Windowbox
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 4:56 - 5:16
Good morning.
Calling to order the second-to-last work session of the Portland City Council for this budget season.
Y'all, we're almost there.
This morning we're going to be hearing about the Public Safety Service Area, the DCA's office, and the Portland Police Bureau.
So I'm going to be turning it over— Stephanie, am I turning it over to you?
I think to Raymond.
I'm turning it over to Raymond first.
Raymond, Mr. City Administrator, take it away.
Raymond C. Lee 5:17 - 9:05
Good morning and thank you, Council President, Vice President, and City Councilors.
I am City Administrator Raymond Lee.
Next slide for me, please.
This is the second of 2 Public Safety Service Area work sessions.
The first focused on the Bureau of Emergency Communications, Bureau of Emergency Management and Fire and Rescue.
Today's work session will include the DCA's office, Community Safety Programs, and the Portland Police Bureau.
Next slide for me.
As a recap, and you've seen this information before, the proposed $620 million budget includes 2,250 staff across the complete service area.
Thank you.
Next slide, please.
And this is the high-level organizational chart of the service area showing emergency communications, emergency management, fire and rescue, police, and community safety.
Portland Street Response, Ceasefire, and the Office of Violence Prevention are all housed within the community safety.
The Office of Violence Prevention houses the Safe Blocks and Rose City Safe Defense programs as well.
As—.
Next slide, please.
As stated before, the vision of the Public Safety Service Area is a safe Portland for all, and our primary focus throughout this budget process is preventing core emergency response capabilities such as 911, fire, police, and emergency management while preserving continuity of priority programs throughout the service area.
These priority programs include alternative responses and prevention.
Next slide, please.
This slide demonstrates the budgets over the past few years in comparison with the proposed budget.
Showing the service area funded at $620 million.
This includes $319.5 million for PPB, $216.2 million for fire, $39.6 million for BOEC, and $37.3 million for the Office of the DCA, including the community safety programs, and $7.6 million for PBIM.
Next slide, please.
The Office of the Public Safety DCA includes $29.6 million in general fund dollars and $7.4 million in other funding, including cannabis tax for PSR and grant funding for Safe Blocks.
Reductions are tied directly to the community safety programs and will be outlined shortly.
Realignments are a part of those core services realignment process and were addressed in this work session on May the 8th.
Next slide, please.
The Office of Public Safety DCA includes Portland Street Response, as stated before, the Office of Violence Prevention, Ceasefire Portland Committee, on Community Engaged Policing, Focused Intervention Team Community Outreach Oversight— I'm sorry, Group— and Enterprise Services support, with a total reduction of 5 FTEs and realignment of 20 FTEs.
And now I'll hand it off to Stephanie Howard, our Director of Community Safety, to walk through her programs.
Stephanie Howard 9:06 - 17:28
Thank you, CA Lee.
Good morning, councilors.
My name for the record is Stephanie Howard.
I use she/her pronouns, and I am the Director of Community safety programs for the Public Safety Service Area.
While, as you just heard, we are technically part of the DCA's Office, Community Safety houses the Office of Violence Prevention, Ceasefire, and Portland Street Response.
This group is a cluster of non-sworn teams and collaborative partnerships across the public safety spectrum to meet people where they are, identify risks, and connect them with services, with the goal of improving both individual safety as well as public safety outcomes.
We have a total of 77 full-time employees, and in the mayor's proposed budget, a budget of $22.5 million across all programs.
Next slide.
First, Portland Street Response provides 911 dispatch behavioral health crisis response as well as aftercare services for people in behavioral health crises.
PSR operates 7 days a week from 6 AM to midnight, with aftercare teams available Monday through Friday from 6 next.
Next, the Office of Violence Prevention and Portland Ceasefire programs work alongside one another to implement Community Safety's violence reduction strategy.
As the name suggests, the Office of Violence Prevention represents Community Safety's efforts in the violence prevention lane.
OVP includes the Safe Blocks program and Rose City Self-Defense, as you heard from CA Lee, And all of OVP's teams work with community to co-create public safety prevention strategies, support early interventions for at-risk individuals and the broader Portland community as a whole.
These strategies include funding community-based organizations that offer critical root cause violence prevention programming, promoting empowerment, de-escalation, and individual safety, and supporting CPTED, or Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, and placemaking initiatives to support broader long-term community transformation and safety.
Complementing these longer-term efforts is the Portland Ceasefire Program, which comprises the city's gun violence intervention strategy.
Ceasefire relies on strong partnerships with community organizations and law enforcement to intervene with individuals at the very highest risk of perpetrating or being victim By gun violence, this work is distinct from the work of OVP in the prevention lane.
Ceasefire in the intervention lane is intended for people who are often literally moments away from pulling a trigger or being shot themselves.
The ceasefire team coordinates individualized service delivery with community partners to provide intensive case management for these very high-risk participants.
Participants to keep them alive, safe, and free.
It's important for me to say a few words about lives saved here.
Community safety programs alongside our public safety partners like the Portland Police Bureau, the District Attorney's Office, Portland Probation, and of course our amazing community partners, some of whom are with us today, have generated major reductions in Portland's rates of gun violence.
As of March, uh, data shows a 68% reduction in firearm homicides compared to the prior 3 years, a 43% reduction in total shooting incidents over the prior 3 years.
And to put that in context, we are outpacing the national trend by almost double the reduction rate in gun violence.
This incredible work has made Portland a national leader in gun violence reduction and illustrates what can happen when stakeholders truly collaborate.
Next slide.
I don't want to downplay the very difficult decisions and reductions being made across the city, but I do want to highlight what this budget accomplishes for PSR, OVP, and Ceasefire.
Through the mayor's proposed budget, PSR will maintain its current level of service 7 days a week from 6 AM to midnight by preserving all crisis responder positions and all currently filled aftercare positions.
This proposed budget also makes all OVP and Ceasefire funding ongoing, which has not happened in recent memory, if ever.
Um, ongoing funding helps us stabilize OVP's ability to provide grants to community-based organizations doing incredible violence prevention work, and it helps stabilize Ceasefire's ability to plan and contract with our community partners to intervene with those at the very highest risk.
Providing ongoing funding for this life-saving programming is essential to maintaining the strong progress we've made, and I'm incredibly grateful for that commitment by the mayor to this work.
Next slide.
The reality of this budget is that we have all had to try to find the best ways to ensure the community is well served within very limited means.
To that end, we work to minimize reductions in direct services.
Whenever possible and looked inward to identify opportunities to tighten our collective belts.
To accomplish this, the proposed budget will reduce OVP and Ceasefire's EMS budget by a total of $162,000.
To realize that, we will prioritize reductions in areas such as travel, national conference representation, professional development, and continuing education opportunities for staff.
This reduction will also reduce our community engagement tools, which our teams rely on to drive public engagement and safety initiatives.
This encompasses things like serving a good meal, offering appealing tabling supplies that really help increase community attendance and collaboration.
Next slide.
This proposed budget unfortunately eliminates a Coordinator 3 position that's within Ceasefire, taking the team down to to 3 full-time employees.
This position is responsible for conducting educational and community outreach with support, uh, and supporting some service coordination with Ceasefire contractors.
Next slide.
This proposed budget would also reduce the total grant and contracting capacity of OVP and Ceasefire by $500,000 each.
These reductions decrease OVP and Ceasefire's capacity to fund community-based organizations who work in violence prevention and intervention.
However, I—.
In given the significant challenges this budget year, I'm confident that OVP and Ceasefire can maintain core service levels even with the reduced budget and staff.
Next slide.
Lastly, the proposed budget eliminates 2 aftercare teams comprised of 4 currently vacant positions.
Those are 2 peer support specialist positions, leaving us with 7 filled positions, and 2 community health workers, leaving us with 4 filled community health worker positions.
For context, our aftercare teams receive referrals from PSR crisis responders based on calls for service.
PSR's aftercare teams then work to build relationships with clients, help connect people to a wide variety of resources, and support people in navigating navigating the complex systems that are often necessary to access care and can be difficult to reach without support.
In addition to freeing crisis responders to efficiently return to calls for service without sacrificing client care, aftercare interventions also serve to reduce repeat crises, improve connections to community-based services, and support long-term stability for the people PSR engages with.
As I mentioned, these positions are currently vacant.
However, the positions were intended to provide aftercare services 7 days per week rather than 5, and without them, the aftercare team will still be able to remain its current level of service Monday through Friday with some Saturday coverage.
Again, I'm incredibly— in an incredibly challenging budget year, I am appreciative of the support community safety programs have received in the mayor's proposed budget, and I'm confident that the dedicated and resourceful folks who are part of our teams will meet this moment to find solutions, as they always do, to support the community.
And with that, I will hand it to Chief Day.
Bob Day 17:29 - 59:00
Okay, thank you.
Excuse me.
Good morning, councilors, Council President, Vice President, CA Lee.
Thanks for having us here today.
I'm a big believer in context and understanding the context and the environment that we're working in.
And as I was preparing for this over the last few weeks, at the same time celebrating the birth of our first grandchild, I wanted to provide a little bit of context.
And as you enter into the world of grandparenting, it has caused me to reflect on my life and longevity and age and the term grandpa and what that implies.
It also reminded me that my nearly 33 years of service to the Police Bureau in this role, which is over 50% of my entire lifespan, weighs heavily on me as I come before you with an understandable bias for the Police Bureau and a proud representation of the men and women, some of whom are seated behind me today, that I'm grateful to be in this position.
All these recommendations that come in today are based on careful deliberation with PPB leaders, with the Deputy City Administrator, with the City Administrator and the Mayor.
They are my recommendations with some adjustments made in the process with the Mayor and the City Administrator's office.
We're going to walk through a series of cuts today with differing implications on how Portlanders will be experiencing the Police Bureau.
And this can feel a bit clinical.
It can feel a little bit static, but it has real-world impacts, particularly on the members who we may end up having to lay off, positions we have to reduce, or lower our ability to provide the service that Portlanders expect.
The other part of this conversation that you'll hear me refer to oftentimes today is that cuts within the Police Bureau we need to see as not singular, but as a system, that anything that we make obviously has impact and could manifest itself, maybe not in the immediacy, but in the months or years to come.
That's the nature of policing, that oftentimes we don't see an immediate impact, but oftentimes down the road we will see the consequences of those decisions.
And long after we're all gone, the community will still be here, as will be the police bureau, and that challenge for these difficult decisions should weigh on all of us.
And finally, I often say 2 things can be true at the same time.
And although I'm disappointed in these cuts and this position that we are in as a city, I also, as a chief, have a responsibility to ensure the city has a balanced budget.
And I am appreciative of the mayor and the CA's work to try and land this plane during these difficult times and committed to supporting their efforts.
As seen on this first slide, This is an overview of the organization.
The 1,152.9 proposed staff includes both our sworn and our professional staff, all of which play an integral, critical part to supporting the work of the Portland Police Bureau.
Today, I'm going to give you a little bit of highlight about what we're prioritizing, what we're reducing, and what those reductions may mean in practical terms.
Next slide, please.
This is an overall budget summary.
Pretty straightforward.
You've seen from the other public service areas, identifies the reductions as well as the realignments going forward.
There's a variety of movement afoot, but at the end of the day, it's about a 6.4% reduction.
And then with the realignment, about 0.3%.
And that gets us to the $319.6 million that C.A.
Lee mentioned a little bit earlier.
Next slide, please.
This is a staffing summary of what these impacts will mean.
We anticipate roughly about 48 FTEs as well as 11 that are going to be part of realignment.
I will say this has been a moving target, and I'm going to cover that when I talk about the reductions information that came in as recently as yesterday.
So I will try to distinguish between vacancies, closed, and actual layoffs to help you give better context and perspective as we go forward.
The numbers haven't changed in terms of 48, but the potential for layoffs in some positions may have decreased.
Next slide, please.
So what we're preserving— we came together and began having these conversations as far back as December, and as the cuts became more aware, we made a decision to prioritize 3 large areas.
One is our core— excuse me— our core response to priority calls for service.
This is priorities 1 through 4.
Some examples of what that might be is a suspicious person with a weapon.
A priority 1 definition is a weapon's involved, the person appears to be acting in a strange, unusual manner, appears to have no valid reason for being in the area.
This is straight out of the the BOEC manual.
A call would come in that would be— we had just recently, 1 minute ago, female hitting cars with a sword, white female, 30s, red and black pajama pants, last seen eastbound on Washington on foot.
That's an example of a call that we would continue to prioritize at the highest level.
Last year, and well, '25-'26, this fiscal year, we've had 1,093 of those types of calls, and we average about 11.6 minutes to get to those calls.
Okay.
Ideally, and this former City Council decades ago, as I've looked back, set a priority of 5 minutes to get to those types of calls.
We're woefully short of that at this time.
We will also be prioritizing threats with a weapon in a different context.
And once we had 782 of those calls in this year, would maybe be like a robbery situation.
We've averaged about 12.6 minutes to get to those.
And on and on.
There's several categories.
The bottom line here for us is that we are gonna continue to emphasize priority call response for the highest level in-progress crimes.
I have more examples.
And then as we get more into the presentation, we'll talk about the inability to provide the levels of service to those that fall below 4, 5, 6, and 7.
Thank you.
We are going to continue to investigate violent crime investigations.
This is a priority for us as we look at our most vulnerable populations.
These are things such as domestic violence, child abuse, human trafficking, homicide, obviously gun violence, which disproportionately impacts our marginalized communities.
So we will continue to prioritize those.
We will be limiting or discontinuing our service in the areas of property crimes, burglary, theft, other areas, you know, potentially.
We haven't been doing much fraud as of late.
There's a lot of things that will likely go by the wayside as we make these adjustments, but we will be continuing to prioritize our most vulnerable population.
And then finally, the overall wellness and continued officer recruitment is a priority for us.
As we've looked at this.
And that is because an organization that is not healthy and not well is not going to be able to provide quality service.
And I am passionate about trying to create the best environment for our members, both physically, emotionally, spiritually, training, equipment, et cetera, and continuing to recruit officers.
So all of the recommendations as it relates to potential layoffs are in the professional staff, which weighs once again heavy on me.
But believing that in staying in line with our priorities, officers are uniquely positioned to be able to respond to the highest, most threatening level calls, as well as be able to make arrests based on probable cause, serve warrants, et cetera, et cetera.
So we need to preserve those.
Next slide, please.
This is— all of these reductions are impactful.
This one, has tremendous significance.
The Police Bureau historically has had an external materials and services budget prior to these recommended cuts at about $17 million.
This is going to take it down to about $11 million.
We have about $6 million in ongoing contracts that are already required to be paid for out of this next budget year.
So we're going into July 1st with already about $6 million committed.
This is for things like tasers and body-worn cameras, et cetera.
And the remaining $5 million will then be basically paying to keep the lights on.
Some examples where this is going to impact— it's going to impact equipment, the ability to maintain and keep our equipment at the highest level.
As we saw at the Multnomah Athletic Club, heavy reliance upon bomb suits and robots, etc.
These are all very costly items that you only need in certain situations, but we need to have them available.
We currently have them available.
Over the course of the next year, we will have to make decisions about replacing equipment, when we do, how we do it, prioritize as they go back to our number one goal of preserving life safety.
This impacts things like the ability to use the plane.
2 nights ago, we used the plane to apprehend someone who was driving 100 miles an hour on 82nd Avenue.
We didn't have to get vehicles involved until they stopped and went to ground, and we were able to make an arrest.
But we pay for fuel.
Thank you.
We know fuel costs are going up.
We pay for maintenance and equipment on the plane.
It could reduce our ability to be able to provide that level of service.
It's going to reduce our vehicles, and, and we're going to talk about vehicle reduction in a minute, but we could be moving towards 2-person cars.
This will cut our gas prices in half, hopefully.
We estimate about a $500,000 increase in fuel costs because of the current state of affairs around gasoline.
But the biggest impact is really going to be around training and the reliance that we use upon this money for training, and both internal and external.
