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
Good morning.
I am calling to order this meeting of the Portland City Council.
It is 9:30 on Wednesday, September 2nd.
Keelan, could you please call the roll?
Good morning.
Keelan McClymont
Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Here.
Jamie Dunphy
Nowick.
Keelan McClymont
Clark.
Olivia Clark
Here.
Here.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Present.
Angelita Morillo
Here.
Keelan McClymont
Canal.
Sameer Kanal
Here.
Loretta Smith
Here.
Dan Ryan
Here.
Keelan McClymont
Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Here.
And can we please read the rules of decorum for the chamber?
Novick's here too, by the way.
Oh, and Novick's here.
Hi, Councilor Novick.
Good morning.
Nancy Thorington
Welcome to the Portland City Council.
To testify before council in person or virtually, you must sign up in advance on the council agenda at www.portland.gov/council/agenda.
Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's webpage.
Individuals may testify for 3 minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over.
The presiding officer preserves order.
Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others' testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed.
If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given.
Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting.
Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass.
Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually.
Thank you.
Your testimony should address the matter being considered.
When testifying, please state your name for the record.
Your address is not necessary.
If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent.
Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you.
Thank you very much, colleagues.
Our first item on the agenda is, as always, agenda approval.
Item number 3, document number 2026-294, has been pulled from the consent agenda for discussion by Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
When items are pulled from consent, they are customarily placed at the end of the agenda.
However, I move that we place this item related to the TriMet passes for city employees after the grant appropriation, but before the Chavez Boulevard renaming and the Zenith transfer.
There are 2 reasons.
First, so that we can hear this emergency ordinance today, and second, to allow the folks from TriMet who have joined us here to do their thing and get out of here.
Uh, may I have a second?
Second.
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Uh, may I have unanimous consent to amend the agenda to place document 2026-294 as the second item on the regular agenda?
Thank you very much.
Are there any other requests to amend the agenda, to reorder items, or reschedule an item to a future meeting date?
Seeing nobody hurriedly rushing to do that, do I have unanimous consent to now approve the amended agenda?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay, the agenda is approved.
Thank you, colleagues.
Keelan, could we please call public communications?
First up today, we have Galeb Benhotep.
Good morning.
Please state your name for the record.
Uh, you're welcome to share your pronouns if you so choose, and you have 3 minutes.
Greetings, beloved councilors.
C.A.
Lee.
I am Ghalib bin Imhotep El, and my domicile is in District 4.
I have spoken here many times before, never like this.
So with that being said, I have accepted the fact that what I affirm here today may not be popular.
Understanding accountability in its inviolate form I have accepted the consequences of my choices prior to their commission.
That is true accountability— accepting the consequences prior to ever commencing in the act.
All of the consequences.
So be whatever comes, this I must affirm today on public record.
I affirm with absolute— as absolute truth that I, Ghalib bin Imhotep El, the victorious descendant of Imhotep essence actuating the corporeal entity that you hold before you, am powerful through the empowerment that is nurtured within the Aye.
By tapping into the omnipotent energy of unconditional love of self and all that there is, I have tapped into a strength that one can only appreciate the benefits of.
I affirm that there is none better, none worse, none greater, none lesser, none more worthy, nor no worth less than I.
The only differences between us is what we are.
Or I'm— excuse me, let me rephrase that.
The only differences between us are what we see, for what we are is from, came from, and will return to the same source in which we do indeed today currently reside.
When I reached the understanding of these affirmations that I have laid bare before you, I achieved the capacity to look each one of you in the eye and say with complete honesty and genuine sincerity that I love you all unconditionally.
Portland.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I yield those 20 free seconds to a joke from Council President Dunphy.
He's made me laugh every time.
Please.
Okay, what do you call a spider with 8 eyes?
What?
A spy-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-der.
Oh, you were ready.
I was ready for that one.
Thank you.
Next up, we have Scott Safe.
Uh, Scott.
Scott.
Sorry about that, folks.
Sit right there.
Good morning.
My name is Scott Seif, and I'm here in regards to my service animal Snowflake.
Snowflake came to Portland, Oregon when she was 5 months old.
First time she ever got bit was 2 weeks after she came to Portland, Oregon.
She has the scar on her side.
This is very emotional for me because she still today gets interfered with by people's pets.
I'm tired of her getting bit.
Even though it's not major injuries, it still hurts her.
Thank you.
It still traumatizes both her and me.
As you can see, she's already starting to cry because she feels my pain.
I feel her pain.
We are here to ask the city, can we not pass some type of city ordinance that makes it mandatory that all pets that live in this city have to have social skill training so that when they're out in public, They know how to behave.
Even when they're scared, they can still act reasonable if they are taught civil social skills.
It's not hard to do.
I've actually helped other people teach their dogs not to bark at her, not to growl at her, or to try and bite her, or bite her.
She's been bit more times than you got fingers, but because none of them aren't serious injuries, none ever gets done about it.
Thank you.
It is safer for her to go to the Oregon Zoo than the Safeway grocery store we shop at.
It is safer for her to walk around the Moda Center with 20,000 fans, kids of all sizes, people of all sizes, and she never once gets injured, never once has to deal with being injured.
Thank you.
I had to train her to sit in my chair for 2 reasons.
One of them is to help me with my complex PTSD, and the other one is to keep her safe when we have to deal with unfriendly environments, which is dogs.
Can we please do something about the dogs that aren't friendly?
There's a lot of friendly dogs, do not get me wrong.
She loves the friendly dogs, and so do I.
Thank you.
It's the non-friendly dogs that make a threat.
I have videos of it and I wanted to show 'em, but I don't wanna show 'em because it's too traumatizing for people who have been bit by dogs.
So can we do something about this before it becomes a bigger pandemic than it is, please?
Snowflake wants a friendly, pet-friendly, safe neighborhood.
Thank you.
Portland.
She loves Portland as much as I do.
And go Blazers, and go Fires, and go Winterhawks, and all of our sports.
She loves them all.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here, both of you.
You ready, Bo?
Next up, we have David Guither.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is David Kwyther.
I'm with Radio Cab and a precinct committeeman, uh, for— in the Democratic Party.
Um, I'm here to talk about Waymo again.
Waymo is obviously the robotic cab company that seeks to come to town.
There are at least 6 or 7 others who would like to come to town once the rules are figured out.
The problem with, with Waymo is, first of all, the comparison between the Waymo numbers and human drivers is erroneous.
You're trying to eliminate professional drivers.
That's what they're gonna do is take over the market, eliminate the Uber and the Lyft drivers.
Radio cab will probably survive because we have contracts that they can't fill up.
For example, delivering disabled kids to school.
They couldn't do that.
