City Council · afternoon

5:57Good afternoon, everybody.

5:59I'm now calling back to order this recessed meeting of the Portland City Council.

6:05Rebecca, can we please call the roll?

6:07Kanal?

6:08Here.

6:09Pirtle-Guiney?

6:10Here.

6:13Ryan?

6:14Here.

6:15Murillo?

6:17Here.

6:19Novick?

6:19Here.

6:22Clark.

6:22Green.

6:23Here.

6:23Zimmerman.

6:25Avalos.

6:25Present.

6:26Smith.

6:27Here.

6:28Dunphy.

6:28Here.

6:29And can we please have the attorney read the rules of decorum?

6:32Good afternoon.

6:33Welcome to the Portland City Council.

6:35To testify before council in person or virtually, you must sign up in advance on the council agenda at www.portland.gov/council/agenda.

6:47Information on engaging with council can be found on the city council clerk's webpage.

6:52Individuals may testify for 3 minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise.

6:56Your microphone will be muted when your time is over.

6:59The presiding officer preserves order.

7:01Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others' testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed.

7:11If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given.

7:13Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting.

7:17Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass.

7:21Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene.

7:23Thank you.

7:24Convened virtually.

7:25Your testimony should address the matter being considered.

7:28When testifying, state your name for the record.

7:30Your address is not necessary.

7:32If you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent.

7:36Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name.

7:39Thank you.

7:40Thank you very much.

7:41Can we please move to item 14?

7:45Item 14, adopt and implement the Moderate Income Revolving Loan Program, document number 2026-124.

7:52Colleagues, this is the second reading of a non-emergency ordinance.

7:56We've had council discussion and some amendment work.

7:58Is there any further discussion of this item before we move to a roll call vote?

8:03Councilor Green.

8:05Thank you.

8:06I think that it's— I'm excited about this.

8:10We had some amendments last week and one of them passed, and I really appreciated the conversation.

8:16I just wanted to say that I think this is actually going to be— this is one of those things that's not not easy to understand, and it's kind of got a weird name, and it's Byzantine.

8:25But I think we have an opportunity to, especially with the amendments that passed last week, to see revolving loan funds become an increasingly important tool to replace some of the more impatient capital in the housing production capital stacks.

8:44You know, private equity markets are not there for us right now.

8:47And so when jurisdictions, whether it's at the city level or the state level, Establish these revolving loan funds to then replace that.

8:57I think that's going to be the cheat code for housing production in the years forward.

9:00So this is going to be a really small piece.

9:02I think there's like maybe $20 million on the table for the City of Oregon, although it is a first-come, first-served program.

9:08What I'm hoping is when we see these successes and we can, you know, I think Chair Candace Avalos would entertain this as like, is inviting in some of those developers who've been able to make use of it and say, hey, this did unlock something that was frozen.

9:24Let's celebrate that.

9:25Let's advertise that so we can continue to reinvest in these things and expand that.

9:29So I'm really excited about it, and I appreciate the debate we had last time we talked about it.

9:33I vote— I will vote yes.

9:35Thank you, Councilor Green.

9:36Councilor Kanal.

9:39Thank you, Council President.

9:41I'm actually going to defer to Councilor Smith.

9:44I'm pulling up my notes, so—.

9:45Sure.

9:45Councilor Smith.

9:48Thank you.

9:49Um, thank you, Council President.

9:50I think this is, um, a, a very good program because if you look at the ecosystem of building housing, uh, there is very little out there in the, in the world for, um, middle housing.

10:05And, and that middle housing, um, piece is where folks can probably pay some of these higher fees back, but I think that this is important and we have to do it, and I'd like to see more middle housing in East Portland, and I look forward to seeing what projects come out of this.

10:26Thanks.

10:27Thank you, Councilor Smith.

10:28Councilor Morillo.

10:31Thank you, Council President.

10:33I will be voting yes on this today, but I also just want to add that, you know, I have some concerns that I stated last time, and I do need to reiterate them because This does essentially leave the city carrying the repayment liability to the state for the loans Prosper underwrites and the council never approves.

10:53And that means that council— that means that Prosper is going to be writing the checks.

10:57But if the deal sours and the TIF or the fee-in-lieu repayment doesn't materialize, the city repays the state out of its own funds, our own funds.