Internal, we use these resources to bring in outside training.
For example, in the last year, we partnered with the NAACP on a program called Common Ground, working on our efforts around different perspectives, interactions with communities of color.
Thank you.
We did a civil rights training partnership with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center.
We also have lined up some training for our focus intervention team, which works hand in hand with the Ceasefire Program around understanding trauma, behavior, long-term impacts of both victims and community members.
So we will be reducing the ability to provide that level of training.
It will also reduce our ability to respond to recommendations, as we've seen, like from OIR, or the IMLLC, which did the public order review, PSEP, TAC, there will be a reduction in our ability to respond because we will not have the capability to support and fund those initiatives with the reduction in our EMS.
We will continue to meet the DOJ mandates as required.
And so those trainings will be continued to be met.
We will also be training essentially to the state level.
Portland has a long, rich history of training at the highest level.
For example, when we reconstituted our rapid response team, we adopted the gold standard for training, and they train once a month for 10 hours a day.
That's potential that could be impacted.
We've already made some difficult decisions to cancel training going into the next fiscal year, knowing that we may not have the cost, the funds to support it.
Thank you.
Things like a reduction in possibly the Advanced Academy where our new hires are trained, et cetera.
About 65%, 60 to 65% of the police bureau right now at the officer rank has less than 8 years of service.
So we have a very young organization and we're continuing to hire.
And officers that were hired really in '19, '20, '21, '22 got the short end of the stick, much like we saw We're seeing sort of come to fruition with some of our high school students and those that had to miss out on opportunities during those COVID years.
We're seeing some of that play out within the police bureau as we try to catch up and fill in some of the gaps that were missed in that time period.
Also, the lack of ability to support people to attend training either externally or promoted internally can impact retention as members like to know that both professional and sworn, that they are supported in continued development of their work.
And we're going to have to be saying no quite a bit more to that type of work.
There's no direct FTE reductions associated with this change.
It's really an impact on our capability, our preparedness, and long-term performance rather than staffing.
And we will be evaluating those as we go.
Next slide, please.
This program has obviously garnered a tremendous amount of attention, and appropriately so.
I'm very proud of the work that the PS3s have done, and they're represented behind me today, and I'm grateful for their attendance.
PS3 program, unfortunately, Police Bureau did not set it up for success early on.
I take responsibility for that.
And it was really through the budget session of last year when councilors brought forward really good pointed questions about the PS3s and how we were utilizing them and what they were doing.
And I want you to know that I heard that.
We put together a team.
Thank you.
Of leaders as well as our PS3 members, and over the last year they have responded at a level that has really encouraged me.
We are seeing an increased amount of calls taken.
We're seeing more calls taken but not shorter amount of time on calls, so they are engaging well and staying present.
They're not hurrying through things.
We would estimate this year that they would probably be responsible for about 25,000 calls for service.
I was at a social event here, a personal event here a couple of weeks ago, and a woman who lives in District 3 says to me, hey, I had this great experience with one of your officers.
I had my license plate stolen off my car.
That was not great, but they came right away.
They took the report, and then I had a car across the street I was concerned about, and I really appreciated the information and the responsiveness.
Like I typically do, I'm like, send me that person's name.
I want to reach out and thank them.
And when she sent me the information, it was a PS3.
You know, so from a community perspective, she interpreted it as a police officer.
Regardless, she got the service that she needed.
She got it in a timely fashion.
And it's really proven to be a significant program.
At the same time, it's a program that we have leaned into over the last year and really had to shore up.
And that's once again not on them.
That's on us as an organization.
I'm proud to say we've created— they now have SOPs, they now have metrics for their work to be measured by, they have scheduled training occurring this week for the first time.
Yes, we have not provided them with adequate support and training, and we've been doing that now this past year.
So putting this forward has certainly weighed heavy on me.
These calls that they typically take include cold theft reports.
They assist on non-injury crashes, traffic control, lower acuity service requests.
Thank you.
Community outreach.
It's important to know that these calls do not go away.
I'm not going to tell Portlanders that we're not going to do those things.
What I can tell you is that the— excuse me— the example I used earlier where a person had their license plate stolen and they had a response in a timely, appropriate manner, it could be delayed significantly.
And that this new model of prioritizing only the highest priority calls and restructuring It could be a day or 2 before we're able to get to that.
In essence, for some of these calls that they handle, they may go away because of the fact that the people are frustrated.
We may see a decrease in calls.
We've seen an increase in calls for service over the last year, which I attribute to a growing sense of trust and connectivity and confidence in the police bureau.
So more people are calling us than they have last year, and we're providing that higher level of service.
This will certainly have an impact on being able to provide that.
So we'll have officers focusing on the high priority stuff, and then we're going to be looking at ways to, you know, whether it be online reporting, whether it be officers that might be able to take reports over the phone, maybe grouping these lower priority calls at certain times of the day.
So one potential thing we're considering is overnight we would not be able to get to those types of calls.
We would group them in the morning, and then in the morning hours trying to set a staffing model that allows us to get to those calls during daytime hours, et cetera.
So we will be adjusting, but the work will still need to happen.
The staffing impact on the screen is the loss of about 34 FTEs.
It's about 80% of the program.
Given the good work that they've done, this does not mean that it lessens the impact, but it's probably more of about a 60% cut versus an 80% cut because of the restructuring and the new expectations and metrics that we're using.
Those that remain, I anticipate, will continue to perform at a high level.
So I wouldn't say it's an exact 80% cut to overall service, probably more like a 60% cut.
Either way, it's still significant.
There are some vacancies right now.
There's 4 vacancies.
So the latest information I have, and once again, that's changing fairly rapidly, but probably be about 30 or so that would be laid off.
Once again, this is a prioritization decision that we made in an attempt to be able to focus on our life safety calls.
Next slide, please.
Reduced technology and fleet.
These are challenging because the way that we reduce these costs is to eliminate the equipment associated with them.
So as you can imagine, the Police Bureau has a significant footprint in both of these areas.
So we'll be looking at reducing the replacement cycles for our mobile data commuters and equipment.
We will have less availability for backup when things go down.
We'll be looking at phones and do we need everybody to have a phone?
Do we need everybody— do we need laptops for investigations?
You know, we're going to be really diving into this.
This is an exercise we've done in the past.
It's probably good for us to do because there is always the possibility of mission creep.
Thank you.
And we will be diving into looking for ways to reduce that.
And by turning that equipment in, it will reduce the amount that we are charged by technology services.
So we see some potential savings there.
The fleet side is a lot more complicated.
I don't know if you spent any time trying to navigate the fleet world, and this is not a criticism of fleet services.
It is just a big, big animal to manage in the City of Portland, and the Police Bureau is a big part of that.
Yeah.
So we are going to be looking for ways to reduce our fleet costs.
Some examples of that would be to turn in vehicles that are not being used.
So I want to talk once again about a systems connection.
If we reduce the FT— the FTEs in PS3s, they drive a truck that's distinct and different from a police car.
If we go forward with that, we will have a number of vehicles that we can turn in that we will no longer be charged for.
The problem is that those vehicles are expensive to replace because they're outfitted for the work of the PS3.
They're well over $100,000.
If we turn them in and then a year from now or 2 years from now decide to reestablish or grow the program, we have to revisit that.
So we're in the process of working with Fleet because these are relatively new vehicles, because the program came online in 2020.
These are relatively new vehicles with low miles.
So we're trying to work with Fleet to see if we can find a place to maybe store them, not be charged to have them, but have them available should we look for an opportunity to restore the program.
This is true for many of our fleet costs.
Motorcycles are the same way.
Our traffic unit has experienced all the way from a complete removal of the traffic unit in 2020 and '21 to, you know, a restoration now where we have some motorcycles.
And so we're, we're looking at, do we actually get rid of vehicles?
There are some vehicles that we can and should get rid of.
We're going to probably be eliminating our ATVs, I would say, for example, which are a primary form, are only used at parades, events such as that.
And then we use them to patrol the Springwater corridor.
But they're outdated.
They cost a significant amount of money to maintain.
So if we get rid of the ATVs, that's going to eliminate or at least reduce our ability to respond.
Thank you.
As effectively and in a proactive way on the Springwater Corridor.
We would obviously still take calls for service.
Just the final piece about both of these is that a reduction in these really are— fleet and technology are enabling systems, and when they're constrained, the same number of officers produces less output per shift.
We have several positions because we're 24/7 that are on call, so we have vehicles assigned to on-call positions.
If we reduce those number of vehicles, now we have to create transition points where the officer or detective who's going off call can meet with the person who's going on call.
They can switch their gear and get a new car.
It seems like a small inconvenience, and it is as we face a massive budget shortfall and the potential of people losing their jobs, but it also will reduce the time available in small increments, which over a large organization adds up.
To greater inefficiencies.
And so we are looking at a variety of ways to reduce both our technology and our fleet costs.
There are no direct FTE reductions associated with this, and it's a work in progress.
I'm taking on the responsibility for this.
Candidly, I'm not 100% sure we can find $3.4 million worth of savings in technology and fleet, but that's something that I'll have to figure out.
In the next fiscal year.
These are projected estimates both by my team and, and by the bureaus that, that we work with.
Next slide, please.
Operational overtime.
I want to start with some good news.
Portland Police Bureau has reduced its overtime in the last 2 years under my command by 22% when you take out unplanned events.
If you add in unplanned event response, We've reduced our overtime by 14%.
I'm proud of that number.
That demonstrates a strong commitment by the organization and a buy-in to understand the importance of fiscal accountability and responsibility and continue to see improvement in that.
With that being said, this operational overtime cut is about 20,000 hours and is going to be reducing primarily our ability for backfilling patrol staffing.
Thank you.
Traditionally, right now, when we're short, we have to— we hire for maybe a 10-hour shift or an 8-hour shift.
We're going to be evaluating maybe to go to 6-hour shifts as a possibility.
We will be really taking a deep dive into the metrics and see, okay, when are the highest likely call numbers?
This isn't unlike the exercise Chief Johnson went through with fire and determining where is the least amount of risk to remove fire engine from, we're going to be doing the same thing, knowing that everything's unpredictable.
The Multnomah Athletic Club attack happened at 3:15 in the morning.
That's typically one of our least staffed times, and we'll probably be even less staffed in this new model with the reduction in overtime, which, if an event like that occurs, will certainly demand, you know, essentially all on-duty resources to be able to respond until it can be contained and we can bring out other experts to help manage and process the scene.
We anticipate this to also directly impact, once again, the calls for service that are below the high priority ones.
We are looking carefully to see what this can do to investigations, possibly delaying the ability to do follow-up, serve search warrants.
Much of the work that we do in support of ceasefire requires surveillance requires observations of people for long periods of time to be able to create the safest possible environment to take them into custody and, and to locate them.
So we are going to be evaluating all of that as we go forward.
I know that overtime can sometimes be seen as a bad word.
I do not see it as such.
I see overtime as a necessary cost associated with a 24/7 public safety organization.
If every single police officer and detective, if every single person came to work every single day at all times, we would still need overtime to function in the Portland Police Bureau.
We estimate about $800,000 just in court costs alone.
We're working with District Attorney Vasquez to see if we can reduce that, but we have, you know, those kind of costs associated as well as others.
We also know because the police bureau is not properly staffed and resourced that We are intentionally absorbing overtime costs because even if everyone comes to work, you're still going to have people that are going to be on vacation, they're going to call in sick, they're going to have injuries, they're going to have training, which immediately puts us in a deficit.
So although I am very much aware of the overtime impact and I don't believe that sustaining an organization on overtime is fiscally responsible or healthy for the organization, in practical terms, I believe we've been doing a good job in addressing this, and we will be looking for ways to do a better job.
I do want to highlight that last year I made a heavy emphasis on our mission-based work, which is dependent upon overtime, and that continues to be the case.
But another thing that I'm very proud of is I have seen our precincts take on individual initiative to do this mission-based work with on-duty resources.
Thank you.
Some examples of that, Central Precinct has been focusing some efforts in some drug missions and so forth.
They've been using on-duty resources.
We have a sergeant out in East Precinct on night shift who's been taking both coaches and their trainees and working areas around 122nd and Burnside, around the bottle drop, around some of the issues out there in East Portland.
The other night we had a street takeover pop up out on the north end, and the sergeant on duty recognized that this was a priority for me and a priority for us and marshaled resources from around the bureau.
And we had the plane up, and once again, seeing speeds at over 100 miles an hour on Marine Drive, we were able to maintain separation, vector in our resources after they went to ground, and make safe, appropriate arrests for that and disrupt these street takeovers.
These things are happening with on-duty resources, and I'm really proud to see that.
When I started in September of '23, there were a number of articles how we were observing street takeovers, and now we're engaging as just one example.
So we will still be dependent upon mission-type work.
We're doing a tremendous amount of stuff around retail theft right now that is grant-based, so that will continue until that grant runs out.
But in terms of overall mission-based work, it will certainly be impacted both by the reduction in overtime, as well as our reduction in EM&S, which provides equipment and support for, once again, the vehicles and things that we use during that time.
And obviously, the conversation around public order around this.
Councilor Kanal asked last year, as we review the last year, there are a number of unexpected events that occur in the City of Portland that the Police Bureau has never been directly budgeted Rose Festival is an example.
Rose Festival costs the police bureau about $400,000 with both, you know, whether it's moving floats, whether it's parade security, whether it's just, you know, providing support to the increased amount of tourism that we see.
And so these are unexpected costs that we, with Rose Festival, we expect, but they're not specifically budgeted.
So when I say unexpected events, it's— that would be one.
Okay.
The great work that Heather Davis and the Timbers are doing at Providence Park.
You know, they hire security for the inside of the stadium, and yet, you know, you can't put 30,000, 35,000 people up there and not have a community impact.
And the Police Bureau is very much committed to seeing those kind of events be successful.
I think they're great for the city.
I couldn't name a single song from a performer they've had yet, but I will tell you that I'm a big promoter of the work that they're doing.
Thank you.
And so we will be providing that support.
That's not something that's budgeted, but it's something I believe is good for the city safety-wise.
Sunday parkways, marathons, some of these things that occur, there is some offsetting costs because of overtime paid to officers through contracts.
But then oftentimes the police bureau is expected to take on some of these additional costs to make sure that we have a safe environment.
And then finally, you know, the events of the last year, I don't know any of us could have predicted.
The intensity or the behavior of the federal law enforcement.
And I feel confident in our decision-making around the application of resources in the South Waterfront as we have really become a national leader in the area of public order management, crowd science, dialogue liaison officers.
We just hosted a national conference last 2 weeks for 3 days where we had officers and agencies coming in from around the country As really we are on the cusp of, I think, resetting how public order events are managed, and Portland is certainly the leader of that.
But those all factor into overtime and unanticipated events.
Next slide, please.
This would reduce our administrative staffing.
We're looking at a loss of 12 FTE.
I mentioned earlier about ongoing vacancies.
Thank you.
The 2 primary programs we're looking at reducing is our Police Administrative Support Specialist, another acronym, PASS.
We're nothing if we don't have acronyms.
We had PS3s earlier.
We now have our PASSs.
Our PASSs play a critical role.
They process reports, do data entry, case documentation.
They support investigation with records transcription, file management.
They coordinate subpoenas, court scheduling, legal documentation.
They serve as a front-facing staff for calls, public inquiries, and unit support.
They maintain compliance record systems and daily bureau operations, et cetera, and more.
They keep the bureau functioning by handling critical administrative and coordination work across all units.
Right now, we're proposing the elimination of 5 of these positions, 4 of which are currently vacant.
So at present day, I learned just as of the last couple days that this would require the layoff of 1 PASS position.
The vacancies have remained.
As you're aware, the city's been under a hiring freeze over the last several months, so we have some vacancies there that we, that we haven't pursued to fill in respect for the city's attempt to try and make the budget work.
And so this would be a layoff of one PASS person, but it would be 5 positions total.
The other is our desk clerks.