But this disruption in the economy of Portland can be very dramatic.
It doesn't seem that way.
You'd be surprised how much money goes into ground transportation in Portland.
And for every dollar that Waymo gets, $5 of economic activity disappears because that money goes out of town, goes to Mountain View, California, etc.
And they don't pay taxes.
They don't pay any road use taxes.
They don't pay any parking taxes.
Every cab has little license plates on it, which costs.
And they will not be paying any income taxes because of various tax credits for a number of years.
So they can operate, they can come in, come in at free cab service to begin with.
As their market share increases, they can raise the price.
In San Francisco, for example, it's right now more expensive to take a Waymo cab than an Uber or Lyft.
Well, Uber and Lyft have adjusted; they're raising their rates.
So why would you bring something in that costs more, doesn't really provide the service that a taxi cab can because it's a new shiny thing?
I'm hoping that the committee that's meeting on next Tuesday will address some of these issues.
I know that the PBOT people have been.
Anxious to regulate them for a number of years, but they don't have any legal basis to do so.
Maybe the city council— and they should write their own bill, get it lobbied through the legislature, put it through the House— excuse me, the Senate rather than the House, because the chairwoman of the Senate committee on that issue is very pro-Waymo and showed her true colors the last session.
We need to deal with this issue.
And I hope everybody gets a chance to vote.
I hope it's not just the committee that votes on this sort of thing.
Thank you for your time, and, uh, hopefully I'll get to testify on Tuesday.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for being here.
Next up, we have Jane Doe.
Jane Doe.
Kevin Matches.
Good morning.
Welcome.
Please introduce yourself for the record.
You have 3 minutes.
Thank you.
My name is Kevin Matches, he/him.
I saw that council will be reviewing the city administrator's monthly update tomorrow.
The update notes that recruitment for the search for a trustee on the Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Board is underway.
Citizen Trustee Tom Kramer's current term expires on December 31st, 2026.
The position has been posted to the city's website.
How did we get here?
At the December 3rd, 2025 City Council meeting, Councilor Kanal questioned staff.
Why did staff want a reappointment of Trustee Catherine McLeod without running an open recruitment process?
Councilor Kanal ultimately asked staff, quote, the next time there's a vacancy, can you commit to doing a full recruitment, end quote.
Staff replied yes.
The topic of both reappointments came up at the July 28th, 2026 FPDR board meeting.
Trustee Kramer stated, quote, the questioning, if I can even call it that, that Catherine got at her reappointment, I thought was appalling.
I've sort of imagined if I were to be in that meeting, being nowhere near as polite and responsive as Catherine was.
Staff stated later in the conversation, I don't know if I'm allowed to have an opinion, but I sure hope you come back, Trustee Kramer.
We'll do what we can to protect you from unreasonable lines of questioning.
This highlights several important questions.
Do the board and staff at FPDR foster a culture of transparency?
Do trustees feel entitled to reappointment?
Does everyone understand and respect the responsibilities and authorities given by the charter to the mayor and council regarding nomination and approval of trustees for appointment?
How can staff claim in good faith to respect the demand for an open recruitment process?
While broadcasting a predetermined desire for the outcome of that process?
Does broadcasting a desired outcome undermine a sense of trust that applicants will be evaluated in a fair and impartial manner?
Do such comments discourage applicants from applying in the first place?
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention.
Our alternate today is Amy Mahoney.
Amy Mahoney.
That completes communications.
Thank you very much.
Can we please call item number 3?
Document 2026— uh, I'm sorry, do you mean, um, item 4 on the regular agenda?
Uh, yeah, you're right.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
Yep.
Thank you so much.
Uh, this is document 2026 thank you very much.
This is the first reading of a non-emergency ordinance.
Uh, Claire Adamsick with Council Operations is here for a committee staff summary report.
Good morning, Claire.
Good morning.
Thank you, Council President and councilors.
For the record, Claire Adamsick, Council Policy Analyst and staff to the Housing and Permitting Committee.
The ordinance before you, document number 2026-272, was heard in the Housing and Permitting Committee on August 4th, where it was referred to full council with the recommendation to pass.
The ordinance amends the FY 2026-27 city budget by appropriating $35 million in funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program.
The federal award agreement, which is found in Exhibit A, of the ordinance describes the requirements of the city as the borrower in its administration of the loan funds.
Under the Section 108 program, the city may use the funds in supporting regulated affordable housing projects serving households earning between 0 and 80% of area median income.
Eligible uses of these funds include property acquisition, conversion, or rehabilitation of existing properties.
The full impact statement on this item includes information on financial and budgetary impacts, community impacts, and community involvement.
And no written or verbal testimony was provided on this item prior to committee action.
And that concludes the committee staff summary.
Thank you.
Thank you, Claire.
Councilor Avalos, this came out of your committee.
Any remarks?
Thank you.
This came to the Housing and Permitting Committee on August 4th and received a unanimous recommendation to move forward.
At a high level, the committee recognized the value of having another financing tool available to support our affordable housing goals, particularly at a time when projects are facing significant We also appreciated the opportunity to leverage federal resources while being thoughtful about the city's responsibility and financial exposure under this program.
Like I said, the committee voted 5 to 0 to recommend passage, and I encourage my colleagues to support it.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Keelan, just to verify, has anyone signed up for public testimony on this item?
No one signed up.
Okay, then colleagues, we are now both in technical and clarifying questions as well as council discussion.
So, uh, Councilor Kanal.
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Claire.
Um, so it's interesting, this, this is titled a grant, but it is actually a loan.
We were awarded the ability to take this, this loan effectively.
Um, I had a question about something in that impact statement you mentioned, and maybe this is better for the, the bureau staff, so please feel free to defer.
Um, if borrowers— this is in financial and budgetary impacts— if borrowers fail to make timely payments and PHB fails fails to make a required payment on its notes, HUD will deduct that payment from the city's CDBG letter of credit.
In accepting this loan guarantee, the city will pledge its CDBG entitlement funds and program income as security for the guarantee.
That appears to me that we're taking on all the risk if the people that, uh, the Housing Bureau loaned money to are not, uh, repaying it.
Is that correct?
Good morning, Council.
I'm Amanda Saul with Portland Housing Bureau.
Thanks for the question.
PHB is taking on some risk by taking this loan, but we've tried to mitigate that risk by ensuring that the loans that we pass on to the projects have similar terms that PHB is taking on with HUD, which is like a requirement for a hard debt payment, matching interest rate, matching terms.
And then if projects get into financial challenges, PHB will set aside a certain amount of contingency in our annual CDBG allocation to cover potential costs.
Okay.
And so does taking this on reduce the available amount because you're putting some of it into contingency then?