11:06And so the entity making the underwriting call bears none of the downside.

11:10Councilmember Smith.

11:11While the body holding all of the liability has no way to address that or hold it accountable.

11:18And council's investigative authority under the charter does not extend to Prosper.

11:24So if a deal goes bad, we as city council can't actually compel the underlying records to be responsive to that deal going bad.

11:33We can't ask for the pro forma.

11:34We can't ask for the underwriting documents.

11:35We can't ask for the underwriting documents.

11:37And, you know, I'm just going to say again, with what happened with Maiden Old Town, for example, we don't want to be holding the bag for that.

11:49We want to make sure that we can do oversight in the ways that the city requires of us.

11:54So I think this is a good step forward, and I will be supporting it today.

12:01But I am just generally concerned about how the city is handling this.

12:03Councilor Loretta Smith.

12:07So I think revolving loan funds are great as a concept, and we need to create one within the city, but we also need to do this as well right now while we have the chance.

12:19But we also can't reduce the risk that this is going to put us in.

12:22So I just wanted to state my piece, but I will be voting aye.

12:25Thank you.

12:26Thank you, Councilor Morillo.

12:28Councilor Smith.

12:29Thank you.

12:30Thank you, Council President.

12:31I, I don't know why we don't have people up here from the Housing Bureau, somebody here other than council to— it's the DCA?

12:41Yep.

12:42Okay.

12:42Hi, Donnie, could you come up for a second?

12:46It's almost like we're on our own and people know about these agenda items and we don't have anybody from the administration ever to sit here.

12:51And so we end up kind of, you know, going back and forth with ourselves.

12:56And we're not the administrators of this.

12:58So thank you so much.

13:00I think this is a very important project.

13:04Could you explain this revolving loan?

13:06Because there's a couple that we have now.

13:09We have the revolving loan from the TAO, which has a 60% and below, and that we're responsible for.

13:19And then we have this program.

13:21And the reason why we created this program is so that we could get the state money that, that the governor has.

13:27Could you address some of those issues that Councilor Murillo was talking about in terms of taking all the risk if, if these projects, if they bankrupt or go sideways or, or if they are short some, some funding and they need additional gap funding to complete projects?

13:45Could you kind of—.

13:46Yeah, thank you.

13:47Yeah, thank you, Councilor.

13:49Donnie Oliveira for the record.

13:51Councilor Murillo is referring to the risk the city funds would have if a project that was granted by the state went belly up or went sideways.

14:03Just this particular loan that you're— this ordinance, excuse me, is giving the city the authority to administer programs that are a state-led loan.

14:13So this is really a state loan program that you're giving us agency.

14:17In this case, the ordinance bestows that authority to Prosper to administer the projects through that loan.

14:25The reason why Prosper is the appropriate body for projects that are in TIF is we'd be able to utilize TIF as essentially the safety net if those projects didn't pin out.

14:36Now, I believe what Councilor Morillo was referring to is if there is no TIF for whatever reason, then yes, the city's full faith and credit would be backing the true underwriting or the underlying loan if that were to play out.

14:48But TIF is the one who—.

14:49TIF would be the first line of defense, if you will, yes.

14:51Would be the first line of defense.

14:54No, I like it.

14:55I think it's great.

14:57It would've been great to hear from Prosper as well to, you know, kind of level set what they see in the future.

15:03Are there any projects in the pipeline right now that you know of that are waiting for this ordinance to pass?

15:10We are aware of several projects, and especially you heard from Robert Pyle at the last meeting.

15:15He's got projects in that smaller range, and then we have projects like Broadway Corridor on the bigger size that, that could potentially be eligible for the program.

15:23So those are examples of projects, but—.

15:25I'm not voting for this if you don't have none in East Portland.

15:29It's a competitive— it's a competitive program, Councilor.

15:31I'm just saying, y'all better get some in East Portland.

15:35Noted.

15:37No, I like it.

15:37Thank you.

15:38Thank you, Councilor Smith.

15:40Councilor Kanal.

15:40DC Oliveira.

15:43Um, good try.

15:44Thank you, Council President.

15:47Just since we're on the subject, is there anything that— I think we need to have a conversation at some point about the citywide, but is there anything for this particular program that does protect it from not all being in the same part of the city?

16:00Is there any geographical protection for this at all?

16:02There is not.

