life-changing because of the support it gives to all the organizations that you see represented here.
I've been involved with Wonderfolk since 2019, and I'm a very proud board member.
This is our 10th year serving our community.
Wonderfolk is a youth-focused organization that serves Portland youth from underserved communities by creating in-depth program comprised of mentoring and hands-on service in our community.
We focus on youth leadership, developing youth voices, and bridging the opportunity gap that exists for these students.
Our program pillars are unity through arts, our naturehood, and global leadership.
That means that our youth learn leadership development while being exposed to nature in our city through hiking, beekeeping, painting murals, farming, documentary filmmaking, and more.
I wanted to explain to you all how deeply we work with each youth and how dedicated our staff are, so I attempted to add up the number of hours that we spend with each youth in our program.
It's up to 75 hours per student here in Portland, depending on the student's availability, and even more during our global leadership trips.
And that's just in their first year.
So our staff saw the first year and said, what else can we do?
Our work with the Portland Children's Levy is actually related to our second-year program, which is new.
Our staff is so dedicated that they said, what else can we do to support them?
So working with our alumni board, we've come up with a second-year program that also provides workforce development for youth that have been part of the program.
That development is led by our youth.
As I said, they help tell us what they need, and that includes panels coming from different people in different careers, interviewing tactics, resume building, Financial literacy, and then we place them in internships, um, and working with our different partners.
They're learning to track timesheets, they're going through their first internship process.
So please vote yes to the 8% increase and help us continue— all of us continue to encourage and serve this next generation of city leaders here in Portland.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
Oh, sorry, Molly.
Yeah.
Yes, hello, thank you all for staying late.
My name is Molly Armentrout.
I'm a resident of District 2, and I work with immigrant and refugee communities at ERCO.
I want to voice my strong support for the resolution to approve the 8% increase for Portland Children's Levy amidst the current term turbulent political environment and a worsening affordability crisis, I see the effective and critical work that is being done by my colleagues funded by PCL.
In the small and dynamic program I am a part of, the team speaks over 8 languages and we come from a variety of cultural backgrounds and countries.
The PCL program is best positioned to provide outreach and critical services to some of Portland's most vulnerable communities, including Immigrant and refugee communities that I work with every day, primarily in East Portland.
These communities face systemic barriers when accessing and navigating services and resources, and the PCL-funded organizations help bridge that gap through culturally specific and targeted services and outreach.
Every day, I see hundreds of children living in multi-generational working-class families being positively impacted.
By PCL services, which include after-school academic and enrichment programs, youth mentorship and job preparation services, and services that support struggling families connect with food services, child care, accessing health care, and so much more.
Amid the, amid the worsening affordability crisis, it is really important that the city not pull back from investing in social services.
Services that directly benefit our working-class residents, but instead step up to the moment by approving the 8% increase for PCL.
The city would be confirming their obligation and commitment to the welfare of Portland's most vulnerable residents.
The city would also be ensuring that the money would go towards organizations that have proven year after year to deliver crucial services to Portland Therefore, I strongly support the passage of this resolution.
Thank you.
Next up, we have Nhu Hoang, Lakiana Yato— Yato Madruri, Muna Yusuf, Hisham Sheikh Hussein, Ayat Hassan.
Great evening, uh, President Dunphy and councilors of Portland City Council.
Really appreciate you all staying late to hear our testimony.
I'm the founder and executive director of Word Is Bond, as well as a proud resident of District 2, um, and we strongly advocate for the 8% increase in the Portland Children's Levy.
Word Is Bond serves 4 quadrants of young Black men ages 14 to— excuse me, 15 to 20 years old, African-American Thank you.
We have 26 young men in high school.
We have a 91% graduation rate.
We have 24 young men in the workforce, another 22 in college, and 4 who are incarcerated.
And it goes without saying how important it is to support young Black men, especially in the city of Portland.
Like Portland.
Considering the $160 million or so budget deficit that we're facing right now, I think it's extremely important that we invest in people, right?
We know that data shows when we invest in youth in our communities, that those youth go on to be productive members of our workforce, go on to be homeowners, and be less reliant on social services.
From the city, including overpolicing of Black communities.
So keeping this sweet and short, we strongly advocate for this increase to support youth in our city.
That will be a long-term investment to the vibrancy of this city.
Thank you.
Hello everyone, my name is Muna Youssef.
I had a few kiddos that were supposed to come up, but they couldn't wait and they had to leave.
But my name is Muna Youssef, like I stated, and I serve as a program manager Thank you.
I'm a representative for Center for African Immigrants and Refugees organization, also known as CAIRO.
I really do want to thank you guys for sticking behind and, and giving us this opportunity to speak with you.
Um, we've dealt with a lot throughout this past year.
Our organization in August has experienced an arson attack at a preschool program that we've offered and on our preschool playground.