You know, once again, to sound a little bit old, I mean, when I started, cops manned the desk 24 hours a day, 24/7.
And so we moved several years ago to a civilian staffing model, which I firmly believe is the right one.
They provide front counter support, phone support for the public, oftentimes in sensitive and high-stress situations.
I would challenge any of us to have the patience to sit at the front desk of some of our precincts and be the first one to receive the sometimes ire of people that are disappointed in their service to the City of Portland.
They do amazing work under tremendous strain and with patience and clarity.
They access and relay confidential law enforcement information to support officers' calls for service.
They have access to all the things that we do.
They use our LEDS system region.
They do research.
They retrieve and share critical information.
They handle inquiries, complaints, walk-in requests.
With a really a focus on de-escalation and customer service.
This is one of our only front-facing programs aside from a patrol car, you know, getting— calling a 911.
They perform also administrative support while managing multiple tasks amidst their interruptions.
The East Precinct out on 107th and Stark and the North Precinct at MLK and Killingsworth are staffed Monday through Friday day shift.
The Justice Center Precinct Desk is staffed 24/7.
Given the complexity of that building and the access needed for 24, because we have 24/7 operations in that building as well.
And so this proposal would close, eliminate the 7 desk clerks, 2 of which are vacant, so 5 total.
And this would close the North and East Precincts, so affecting neighborhoods primarily in Districts 1 and 2.
Thank you.
The point here is a couple things.
One, I mentioned earlier about the officer work and how we're not going to say we're not going to do these things.
And the reason that's important to me is 'cause I feel strongly as a public servant, we have to provide, if somebody has a request for service, we have to do our best to try and provide it.
The administrative work, on the other hand, is more position-specific.
And one of the things that I'm highly sensitive to is that we cannot take this administrative work and ask it to be done by the sworn side of the house.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for the role of labor and the lanes that we all fill.
And to say we're just going to stop doing this work and have an officer or a sergeant taken on is not the case.
What we will have to do to absorb these losses will be looking at people that are in similar related positions and, you know, thin the soup, spread them around potentially more.
We have both the PASS classification and the senior PASS classification.
Thank you.
To maybe help offset some of that, the loss of the past.
But frankly, this is an example where some of these things will just no longer happen.
This is a visible representation of these cuts.
By closing a precinct, people will no longer have access to the community rooms.
They'll no longer have access outside, particularly in these districts, aside from calling 911 from a police response unless they want to come downtown.
But I anticipate there will be a number of things that we will just stop doing administratively that I outlined earlier as we move forward.
Our professional staff really are sort of the— I like to say, you know, if you think of a police department as an egg, the shell is that visible uniform piece, but the inside that supports it is really our professional staff.
And we're hollowing out that shell, which obviously weakens the effectiveness of the organization, but staying in line with our priority to be able to respond to life safety calls first.
These administrative duties can either wait or be eliminated while we continue to make sure we're on scene and, and protecting life safety.
Next slide, please.
Our Victim Services Unit— this is comprised of one supervisor and 8 advocates.
We currently have I believe as of yesterday, I think we have 4 vacancies.
So we are going to be eliminating 2 vacancy positions.
So this will not require the layoff of any personnel.
We will be reducing a couple vacancies.
Once again, we've had vacancies because of the hiring freeze.
I was in the Detective Division when we hired our very first 2 advocates.
I was part of that process.
One of them who's still with us today, many years later.
They play a huge role.
Thank you.
Support for being able to provide that bridge between our investigators and our victims.
They make sure that there's better timely follow-up.
They connect victims to services.
They're a great support during these critical moments.
Multnomah County does have victim services support, both through the DA's office and otherwise, but those are typically post-indictment.
Those are on the back end.
Our victim services advocates really step in at the very beginning.
Thank you.
At a critical time when the investigation is fresh and new and provide that pathway.
Next slide, please.
This is a one-time reduction in the payout budget.
So City Budget Office, as you know, predicts that based upon looking back over several years, that anticipated retirements payouts will be somewhere around $3.5 million.
They had originally budgeted $5.5 million.
That's a reduction.
So if the numbers stay true and that is the case, this should be something that we can absorb.
Obviously, if for some reason there's a mass exodus and we see a tremendous amount of retirements, that's gonna change that.
There is no '27 pay period lookback in the next fiscal year.
The next one is not till October of '27.
So we have a year ahead of us where we should see fairly normal levels of separation.
I will tell you that once again, I'm proud of the fact that we've seen Some higher retention rates.
We're seeing some good numbers in our recruits that are remaining.
So we're tracking forward.
Councilor Green's, I don't know if it was a budget note ordinance, I can't remember all the language, but the money that was provided over the last year, we've put to good use.
April was our highest number of applicants we've seen in, I think, almost a decade or about 7 or 8 years.
And this year we will net A high number of officers.
I'm going to share a little information early, but I'm anticipating with our June hires that we will hit or come close or even possibly exceed our hiring goal of 84 officers this year.
We put together a hiring plan last June, the mayor and city administrator supported, of hiring 21 officers a quarter, and I believe we're going to meet that objective and hope to continue that going into the next year.
Next slide, please.
These are some staffing forecasts that are out there.
This model assumes about 30 retirements in the month of May.
We know that it's a 27-pay-period month.
It's a little bit inconsistent in the fact that we're probably going to see more like 40-plus, but we also are doing— allowed for a moderate number of retire-rehires to offset that loss.
So we probably have about 40 to 45 going out the door.
Officially retiring, but we probably have about 30 that are actually separating from the organization.
But we've had some in the retire pre-retire program already say they're not going to participate.
But when the retirements exceed projections, much like they're doing this year, we see a greater strain on existing staff, increased reliance on overtime.
And that's why really the hiring pace is essential, that we not be able— that we not fall behind, that we continue to be able to move forward.
And you can see by the chart, overall, we're trending in the right direction.
Next slide, please.
This is something that's, you know, we've seen in similar slides.
Once again, appreciative of the model that— and the leadership that fire and both fire and BOEC have shown, that as we continue to be able to hire and fill positions, we see less of a reduction on overtime.
Like in that top bullet point, you know, 46 hours— 46,000 hours less is the number that we're particularly proud of.
We started May 1st with only 48 vacancies in the officer ranks.
Last year at that time, we had 83.
Now, once again, we're seeing some retirements this month, so that's going to dip down, but that is an indication, I think, of the health of the organization and the direction the organization's going positively.
And finally, you know, I don't know that it's— yeah, in closing.
So just finally, you know, taken together, these reductions are gonna make us fewer resources responding to some of those lower priority calls, place a greater demand on some of our sworn officers, and reduce some of that internal capacity for sustaining system operations.
The immediate impacts probably will be around response times, front desk closures, and staffing flexibility.
Others over time will probably be around training, organizational capabilities, system reliability, and liability exposure.
These are structural reductions, but as I said at the beginning, you know, we are committed to doing our part to make sure that the city achieves a balanced budget.
And this, as difficult as these recommendations are, I believe that they're appropriate for what was asked of us.
Thank you.
To meet this expected cut.
Thank you very much.
Jamie Dunphy 59:02 - 59:03
Thank you, Chief.
Raymond C. Lee 59:04 - 1:00:27
And I just want to add one little closing statement in this as well before we move to questions.
And I just want to emphasize that this proposed budget reflects challenging but disciplined choices in a constrained fiscal environment.
Our focus has been clear: to protect core emergency responses, maintain operational readiness across the service area, and preserve the community-based prevention and alternative response strategies that are critical to Portland's long-term safety.
Public safety is not defined by one bureau, one program, R1 response model.
It is the collective work of prevention, intervention, emergency response, and accountability and partnership.
I want to thank the public safety team, the bureau directors, sworn and civilian employees, frontline responders, and community partners who we don't talk a lot about but do a tremendous amount of work with us, who continue to serve this city Every single day.
With that, uh, we appreciate council's partnership throughout this process, and we're prepared to answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy 1:00:28 - 1:00:44
Thank you, City Administrator.
All right, colleagues, uh, it is 10:30.
We're going to take a break at 11, so we have time for some questions.
So folks, feel free to jump in the queue.
I'm asking colleagues to try and, uh, keep it to 5 minutes, but you're welcome to jump back in the queue afterwards.
Vice President Clark, take us away.
Olivia Clark 1:00:46 - 1:03:26
Thank you, Council President.
I hope you can hear me through the mask, um, and I hope I, I last.
Um, first of all, I, I appreciate the comments of, um, Raymond Lee.
I understand what you're saying.
I understand the disciplined approach, and I appreciate the, uh, bureau's effort to implement these directives.
I understand from what you've said today that it's a very complex budget.
There's a lot of interconnectivity that I don't think I fully understood until I heard you address that today, Chief Day.
But if you talk to my constituents, they are— they cannot believe that why public safety is not our number one priority in this city, that it is a core function of our city.
They cannot believe that we're putting response times at risk.
I hear about this all the time, and I'm very concerned that this budget is a violation of our promise to keep Portland safe, and it really risks our going backwards.
We've done a tremendous job in revitalizing the city, and you in the audience are a key part of that, and I appreciate your being here today.
All the people who put their lives on the line every day for me and for all of the city.
So I just feel like we are violating this promise.
It's a common sense issue, and I will do everything I can in the next week or so to try to restore some of these, some of these cuts.
And I appreciate your egg analogy.
I think we got into some of the yolk today, and I really appreciate your explaining the complexity of this.
Thank you.
I do have a couple of questions about the external materials and services.
I think this is one of the hardest things for us to get our head around because it seems somewhat intangible.
My own personal perspective is that it's some of these investments that help our bureau become a more progressive, forward-looking bureau, that kind of training that you're talking about.
And I don't—.
Yes.
I guess I have a question for you.
Am I on the right track in thinking that way?
But also, is there any kind of risk with the federal government, the Department of Justice, anything like that, if we don't keep up with our external materials and services?
Bob Day 1:03:26 - 1:05:26
Well, certainly we're under obligation of the settlement agreement to meet those basic standards, and we will continue to do that.
Those, we don't have any choice.
As the federal government, which of course I hesitate to speculate on anything right now related to their operation, but they do look at, you know, whether or not we're ever going to be able to operationalize grants and resources that are provided to us.
And so there could be some risks there.
I have not— I think that's a good point.
Dove into that specifically.
What I will tell you is that we're mandated now by state law, and we have achieved accreditation at the state level.
So we will continue to meet the state-level accreditation requirements.
Really what this is, is a lessening of our ability to exceed the basics.
We place a high value on external training.
So external training is expensive.
When we travel to other locations, conferences and events, oftentimes we're in high demand to speak at these and present our learnings.
We will be placing a strong reduction on that, probably limited to maybe only in-state.
And the downside to that is, you know, it's a big country with a lot of different policing organizations and a lot of things to learn from both communities and law enforcement.
I always say when we go somewhere, You always learn something.
You may learn that we don't ever want to do things that way, but we always learn something.
And I'm concerned that we will become more insular in our thinking and more dependent upon sort of the old ways of doing stuff and not being able to stay as consistent.
One of the efforts I want to make is to try and bring training to us.
That's both fiscally responsible because we can train more people versus sending them.
But once again, that costs and— I'm sorry, Councilor Smith.
This EM&S would be to pay for that.
So, um, I would anticipate a, you know, a reduction in the quality, um, but we will continue to meet the basic standard.
Olivia Clark 1:05:27 - 1:05:57
Well, thank you for that.
I'm really interested in investments that continue to make us a progressive, uh, gold standard bureau, which I think we're, we're, um, working towards.
Um, you mentioned that, uh, long ago there was this 5-minute 911 or response time goal.
Can you refresh my memory where we are now and what would it take for us to get back to that?
And I think this involves the cut in the P3s, which I'm very concerned about.
Bob Day 1:05:58 - 1:08:55
Yeah, well, I can give you the, you know, the latest numbers for call response times and We've been averaging this year for our priority calls right around 16 to 17 minutes to get to a priority call.
Now, one way to look at it is they were as high as 20, 21 a few years ago.
So we're tracking in the right direction.
But if you go back extensively, they were more, you know, in the 5, 6, 7, 8 range.
There's a couple things that make this difficult to capture explicitly because the world has changed so much in terms of what we're asking our police officers to do today.
The types of calls we're going to, for example, we've seen over the last few years an increased number of shooting calls, although the good work that we're doing in partnership with OVP has brought those down.
But shooting calls require more officers, so they're tied up for a longer period of time.
That impacts response times.
We're seeing more calls for service related to mental health and addiction.
So those are time-consuming, complex, obviously bring a significant amount of challenges.
We emphasize to our officers the importance of time and the utilization of time to de-escalate scenarios.
Recently, we got a call to a home, a group home with a young man who was threatening with a knife, and he was out in the street threatening with a knife.
Oh my God.
The officers arrived on scene through the use of a drone, were able to observe this young man who was in the street by himself.
They were able to coordinate with the group home, and the group home was willing to have him return, but they couldn't have him return if he was waving a knife around.
So by observing him safely from a distance, the officers working with the group home were able to see him eventually put the knife down and then guide the workers back in.
And have him return back to the group home.
Not a single police officer ever interacted with him.
You know, years ago, we would've been dependent upon driving up on that scene, challenging him, et cetera.
But that also is much more time-consuming for patients to wait, you know, to wait for him to come to his own realization, et cetera, et cetera.
So we are seeing more complexity in the calls for service, which are also impacting response times.
But at the end of the day, it really is about butts in seats, and it's really about having, you know, officers to be able to respond in a timely fashion.
And, you know, those numbers have gone down historically, you know, over the last 20 years.
I don't say this lightly because this isn't really a problem that this council has created.
This is a problem that this council has inherited.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm grateful the mayor and I have spent a great deal of time over the last 18 months and he's challenged me regularly in this area of response times, and we will continue to see ways to impact it.
Olivia Clark 1:08:55 - 1:09:09
Well, I appreciate that.
Have you done any kind of an estimate of what these proposed cuts on both the desk staff and the P3s will do to harm our response time?
Bob Day 1:09:10 - 1:09:48
Well, my speculation— and it is speculation because it hasn't happened yet— but my speculation is that they will go up.
That, you know, because those people who were getting that service are now going to have to rely upon a different resource, which is only the officers, unless we, you know, off-ramp them to some of these other programs.
But primarily, the people that are utilizing PS3 services and our desk clerks are looking for a connection to the law enforcement, you know, aspect of it.
It's not, it's, it's not always going to be something that we're going to be able to pass along to PSR or whatever.
But I'm anticipating those cuts to potentially cause an increase in response times.
Olivia Clark 1:09:48 - 1:10:52
Okay, well, maybe that was a dumb question, but I think that the people that I represent in District 4 are very concerned about response times.
And I just wonder, and you don't have to answer this today, but what would it take for us to get back to 5 minutes?
How do we have to grow, you know, different segments of the bureau to get to reach that goal?
Um, let's see, I did have other questions.
Um, on the neighborhood safety side, um, on Safe Blocks, I know we've talked about Safe Blocks before, you and I, um, and your team's doing a great job.
And I have, um, talked to you about how can we grow that and bring back crime prevention across the city.
I have neighborhood associations that are wanting to be trained, that are wanting to be mobilized, and I don't think they've been able to access those and get that kind of training.
Can you speak to that a little bit?
I understand that you're preserving this, but I'm interested in growth as well.
Stephanie Howard 1:10:53 - 1:12:06
Thank you, Councilor Clark.
Yes, I think our SafeBlocks team, there's a lot of potential there of what, what they can do if thank you.
I will say, I mean, I think part of the way that their work is assigned right now is tied to our federal Byrne grant.
So it's affiliated with 3 specific neighborhoods that we have to focus on.
And so that's why the current structure is the way that it is.
And then we've got our at-large teams who are working really hard to try to bring these services to all of the other areas across the city.
But I think, as you mentioned, we've spoken about the SafeBlocks team's efforts to revamp and restore the neighborhood watch type of system and give that a good revitalization and modernize that.