16:03Okay.

16:04But the—.

16:05And, and what about the projects that are not in TIF districts?

16:09There, there are other fundamental, like, financial fundamentals to, to pay that back.

16:12And if I can invite staff up to walk through non-TIF projects, if you'd like.

16:16But the answer is yes.

16:17Non-TIF projects are eligible as well.

16:20Okay, and then for the TIF projects, I mean, in terms of geographical protection, there are TIFs in parts of this, various parts of the city.

16:26They're not necessarily evenly distributed, but, and not necessarily, the loans will not necessarily be evenly distributed between them, but there is the opportunity.

16:36It's not like all the TIFs are in D4 or something.

16:38Correct.

16:39Yeah.

16:40Okay, colleagues, I am really, Concerned about the Prosper part of this.

16:46I think I mentioned this last time.

16:48I really appreciated, uh, both Green 3 and Green 4, which didn't pass, along with Green 2, which did.

16:54Um, I don't understand why Green 3 was so controversial.

16:57I get why Green 4 was, but I just had a different opinion on that one.

17:01But I would have loved to have more reporting.

17:04Don't see what the harm is in more reporting.

17:06Um, but, uh, I'll begrudgingly be supporting this, but with the intention of revisiting if there is a concern about who manages it.

17:15And so I'd ask for CEDSA leadership to be aware of the possibility that if council feels it's not working, we might want to get this back into PHB.

17:27Thanks.

17:29Thank you, Councilor Kanal.

17:30Vice President Clark.

17:32Thank you, Council President.

17:34I am an enthusiastic supporter of this and really appreciate I appreciate my colleagues bringing it forward.

17:43I think we are in such a bad situation, we have such a great need that anytime we can leverage something, we'll look in every couch cushion, look under every rock and try to get something going.

17:56And this is an opportunity.

17:57And I, for me, oh, I know, I know.

18:00Sorry, I'll turn this way.

18:02No, it's great.

18:03It's poison waters.

18:06Anyway, um, I, I— this overcomes any concern I have about risk, about it going to prosper.

18:12So I just want to let people know that I think this is fantastic.

18:16Thank you.

18:17Thank you, Vice President Clark.

18:18Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.

18:20Thank you, Council President.

18:21I am so glad that we are taking advantage of this opportunity.

18:25There are state dollars that we should not just leave on the table.

18:28This certainly is not the panacea of creating middle housing or homeownership opportunities, but it is a piece of the puzzle that we need to have access to.

18:38I got in the queue though because Councilor Kanal asked broadly about support in other areas of the city, and I just want to say specifically, I look forward to seeing some of these projects in District 2.

18:50Thank you, Council President.

18:51Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.

18:57Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, Rebecca, can we please move to a roll call vote?

19:04This is for Document 2026-124.

19:08Kanal?

19:10Aye.

19:11Pirtle-Guiney?

19:12Aye.

19:12Ryan?

19:13Aye.

19:14Koyama Lane?

19:15We'll take projects in District 3 also.

19:18I vote aye.

19:20Theo?

19:22Aye.

19:23Novick?

19:24Aye.

19:25Clark?

19:25Aye.

19:27Green?

19:28Aye.

19:29Zimmerman?

19:30Absent.

19:30Avalos?

19:31Aye.

19:32Smith?

19:33Aye.

19:34Dunphy?

19:35Aye.

19:36The ordinance passes with 11 aye, 1 absent.

19:39Thank you very much.

19:41Rebecca, can we please read items 15 and 16 together?

19:45Item 15, authorize a cable franchise fund for the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to support the collection of public education and government revenues and manage cable franchise work related to Intergovernmental Agreements with Jurisdictions, document number 2026-175.

20:02Item 16, amend city code to reflect the dissolution of the Mount Hood Cable Regulatory Commission, amend code chapters 3.33 and 3.115, document number 2026-176.

20:17Thank you very much.

20:18These are the first readings of 2 separate non-emergency ordinances.

20:22Christopher Hare from Council Operations is here with a committee staff summary report.

20:25Christopher.

20:26Take it away.

20:27Good afternoon, Council President and Councilors.

20:29For the record, Christopher Hare, Council Operations Policy Analyst.

20:32I serve as staff to the City Life Committee.