Sorry.
And following that fire, we've experienced a lot of safety concerns, break-ins, threats, which has really did force us to stop a lot of in-person activities to kind of focus on the safety of our community and the children.
At the same time, we've dealt with a lot of rising operational costs.
Limited funding kind of forced our organization to figure out other avenues while also doing more with the fewer staff that we have.
While the community demands continue to grow.
And I believe, you know, despite these challenges, we've really shown out for our students that we're kind of supposed to be here to talk about what this program has provided for them and the impact that is brought into their lives.
But I really do believe that this 8% increase is really important in stabilizing a lot of the work that we're doing and sustainability for a lot of the nonprofit organizations that are providing these services.
Um, and I also want to highlight that the workforce development grants used to go up to the age of 18, and this is the first year it's tackling into going up to the age of 24, which is really important because there is a lot of challenges when it comes to navigating adulthood and that age and the proper support that we can provide for those students.
Thank you again.
For all of you guys, and thank you.
Thank you, and I'm sorry that your, uh, littles couldn't stay with us.
Okay.
Niu.
Hello, members of the City Council.
For the record, my name is Niu Hoang, and I live in District 1 of Portland City.
I'm here today to support, to support the proposed 8% increase large grant funding for after-school programs.
As an immigrant parent, navigating a new country, language, and school system can be overwhelming, and I'm most worried about whether my children feel safe, have a sense of belonging, have enough support to succeed in school.
My son was born a couple years before the COVID hit.
During the time, everyone practicing social distancing, and he didn't have many friends back then.
She's right.
He was shy and afraid to speak up.
The teacher said he didn't raise hand to participate much in class and his student skill was below average.
I would know— we're not sure how to help him.
However, joining the OCO after-school program have been life-changing for my child.
After joining for a few months, I began seeing the meaningful changes.
He come home with smile talking about what he done with his spent with the program, such as reading books, doing art projects, building Lego, and other cultural activities.
The program provided a safe space for my child to feel safe, respected, and connected.
Now my child improved in reading skills, feels confident expressing who he is, building friendships across cultures, participating in activities that reflect both cultural heritage and future goals.
Thank you.
Aye.
That makes a powerful difference.
Despite increase of ICE activity, make the fear many immigrant and refugee families are experiencing, the program continues to provide inclusive community where you feel safe, valued, and empowered.
With 8% increase, the after-school program can serve more hundreds of children of color, provide more resources, more healthy snacks that my son excited to have after a long Thank you for listening.
Thank you very much.
Next up we have Crystal Ross, Lisa Jackson Spotted Elk, and Joye Manns.
Uh, we have 2 online.
Checking one last time.
Crystal Ross, Lisa Jackson-Spotted Elk, Joye Manns.
I see, I see someone online.
There's— okay, great.
Joya, can you hear us?
Yes, can you guys hear me all?
We can hear you.
You guys hear me well?
Okay.
Hi everyone, my name is Joya Manns.
I'm with the program of Love Is Stronger, and I'm here to talk on, um, behalf of not cutting them out of the 13, I believe.
I think they placed 13 and there was only 12 people that will, um, benefit from the act of receiving, um, Thank you.
I've been working with Love Is Stronger since I've been, I want to say, 16 going to 17 in my high school years, and I'm still part of the program as a college student.
And for the future, Love Is Stronger is a very great program, especially for the minorities within the Southeast District and some people that live in the North Portland area.
With that being said, I'm hoping that you guys are able to To reinstate them into hopefully giving them the funding.
Not only does Love Is Stronger not just help me through— have not just helped me through my high school years, but it's still helping me with my college years.
It's such a benefit for the younger generation to be active in the community, which Love Is Stronger— and if you guys don't know, the owner of Love Is Stronger, Lynell— Lynell Irvin.
Excuse me.
Is a very big activist when it comes to the community as far as gun violence and helping the less fortunate and making sure that we prioritize and pour into the children that may not get the full attention that they seek at home or seek in the school system.
Um, with that being said, I hope you guys are able to reconsider them.
Um, thank you guys again.
That's all I have to say.
That completes testimony.
Thank you very much.
Colleagues, I will be building out enough time for us to just add some, uh, laudits and some love for this program when we move this to second reading.
Is there any discussion at this time?
Councilors, quick question, will we have staff available at that one too?
Absolutely.
Great.
Yeah, and it'll be time certain.
And I'll, I'll move it to time certain.
Sure, absolutely.
Yeah, seeing no further discussion, I'd like to move this item to second reading.
And colleagues, I am going to continue item 12 to our next meeting.
With that, we're not adjourning, right?
We don't have an afternoon tomorrow.
Yeah, with that, I'm adjourning the meeting of the Portland City Council.
Thank you all so much for your patience sticking late.
Oh, thank you, everybody.