It doesn't impact other programming, but we have planned to set aside some contingency.
Okay.
And that's separate from what this talks about a couple lines later when it says in the immediate term, this amends the budget by appropriating an additional $35 million towards contingency.
That's a separate process where this money, as it comes in, first goes into contingency and then is used to— Correct.
Okay.
Correct.
And then once we go through a NOFA process, And projects are selected and then go through their financial closing process, then that funding is moved into sort of a committed line item for that specific project in our budget.
Okay.
Do you, given that it is separate from the $35 million, the first contingency you were talking about, do you have a rough idea of how much that would be?
I think so.
Give me just a moment.
Very rough is okay.
Yeah, so I believe that based on our previous experience, PHB recommends budgeting 75% of its debt service due to HUD annually based on the amount that PHB borrows from HUD at project closing as contingency in the event that there are any shortfalls.
So for example, projects will come in over time, and so we've estimated that In 2027, our annual debt payment to HUD would be $411,000.
Our total CDBG entitlement that year is $8.2 million.
And so we've assumed that we'll set aside 75% of the debt payment, which is about $308,000.
Great.
That's an example.
Thank you.
Just to save time later, I'm generally very supportive of most acceptance of money.
So I just— this one's a little unique because of the loan structure.
So I wanted to ask those questions on the record before voting yes.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Off my mic.
There we go.
Thank you, Councilor Knoll.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Thank you, Council President.
There were 2 things that came out in the conversation in committee that I had said at the time I wanted to make sure were flagged at full council as well.
So I just I want to ask about both of those.
The first is that we had a conversation in committee about which portions of CBDG would be used to back this program and ensuring that we were very clear about what programs within CBDG could be affected and which wouldn't.
I believe the answer that I got was that the portion of CDBG that is used to fund restoration of existing affordable housing would be the portion that was backing this and that no other programs within the CDBG funding stream would be affected.
Is that accurate?
Correct.
We're thinking of this as sort of being able to future fund preservation projects against our future allocation of CDBG.
So instead of doing a small amount of preservation projects over a long period of time.
We're trying to use the CDBG loan to do more preservation projects faster.
And essentially backing it with the portion of CDBG that would be used for that type of project anyway, therefore extending the capacity of that portion of those funds.
Correct.
Okay.
And leaving the other programs that that fund helps to support not at risk.
Correct.
Okay.
Thank you for reiterating that and making sure that that's on the record.
There was also— we also had a conversation in committee about what these funds could be used for, what these loans could be used for.
And I believe they could be used for both rental and homeownership opportunities.
Is that accurate?
Yes.
Okay.
I think that's really important as we look at our total portfolio and the opportunities that we create across the city to ensure that both of those options are available to all Portlanders.
So I appreciate that we're using this program broadly.
Thank you for letting me put both of those pieces on the record as our intent in this meeting.
Can I just add one caveat that CDBG funds can't be used for new construction, whether it's rental or homeownership?
It can't be used for new construction.
It can be used for rehab or site preparation and other things.
So I just wanted to clarify.
When you say rental housing and homeownership, that it can't be— For ensuring those opportunities are retained.
Yes.
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you all for coming.
The Community Development Block Grant, it comes from the federal government, and each state gets an allotment, and our allotment is $8.2 million.
And thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
70% Of these funds have to be spent on low and moderate Um, projects.
So what you're saying is 70, 70% of, uh, our, uh, allotment every year is going to be set aside for low and moderate income, uh, projects.
And so what are you, um, what's your intention with the other 30%?
Is that what you're going to use for debt service?
Because you didn't set a guideline in terms of who who is going to be expected to use these projects for rehab and other kinds of things?
So CDBG funds can be used to serve people up to 80% of area median income, and the Portland Housing Bureau traditionally supports projects that fund— that have initial incomes at 60% of area median income.
So I anticipate, or our recommendation would be, that we would use these funds, these these Section 108 loan guarantee funds to preserve existing affordable housing projects that mostly serve people at 60% and below.
I think our CDBG allocation more broadly does support homeownership programs that PHB oversees, but I, to be honest with you, don't know about the income guidelines associated with those homeownership programs.
But I assume because it's funded with CDBG.
They have to be for low to moderate.
It would have to be for low and moderate income.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And so when you thought about doing this 108 program, were there any projects out there that you know about that you were kind of thinking this would be a good program for to have a loan?
Can you give me an example of a project?
Yeah, so through our unified housing strategy, We've determined that there are about 1,250 affordable rental housing projects that will be expiring in the next 10 years.
And so in order to retain affordability on those projects and continue to have them as a good place to live, we're recommending that these funds be used to rehab and preserve existing affordable housing rental projects.
So it's projects that are, you know, probably are 20 or 30 years old.
Right.
So are we going to prioritize those projects that already have a public capital stack to make sure that they have the needed resources?
Have you all looked at that?
Yes.
Okay, perfect.
Thank you so much for bringing this forward.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Sorry, was that a question for me?
Oh, just looking at me.
Just Councilor Smith is done.
Great.
I was distracted.
I apologize.
Councilor Smith, thank you.
Councilor Green.
Thank you, Council President.
Um, thank you so much for bringing this forward.
Uh, we did have a good discussion in the committee.
Um, just a few questions.
Well, first of all, I'm supportive of this, so I'm just going to lay that out here.
But, um, I do have some questions and some maybe suggestions for when we bring these items forward to make it clear to the public what the risk profile is.
So my first question is, I mean, it's clear that it's a loan guarantee.
We've already established that.
But do we know what the interest rate, like the term structure is going to look like for this type of loan?
Is it a fixed rate?
Is it a floating rate?
Is it prime plus some percentage?
It's prime plus some percentage.
Can you walk us through that?
Yes, just a moment, please.
So interest rates associated with these loans are floating until the interest rate is fixed by a public offering.
The floating rate is based on HUD's formula of the 3-month Treasury auction bill rate plus 35 basis points, which is currently at 4.17%.
Okay.
So it's floating until we've offered it.
So when do we take on the exposure?
Is it when we start— when we say we're going to attempt to offer it, or is it after we've offered it?
I believe it's once the loan documents are signed with the project partner that would then obligate us.
It's when we receive the funds from HUD.
And then they are passed on to a project.
Okay, so we don't actually have any floating rate risk once we're into the deal?
Correct.
Okay, it's just about— it's just like when you're shopping for a mortgage and the interest rates will move with the market, and when you— not until you lock it, that— That's my understanding.
Okay, that's helpful.
And so when you say that we're mitigating, we're hedging our risk by matching the terms with the other counterparty, they're just going to pay the same interest rate that we have incurred?
Yes.
On the same repayment term?
Yes.
Okay.