20:34The ordinances before you, document numbers 2026-175 and 2026-176, were considered in the City Life Committee on May 26th, where they were referred to full council with a recommendation that they be passed.

20:47The ordinance, document number 2026-175, establishes the Cable Franchise Fund.

20:53Fund 234, effective July 1st, 2026, to be administered by the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

21:00The new fund will replace the Mount Hood Cable Regulatory Commission, or MHCRC, Fund 855 following the dissolution of the MHCRC on June 30th, 2026.

21:10The Cable Franchise Fund will support capital costs related to public educational and governmental, or PEG, access services consistent with applicable law, account for costs associated with any subsequent intergovernmental agreements, IGAs, with partner jurisdictions and fulfill outstanding obligations of the MHCRC following its dissolution.

21:30Funding sources for the Cable Franchise Fund include city PEG revenues, IGA revenues associated with services provided to partner jurisdictions, and resources transferred from the MHCRC Fund 855 to address remaining obligations of the former commission.

21:45The ordinance document number 2026-176 amends City Code Chapter yes.

21:49Second.

21:49Second.

21:50The ordinance is moved to amend Chapter 3.115 as shown in Exhibit A and Chapter 3.33 as shown in Exhibit B.

21:55Amendments to Chapter 3.115 remove references to MHCRC and the IGA that created it, ensures cable providers are held to the same standards as they are under the MHCRC, and retain the city's representation on Open Signal's board.

22:09Amendments to Chapter 3.33 remove all references to MHCRC and retain all other functions performed by city staff within the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

22:17No verbal or written testimony was provided prior to committee action on either ordinance.

22:21Thank you very much, Christopher.

22:25Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, this came out of your committee.

22:27So it did.

22:28Thank you very much, Council President, colleagues.

22:29This is the most controversial thing we'll do this week.

22:32Just kidding.

22:33Um, we moved this unanimously out of committee on May 26th.

22:38This was on our agenda previously in the month, but we ran out of time that meeting to hear it, so it's back today.

22:47Previously, I want to say in May, the City Life Committee brought a proposal to full council unanimously to dissolve the joint commission that we have to regulate our cable franchises.

23:03This is the next step in that work.

23:06I think we said at that time things came a bit out of order just because of what we needed to do with the budget process.

23:12These 2 items are what I think we wish we would have heard first, where we can make the, the more technical adjustments and decisions about whether we want to do the dissolution and move in this direction.

23:26But they needed to come as follow-ups to the earlier piece that had to do with the budget.

23:32Essentially, this replaces the old regional fund that went away with the commission.

23:37With the It removes outdated references and shifts that responsibility back to the city, allows us to do the work that we have talked previously about doing as our cable franchise fees diminish over the next few years.

23:55Thank you, Council President.

23:56Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.

23:58Colleagues, I have confirmed that there is no one signed up for testimony, so we're going to move both into technical and clarifying questions and also to public comment.

24:03Councilor Smith, you are the first to speak.

24:04Council discussion.

24:05Councilor Novick.

24:07I just wanted to— thank you, Mr. President.

24:10I just wanted to introduce 2 notes of semi-sadness.

24:13One is that I remember when cable TV started, and now we're abolishing the Cable Regulatory Commission because there basically is no more cable TV.

24:23And I'm reminded of the words of Digory, one of the major characters in The Chronicles of Narnia, who says in the final book, The Last Battle, I saw it begin.

24:31I didn't think that I would live to see it die.

24:34And I also just want to give a shout out to David Olson, who was the leader of the Mount Hood Cable Regulatory Commission for years and was a fierce advocate for consumers and made Multnomah County a great place to be a cable consumer.

24:48So I don't know where David is now, but I hope he's listening.

24:52Thank you, Councilor Novick.

24:54I put myself in the queue because I actually have a couple questions for staff.

24:56If staff could come welcome, friends.

25:05I just wanted to put on the record a little bit.

25:07Could you explain to us what is the future for Open Signal and Metro East, for the grants that this commission has historically put out?

25:15What should folks in our community expect as a result of this, specifically folks who work with those organizations?

25:22Sure.

25:22For the record, Eric Engstrom, Director of the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, and with me is Andrew Speer, who's I was the franchise utility manager for BPS.

25:31Both of those organizations are community media centers which get the bulk of their funding through the public education government PEG fees that come through cable regulation.