And they've been working really hard on that.
I think the budget has— the budget this time has obviously taken a lot of resources well, I appreciate that.
Olivia Clark 1:12:06 - 1:12:21
My District 4 has actually— the neighborhoods have developed a public safety committee, and I know they're going to be reaching out to you to get more assistance in training the neighborhoods on crime prevention.
Well, I'll just close by saying I'm not really happy about this.
Angelita Morillo 1:12:21 - 1:12:21
I think it's a good idea.
Olivia Clark 1:12:21 - 1:12:59
Thank you.
These cuts.
As I mentioned, I'm going to be looking for some restorations where possible.
You'll hear more about that later when we go through our budget amendment process.
But I just really appreciate your presentation today.
It really— it went into a lot of depth.
I think we can appreciate the complexity of the department and how one cut here affects something else here.
It's all related.
And I appreciate that.
I do believe this is our number one function as local government is public safety.
It is a core function and we need to do everything we can to grow the service.
So thank you so much.
Jamie Dunphy 1:13:00 - 1:13:02
Thank you, Vice President Clark.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick 1:13:03 - 1:13:59
Thank you, Mr. President.
Chief Day, you know what I'm going to ask you.
It worries me when you say that when we get rid of the PS3s, the work will shift to sworn officers.
And it worries me when you say that you're not gonna say that certain work is not gonna get done.
Because if the PS3s are doing the work of sworn officers, they're more— I mean, the sworn officers are doing the work of PS3s, the sworn officers are more expensive.
And then there's an argument that, well, to be more efficient and make sure more work would get done, you should actually lay off some sworn officers to keep some PS3s.
What I'd like to hear is that if we lay off sworn officers, the things that will not get done are more important than the things that will not get done if you lay off PS3s.
And also, frankly, more of an acknowledgment that some things simply will not get done.
So with that, you could— we could take about an hour with that answer probably.
And I've got a couple more questions, but could you give me your initial response to that?
Bob Day 1:14:00 - 1:15:09
Yeah, Councilor.
And I have so much respect for that framing.
And maybe this is just a mental block that I have, but as a public servant, first and foremost, I struggle with telling Portlanders that their police department is not going to be able to at least attempt to respond to their need for service.
I mean, just at my core, I have a hard time when somebody calls and asks to say no.
Now, in reality, you're probably more accurate than I care to admit.
There will— my maybe a little bit lack of transparency is my expectation that people will just simply give up.
I think that's a little bit of a stretch.
And stop calling because they won't be receiving the service in a timely enough manner.
And that is also a hurtful way to see an outcome occur.
But you're right, we could spend an hour on this conversation.
At the end of the day, I don't disagree.
I don't have a specific call right now to tell you this is what's going to stop, but I do believe that— I think that's a good point.
The impacts that you're highlighting do exist.
Steve Novick 1:15:10 - 1:15:21
Can you say, if we said, you know what, the PS3s cost 2/3 as much as the officers, so you should cut more sworn officers and fewer PS3s, what do you think the impact of that would be?
Bob Day 1:15:22 - 1:16:45
Well, I think that would have a direct impact on life safety.
As I mentioned earlier, the role of a police officer is unique in both its, you know, training and expertise and its ability to enforce the laws.
And at the end of the day, we still have a responsibility towards the preservation of life and those investigations that have the most profound impact.
And so a reduction in police officer positions is going to really be more challenging for us to be able to continue to meet that.
Our PS3s, from a hiring standpoint, go through a similar type process of hiring.
Okay.
So they essentially go through a police officer background process piece, but we can get them up to speed quicker to provide the service.
So as we know, the police officers takes about 18 months or so forth.
But my concern would be that we're also talking about a department that already by any measure, whether it's calls for service, whether it's response times, whether it's in clearance rates, whether it's per capita, Whatever national standard you use to evaluate the number of police officers that we have for a city this size, we're woefully behind.
So to me, cutting more from that position just creates greater amount of risk.
Steve Novick 1:16:46 - 1:17:25
Thank you.
And I wanna say I really appreciate your saying that police officers are not gonna take over the work of the PASSs.
I actually know a PASS personally, and she was describing her work to me and it was like, okay, No officer is going to do data entry to make sure we know where the evidence is.
That's just not going to happen.
Yeah.
Question for Stephanie, but also both of you.
I mean, when we talk about the homicides and the shootings declining, I know they're declining faster than the national average, but they also went up during the pandemic faster than the national average.
So, I mean, are we now doing, compared to other cities, doing better than we were in 2019 when you look at homicides and shootings?
Stephanie Howard 1:17:25 - 1:18:47
Yeah, if I— I'll take a first stab at that.
Yeah, I, I think the answer is yes.
I think we are only now reaching a point where research and data can give us enough information to analyze that.
But what I can tell you is that in our efforts, based on the data and the problem analysis that was developed, identifying our highest risk factors, so helping us identify those individuals that need intervention not prevention, but intervention.
We have seen the most significant reduction with that population.
And, and so our efforts have had specifically that, um, that correlation, uh, and, and seen that reduction.
And I can also tell you that with the national average, after implementing the ceasefire program, which we did in mid-2023, um, in after, you know, near just at the, the height of our, our 200% spike in 2022.
That is what is the trend here.
So when there was a recent report that came out, I'm happy to share that, that showed the national average in just reductions across, you know, major cities is about 29%.
But in cities like ours where we implemented a specific violence intervention strategy, those are the, those are the So it's not just us.
Steve Novick 1:18:47 - 1:19:09
That's, that's really— I did not know that.
That's really good to hear.
Yeah.
Finally, Chief, I think that you've got a hard sell when you tell people that overtime is not a bad word because people think that overtime is necessarily an expense.
And I just want to refer you to a song that I'm sure you are familiar with, and I think that in the future you might point out that Bachman-Turner Overdrive assumed that taking care of business occasionally does require work and overtime.
Bob Day 1:19:10 - 1:20:48
Thank you very much.
Yes, and just to highlight, and I really want to compliment the work that Stephanie and Ceasefire has been doing, Sierra Ellis and others, to the point to where when we were early on in these budget discussions, the Police Bureau agreed to take additional cuts to support the work they're doing.
And I believe that's important because I spend a lot of time with these communities that are directly impacted by violence, particularly communities of color.
And as I sit across from them, I couldn't say in good faith that this— because I say, I regularly say how it is a system.
I think C.A.
Lee's comments are spot on.
It's not one or any other individual program.
It's all of us working together.
And so part of this cut package is our willingness to provide support for ceasefire.
In full transparency, that was early on in the process.
I didn't know that we were going to see the level of cuts.
And so, but I really believe strongly in seeing a collaborative effort for us to be able to reduce this impact on our community.
And we're trending in the right direction.
Final thing is, you know, from 2014 to 2019, the highest homicides we ever had was 32, and that was in 2019.
We averaged, you know, more like 25 to 30.
You know, since 2020, it's been 54, 89, 94, 71, 68.
I mean, Wow.
We are woefully shy from what Portland knows it's capable of being, and we have a lot of work to do.
This year we're at 6.
This time last year we were at 11.
Maybe this is the year where we'll start to turn the corner on that more significantly.
Stephanie Howard 1:20:48 - 1:21:23
And if I could just add one additional thing, I do not want to tout our great progress without also a note of caution because it is fragile.
There are, you know, currently conflicts happening that can change the tide of that data in a moment.
And so the teams that we are working with and the community members that we have partnerships with are working incredibly hard, even with the reduction in the numbers now, to prevent those spikes which could inflame over a weekend, right?
Steve Novick 1:21:24 - 1:21:39
Actually, this reminds me of a question that you can— I think I'm out of my 5 minutes, so you could answer it offline.
Some of us are looking at amendments to restore some of the ceasefire money, and I'd want to know, would your priority be to restore the coordinator, to restore the EMS, or to restore the community grants money?
Stephanie Howard 1:21:41 - 1:21:58
Well, I think we can work with all of the cuts that we have right now and maintain our core services.
But I do think any priority but again, I think our teams can maintain our core services right now with the budget as proposed.
Jamie Dunphy 1:22:00 - 1:22:02
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green 1:22:02 - 1:23:34
Thank you, Council President.
First of all, Chief, I want to congratulate you on the birth of your first grandchild.
That's wonderful news.
My colleague from District 4 already kind of got into some of the concerns I was thinking about.
Related to the cuts to the sort of PS3s, the, you know, the admin staff that I think for our constituents, they're going to see that as reducing the overall capability and capacity, and then that translates into slower response times.
I'm also worried about that.
And you gave, you gave an answer to Councilor Clark that I think is helpful for me, but I just, I just need to register my concern that I'm already hearing from folks who say You know, hey, we can't get out because we have to prioritize for different reasons.
And I'm just worried that, you know, I know it's beyond your control, you're doing the best you can with the budget that's been— the guidance was given to you, but those custos PS3s I think are going to set us back.
And I appreciated hearing you say that we also have a double risk here on the fleet vehicle return, which is to say, well, these are new vehicles, they're Very serviceable.
And so I'm supposed to find $3.4 million.
How do I turn those in and then only have to come back and maybe buy them back later if we get a budget that supports the, you know, redeployment, so to speak, of PS3s?
And so I'm cautious of that myself.
And so what I'm— what I heard you say, though, is you've got the $3.4 million target that you need to find as a cut.
Bob Day 1:23:34 - 1:23:35
Yes.
Mitch Green 1:23:36 - 1:24:14
You're going to work to see how you can minimize that sort of a risk.
Is that a fair conclusion to draw from that?
Yes.
Okay.
I appreciate that.
And I think that's the right thing to do.
I'm curious about— I think most Portlanders are going to see closing precincts for walk-in service to be pretty unacceptable.
It's a core thing.
And so I'm curious to know Why people generally walk into a precinct?
Like, what— why are they there?
What sort of issues are they dealing with?
And what are we going to basically, um, produce for the community in terms of that anxiety by, by not having that service?
Bob Day 1:24:15 - 1:26:17
Yeah, that's a great question.
I'm going to be a little bit outside my comfort zone having not worked the front desk in a number of years, but from what I have observed and from what I've heard, I'll, I'll take a stab at it, but I can get a little bit more detail.
The big picture piece for me as a chief is it eliminates that human contact, right?
People don't generally reach out to the police bureau when things are going well.
They tend to see us as a resource on their toughest day.
And we had about 200,000+ calls for service last year.
I do not know the number of walk-ins we had, but people who walk in generally, not all the time, sometimes it is an emergency and it is a crisis, But generally have maybe a longer-term problem.
Maybe they're not looking for a necessary police intervention, but they're looking for a pathway to resolve a neighbor dispute.
Maybe they want to confidentially identify a drug house in their neighborhood and they don't want a police car coming to their house and talking to them, but they can stop by the precinct and say, hey, I see some suspicious activity down the street.
And then it is, it is a location.
Thank you.
Of safety.
I mean, we see oftentimes at the Justice Center where people come in, sometimes in the winter months, they just want to sit for a moment and get out of the weather, or maybe where they feel threatened and they know that they can go into this building and there's going to be a sense of safety and security for a brief period of time.
It really runs the gamut, but— and it weighs on me that these cuts, particularly as an advocate and a believer in East Portland, You know, the closing of that precinct is just one more step in the historical harm of not valuing really our community east of 82nd.
I've been out there a couple of times just in the last few weeks, and so that's not lost on me, as well as, you know, MLK.
So it's really that, on a high level, that human contact that provides opportunities and minimizes the dependence upon 911 or minimizes the dependence upon I'm so sorry, Councilor, if I might just add.
Stephanie Howard 1:26:18 - 1:26:30
I know that was a question for the chief, but just for a little additional— another example, our Office of Violence Prevention hosts community peace collaborative meetings twice a month at East Precinct and at North Precinct.
Mitch Green 1:26:30 - 1:26:32
Going to one of those soon in North.
Stephanie Howard 1:26:32 - 1:26:43
Exactly, yes.
So, so, you know, those are the types of community events that happen at, at police precincts as well.
And I just— not to throw you under the bus there, Chief, but just wanted to add that.
Bob Day 1:26:43 - 1:27:11
Thanks for the help.
I'm like, yeah, like friends like you.
Uh, and one of the things that was notifi— I was just mentioned to me that I'd forgotten.
I mean, people turn themselves into precincts.
You may find that hard to believe, but just a few weeks ago, um, we put out information on a homicide suspect and they turned themselves in at a precinct.
And that's, that's ideal.
Like, that's the safest, you know, family members are like, hey, you need to take care of this, we're going to take you down to the precinct, turn yourself in.
It's a safe environment.
It allows for least amount of risk.
So that is also an aspect.
Mitch Green 1:27:12 - 1:28:13
I appreciate those responses.
I mean, I suspect there's many councilors up here looking under the couch cushions to find a way to restore some of these classes of cuts.
We're hearing pretty loudly that people are concerned about that and the long-run consequences of such a thing.
I want to go back to the training budget question.
You know, last summer the bureau invested in some training from you know, professors who study protest movements and engage in crowd control practices with law enforcement in Europe with a certain degree of outcomes and success that we would find maybe ideal in the city of Portland and deal with challenges in the city of Portland.
And I sat in on one of those briefings, and I saw some of the folks who I recognize as being down there a lot having some engagement and dialogue with some of your officers.
Mm-hmm.
And I found that training to be promising and that sort of investment to be a good thing for the city to be doing.
Would these EMS cuts affect our ability to continue to invest in that kind of space?
Bob Day 1:28:14 - 1:28:30
Long-term, we're still— that program specifically was grant-funded, so we're still working off of that.
But yes, long-term, the maintenance of that will be impacted down the road.
I don't know when that grant expires, but it's, you know, coming to fruition here.
Then we will be taking on the responsibility for that.
Yes.
Mitch Green 1:28:30 - 1:29:03
Okay, that's helpful to understand.
So, um, I, I told, um, you know, Bob Causie at the time, like, that this is something that I support and I want to help to sort of work on ways to keeping that going.
So I guess I'll put a pin in that for future.
Um, and then finally, I just want to acknowledge that thanks for, um, you know, mentioning the Green Amendment from last time that provided the public safety set-aside.
Um, I've heard now from fire and also from police that that resulted in the ability to Do some recruiting that we might have had challenges with before.
So, uh, that was the intended purpose of that amendment.
So I'm glad to see that kind of ripple through public safety.
Bob Day 1:29:04 - 1:29:04
Yeah, thank you.
It did.
Mitch Green 1:29:06 - 1:29:06
Thanks.
I think that's it for me.
Jamie Dunphy 1:29:07 - 1:29:54
Thank you, Councilor Green.
I, I have myself in the queue.
Um, I, uh, Stephanie, I want to talk about the OVP, uh, community grant getting cut.
You know, I started my career in the David Douglas District doing gang prevention in a middle school.
I know that A lot of those, a lot of the best interventions are direct relationships.
And I know that this grant is funding sometimes peer mentors or adult mentors for at-risk youth.
How are you all working to focus on what this cut would look like to those groups that are serving kids right now?
And how are we trying to minimize potential?
I mean, like you know, right as we're going into summer, are we taking away their their role models or their peers or their support?
Structure and then sending them out into the streets.
How are we looking to communicate to our grantees?
Stephanie Howard 1:29:55 - 1:31:27
Yeah, no, I appreciate the question, Council President.
So for our process, we do these grants annually.
Right now we've basically got it broken down to spring break grants to help provide programming for kids while they're out of school, and then our longer term, we call them a Safer Portland grant, which is about a year-long grant.
And so we reopen them and reevaluate every year based on the data and the trends that we're seeing to identify the needs.
We also work really closely with partners at, you know, different organizations in the county to try to make sure that we're complementing efforts.
And I think we can do more along those lines.
That certainly is a goal of mine.
But all of that is to say that we try to prioritize where we're seeing the greatest need and help to build out our criteria accordingly.
Um, in, in terms of, you know, communicating what our grant capabilities may be in the next year, I think that's, that's part of what the discussion is now, of course.