I think that kind of stuff would be really helpful just to see spelled out in the financial, probably the financial and budgetary impact section of these things, largely because I think it's actually really good for us to try to make use of federal loan guarantees.
It's a really good way of, of leveraging resources we don't have in the City of Portland.
And because when we make the loan, it creates economic activity and it creates income that then flows to the City of Portland.
So that's actually a net positive, right?
Mm-hmm.
And then describing how you've managed the risk, I think, is important for someone like me, but I think it's also important for other partners who are watching this.
And so that's a suggestion there.
The other piece, and this is a little bit more for CA Lee.
This is, you know, our impact statement structure.
It's a little bit peculiar because we've got the financial and economic impact section, and then down at the bottom we have economic and real estate development impacts.
Or I'm sorry, we actually have that, and then we have at the very bottom, we have economic and real estate development analysis, which is this other thing that we sort of like outsourced to Prosper Portland.
Yeah.
And typically the pattern is for them to say, well, we read your economic and real estate development impact analysis, we're good with that, we have nothing to add.
That doesn't seem like a— I'm not sure what they— I'm not sure what their reasoning was when they did this evaluation.
So I have no way of knowing whether or not it's good beyond saying check the box and move on.
I think the purpose of this was to see an actual economic impact analysis.
I don't think they've got the capacity to do that.
I think they're just saying, capacity to roll those out on the frequency with which we do these.
And so we might want to revisit that resolution that creates this requirement because I'm not seeing a lot of value add there.
Because I expected to see a rich discussion of how we can leverage, especially in a tight credit market where there's no private equity capital flowing, how leveraging this kind of a federal loan guarantee could actually induce and incite some broad— Mm-hmm.
I think that's really what we want to see in that section, and that's what I look for when I look at these.
So that's a note for you.
Thank you.
And then finally, I think my colleagues are right to ask about the interplay of the CDBG grant funds as the collateral piece.
And again, that's, that's why it's good for us to lay out that counterparty risk profile piece on the 2 sides of the ledger and say, this is how much it's going to cost, we think, on average.
And I think that's and then here's the sort of potential exposure, knowing that it's not a 100% default risk.
It's probably like a less than 5% default risk, right?
And so I'm sorry I'm getting kind of down in the weeds, but that's important stuff for the market watchers too.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Councilor Smith, I'll come back to you since you've spoken once.
Councilor Ryan.
Yeah, thank you, Council President, and thank you for this presentation.
Great questions.
I just want to put a pin in the— to support the expenses, the expenditures being investments going to rehab of those 20 to 30-year properties.
It gives us a chance to actually get some jobs moving in the market.
So thank you for mentioning that, and I really am supportive of this, but I just wanted to state my preference.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Mr. President.
A quick question: how many times can we apply for the $35 million Section once.
Do you know once and how long?
Sorry, I'm looking at my, my colleague.
Thank you.
Yeah, of course.
Hi, Councilor Smith.
My name is Kara Hamilton from the Portland Housing Bureau.
Um, so we applied— it's an— I think— I believe it's an annual competition.
This was the 2025 Legacy Challenge, and we applied for, um, the maximum amount that we were entitled to apply for.
So there will be future opportunities, and we were awarded the $35 million for this round.
Do they come around every 5 years, or what, what's the process for that?
I think it's annual, actually.
I'll add that the Portland Housing Bureau did receive an allocation of, of this funding, of this loan guarantee program funding, back in 2009.
Back in 2009?
Yeah.
Okay.
And so the the last question that I have is, if we choose to forgive an applicant's, um, loan, can we do that with the CDBG money?
Then the city would have to pay HUD back, right?
I'm saying if we decided— if they requested— if they got into a, into a, um, hard time and they said they can't pay, um, their capital stack was, was lessened, and, uh, could it be waived?
Using, um, CDBG money?
I, I suppose it's possible.
It would be a decision to— right, but it's, it's a possibility.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
Okay, perfect.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Councilor Smith.
Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, Councilor Ryan.
Can this also be used for, um, roads and infrastructure for some of our master plan projects?
Oh, It can't.
I believe it can be used for site preparation for affordable housing projects.
Right.
So it couldn't be broadly used to support the city, but it can be used to support a specific project that will serve people at— City Attorney Lee, I like your head nodding.
You want to add to that?
Yes.
Typically what you see in projects like this, and especially using CDBG funding, It has to be associated with a project adjacent to the property.
We couldn't broadly just use it for any project, but if there are sidewalks or anything that helps the project itself develop, then yes.
Like the Broadway Corridor Project, which is already in motion.
If we went back in time, could it be used for that since we're doing— I don't know.
I'd have to look back at that project itself to actually speak on it accurately to see if it could be used for that.
So I'll have to follow up on that one.
I just think anytime you can get the most flexibility possible from federal money, the better.
So yeah, thanks.
Right.
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, uh, this item is a first reading of a non-emergency ordinance.
It now moves to second reading.
Keelan, can we please call the now reordered item number 3?
Document 2026-294, authorize an increase up to $245,000 in bureau rates for FY 2026 through '27 to implement a pilot program to subsidize transit passes for city employees.
Thank you.
We do have staff available for a brief presentation on this, but I first wanted to turn it over to Councilor Pirtle-Guiney who pulled this from consent.
Thank you, Council President.
I pulled this from consent for 2 reasons.
First of all, in a previous meeting I had Councilor Smith.
I asked our staff to ensure that this was something that our employees wanted at a time when budgets are tight and we know that our city staff have many needs.
I wanted to ensure that this was a shared priority, and I wanted to give our professional staff here today an opportunity to let us know if those conversations had happened.
I also pulled this from consent because in the meantime it was brought to my attention that we have about somewhere between 100 and 150 workers at the city who are subcontractors but work for an hourly wage, essentially full-time, on behalf of the city— our janitors and security personnel— who were not provided the opportunity to be covered under this contract.
And I wanted to ask some questions about whether it would be possible to extend this to those workers as well.
Perfect.
So for both of those reasons, I pulled it from Brilliant.
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Well, with us this morning, we have Liz Horman from PBOT, Ron Zito, the Director of Bureau of Human Resources, and Millicent Williams, the Director of the Bureau of Transportation, to give us a brief presentation and then take some technical clarifications.
Take it away.
Good morning.
Thank you so much, President Dunphy.
My name is Millicent Williams.
I'm the Director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation, and we are here today to talk about an exciting opportunity to support city employees and the city's mobility and climate goals at the same time with a pilot program to offer annual transit passes to all city employees.
For over 30 years, the city has provided financial incentives to employees for taking active and non-driving modes of transportation for their commutes.