25:44With the MHCRC, they— Metro East was receiving both operational money and capital investment directly from MHCRC.

25:56In the case of Open Signal, the city used its— essentially used its franchise fee revenue into the general fund to do the operational side of Open Signal, and the capital side was still coming from the MHCRC directly.

26:08So with the dissolution of the commission, those 2 entities take slightly different paths.

26:14The City of Portland, of course, remains served by Open Signal.

26:17Metro East is serving the East County jurisdictions.

26:21In the case of Open Signal, we will then be administering both the capital grant that goes to Open Signal as well as the operational grant.

26:30And then we're also spinning off the council services that you're familiar with, the broadcasting of council itself, to a contract with Open Signal instead of including it in the grant.

26:42So Open Signal is having a smooth transition because we can manage all of those parts as a city.

26:51Metro East is in a little trickier situation because they have to deal with multiple jurisdictions.

26:58And in the aftermath of the MHCRC, they will have to form agreements with Gresham and other cities to replace that system.

27:05And that's an ongoing dialogue right now.

27:08Okay, so there's definitely some change happening.

27:14And obviously that's going to happen.

27:15Has that impacted at this point, to your knowledge, their bottom line or their ability to continue doing the work that they were doing?

27:23Have there been layoffs or anything like that at either of those organizations, you know?

27:27This is Andrew Spear.

27:28I'm the Franchise Utility Program Manager.

27:31At this time, no, there's no layoffs that have been identified as part of this change.

27:35And the, you know, our work within the bureau has been to keep the same funding as last year into this next fiscal year for them.

27:45The organization.

27:46The long-term trajectory is that this action by dissolving the commission, we've taken the cost of running the commission out of the picture and bought ourselves a few more years to consider the question of what happens when the PEG revenue runs out entirely.

28:01And that's still another bridge we need to cross in the future.

28:05Great.

28:05Thank you.

28:07It sort of— we've discussed this privately.

28:11I just want to put this out there.

28:13Comcast is sort of the last cable provider.

28:17And part of that is because, as I understand it, some of the companies that were cable providers went away, and some of them have transitioned to more of an internet company.

28:25And as I understand it, Comcast provides cable but also internet, but it's beneficial for them to be a cable company.

28:31What would happen for the city if they did eventually transition to becoming an internet company?

28:36Would we receive more money out of this regulatory agreement, or is that a— I don't know.

28:40A scenario we envision this corporation moving towards?

28:46There's a lot of nuance behind your question.

28:48So there's FCC law that inhibits jurisdictions from imposing fees on other services if the entity is a cable provider.

29:02And so in the case of Comcast, as a dual provider of internet and cable, we can only impose franchise fees on the cable portion.

29:14There's a longer-term question.

29:16If the city perhaps was to say we no longer want to have a cable franchise in the city of Portland, we could then impose franchise fees on all services related to Comcast and their operations, with exception of cable, of course.

29:32But you know, but that's like both a policy question and there's still a somewhat significant amount of number of customers that receive cable that is meaningful because we receive millions per year in franchise fees.

29:49But it's not the same level of gross revenues they're receiving— Comcast is receiving for internet services.

29:55Gotcha.

29:55Thank you.

29:55That's helpful.

29:57Who will be managing the community technology grants going forward?

30:02There are 2 community technology grant programs that BPS has managed historically since absorbing OCT. One is the Mt.

30:11Hood Cable Commission's grant program that we had been staffing.

30:16That program is essentially sunsetting because we've— we're going to prioritize the grants to the community media centers directly.

30:24Okay.

30:27Grant program that we had been running had been through the general fund, and that was one of our cuts in this year's budget.

30:33So sadly, there are no community technology grant programs going forward that are currently funded, other than we are continuing to manage the legacy grants that have already gone out the door.

30:44Okay, thank you.

30:45That's all my questions.

30:47Colleagues, any further questions for our friends from BPS?

30:52I'm seeing no one else in the queue.

30:54All right, with that, I'm going to move this item to second reading and the second item— move both these items to second reading.

31:03And colleagues, that's our agenda.

31:04That's everything we have for today.

31:06Relatively easy.

31:07Uh, with that, I am going to— unless there's anything for the good of the order, I'm going to adjourn this meeting of the Portland City Council.

31:14Do it while you still can.

31:16Thank you, everybody.