But I think we again would be looking at our data and just working to try to maximize the amounts that we can get into the hands of community organizations that are working for those vulnerable and at-risk populations.
And we provide a process, or we rely on a process that's objective and using a panel to evaluate all applications, making sure that they are held against the needs that we are seeing and trying to meet based on what's happening at the time.
Jamie Dunphy 1:31:28 - 1:32:15
I appreciate that.
We've had a couple of really high-profile incidents involving violence and murder by young people in East Portland in the last couple of months here.
I, as I've said before from this dais, I really care about what what happens to kids between the hours of three o'clock and eight o'clock.
So I'm really concerned about this cut.
Chief, I had a question for you about you said you don't well maybe.
I was reading between the lines.
With the closure of the precincts, the walk-in ability to walk into the precincts, do we— we don't currently track how many visitors or how many people visit or how many people are served.
Do we?
I just want to know, like, the ballpark, the world of, you know, how this is going to affect folks in East Portland.
Bob Day 1:32:16 - 1:32:28
I don't have that number.
I'll get it back to you.
I'll share it with all of council.
My guess is that we do track that since we seem to track just about everything, but I don't want to put a ballpark on it, but I'll get that number back to you.
I'm sorry I didn't have that.
Jamie Dunphy 1:32:28 - 1:33:32
No problem.
I'd love that.
My other question is with regard to call responses.
And this is maybe less of a budget question.
It's a bit of a budget question because it's resource constraints.
But, you know, I was on a ride-along with the Entertainment Division about late last year, and there was a shooting.
Someone got shot in the hand.
Big scary incident.
Everybody showed up.
But for about an hour and a half, there were more than 10 The victim had left.
The person who shot had left.
The bar had sort of started to reopen.
Similarly, there was a fatal hit-and-run in my neighborhood, and a pedestrian getting out of his car was killed.
But there were 6 officers there for more than an hour.
6 units, 6 actual cars.
In a resource-constrained situation, how are we determining how many people should be on the scene?
I think that's a great question.
How do we— how is that decided?
I've had some critiques of people saying, you say you don't have enough officers, you have a big backlog of 30 calls you have to get to tonight, and then I see 10 officers sort of hanging around at a serious site, but I don't know what they're doing.
Mitch Green 1:33:32 - 1:33:33
Yeah.
Jamie Dunphy 1:33:33 - 1:33:38
How do we determine how many people go to a call and why we would need that many people?
Bob Day 1:33:38 - 1:35:56
Yeah, that's a great question that's baffled police leaders for decades because we have a minimum that we set.
For example, those priority calls that we talked about, Priority 1 calls that I mentioned earlier, of a minimum 2-person response.
So at the end of the day, that's 2 people should be able to go to just about any serious priority call.
And then officers use their discretion when they're on scene.
Do we need more?
It's human nature, and because police officers are problem solvers and then we want to help at our core, that—.
Excuse me—.
When we have larger incidents, it draws more people in.
And sometimes that's necessary, sometimes it's not.
I am constantly working with our supervisors on that very issue.
There's a couple things, I mean, we've done.
One, last year we, for the first time in the history of the Bureau that I'm aware of, put all sergeants in the room for one day of training.
And that was an attempt by me for them to hear from me in the morning.
We brought in an outside consultant during the day.
They had some panels in the afternoon of their own and then closing remarks emphasizing some of these very things that you're talking about.
That efficiency.
So we are constantly looking at ways to improve our efficiency, and I would absolutely be not accurate if I just said that, you know, all that time is time well spent when other things could be being done.
But I think it's also important to remember that time on those calls is also a form of wellness.
There's a form of decompressing.
To go from high priority to high priority, to witness a fatal accident, to To be involved at a scene where there's been a shooting, where there's been trauma, that impacts our members.
And sometimes they need that time to sort of decompress.
They need that time to be able to share with one another either about that experience or otherwise.
And I would be hesitant to move them on too quickly to the next crisis.
I have found that, you know, when the next crisis arrives, they tend to answer the call and move towards the gunfire.
But, but your point is well taken.
I do think there's efficiencies there.
Thank you.
We are working with our supervisors to be managing scenes more effectively, and we're working with our Strategic Services Division to make a determination— what do we really need at a scene for how long?
So, um, we will continue to— obviously, with, with these pressures, um, we will need to be even more diligent in that.
Jamie Dunphy 1:35:57 - 1:36:16
Thank you.
Um, colleagues, it is 11 o'clock.
We are about halfway through this.
I'm going to give us a restroom break.
I'd like everybody to please be back at 11:15, and Councilor Zimmerman will how about a little help?
Bob Day 1:36:16 - 1:36:25
Give us a little breeze.
I mean, you know, I'm trying to throw you some stuff about how much I love C-Spire OBD.
You're like, yeah, well, they're going to close it.
We're not going to be able to have our meetings there.
Angelita Morillo 1:36:31 - 1:36:57
There is no way to prove it.
Loretta Smith 1:36:57 - 1:36:57
Do you anticipate asking that question?
Jamie Dunphy 1:51:54 - 1:52:07
And we are coming back to order.
Thank you, folks.
Councilor Zimmerman, take us yes, sir.
Candace Avalos 1:52:07 - 1:52:08
Great.
Marvin Young 1:52:16 - 1:52:17
All right.
Eric Zimmerman 1:52:17 - 1:53:20
Hi, Chief.
Um, I wanted to talk a little bit about what you described in your presentation regarding some of the reductions in EMS.
And, uh, Councilor Clark alluded to this slightly, and I want to continue that line of discussion with respect to training.
I think a lot of people in our, in our world think that training is like taking an HR class.
For a lot of us, that's what going to a training might mean, but it's really different In your bureau and what that means, frankly.
So with respect to training to the bureau standard, the state standard on things like how often does an officer— how often is an officer in Portland Police Bureau required to qualify with their weapon or go through a defensive driving course or a tactical driving course?
Or I think about our SRT team.
So like what types of scenarios?
Olivia Clark 1:53:20 - 1:53:20
Yeah.
Mitch Green 1:53:20 - 1:53:21
Wow.
Eric Zimmerman 1:53:21 - 1:53:46
Does that team train?
When you say they train for 10 hours a month, one day, where do they go?
What do they do?
What types of things?
And how does that then relate to how they show up on the street?
I want to get really into what EMS is because it's not sticky notes and HR classes, and it's not just fuel.
There's more.
You guys use training and EMS in a way that I don't think most of us fully understand, not coming from the Bureau.
Bob Day 1:53:47 - 1:54:44
Yeah, I'll give you 3 quick examples.
One, our driving course for our recruits in the Advanced Academy.
That's something that we have to go pay for track time at and use.
We don't have the capability, so there's a substantial investment every Advanced Academy.
We will likely be reducing that or eliminating that to save money, which means our recruits will not be getting experience in high-speed driving, high-risk driving, things like that.
And all of our training is not just about driving, and we use our training to incorporate our values, our goals, our mission.
So we've come a long ways from you drive, you do defensive tactics, you shoot, you do this.
They are all now together with the— Director Rodriguez has done an amazing job out there at the training division, really bringing us into that combination of both that academic learning and that practical learning.
Another example would be to Councilor Green's comment about the dialogue officer.
Steve Novick 1:54:44 - 1:54:44
Yes.
Bob Day 1:54:47 - 1:56:21
As I mentioned already, that's a system.
So we have our dialogue officers, but we also have our RRT members, and we also have our incident commanders.
Our incident commanders need to go to training.
They need to go to incident command school.
So we can have the best dialogue liaison officers we've had funded through this grant, but, you know, in the coming months, we have incident commanders that are retiring.
We need to get new incident commanders up to speed.
We need to be able to send them to schools.
There's no EM&S money to send them to schools, and there's no EM&S money to bring and one other really salient example, which is just incredible timing.
Every year we have had our tactical team and our negotiation team, the entire component, take a few days and train as a group.
And that's a substantial investment, probably somewhere north of $50,000, which we anticipate having to put off this year.
Ironically, that training they did last year was An exercise in clearing a home that had the potential of having explosive devices in it.
And so the very exercise that they trained and practiced last year, they executed a week ago with the Multnomah Athletic Club event, both at the scene and then execution of the search warrant.
So, you know, obviously that's not always the case.
It doesn't always translate that way, but those are examples of, of of practical, both risks that we'll be taking on reducing that training, but also the bigger miss is the opportunity to bring people together to institute values, mission understanding, and, you know, to show how these things all connect with one another.
Eric Zimmerman 1:56:21 - 1:57:52
Okay, thank you for that.
I appreciate it.
I share some real concerns that I think you alluded to with respect to the junior nature of our force, right?
Less than 8 years, those COVID years, what training looks like.
And I think about how many years do you have to have under your belt to then put on sergeant stripes, which are our first line of leadership?
And so we're coming up on some of those folks who fall into that category, who had diminished training in their early years, are soon to be able to compete for our first line of leadership, which I consider a big part of enforcing your culture that you and your command staff are putting out there.
So I'm certainly kind of highlighting that as an area of pretty deep concern.
I wanna shift slightly to, you know, PPB, you have your vehicles serviced with our fleet and facilities, is that accurate?
Yes.
And so I consider you guys a customer, if you will, of another bureau in that sense.
Correct.
Do you know the last time, or has it occurred in recent era where there was an analysis done about whether or not you can get a better bang for your buck inside of Fleet and Facilities, or if you were to— many, many police departments across the state of Oregon go to the local dealership or what have you that services that Ford or that Chevy or whatever.
Have you ever had to go through that analysis to see, is Fleet and Facilities a better bang for the buck servicing your bureau?
Bob Day 1:57:53 - 1:58:05
No, we have not.
I have had recent discussions, both with the mayor and the city administrator, about you know, just overall fleet costs and looking at that.
But we haven't done that exercise to my knowledge.
I certainly am not aware of whether those exist.
Eric Zimmerman 1:58:05 - 1:58:48
I look at their internal rates that they get and I think it's about $74 million.
And boy, I wish I ran a mechanic shop for $74 million with the number of vehicles that we see in there.
But going a little further, The neighborhood response teams, if I were to look at the budget flatly, the neighborhood response teams are one of the things that I've worked with probably the closest and the most, both before elected and now.
It's about $6.3 million, but it has moved in from an administrative budget perspective.
The program, as best I can tell, still exists in whole, but it has moved under, from a budget perspective, under precincts and is no longer a special line item.
Is that an accurate statement?
Bob Day 1:58:48 - 1:58:53
I'm going to agree with that, but I'm going to look to Ginger to see if that move is correct.
Eric Zimmerman 1:58:54 - 1:59:31
Meaning your precinct commanders still have a neighborhood response team in each of the precincts that they get to use and work with us?
Okay, that's great news.
I really appreciate that.
Coming up to the end here, I just want to— I'm going to propose an amendment for $5 million, 2 different amendments, $2.5 million for 20 FTE authorizations for the patrol bureau or patrol line item.
And another $2.5 million amendment to the training division, uh, not associated with FTE, but to keep those training scenarios and events alive and well, uh, as best we can.
I know that's only about a 50% restore, uh, but between those 2 amendments, colleagues, I'm going to propose that $5 million amendment.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy 1:59:32 - 1:59:34
Thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos 1:59:35 - 2:00:59
All right, thank you.
Well, I want to start by responding to something that, um, City Administrator said in his closing statement, that public safety is more than one bureau and more than one program.
I agree with that.
But I also think that our values are reflected in our budgets.
And when I am looking at the actual distribution of cuts and investments in this presentation, I don't know that that implementation fully reflects that philosophy.
Because what I am seeing is that when difficult choices are made, prevention, behavioral health response, community intervention, and stabilization systems are still treated as more expendable than traditional enforcement infrastructure.
And at the same time, this presentation itself highlights major reductions in shootings and firearm homicides while pointing to the violence prevention and intervention strategies as part of that success.
So I think the tension that I'm trying to understand today is if we truly believe that public safety is broader than policing, are we building a budget that actually reflects that belief structurally?
Or Or are we still treating community safety investments as secondary systems that only get protected when resources are abundant?
So my first question is, how did the administration determine that policing infrastructure constitutes core public safety while behavioral health response, violence prevention, and community stabilization remain secondary investments in how this budget has been created?
And I don't know if that's for you or for the mayor.
Raymond C. Lee 2:01:01 - 2:01:07
I think the mayor's online, but I'll take the first stab at this.
I know when we first went—.
Bob Day 2:01:07 - 2:01:15
I think the mayor's on the phone.
Loretta Smith 2:01:16 - 2:01:16
Okay.
Raymond C. Lee 2:01:16 - 2:03:50
I think he muted himself.
Okay.
You know, when we first started looking at the overall cuts and what we wanted to preserve in this budget, just from a philosophy standpoint, of what the mayor's direction was in this.
He wanted to ensure that our public safety staff, from the standpoint of our uniformed staff, that we didn't see main reductions in that.
I believe his philosophy, and he'll add to this as he chimes in on this conversation as well, was to ensure that the public safety and the safety and care of the people within the community were not going to be at jeopardy as it relates to any budget cuts.
That came through from his proposed budget.
I know things that he, you know, doesn't see as that kind of those core services, he wanted us to take a closer look at.
Is there a better way to provide that service, or should we be providing that service altogether?
But also preserving those things like our PS3s that we know provide crucial services to our community, that those things weren't completely eliminated.
Thank you.
Because we know if those things were completely eliminated within the proposed budget, it would have been harder to bring those things back or build upon things that did not exist anymore.
I think anytime we go through tight budget cuts like this, it's trade-offs that we're making as an organization.
I think these trade-offs are hard things and hard conversations to have, and I think there's going to be differences of opinions as it relates to how we go about in those trade-offs and what actual things should be reduced within public safety and what are those things that should be held safe and secure to ensure that we can continue the operations and core services that we are required to provide as a city.
I do not believe in any of this that anything from ill will or harm was intent from the reductions that were being proposed in this.
Thank you.
I think philosophy from the standpoint of the council, I know the council is going to have to make some strong decisions as it relates to how do those things that you may see as critical, crucial functions of the city may be potentially brought back within this budget.
This was just the first stab at really looking at how do we provide those core services to the community with the financial constraints that we were faced with as an organization.
Thank you.
And I'll let the mayor— I know he's on as well.
Keith Wilson 2:03:51 - 2:05:31
Yeah, and thank you, Councilor, for the, the question.
Uh, CA Lee had noted, you know, core service was really that response times, and Chief, I thought, spoke very well when he said our goal was life safety.
And then I think you're really referring to our focus on PSR, OVP, ceasefire, And some of those other non-priority response life safety issues in the moment.
And we looked at all those, and because those weren't core in the sense life safety, that initial response time, we were looking at a 50% cut across those, uh, programs or bureaus, if you will.
And as we had these very robust discussions, Chief leaned in and said OVP and ceasefire are prior— pardon me, are a core service.
And so they were elevated and, and set up to that core.
And so the cut is only about 12-13%.
So it was at that 10% guidance level that I set out months ago, uh, because those were, in our estimates, trigger pullers.
So it was a life safety, so we elevated that.
PSR was maintained because of our significant mental health challenges on the street.
And we need an unarmed response.
Um, uh, the PS3s were at 80%.
We're looking at a 50% on that one because it's a maturing organization and it wasn't life safety.
So we had very difficult choices.
The chief deliberated on them closely.
Stephanie weighed in heavily, and that's essentially how we came up with the amount of money that we had to, to focus on the public safety.
Thank you.
Candace Avalos 2:05:35 - 2:06:24
Well, thank you for your answers.
I think your answers just reinforce my point that if we are saying we care about life safety but we're not investing in the things that are contributing to the life safety issues we're experiencing as a city, then I don't know that I agree we care.
So I'll leave it at that.
I think my next question is, you know, speaking about the OVP office, The presentation obviously highlighted some really important reductions in shootings and firearms.