The Trip Reduction Incentive Program, or TRIP as it is known commonly, has been in place offering incentives for taking transit, walking, biking, and carpooling to work sites.
TRIP is implemented as a partnership between the Bureau of Human Resources and the Portland Bureau of Transportation, which is why both Director Zito and I are here today.
The timing of this emergency ordinance is due to the upcoming Oregon Department of Transportation's closure of all southbound lanes of Interstate 5 beginning on September 11th, 2026.
This closure is expected to cause significant congestion and extend commute times by up to 3 times what people would normally expect.
To support travelers, the city is looking at ways to reduce the number of vehicles on the road during the closure and supporting its own employees during the closure.
This proposal actually has a longer history, which you will hear about a bit, uh, later in this presentation.
Uh, the pilot program is a triple win for the city of Portland.
It supports our transit system.
It advances our work in the city's mobility and climate goals, and it supports employees at a critical moment and with travel throughout the year.
It's about leading by example and with our city's values.
We are proud of our transit system.
We support our transit system, and we want to make it easier for our employees to use our transit system.
I also want to thank TriMet and General Manager Sam Dessou for their partnership on this.
GM Dessou, we work together frequently to advance transportation and transit goals for our city, and this is no exception.
Thank you once again for all that you do for the community, GM Dessou.
And now I'm going to hand it over to Director Zito to speak on how this pilot and trip are a part of supporting the City of Portland employees.
And we're joined by Anessa Vitko from TriMet.
Thank you, Director Williams, and thank you to PBOT and all the work you've done to bring it to this point.
Good morning, councilors.
For the record, I'm Ron Zito, interim Director for HR.
And from BHR's perspective, I want to reinforce that this ordinance is fundamentally an opportunity to support our employees while also helping the city address an immediate operational challenge.
We know that transportation can be a significant barrier for employees, particularly as we prepare for the upcoming I-5 closure.
And we also know that a stronger transit benefit can meaningfully influence how employees choose to get to work.
Thank you.
As Director Williams has shared, this proposal builds on a program the city has had in place for more than 30 years and will make the benefits simpler, more accessible, and available to all city employees during this 1-year pilot.
For HR, that means reducing barriers for employees, supporting our employees' ability to attract and retain a strong workforce, and responding directly to feedback that we've heard from city staff.
And finally, this is a benefit our labor partners are supportive of as well.
To date, we've noticed our labor representatives of today's ordinance, and should it be adopted, we've already received confirmation from almost all of our labor unions that they support providing this new benefit to their membership.
At this point, I'll turn it over now to our TriMet partner, and then we'll give the floor to Liz Hormann from PBOT to walk you through where the program came from, what we currently offer, and how we arrived at this proposed pilot.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good morning, Council President Dunphy and members of the Portland City Council, City Administrator Lee.
Thanks for having me here today.
I am Inessa Vitko, the Chief Operations Officer at TriMet.
I was here a few weeks ago actually discussing the I-5 shutdown, so I'm happy to be back in front of you with something a little more upbeat and fun to talk about.
TriMet greatly appreciates the commitment the city has made over the last 30 years to encourage the use of alternative modes of transportation, including public transit.
And after my last visit here, it's very evident that I know that's also something important to this council.
So expanding the pass program to offer every city employee a full TriMet pass is a forward-thinking, innovative, and resourceful initiative by the city.
It also demonstrates the continued and highly collaborative work between the city and TriMet staff, something that I think is always worth celebrating.
I want to thank the city of Portland for our partnership that makes this proposal and so many other things we do possible.
This also comes at a very critical time for TriMet, where we continue to face a funding— excuse me, funding crisis that jeopardizes our ability to provide the necessary transit service that makes our city so very special.
As a regular rider myself, I'm really excited to share with the city employees who haven't experienced TriMet how easy and stress-free it can be to travel on our buses and trains.
Additionally, our employees at TriMet are eager to show city staff who— both all of our staff who keep the city operational— the pride for which we deliver safe, reliable, and efficient service as we navigate this upcoming 5-week partial closure of I-5, as well as for the continuation during the pilot.
So I want to take this moment to appreciate this renewed commitment to the TriMet system and to recognize our enduring partnership with the city.
Thank you, guys.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Thank you, Director Williams, Director Zito, and Vanessa.
And good morning, Council.
My name is Liz Foreman, and I work for the Portland Bureau of Transportation.
So today I really want to be sharing a presentation that covers— this is not— I can do it.
Thank you.
That covers the history, the origin, and our current status of the City of Portland Trip Reduction Incentive Program.
And I'll share more details about the opportunity that we have to implement a 1-year pilot to provide all city employees with an annual TriMet pass.
I think I can do it.
There we go.
Okay, lovely.
One more, please.
Yes.
Okay.
Um, so City Council first approved the Trip Reduction Incentive Program in 1994 to incentivize city employees to commute in climate-friendly ways.
Since its inception, there have been updates over the years to keep the HRAR modern and update the incentive amounts.
Um, our— the participation really peaked prior to the COVID pandemic for benefits-eligible employees, and— but we have been seeing a steady increase in participation over the last few years.
And also, as mentioned by Director Williams and Director Zito, this current program is really a partnership between the Bureau of Human Resources and the Portland Bureau of Transportation and Implementation.
Next slide.
The current TRIP offering includes a choice of one of the following to benefits eligible employees.
On transit, there is a monthly or annual option where the city pays half, so $50 monthly Or $600 for the annual, and then the other half is paid by a pre-tax income— pre-tax income via payroll deduction from the participating employees' paychecks.
The second option is our Bike and Walk Bucks, which is a $50 a month taxable income that's added to an employee's paycheck on a quarterly basis if the employee pledges to walk or bike at least 20% of their scheduled workdays.
Additionally, there is a carpool check option which offers funds for an employee to put towards parking.
Thank you.
Costs at down— at select downtown locations.
Next slide.
So as I mentioned, we have seen a drop in participation of TRIPS since the pandemic.
There are a number of reasons for this, including the transition to remote and then hybrid schedules, certain benefits not making financial sense if the employee was not commuting every day into the office, real and perceived issues on safety and traveling.
Thank you.
And much more.
We also currently have 8% of all eligible employees that are fully remote and thus are not eligible for— would not participate in the trip benefit.
I do want to, you know, call to your attention that the number of participants in the bike and walk bucks is actually higher than our pre-pandemic efforts.
And I really think that the correlation to this is some of the big encouragement events that PBOT and the city has done over the last few years with our city bike bus and more.
Thank you.
Trip costs have always been charged back to the bureaus based on the participating employee's cost code or cost codes, meaning it has been a mixture of general funds if that bureau is general fund funded or non-general fund money.