So if these strategies are producing measurable outcomes as we are being told they are, then why are we cutting things like the $1 million in community-based violence prevention grants, eliminating the ceasefire coordinator position?
Help me understand what message do you think that sends about the city's confidence in prevention-based safety strategies?
Raymond C. Lee 2:06:31 - 2:06:33
I'll let Stephanie kind of— oh, go ahead, Mayor.
Keith Wilson 2:06:34 - 2:06:37
No, I think, I think Stephanie would be the proper one to answer that.
Thank you.
Stephanie Howard 2:06:39 - 2:07:41
You know, again, in a difficult budget year where we were all— every bureau program across the city was asked to provide, you know, information on what they could live with, within the parameters of that guidance.
We all had to make incredibly difficult choices.
And so putting forward what I believed could help— we could absorb and still maintain our ability to provide the level of service that, that I think we are currently providing— that, that was the decision-making process for me.
And none of those decisions are are fun or a preference by any program manager, bureau director, or chief.
That's all bad.
But in measuring those things, I think that's what we were given in terms of guidance and what we had to weigh.
That evaluation was how we had to operate on what we would put forward for consideration.
Candace Avalos 2:07:45 - 2:09:25
I'm aware and understand that there are tough budget decisions.
I think my point beyond just this presentation for the whole budget is how are we making decisions about what are investments we cannot afford to lose because they're going to create more problems down the road, and making sure that those are the core services.
That's what, in my opinion, what a core service is, is prevention.
And so I, I think that, you know, sure, everybody's taking a 10% cut, But again, I don't believe everyone should have had to take that, especially if the things that we're cutting are cutting into our future ability to mitigate crime and other livability issues that are very much tied to societal, frankly, injustices, to lack of resources.
And so this is what I'm trying to understand of how— what is our philosophy of building this budget around public safety and how we're defining that?
I know that that is obviously the main thank you.
So that's a question that we're always grappling with.
But again, at a time when we're making hard choices, I'm trying to think about what are choices that we can't afford to make that are going to make later choices harder.
So as it relates to PSR, you know, I think that these proposed reductions, eliminating these aftercare positions and preventing expansion to 7-day aftercare support, given that that aftercare is specifically intended to reduce repeated I can speak on behalf of our program that no, I don't think we've done a long-term, you know, analysis of what we've lost.
Stephanie Howard 2:09:25 - 2:10:10
But I can certainly say anecdotally that our aftercare teams are very, very important to the effectiveness of PSR and that prevention that you're talking about.
So I think in the triaging of needs, one of the biggest considerations was how quickly can I build back from— if I have to, you know, take a cut somewhere, how quickly can I restore that in a future budget?
Or, you know, to minimize the impact to the program and to the service level.
And so in those, those vacant positions in aftercare, you know, hate to lose them, but we can build those back in in future budgets.
And I think that is part of the long-term strategy certainly to do.
Dan Ryan 2:10:13 - 2:10:13
Thank you.
Candace Avalos 2:10:15 - 2:10:41
To the PS3s, my last question.
This proposal cuts, you know, 80% of the PS3 program and shifts low acuity and non-emergency calls back to sworn officers.
So I heard the exchange you had with Councilor Novick regarding that, but how many calls that currently receive a civilian or non-sworn response will now receive an armed response instead?
And was any analysis conducted around escalation risk or community impact associated with that kind of a shift?
Bob Day 2:10:42 - 2:11:00
We estimate this year that PS3s will take about 25,000 calls for service.
So I haven't done the math in terms of reduction.
If we take 60% away from that, those would fall to sworn response.
And no, I haven't done any analysis around escalation or those topics.
Candace Avalos 2:11:02 - 2:11:47
Okay, well, I think lastly I'll just say these kinds of analyses are important.
So what are we doing to build in that kind of infrastructure for us to assess these decisions in the future?
Because my broader concern that I have moving forward is that we just continue trying to patch individual pieces of systems that were not designed around prevention and stabilization or long-term community well-being in the first place.
So a rhetorical question I ask for us as a body is, what is it going to look like for the city to build a public safety model where prevention and housing stability, behavioral health, community intervention are treated as foundational infrastructure rather than supplemental programs?
The way I view this budget I don't believe that we've gotten there.
I'll leave it at that.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy 2:11:48 - 2:11:49
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal 2:11:52 - 2:12:31
Thank you, Council President.
Thanks everybody for being here.
Um, congratulations on the grandchild.
Uh, also, um, I see DC Jelvic back there.
I know you— I, I've heard you are retiring soon, so just wanted to, to shout you out while we have the opportunity to do that, um, here, as well as thank you to our interim DCACA Lee and our outgoing DCACASI.
I had 2 questions just framing for you, I think, CA Lee.
One is, in the intro to this, it talks about having 3 different presentations, one on community safety, one on Portland Police, and the other on the DCA's office.
Should we expect that there'll be a DCA's office enterprise services piece coming at some point?
Raymond C. Lee 2:12:33 - 2:12:48
A lot of, some of that information was in some of the information that I presented within my presentation.
Short little segment within it.
If it's additional information you would like on as it relates to the DC office and the makeup of that DC office, we can ensure that we can get that information to council.
Sameer Kanal 2:12:48 - 2:12:55
Yeah, I, I think specifically the parts that's not— I mean, the DCA's office also has enterprise services and sort of the core, the EA and all that.
Raymond C. Lee 2:12:55 - 2:12:57
Yeah, I think it has some of the community stuff as well.
Sameer Kanal 2:12:58 - 2:13:19
Right.
So the, the director of enterprise services piece, I think that area is the part I'm, I'm curious about.
I, I'm biased.
I used to work but, um, yeah, the, the other, uh, thing I wanted to ask is if there's an update on the call allocation work, because I think that, that helps with a portion of what Councilor Avalos's questions are, and some of what I, I'm asking in a minute here might relate to that too.
Stephanie Howard 2:13:20 - 2:13:22
I, I can— Chief, if you want to, please.
Bob Day 2:13:23 - 2:13:26
Okay, you've been helpful already, so let's see what you have to say here.
Stephanie Howard 2:13:27 - 2:13:54
Um, so I, I, I can at least confirm a couple of things.
Number one, that the report from, uh, on the welfare check study was finalized and it should have been shared with your offices yesterday, I believe, from the DCA's office.
Um, and so I think, you know, we're— I, I know that team is very, um, willing to come and present it at any point that council would like to hear more about it, uh, or to, you know, meet and, and do some more discussions around that.
Great.
Sameer Kanal 2:13:54 - 2:14:36
Um, I'm— we'll talk Councilor Novick and I about which committee it makes the most sense in, but I, I think, uh, that we'll figure it out.
Um, I'm going to start with the community safety side first.
I, I do want to thank the mayor for acknowledging that OVP ceasefire and PSR are core services.
Um, I think that's a really important acknowledgement.
I think the how that manifests is really important, and we need to talk about that.
Um, as a framing point for this question, I want to note that the economic costs of what I'm about to ask about are the least but I'm trying to illustrate a point here.
A couple years ago, the now director of Ceasefire did— had a fact that they would put out about what the economic cost of a homicide was.
I believe it was around $2 million per.
Is that accurate?
Stephanie Howard 2:14:37 - 2:15:41
That, that I would say that's correct here, uh, Councilor.
The, the specific figure, and I think it was from 2021, so consider inflation, I think you're right on the money.
Uh, one homicide, uh, cost the system— so city, county, you know, jails, incarceration, and things like that— about $2 million.
$1.7 Million was the amount there.
And an injury shooting similarly is about almost $700,000.
And so our reporting from Ceasefire also includes kind of a running tab, at least our last quarterly report on how much money has been saved, uh, if under that analysis by the prevention investments.
And so let me get that in front of me.
Yeah, looking at our first quarter, um, based on the reductions this year compared to last year, we are estimating that there's about $35 million in system savings, um, based on the investments in violence intervention and prevention work?
Sameer Kanal 2:15:42 - 2:16:29
So you, you, you, uh, I appreciate that you answered my next question too, so I love that.
Um, it— if you look at the, the, the extreme level, the highest, it's about $120 million a year for under $10 million a year in investment that we save when we focus on prevention.
Now obviously some of the— there's actually more than $10 million being invested because there's prevention work going on at the police bureau too, but I'm talking specifically for the, the, the, uh, Prevention and intervention piece.
So I just wanted to flag that.
I think it's not merely a focus and philosophical question.
It's also a financial fiscal responsibility question.
With relation to the OVP and ceasefire cuts to the EMS side of $1 million, what specific programs are being reduced there?
Stephanie Howard 2:16:30 - 2:16:49
So the— on the OVP side, they're share of that $500,000 will be determined next year in next year's Safer Summer grant process.
So there's no decisions on what they would fund.
That would just be a smaller pot for community grant applications that would be evaluated at that time.
Sameer Kanal 2:16:49 - 2:16:56
And that's a decision process that occurs during the '26-'27 fiscal year for the summer of 2027.
Correct.
Dan Ryan 2:16:56 - 2:16:57
For summer.
Correct.
Sameer Kanal 2:16:57 - 2:17:00
Nothing is being affected in the absolutely right, yes.
Stephanie Howard 2:17:01 - 2:18:00
And then on the ceasefire side, again, we currently have the— our RFP is open for the violence intervention contractors, and so we're going through and evaluating those.
Again, I think this would— there's no specific program or cut that it would come from.
It would be a measured, you know, response based on the responses we get in our RFPs.
And again, really critical to our work is evaluating the data and the trends that we're seeing at that time.
So for example, if we're seeing an increase in conflict between, you know, say, 2 specific groups and we have contractors that have relationships with those groups, we may need to prioritize those contracts in order to stay ahead of conflict.
So it is very flexible and, and kind of constantly moving target on some of those.
So to answer your question more succinctly, no specific programs have been identified.
They would just be reducing the pot from which we could provide grants and contracts.
Sameer Kanal 2:18:00 - 2:18:12
Thanks.
What portion of the $162,000 reduction that's for engagement, travel, and continuing education— what portion of that is engagement versus travel and continuing education?
Stephanie Howard 2:18:13 - 2:19:19
Uh, probably the majority of it is.
I, I think the— our teams are, uh, not doing a whole lot of travel and not nearly as much professional development as I would like to be able to provide for them currently.
But, um, the, the, the tools that we use, and like our SafeBlocks team, for example, it sounds maybe a little bit, um, petty or, or, you know, unimportant, but providing a good meal at a community event makes a really big difference in how many people will attend, how many people will listen, how many people will accept services from us or our contractors who are on scene.
And so those kinds of things are things we do to draw and make events, public safety events successful, but also to help support local businesses as well.
So we work with local vendors and, you know, food truck owners and things like that.
When we have those kinds of events and really try to uplift those things.
But I would say the majority of that EMS would come from the engagement side of our funding.
Sameer Kanal 2:19:19 - 2:19:37
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Agree 100% with that analysis as well.
With relation to PSR, I had 2 points here.
Real quick clarification.
Aftercare is the only place right now where there are peer support specialists, is that correct?
Stephanie Howard 2:19:37 - 2:19:38
That's correct.
Sameer Kanal 2:19:38 - 2:22:08
Okay, so this is a concern I have.
I understand that there, there are vacant positions right now, but I also know that this is a gap that we have been talking about filling in a general sense that's part of the broader gap with PSR.
Um, I think ideally that they would be paid better than they are right now as well.
That's an ongoing conversation with BHR, that they would be on rigs responding to calls as well as in the aftercare space, and also obviously that we're not cutting them in the aftercare space too.
I'm concerned about losing that expertise.
And so I understand that there appears to be a— I'm hearing from everybody at this dais in every presentation that we're not expecting to lose services with cuts.
I cannot find that fully factual, and I appreciate Councilor Novick's point to that effect, but I'm not going to ask you to change the line.
Thank you.
But I do have a concern about the gap that we'd be creating, that we'd be actually— it already exists, we'd be adding to it.
Last year we made 2 commitments in— they weren't necessarily good or bad commitments.
I think we all have different opinions on it, but they were 2-year plans.
One was the core realignment.
And this year, despite the fact that there have been changes to the circumstances, We're still pushing full speed ahead on the core realignment.
We also committed to a 2-year plan to get 24/7 PSR, and we did the first year of it.
In both cases, we are not currently pushing for that in this budget, and I'm concerned about that, uh, because we have had this plan in place for a couple years.
We finally managed last year, thanks to Mayor Wilson on day one committing to, uh, putting this up in his proposed budget last year and then council voting for it.
I know that there are vacancies still in the current.
I know you've also filled, I think, 24 of them this year, something in that ballpark.
Me too, yeah.
So yeah, it's been positive.
I am concerned that this budget, even after all positions are filled, will not achieve 24/7 PSR, and I'm concerned that we're going to once again be in a position of of saying we're doing things with relation to 24/7 public safety while 2 of the core parts of public safety, PBEM and PSR, are not allowed to get there to get that protection.
And so, can you let us know what is the financial gap?
I know what it was supposed to be last year, but what is the financial gap to be able to do 24/7 staffing for PSR from the mayor's proposed budget that we're looking at now?
Stephanie Howard 2:22:11 - 2:23:03
Well, so I can tell you a couple of things.
So there are— shared with all of your offices yesterday is a plan that was written a little bit earlier this year as a, you know, sort of a proposal, a roadmap for how PSR could get to 24/7.
And it outlines all of the specific needs there.
One of the— in terms of FTE, I think the total is 13.
13 Additional FTE, but that comes along with vehicles, equipment, training, and, you know, additional capacity in terms of supervision to bring on those additional teams.
And so I might see if April is here.
I don't remember what the bottom line number is.
$3 Million.
$3 Million?
Yeah.
It sounds like our estimate Thank you for that.
Sameer Kanal 2:23:04 - 2:25:31
The last thing I wanted to, to cover here, um, just a couple quick notes and then I'm going to get to my point.
Um, the stats on homicide reduction, uh, is they're, they're, they're actually more stark than we've said because, uh, we— the numbers we're using right now of homicides are actually— they exclude one category, which is homicides for example, I believe the 89 number from 2021 includes a homicide that occurred in a different year but wasn't classified as a homicide till that year and excludes 4 people who were killed by police that year.
So the actual number is 92.
And that's not a moral judgment.
Homicide in the legal definition is all I'm getting at here.
I'm actually mentioning it to say that there was progress on that too.
In addition to the 89 that excludes 4 people So who were if killed by you police that exclude year, there was progress on the homicide definition.
That going down to 51, there's actually 4 people in 2021, '22, and '23, and that number went down to 3 in 2024, down to 1 in 2025, if I recall correctly.
So there's been work going on there, and we ascribe credit to practices and policies changing when that happens, and we should.
And I think that's a good thing that I wanted to point out.
I also wanted to point out that the same thing should be applied to the broader category.
Thank you.
And I think, Director Howard, you really covered it, I think, with the work of OVP and Ceasefire alongside partners with SafeBlocks, PPB, has had an impact on that broader category of homicide.
And I just wanted to put the finer point on it, which is that this is not regression to the mean.
And we've been making this argument up here for over a year and a half now that it is not regression to the mean when we see homicides go down.
Yes, they've gone down everywhere.
They've gone down more here.
They've gone down more here, and they've gone down more in the particular neighborhoods that that Byrne Justice Assistance Grant has allowed.
And the folks— I see some people back here from all 3 of the groups we're talking about, from SafeBlocks, from OVP, from Ceasefire.
And I want to take the chance to thank you all for that work because it has saved not only the $2 million in economic impact, but the incredible unquantifiable impact of saving lives.
And I want to value that in our budget as much as we value that morally as well.
And that applies to everybody involved.
So SafeBlocks, PPB, everybody involved in that as well.
And I'll do my PPB questions back in the queue later.
Thank you, Council President.
Jamie Dunphy 2:25:33 - 2:25:34
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan 2:25:34 - 2:25:39
Yes, thank you, Council President, and thank you, leaders in public safety, for this thorough thank you, Councilor Smith.
Angelita Morillo 2:25:39 - 2:25:41
Thank you, Mayor Wilson.
Thank you, Deputy City Administrator Donnie Oliveira, for the thorough, albeit very sobering report.
Dan Ryan 2:25:41 - 2:29:00
Let me say this.
As the only elected official in City Hall who has been in office since September of 2020, the defunding of public safety, particularly police and fire, have made me quite angry and sad this past week.
Just when customer service, response times, and morale have been improving over the past few years in building back, this unfortunate decision has made was made in this— in the mayor's proposed budget.
Taxpayers are overburdened in Portland like few other cities in our country.
In fact, we are just behind New York City, though their threshold for wealth is defined as $25 million.
Ours is $200K.
For a family dealing with mounting affordability issues, our taxpayers should expect services from police and fire to be protected.
Thank you.
It is part of a city's contract with taxpayers to keep them safe.
And thank you to the frontline public safety professionals who are in the chambers today.
I see you.
I thank you for your service.
You keep us safe in our streets and you tamp down organized crime in our city.
I do my best to attend every hiring and promotion ceremony, and I listen to your diverse backgrounds.
Your desire to serve our community.
What I know is that when your profiles do not— what I do know is that your profiles do not match the stereotypes that some carelessly place— make of police officers.
Our officers come from incredibly diverse backgrounds and are highly skilled, educated, and reasons for becoming an officer are grounded in giving back, to the community.
What I've witnessed over the past 6 years is that our PB attracts humanitarians to bring peace and safety to our streets.
In our council's priority setting exercise in, in March, we collectively had one goal at the top: to improve emergency response times.
Having more patrol officers working the streets makes Portlanders feel safer, and I continue to hear that is a priority for almost every Portlander.
PSR, when I do ride-alongs, and I've done a couple in the past year and a half, I have a few insights.
And I've noticed from last year to this year, the experienced move closer to feeling like Portland Street Response is part of an integrated public safety system.
PSR, Had an unfortunate start as it was politicized and was built as an anti-police program that obscured PSR's main value proposition as additive alternative response for certain call types, and that they did not need police or fire response.
I have noticed that siloed mentality is vanishing, and I thank you for that.
On a recent ride-along with PSR, one thing I noticed was that when a call came.
Thank you for the question, Councilor.
And I think our plan for that— let me just sort of level set also.
Stephanie Howard 2:29:06 - 2:30:05
So PSR intentionally does not operate in a lights and sirens fashion.
They—.
That is a trauma-triggering event in these situations, and so that, that is by design.
But what we're planning to do is we're working on a districting model.
We've begun that with stationing teams in particular areas.
Right now we're in 2 districts, and those aren't council districts.
I think those are just geographic districts.
But I am right now in the process of trying to identify a second location for Portland Street Response on the east side of town.
I'm touring facilities and working with the Bureau of Fleet and Facilities very closely on this, and I may come back to all of you with an urgent request to help me lock down a location.
But being sure that we can station our teams in strategic locations around the city will certainly I've also experienced calls where when we got there, the person of interest could not be found.
Dan Ryan 2:30:07 - 2:30:14
What is the protocol after a person of interest is not located?
A call back to the original person who called?
Like, what's the protocol?
Stephanie Howard 2:30:15 - 2:30:54
It depends on the circumstances.
And I think what we, we have been working really closely with our supervisor teams to recognize that there are certain circumstances where we need to be able to that, you know, the, the person that we are being called to assist is certainly our— you know, that is a focus.
But we're also providing a service to the larger community and trying to do a better job of communicating maybe what, you know, what is happening at a call, or trying to get better understanding of why things are happening the way they're happening.
Sometimes a supervisor will be able to return a call to a caller just to say, you Unfortunately, they didn't locate somebody, but I think it really just depends on the circumstances of the call.
Dan Ryan 2:30:54 - 2:31:12
I do think the calls to the originator of the phone call would be good customer service, and I've seen that hit and miss.
The police officer, let's see, when someone seems to need more care and could benefit from a ride to services, PSR was unable to transport them.
Has that changed?
Stephanie Howard 2:31:12 - 2:31:56
Yes.
So we were able to achieve shuttling for our rigs back— we started, I think, in June.
And so we, we have limitations on what we can do.
It's always voluntary.
It is— we're not permitted by the county to transport anyone to a medical facility.
So hospitals, we're— that's the lane of an ambulance, right?
So we're not, we're not able to do what an ambulance would otherwise do.
So acute medical needs or something like that, we are not shuttling people for those purposes.
But we do provide a great deal of shuttling.
I think we've got this on our data dashboard as well.
But we've been increasing the amount of people that we're able to shuttle.
And that's, that's been—.
Dan Ryan 2:31:56 - 2:31:59
Roadblock is the county's policy in the ambulance area.
Stephanie Howard 2:32:00 - 2:32:21
That's one of them.
But I think the other thing that also tends to be, you know, forgotten is that PSR as a voluntary program It's an engagement model.
And so people— there's no legal authority to compel someone to go with, right?
And if that was the case, if that was a need, that would be a call that we would bring, you know, a police officer or someone like Project Respond that does have that authority.
Dan Ryan 2:32:21 - 2:32:57
I'll continue to have more conversations with you about the transportation confusion.
PSR receives $564,000 from the cannabis fund.
I was on a ride-along last Friday with the police bureau.
In a cannabis retail outlet called because a person was preventing customers from going inside.
The police officer connected with the person, gave them a granola bar, kindly asked them to leave the area, and he obliged.
I could tell they were really thrilled.
They waved after that occurred.
What would PSR do when they show up to a cannabis retail outlet that— who directly pay this tax which supports this program?
Stephanie Howard 2:32:58 - 2:33:55
What is your protocol yeah, I think, you know, our teams are trained in trauma-informed care and engagement, and they would approach this person.
They would, you know, try to understand what was happening, what their circumstances were, try to build some rapport with them, right?
Like the police officer did.
Correct.
But I think in the case of the social worker and the PSR response, they would be able to do that.
We're looking at the behavioral health crisis there, trying to make sure that they're safe, that they are not in need of a more heightened level of service.
And then likely, if depending on what they shared with us, if we were able to identify a need that our aftercare team could help with, we would make that referral and make that connection point to help provide that longer-term care.
And let me know the cannabis tax I would have to ask our budget folks.
Dan Ryan 2:33:55 - 2:37:16
Yeah, I'll get that later, but let's make sure we answer that.
Chief Day, congrats on the birth of your first grandchild.
It was said earlier, but that's worth saying twice.
And thank you for showing up in community consistently and for bringing your authentic self.
People have noticed.
You oversee arguably the most complex 24/7 operation in the city, and you do it with grace and humility.
And everyone expects PPB to show up quickly.
Before I go on further, I had an honor of being on a ride-along last Friday with Officer Monsef.
I actually recall when he was sworn in because he notably had left a comfortable career and became a police officer.
And it's always nice to see someone with that type of deep life experience choose to be a peace officer.
Then I observed him.
Yes.
As the first officer to arrive at a scene on the St. Johns Bridge last Friday, where I observed his patience, his kindness, as he did all he could to save a life.
The second responders to this complex life situation on the St. Johns Bridge, actually they were there before the officer, and that's Fire Station 22.
So thank you, and we'll— more on that later, of course.
I saw police and fire with Sadly, after 90 minutes, the incident ended with an outcome none of us wanted.
This is not uncommon, unfortunately.
In fact, the next morning, the same fire crew from Station 22 again were out on the bridge with another person in crisis.
It's hard for some of us to recognize that our first responders are dealing with society's system failures of all kinds.
And the mental health issues are more prevalent than ever, especially in Portland.
This is what our public safety professionals are out there dealing with, and it's not recognized enough.
I encourage every councilor as a city policymaker to do at least one ride-along per year to gain that on-the-ground experience.
I have a PS3 question.
The building of this system, the PS3 system, Thank you.
The deployment of PS3s has just got to a place of impact after it came online in 2020 and a ramp-up in 2022.
I remember being very supportive of that.
Today, PS3s are a backbone of direct community service.
As you said, these public calls will not go away.
I hear from patrol officers that they appreciate the ability to focus on emergency calls because PS3's capacity to take non-urgent calls that are also urgent to the one that made the call, they provide that service.
PS3s are another tool in the toolbox of our public safety system, and I look forward to seeing the program mature and continue to have greater impact as we move forward.
This is a question for you, Chief Day.
I'm a big supporter of community police partnerships, and I think the culture of PPB is more conducive of that connection with Portlanders than at any other time that I've witnessed in the last decade.
Much of that is how you show up in community.
I continue to hear from businesses and residents alike that they're interested in neighborhood police officers, officers that they can get to know the people and the issues in their neighborhood.
How would you describe community policing, and what staffing level would we need to be at for that standard to be actualized?
Bob Day 2:37:17 - 2:40:03
Thank you, Councilor, and thanks for taking the time, uh, with that ride-along last week.
I know that the North Precinct much appreciated your attendance.
The fundamental belief that I have around policing is we, we serve the community.
You know, that, that policing is built upon the trust granted to us by those that we serve.
And that is why we have 18,000 police departments around this country, is because communities have different expectations, different standards, different wants from their police departments, as well do the elected leaders and city managers, etc.
So Portland certainly has a vibrant community with strong beliefs and ideas that I— one of the reasons why I am so prevalent in this is because I want to hear that.
I want to know what those are.
There's a lot of folks and there's one of me, so I'm really dependent upon the extension of the organization into the community, which happens at a higher rate than we've seen in the last couple of years, which affirms your statement that I believe the police-community connection that's occurring today between Portlanders and law enforcement, their police department, is one of the highest that I've seen in my career.
And I'm really proud of that.
And I have examples where I think that can be borne out if you're interested.
But a lot of that is attributed to the learning the organization has developed, including around the PS3s.
Many Portlanders don't recognize the distinction between the two, as my earlier example, and our PS3s are actively engaged with community on a regular basis outside of their traditional role of taking reports or whatever.
We find that our PS3s take a reasonable amount of time on calls to really make sure that they're brought to fruition, that people are being heard.
Procedural justice, we know one of the core components is being heard.
So we're seeing more of that, and that in turn is translating for our officers to be able to then, you know, effectively problem solve and address some issues, as I mentioned earlier, with some of those on-duty resources that we haven't been able to get to in the past.
So, you know, as we've already highlighted, it's a system, and it's, you know, dependent from my position down to that newly hired officer from just a few weeks ago, but also from, you know, You know, all of our civilian staff and PS3s on up the chain to the position that I hold to make sure that that system stays intact with that community connectivity.
At the end of that, I'll say is that that makes us safer, not because we're arresting more people or not arresting more people.
It makes us safer because we're seeing each other in our humanity.
And then when we have a need, we have a pathway to try and meet that need, which is, which is thank you, Chief.
Dan Ryan 2:40:03 - 2:40:50
I'll wrap up with this.
Colleagues, listen to these FTE comparisons from our general fund bureaus over the past 10 years and see how we value public safety at the City of Portland.
Bureau of Public Planning Sustainability over the last 10 years has 45 more FTE, a 50— 47% increase.
That's not true.
Increase.
Bureau of Transportation, PBOT, has 181 more proposed employees in 10 years.
That's a 22% increase.
Portland Housing Bureau has seen 34 more FTEs, a 63% increase.
Parks and Rec has seen 117 more FTEs in the past 10 years.
That's a 20% increase.
Thank you.
Stephanie Howard 2:40:50 - 2:40:50
Yes.
Dan Ryan 2:40:51 - 2:41:32
Portland Police Bureau has seen a decrease of 73 employees FTE.
I'm not doing specifics like patrol officers, just FTE in general.
That's a 6% decrease in the past 10 years.
Fire and Rescue has seen 25 more employees, much of that due to the program CHAT, and that's a 4% increase, the second.
Uh, dismal number there.
We must do better, my colleagues, to ensure that we are providing adequate, if not excellent, core city services.
This is not fair to Portlanders and those paying high-dollar taxes to live in this beautiful city when we see these type of cuts.
Bob Day 2:41:33 - 2:42:09
Councilor, I appreciate you handling that, and I didn't answer the other part of your question.
And I've gone farther back than the last 10 years.
As I said earlier, this is not a problem this council created.
It's a problem that we've inherited.
Looking back at our annual reports to 2005, we've identified 157 police officer positions have been cut going back almost 2 decades, as well as an estimate of about 60 non-sworn positions have been cut.
So in the same time frame, the city's grown by about 20%.
We've seen about a 20% reduction in PPB staff and personnel.
Dan Ryan 2:42:09 - 2:42:14
So fentanyl on the streets 20 years ago?
What's that?
Did we have fentanyl on the streets 20 years ago?
Bob Day 2:42:14 - 2:43:24
No.
So we had a lot of different challenges, but I would argue that, you know, we are making progress in trying to restore those numbers.
Your question is always that, you know, trap question, what's the perfect number?
We're still trying to achieve that.
And I think metrics like response times, clearance rates, our investigative capability, Our community outreach, all of those things factor into whether or not we are achieving that number.
But historically, the organization has suffered these cuts.
And the other thing I would highlight, because we're oftentimes criticized for vacancies, is 6 out of the last 12 years, the Police Bureau has been prevented from hiring for extended periods of time due to cost-saving measures.
So you will continue to hear me emphasize going forward, and I appreciate the mayor's the city administrator's advocacy, even in this budget, to be able to continue to hire, uh, because the long-term effect of this is that we have to restore those ranks, uh, to a reasonable level.
And we will all be involved in determining what that reasonableness is.
But like I said, by any measure right now, it's, it's not even close.
Dan Ryan 2:43:24 - 2:44:02
And clearance ranks go up when we have more staffing and more community policing building those relationships.
I just want to end with thanking you for always yes.
I think one of the things that I'm always telling your new recruits how important it is to go out and experience the joy of Portland.
Like, try to get out in your civilian clothes and enjoy a park, enjoy a festival, because you do see the most challenging and violent situations in our city on a daily basis.
So to keep that perspective that most people in Portland are doing just fine, and I hope that you all take time to go out and connect with them.
Thanks again, all of you, for being in the chambers this morning.
Jamie Dunphy 2:44:03 - 2:44:17
Thank you, Councilor.
Colleagues, we have 20 minutes left and 5 councilors in the queue still, including 2 who have not spoken.
So it's going to go Morillo, Smith, and then, uh, we will hopefully still have time for folks for second round.
Go ahead, Councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo 2:44:19 - 2:44:51
Thank you so much, President Dunphy.
Um, thank you all so much for being here for the presentation.
Uh, sorry, trying to gather my thoughts.
I'm not I'm not sure if I am in a poetry session or a work session to ask technical questions.
But the question that I had was on Portland Street Response.
Since the council signaled last year that they're interested in Portland Street Response going 24/7, can you explain the impacts of going 24/7 with the proposed reduction of the 2 aftercare teams?
Does that change our ability to bill for Medicaid?
Councilor Smith, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
Stephanie Howard 2:44:52 - 2:45:34
Thanks, Councilor.
Uh, no, those positions would not reduce our ability to access Medicaid funding or to get to operate 24/7 in a crisis response context.
It does impact our ability to operate aftercare 7 days a week.
And in terms of the Medicaid impacts, what, what would— it wouldn't impact the rates or the ability for us to be eligible for Medicaid, but what it would impact is that much of the work that an aftercare team does is Medicaid eligible.
And so that would be for positions, once we do achieve Medicaid billing, that we might have otherwise been able to recover some costs for through Medicaid.
Angelita Morillo 2:45:35 - 2:46:30
Thank you, that's helpful.
Um, I, I brought forward an amendment, and I definitely want to make sure that we're going to be funding those aftercare teams.
I think that hearing the data about where some of these different preventative measures have taken place in different neighborhoods and how that has helped to reduce crime on the back end so that our police are less burdened, I think is something that we should not be taking for granted.
I think it's really critical.
So a lot of folks have already said that.