The city costs for the various trip incentives did peak in fiscal year 2019, with the city paying just under $1.1 million for all trip benefits for participating employees and a little over $740,000 of that was the city's contribution to TriMet.
So again, just to give the scale that we've seen over the years and how much the city has contributed to TRIP.
Next slide.
In 2024, PBOT led a process to take a closer look at TRIP and get feedback for employees.
We looked at ways to update the program to better serve employees after the pandemic, focusing on industry best practices like the fact that many peer employers in the region already offer a fully free transit pass to their employees, and looking at keeping the City of Portland an employer of choice while streamlining the administrative burden of the program, especially for our BHR partners, and doing all this while still increasing the impact of the program and reducing drive-alone trips to the worksite.
Some key feedback that we heard was that there was a need for a stronger incentive to encourage participation and that what was being offered wasn't cutting it post-pandemic.
The employee engagement process really found that a stronger transit benefit will shift employee commute behavior and reduce traffic and parking congestion for the wider Portland community.
Next slide.
So that brings us to today, and given the work over the last few years between BHR and PBOT on exploring ways to update the TRIP program, the groundwork has been laid to both improve the program offerings the city can be more in line with what other major employers are offering, and also lower the barriers to participation of the program for all City of Portland employees and increasing the use of transit.
Additionally, TriMet has really been a tremendous partner, and they have made updates to their employer pass programs, streamlining offering for those— for employers.
We have seen— we also, as you know, have a significant event occurring with the ODOT closure of the southbound lanes.
And this is anticipated to cause serious commuting impacts.
So this ordinance today is to move forward with a tremendous opportunity to provide a TriMet annual pass to all city employees.
Next slide.
So the pilot proposal is really shifting from our current offering of a 50% subsidy to be providing a free annual transit pass for all city employees, which includes our casual and seasonal employees.
Thank you.
So expanding beyond just benefits eligible, this would be a one-year pilot, and any future extensions are subject to future agreement between the city and TriMet.
The proposed one-year pilot would cost a flat rate of $495,000, which is about $245,000 more than what the city contributed for transit passes last fiscal year, and the city.
This will be paid for by bureaus and service areas to provide a fully subsidized pass for 12 months, with the employee— the per-employee cost being about $61.
Just 2 important notes on this slide, because I know you guys have gotten updates on this spreadsheet.
One is that sworn police officers are not included in the total FTE because sworn police officers can actually ride transit for free currently, and so we removed them from our FTE.
Councilor Smith.
FTE.
And additionally, for some reason, when we were pulling numbers from SAP, our council offices and their staff were not in those.
So those have been added.
This would be applied to all, to all folks.
So I just want to note that.
Next slide.
To be able to provide these passes to city employees for the I-5 southbound closure, we're on an extremely expedited implementation timeline, as this slide shows, but we have amazing Bureau of Human Resources staff, PBOT staff, and our printing and distribution staff that are all ready and waiting to be able to get these out to staff in time for the closure.
So finally, as I wrap up, I just again want to reiterate what Director Williams said, that we want to make the choice for transit easy.
This pilot program really is a triple win for the City of Portland.
Supports transit and our transit agency, supports our city mobility, our city mobility and climate goals, And it supports our employees and what they have been asking for for the last few years.
So thank you.
Thank you very much.
Colleagues, we now have time for technical clarifying questions or council discussion.
Since this was a consent item, there's nobody signed up to testify.
Oh, oh, hey, look.
Yep, uh, when it was pulled from consent, we opened up registration.
Well, there you go.
Okay, do we have anybody signed up for testimony?
We do have, uh, one person signed up.
Did you want to take that testimony?
Let's take that one person first, and then we'll get into full council discussion after that.
Okay, uh, Jordan Lewis.
Hello?
Hey Jordan, go ahead.
Could you hear me?
Can hear you.
Could hear you.
Jordan, you're muted.
Hello?
There we go.
Yeah, we hear you.
Hello, Portland City Council.
My name is Jordan Lewis.
I'm a volunteer lobbyist for Portland Democratic Socialists of America.
I'm generally supportive of any effort to increase transit ridership.
I'm also supportive of giving fare relief to people, especially with those with the least ability to afford a fare.
My concern with this plan is that it's not universal and it doesn't target those with the least ability to pay.
Let's say a city employee currently works at the office 2 days a week and pays for a day pass each of those days at a SmartPark garage, so $13 a day.
They pay $104 a month on just downtown parking, and a monthly TriMet pass of $100 is already a better deal on parking alone.
And that's just the break-even point.
If they work downtown 5 days a week, the TriMet pass is is going to be an even better deal than that.
So why don't people already take transit if it's a better deal?
Because it does not respect their time, which is more valuable than money after a certain point.
We aren't upset about the I-5 closure because it's wasting people's money.
We're upset because it's wasting people's time.
Time saved means time spent with family, time spent going to school, time spent applying to jobs.
Time may be worth more than money.
This is going to be a moment when lots of people who haven't taken transit since the pandemic experience it for— as a rider for the first time in years.
I see a lot of value in that.
My fear is this is our only opportunity to make an impression, and it must be a positive one.
I rode Portland Streetcar yesterday, and the story I was told was the streetcar is slow, the streetcar is unreliable, it's something you only ride if you want to or have to.
And that doesn't have to be the case.
The streetcar is uniquely slow and infrequent.
I prefer the bus, but these are solvable problems if we prioritize them.
Thank you.
Mayor Zorin in New York ran on speeding up buses and is delivering it as we speak.
The fantastic Rose Lane project pre-COVID sped up buses and made them more reliable.
Then COVID hit and we all thought no one would ever ride a bus again, and we hit pause.
We can always resume it at any time.
In fact, at the July 29th I-5 closure meeting, city councilors asked PBOT if transit lanes could be a part of the conversation, and the answer was yes.
The city is already designed— has already evaluated Roselanes on lots of city streets like Southwest Jefferson, West Burnside, Southeast Hawthorne, um, Lombard.
And this is, this is the time, and the mayor has the authority to do these things.
Uh, we are— TriMet, with the service cuts, combined the St. Johns Line 4 with the Woodstock bus, and a longer bus means more opportunities for delays.
So we're actually going to be experiencing more transit delays Which we could remediate if we pursued bus priority citywide.
And now is the time to do it when I-5 is being closed.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
That completes testimony.
Thank you very much, Keelan.
Okay, colleagues, we are now in council discussion, both clarifying technical questions and also just broader conversation.
Councilor Smith, kick us off.
Thank you.
Thank you all for bringing this forward.
This is so very important.
And I think that our employees and our FTEs, they're going to really appreciate this because I had some conversations with folks and they like the idea of us, uh, bringing this forward, particularly with this, um, the new shutdown at the, the Rose Quarter.
So I appreciate it and I, I think this is important and I'll be supporting it.
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Morillo.
Um, yeah, thank you so much for this discussion today.
And I really want to thank Councilor Pirtle-Guiney for bringing up including some of those workers who are excluded who may actually need transit the most in our city.
So I hope we can get more information on that moving forward too.
I'm very invested in supporting that effort as well.
So thanks for highlighting that.
And as a transit user, I've already felt the impacts of the bus cuts.
My bus now, if I miss it by 4 seconds like I did last night, It's gonna be another half hour before I get to take the bus ride home.
I ended up taking one of the Citi Bikes home instead, and it was a very fun ride.
But, you know, I can see how it's— I'm on a frequent bus line and other people are not, and people are already feeling the effects, and we're not seeing all of them go away yet.
So that's not TriMet's fault.
That is a failure of the state legislature to not fund this really important service.
So thank you guys for what you provide.
Thank you.
I think that this is an important thing for us to offer at a time when gas rates are going up, people can't afford to drive, and people are really struggling to be mobile in the city.
So I appreciate this.
I think it's an important effort, and I will be supportive as well.
Yes, thank you, Council President.
I, I support this.
That was a good presentation, and I hope the silver lining of the closure, in addition to what ODOT was talking about last time you were here is the freeway improvements, is that the silver lining is that we'll see a big uptick in ridership, which is the main culprit for the budget cuts.
So I do think this is an opportunity to really ignite that.
Probably my biggest concern is this is a big lift, and so are you going to be able to pull this off in the next 9 days?
And is there an alternative plan?
If not, like maybe the badges can be— Or just tell me that we don't have chaos on 9/11 when we try to use the TriMet because no one has their badges.
Yes, staff has been— both TriMet staff as well as PBOT, BHR, and PND.
I think we will get this very close to that closure.
And then I know the city has also provided additional flexibility for those early few weeks of the closure.
So yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, Liz, I would just add that our team this morning let me know that If this passes this morning, we will work with PND to get the names over to them, get the badges printed and out to people by a Wednesday of next week.
They'd be mailed out.
So that'd be good timing to get those in people's hands to use effectively as the shutdown begins.
And people do have to have the physical card.
They're not able to load it onto their phones.
There has to actually be the tap of the HOP card.
Yeah, I was, I was just saying that to have fun and try to see if there was an adaptable solution if you couldn't get it done.
But it sounds like you're confident next Wednesday.
Yep.
All right, that's a big deal.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Thank you, Council President.
First off, Mr. Zito, thank you for having those conversations with our labor partners.
I think it's really important if we are spending money on a benefit for our employees in a a tight budget time, that it be something that's a joint priority, not just something that is a, a priority for management.
I have heard over the last week that there are some other individuals who provide services to the city that are interested in this program and didn't have the opportunity to be included, and I want to ask a couple of questions about that.
Our janitors and security personnel are hourly employees who essentially work full-time for the city through a subcontractor.
This isn't a professional services contract, whereas somebody provides a contracted service for the city but has a number of other clients.
This is different from many of our other— these workers are different from many of our other contractors.
So my first question is, as we were developing this program, did we at any point consider including this limited group of subcontractors, again, those who provide direct services essentially full-time to the city, keep our buildings running downtown, and will also be impacted by the changes in mobility around our city with the I-5 closure.
Did we ever consider extending this benefit to those workers?
Councilor, I would say to answer your question directly, this is a considerable expansion of a current benefit.
That we looked at for city employees.
We did not consider contractors or subcontractors as we made the initial appeal to move forward with this ordinance.
Okay, I know that the ordinance that created the TRIP program specifies that the program is for city employees, and these are contracted workers, but an ordinance can change an ordinance.
Other than that, are there any limitations that would restrict us from extending this benefit to those workers?
Um, conceivably, yes.
We are not their direct employers, and so that presents its own challenge.
You know, just speaking theoretically, I think we could get into a situation of being a joint employer if we were to place benefits on those individuals without coordination with their direct employers.
Secondly, I know some of our contractors and subcontractors are represented by labor unions, we need to go through that same process to not unilaterally implement and impact any of those contracts that might be in place as well.
But we could amend the contract with their employer to say that that was part of the, the agreement that we have with those employers, is that this is a benefit that the city offers to our employees and would include those subcontracted workers in that pool?
Yes, I think that's possible.
Okay.
But it would need to include all of the entities that provide some subcontract support to the city.
So it would not just be 1 or 2 unions, it would be— or employers, it would be many, many employers.
Let me ask a question about that.
I had a couple of other questions first, but we'll jump to that.
As I think about this group of contracted workers, we're talking about people who essentially work full-time providing a service to the city, though in a subcontracted way, not as an employee, are working directly in our city buildings.
Again, very different from, for example, a consulting contract.
I know at PBOT there are folks who provide contracted services as well.
But if we were to limit an expansion just to those hourly wage earning, service providing contracted workers who are providing essentially a full-time service, we are the one entity that they are providing service for as an individual, what units would that include other than janitors and security personnel?
Is there a way to draw a line here, and would it include an extensive additional number of folks?
By my math, there are about 120 people within those 2 units, and I'm wondering if it's much larger than that, because 120 individuals, if we were able to extend the $61 an hour rate, would be about $7,300.
Thank you, Councilor.
For the record, Tracy Warren, Deputy City Administrator for City Operations.
I wanted to provide a little bit more information because I do think there's additional complications that would need to be considered.
For example, how we do our cost allocation models for the charges of city employee benefits and our ability to put things into our system for non-city employees.
So we do not pay those employees directly.
We negotiate terms under our contract with the vendor.
The vendor then pays those employees and provides their benefits.
So we would have the obligation to negotiate with each of those vendors around the terms of the contract.
Okay.
They ultimately have the authority over how they would implement benefits and pay for their employees.
So there's not a way for us to say, for example, one of the benefits of working at the city is this transit pass, which is fully covered.
We negotiate a rate with TriMet for it.
And we would extend that to your employees as a contractor at the city who meets very specific criteria, not all contractors at the city.
And if folks are interested in that, here's how you as the subcontractor would go about getting those passes from TriMet, but the cost is covered and that is just part of the contract that we negotiate.
Thank you.
It would need to be something that's negotiated as we're negotiating the terms of their agreement.
And ultimately they would have to agree that that is something that they wanted to provide as compensation to their employees.
Okay.
So we would not be able to just give it to their employees or set legislation that just gives it to their employees because we don't govern or manage their employees.
So for example, You know, if we have a contractor or subcontractor who's working for the city and say there's a personnel issue that arises, we're not able to take action towards that contractor or subcontractor.