I think Councilor Kanal covered it in a much more eloquent way than I will, so I don't need to repeat it, but I just wanted to emphasize that as we're making these I had another question about OVP and Ceasefire.
So in the aftermath of a serious incident, how does OVP and Ceasefire coordinate rapid response efforts to prevent retaliation and stabilize communities?
This kind of is something that's weighing on me, just thinking about the Cinco de Mayo shooting and the potential impacts that could reverberate from that incident.
Stephanie Howard 2:46:31 - 2:46:49
Yeah, thank you for that question.
I wonder if if I could just briefly bring up Sierra Ellis, who's the Ceasefire Program Manager, to discuss that and maybe using that Cinco de Mayo incident as an example of how that coordination happens and what, what we do.
Candace Avalos 2:46:50 - 2:46:50
Thank you.
Sierra Ellis 2:46:51 - 2:50:45
Thank you, Councilor Morillo, for the question.
For the record, my name is Sierra Ellis.
I am the Program Manager for the Ceasefire Program.
And I'm going to talk to you briefly about planning and how we address certain issues.
And I do want to focus on the Cinco de Mayo celebration.
So over the course of 5 days, the City of Portland saw nearly 50,000 people attend the Cinco de Mayo events.
And of course, we were concerned about the potential for violence based on prior incidents, reports, and known conflicts.
And we understood that there was a risk those tensions could escalate during that event.
And knowing this beforehand and before the event, we coordinated a planning meeting which included our community-based organizations and their outreach teams, law enforcement partners, and the event coordinators of Cinco de Mayo.
We—.
With them, we discussed known conflicts, Potential safety concerns and our communication strategies to make sure that we were all aligned if something did happen.
And this is what many people do not see about our program, our community-based organizations who provide the level of service for these events.
And, you know, they're often working in the background before anything ever happens to keep people safe during those events.
Um, our intention— our intensive case managers, uh, continued to communicate with their, uh, participants during this event.
So when something like that happens, we coordinate.
Um, the Cinco de Mayo, uh, homicide was Councilmember Herbold.
Thank you, Mayor.
So, of course, the shootings are tragic and something that we strive to prevent.
But what you don't see is our outreach workers and our intensive case managers mobilizing, going down to the scene, comforting the family, mediating conflicts, ongoing conflicts during that to prevent retaliation.
And our teams did a great job.
We relocated several different people to get them out of the city for a little bit so we can reduce the likelihood of retaliation.
And those are the things that we don't politicize around what we're doing.
So a lot of the work that you see in reductions of gun violence is specifically from our outreach workers, from our intensive case managers being intentional.
They develop the relationships and go into spaces and places that we can't go because they have those built relationships.
And so that is the, you know, our priority is to contract with organizations who have those real relationships, who can really understand and how to intervene in those specific situations because They're dealing with people who are grieving, people who are angry about their friend or family member getting killed.
And so we make sure that— we try to make sure that people are responsible, that they are safe, and that we provide a message that, hey, you know, we don't want continued violence in our city.
I did want to call up the executive director of Nurture Outreach to say a little bit more about that specific response, um, because he is in it on a day-to-day basis.
And so, um, Marvin, if you could come up.
Marvin Young 2:50:56 - 2:50:56
We are—.
Jamie Dunphy 2:50:56 - 2:50:58
We're running pretty tight on time, so—.
Marvin Young 2:50:58 - 2:50:59
All right, how you guys doing?
Bob Day 2:51:00 - 2:51:00
Morning.
Marvin Young 2:51:02 - 2:53:37
So my name is Marvin Young.
I'm the executive director of Nurture Outreach.
I'm on the front line with these individuals.
First, I wanted to say that the numbers regarding the decrease in gun violence in Portland, it must be understood that it's a big thing through the Community Safety Division, that it does include the Portland Police.
It does include CBOs as myself and other organizations that we collaborate with.
It's a missing point.
It's a missing point of what's going on here.
Portland is doing something that no other city in the nation has did.
And I'm not just talking about numbers.
I'm talking about the collaboration efforts.
And I think that needs to be pointed out to you all of what you're investing in and The outcomes of it.
On the first— on the front line of this work, we do work with individuals who's high risk.
We don't have the neighborhoods that we used to have in Portland no more.
So in other city structures, there's neighborhoods.
In this work, in this line of work that we're doing right now through community safety, it's individualized because this is retaliatory gun violence in this intervention lane.
This is not just no—.
Thank you.
Incident of gun violence.
This is retaliatory.
And it's very important that you guys understand that part of what we're dealing with here and how the whole Community Safety Division and our collaborations with the police and everything else that we work with in this frontline of work.
These individuals come into our program.
My program is set up where we have 4 phases.
We have a relentless pursuit stage.
We have a phase 1 stage.
That's the stabilization.
We have a phase 2, that's the programming phase where they go into cognitive behavior therapy and such things like that.
And then phase 3 is our maintenance stage.
That's where they, they're kind of like alumni after they graduate, right?
The program goes up to 18 months.
In the 3 years that we've been funded through the Community Safety Division, we've graduated 27 individuals.
And our community partners, their numbers is probably just as and that's in 18 months.
It's an 18-month program.
So when we work with these individuals, it's not credible, it's influential.
And that's what everybody has to understand, is when you have influence, you have the dynamics to shift what these young people have believed to be the normal behaviors.
And our job is to let them know that this is not normal behavior.
And so, like—.
Jamie Dunphy 2:53:38 - 2:53:40
And I'm so sorry, we've only got 10 minutes left.
Marvin Young 2:53:40 - 2:53:41
Thank you.
Angelita Morillo 2:53:41 - 2:54:47
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate you giving us that background, um, because I think it is really important for— as we're talking about community safety, we have to understand that preventative measures are absolutely critical.
I had someone question why I wanted to fund like school lunch programs, for example, and I had to explain to them that when I was a SNAP policy advocate, something that we heard a lot from people who gave out meals or food food at food banks was that they were recruiting kids to join gangs as they were waiting in the food line because they didn't have access to resources, right?
So if we don't provide people with connection and community and with the resources that they need to survive, then we're going to end up— there is a— we either do the preventative work or we handle it afterwards, and one costs a lot more and is much more difficult for the community and much more painful for the community.
So thank you, Sierra.
Thank you, Mayor.
I have one more question regarding OVP and Ceasefire.
What would be the impact of transitioning Ceasefire from one-time funding to ongoing sustainable investments?
Stephanie Howard 2:54:48 - 2:55:23
Yeah, I can just say really quickly, it is a huge impact.
It is a commitment by our city leadership that this is a strategy that works, that's important, That requires commitment, and that's getting that commitment.
It helps us with our predictability in grantmaking and contracts.
It helps us build more stable relationships with community organizations when we can depend on the amount of support we can offer.
And so I can't thank the mayor enough for making that change, even in a challenging budget year.
It's a huge impact.
Angelita Morillo 2:55:23 - 2:55:53
Yeah, I agree with that.
I think that was something I really supported in this budget, and I just wanted to flag for my colleagues who may have already seen it, if you're on social media as much as I am, one of the amendments that I'm bringing forward is a community health and safety amendment to fund CHAT, Portland Street Response, Lunch and Play, and the Office of Violence Prevention.
So in case that's something that you're interested in, I have filed an amendment to do that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Murillo.
Jamie Dunphy 2:55:53 - 2:55:55
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith 2:55:56 - 2:57:58
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you all for the presentation.
Um, I want to kind of level set what we're talking about here.
We're talking about public safety, right?
And there's, there's about 3 or 4 arms to this.
We have PPB, we have 911, we have fire, and then we have the Public Safety Service Division that has all the preventative work that we do.
That we've just been talking about.
And I want to stay on a message around this ongoing money.
How much ongoing money did you get put into this budget?
Well, let me back up for just a second.
I'm troubled right now, C.A.
Lee, because I did not receive— I stayed here until 11:15 last night.
I did not receive the presentation, and it's still not up.
It's up.
That you presented this morning.
And I briefly saw and I heard you thanking the mayor for the ongoing money, but I can't base— it was— it went so quickly, and I, and I apologize because I had a death in the family, and so I had to go take care of some, some business.
But I couldn't see your full presentation other than what you were giving here, and I would have liked to have really thoroughly gone through your presentation before because I was trying to prepare for it last night.
I was doing some other budget stuff, but it wasn't there.
And if we're going to be effective, if we're going to be able to come here and really talk numbers with you about the budget, those things have to be there ahead of time.
We cannot just quickly look at your presentation and listen to what you say and ask questions because, again, I will say it again, There are no spreadsheets.
I didn't see any spreadsheets, so I can't look and see what monies you, you have received.
But there was one table that was up there, and I thought I saw it, and I need you to, to, to correct me, that this budget has increased since '24 by $75 million.
That's what I thought I saw, $75 to $100 million from, from when it first started.
Stephanie Howard 2:58:00 - 2:58:04
I don't— I know, I think that was not in a slide that we presented.
Loretta Smith 2:58:04 - 2:58:16
No, it was something that you did this morning and it flashed so quickly and I didn't get a chance to look at it.
But I want to find out how much ongoing money do you have in your budget?
Candace Avalos 2:58:17 - 2:58:17
So for—.
Stephanie Howard 2:58:18 - 2:58:39
In this proposed budget, I can tell you for our total programs for OVPC's and Portland Street Response is $22.5 million ongoing dollars.
Okay, some of that is grant, a small percentage of that is grant.
For Ceasefire, the full budget including ongoing dollars is $6.6 million.
Loretta Smith 2:58:40 - 2:58:44
Is everything $22.5 million, or are you adding $22.5 million plus $6 million?
Stephanie Howard 2:58:45 - 2:58:55
Everything is $22.5 million.
Yeah, and I'm happy to get this, you know, a spreadsheet to you also, Councilor any, any councilors I know, we'd be happy to put that together so you have that.
Loretta Smith 2:58:55 - 2:59:16
And, and the reason why I'm so troubled is because we have a $169 million gap.
We have a gap.
And I also thought that I saw your FTEs go up, even though you, you, uh, also eliminated 4, uh, FTEs in, in one of your programs.
But when I looked at the numbers, I was like— and it went, like I said, it went so quickly— and I was like, how did they increase their FTEs?
Stephanie Howard 2:59:19 - 2:59:30
We have not increased our FTE.
Our total FTE across OVP, Ceasefire, and Portland Street Response is 77.
That's across all 3.
Okay.
So there are no additional FTE in this budget.
Loretta Smith 2:59:31 - 2:59:36
Okay.
And do you also get any DOJ grant monies?
Stephanie Howard 2:59:37 - 2:59:59
Our Safe Blocks program does receive a Byrne grant that funds specific environmental placemaking work in the Elliott Dawson Park neighborhood, in Hazelwood, and in Pelhurst Gilbert.
We have applied for additional, and we're waiting to hear on any of those, but as far as I know, that right now that is the only federal grant we've received.
Loretta Smith 3:00:00 - 3:02:10
Okay, I know that prevention is key.
As a single parent, I know that these programs are very, very helpful to make sure that our communities and our neighborhoods thank you.
And that is something that, that is so important.
We often cross the line here at the city between what is a county program, what is a city program, what is a social program versus the infrastructure program.
And I think we've done a pretty good job of trying to reach out and get those DOJ grants and, and some of the other things to make sure that we can keep our community safe.
We passed a summer works resolution last year.
And 26 that said that we supported.
It was 11-1 summer works jobs, because I always say this to the kids when they come to work for me in the summer.
I've never seen a kid doing a drive-by on their way to work.
And if we can keep people working, using preventative programs, I think we can keep our city and our neighborhoods and our neighbors safer.
Thank you.
I want to get some kind of background and data on how violence have decreased under your watch under the past 3 years, because what I'm looking at with this, with this new gap, I see 2 areas where we have increased the budget.
We have increased in Portland Solutions and we have increased in your area in the last 3 years.
Those are 2 big new programs that we have added.
Yes.
Yes.
And we have increased with the PSR, the PS3s, and all of those things in CHAT, which is not a real big, huge piece of money.
But when we say public safety, there are boundaries.
There are boundaries that we have.
We have prevention, we have safety, we have fire, and all those things.
And I want to make sure that the numbers are holding true, that we're decreasing violence in a way that's meaningful and that's effective and impactful for the city of Portland.
Can you send me some data about what you all have been doing and how you've been doing it and how it has been effective in this community?
Stephanie Howard 3:02:11 - 3:02:12
Absolutely.
Yeah, we'll be happy to do that.
Loretta Smith 3:02:16 - 3:04:47
The other piece is when we talk about what's important and talk about showing up.
Councilor Ryan said it best.
You know, we have increased other programs consistently, and we have not supported the public safety system in a way that we have been doing lately.
And I think that that is making a difference.
And I think that the more that we show up together and in a united front, around public safety across the board, I think the better that we're going to be.
Um, there, there are ways that we can, we can do things different and better, but I think we need to make sure that we're covering all the bases.
And I'm going to go back to SummerWorks because they, they— $744,000 was taken out of their budget even though we put forward a resolution to say that this is what we want, and they had $1.2 million.
I want to work with you to see if there are some ways that we can put that program to help our community members, because that's so important.
When you have kids who are from underserved communities and they can get work during the summer as opposed to being, you know, doing foolishness and mischievous out here in the streets, I think that is, that is a number one thing that we should work on.
And I would I would like to talk to you about that to see how we can partner with that and with some of the DOJ grants that we have.
I'm not sure of all the grants and the grant money that we have, CA Lee, but there's a lot of it and I just don't know what it is for.
I want to thank you personally, Stephanie, for the work that you have done, and thank you, Chief, for the work that you've done.
You all have been very helpful and I look forward to Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Mayor.
I appreciate seeing your folks.
I know DCA Causie is going to be at my district office on Friday, and we're going to have a public safety listening session to the community.
We're bringing it out to East Portland so that those folks who can't get down here to City Hall, to let them know that they can— they have a voice too.
And so I appreciate you all participating with that and making sure that you lended Captain, uh, Foxworth.
I understand there's going to be a reason for, uh, congratulations here lately for, um, Captain Foxworth, but, um, he's been great, um, attentive, deliberate, and there all the time.
So thank you so much.
Jamie Dunphy 3:04:48 - 3:04:50
So, uh, City—.
Raymond C. Lee 3:04:51 - 3:05:07
Yes, uh, thank you, Council President and Councilor.
Uh, not sure why the presentation wasn't uploaded, but I know we did email the full council this presentation on Monday, but we'll do a better job ensuring that this is uploaded to the public so the public can see it in a timely fashion as well.
Loretta Smith 3:05:07 - 3:05:08
You did see that it's not up, right?
Raymond C. Lee 3:05:09 - 3:05:18
It's up now.
It got put up today, uh, that's what staff told me.
It got put up today.
Not sure of the time of it, but we'll make sure that happens in a timely fashion moving forward.
Angelita Morillo 3:05:19 - 3:05:19
Thank you.
Loretta Smith 3:05:19 - 3:05:20
I appreciate it.
Jamie Dunphy 3:05:20 - 3:05:39
Thank you, City Administrator.
Unfortunately, folks, we are out of time.
We are at 12:30.
Colleagues, we have an incredibly jam-packed agenda this afternoon at council, and if we all run over our 5 minutes like we did today, we will not make it through.
So I hope we can get through our agenda.
With that—.
Sameer Kanal 3:05:39 - 3:05:40
Can I ask a question?
Jamie Dunphy 3:05:40 - 3:05:41
Sure.
Sameer Kanal 3:05:41 - 3:05:45
Are we going to have another opportunity to ask questions about this service area at some point?
Jamie Dunphy 3:05:46 - 3:05:48
Not publicly.
This is our last work session on it.
Sameer Kanal 3:05:48 - 3:05:49
So, okay, thank you.
Loretta Smith 3:05:49 - 3:05:49
Sorry.
Jamie Dunphy 3:05:49 - 3:05:50
With that, we are adjourned.
Loretta Smith 3:05:50 - 3:06:04
Adjourned.