We have to go through the project or contract managers and say, here's what we're experiencing with the contractor, and they need to manage that process.
We then manage how effective they are within the terms of those agreements.
Understood.
I'll put this in different terms to take it outside of how we normally think about these relationships at the city.
Let's take a big corporation that has a free cafeteria on site, right?
That's a benefit that some large corporations offer.
And those corporations sometimes have contractors who work in their buildings as well and have a separate badge, a contractor and in many cases, those contractors are still able to access that free cafeteria when they are working in those buildings.
That's not something that whatever entity those contractors work for is offering as a benefit.
It is just a benefit of working in that building.
So I think what I'm asking is, could we say that a benefit of working at the city, not for, but at the city, For certain folks is this pass, and we would think about it not as us getting in the middle of negotiating the benefits that their employer, our contractor, offers, but instead it is a benefit of working at the city which we extend to our employees and these folks.
I understand that there's some pushback to this.
I understand that this may feel like it's coming out of left field, but there's a group of folks who are working essentially full-time but through a subcontractor that we didn't include, and I think it's worth examining whether it's possible.
I want to ask one other question, and then I, I won't belabor this because if my colleagues are not interested in picking this up, I don't want to waste too much of our meeting time today.
But I, I do think it's important for us to consider, and that is about the cost.
And I, I appreciate TriMet, having a representative here today, thank you for being here because I think you probably need to give a wink or a nod or something to our city employees when I ask this question.
The current rate that we've negotiated is just under $61 per employee.
This is a group of, like I said, I think it's about 120 additional employees.
If the city were to decide either today or in the future that we wanted to extend this benefit to the portion of our subcontractors who are essentially working full-time on behalf of the city, um, for an hourly wage.
Would we be able to extend that $61 rate to 120 additional people, which is about $7,300, or would we need to renegotiate the entire contract in order to do something like this?
I can't give you a formal, formal answer because I'd have to check with our contract and procurement department, but it would absolutely be open discussions with other groups that are interested in moving forward with some kind of, of, uh, pilot or initiative.
We already do offer an employer pass program.
Um, it's universal to almost any size business to do, so they would be— um, we'd welcome, welcome a conversation with them.
Okay.
But if we were to amend, if we were to in some way be able to respond in the way that you're asking us to, we would need to amend the amount because the contractual agreement is for the $490x, $495, yeah.
I would assume we would need to increase it presumably by that $7,320.
I would note, and I hate to pick on any one entity, but I know that our contracts often run through our city operations service area broadly, that under the new system, the cost to city operations is just over $5,000 less than it was under the old system.
That's just shy of the $7,320 it would cost to add these 120 workers to the program.
Council President, I'll stop there because I don't actually know if there's interest in this and if I should keep pushing or not.
But I appreciate the answers.
I do think from what I've heard that this could be doable.
If there's not interest in doing it today, I think we ought to consider whether we amend this contract and add these workers in pretty short order.
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Councilor Kanal.
Thank you, Council President.
Thanks everybody for being here.
I really appreciate it.
Very supportive of this, and I appreciate the updates.
I'm really interested in the questions over who this could first, I want to appreciate the staff who updated the exhibit to ensure that those working for City Council are included.
I am interested in the— in post-today conversations about our contractors being able to be included, and I'd love more information on that.
I think this may be something that is part of a broader conversation about why are we contracting out all this labor at all.
I think in terms of building a more robust public sector, It would be great if some of those staffers were city employees and were included by virtue of that.
My assumption, and I guess I'll ask for confirmation on this, is that if we were to hire a new city employee after the contract starts but within the pilot period, that they would be included, right?
And so there is some scalability in terms of— I mean, my assumption is there's a rate per person and we're able to, right?
So if we were to increase our workforce through other means that would also involve them seeing the odds.
Yeah.
So that's a conversation I wanted to include, and I appreciate that, which is a much broader conversation than what Councilor Pirtle-Guiney is discussing, I know, but definitely something I appreciate.
And I want to make sure that our contractors are able to ride transit for free because I think everybody should be able to.
I wanted to ask about casuals.
So I know that the single biggest line item by bureau is parks.
Yes.
And they have the most casuals.
The employee count reflects that.
Some of those casuals are already covered by other free transit passes.
And I know you already noted that we have a subset of city employees who are already covered with free transit, so they're not in this ordinance.
So I wanted to ask about this from the perspective of sort of protecting parks' budget.
Was there analysis done of if there's overlap, if we're double awarding effectively.
You know, for example, if you're a, a student who's a lifeguard, um, you can ride transit for free as a public school student, you know.
So I was curious about if that was double-checked, just in terms of the, the size of the park's contribution to this.
Uh, thank you for the question, Councilor.
Uh, we're going to take that question back and, uh, do the research necessary to inform the response.
Uh, but yes, you are right, there are folks who are covered.
My son just finished a stint working with Parks and Recreation as a casual and did have that transit access.
So thank you for flagging that.
I think the team's interest in moving with urgency created some opportunities for us to need to go back and correct some records and make sure we were providing a full comprehensive response.
But yes, we can check on that and make sure that we do not allow for the double count.
Thank you.
And thereby the double expense to those entities who do not have that as an expense already.
Yeah, and I don't want to— I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because it's $160,000.
So I, you know, I get that.
So I broadly— That's a whole human being's— It is.
It is.
It's one position, right?
But it is.
So it's not nothing, but it's also not millions and millions.
So I do want to— I want to just get some clarity.
You mentioned sworn police officers.
Can ride TriMet for free.
Uh, I'm supportive, as I said, of free transit for anybody because I think it should be free for everyone.
But I wasn't previously aware of this particular thing, so I had 2 questions.
One is, can, can I get an explanation of how that works?
Is it— who's, who's paying for that is really the question I'm, I'm asking right now.
And is it, um, like, are there other parameters in terms of like on-duty, uniformed, etc.?
I would have to go back and find out for you.
I'm, I'm not the SME on all of our fare programs.
Yeah, and I heard this from our program partners at TriMet, and there's actually information on the TriMet website.
So I think it's sworn officers, they need to show a badge or their ID or already be in uniform on that.
So it's not just City of Portland sworn officers, it is sworn officers in a larger amount.
And we are not paying for it?
We are not paying for that.
No, it is a thing that, you know, I think TriMet offers reduced fares and free fares for certain folks, but sworn officers are one of them on that.
We can get the exact language and send it over, but working with our program partners.
Yeah, and just to be transparent, this will be a request to include our other first responders at some point.
I think firefighters deserve free transit.
I think Portland Street Response, I think telecommunicators, et cetera.
So longer-term conversation, not in the scope of this ordinance, but I heard that and wanted to make sure our broader first response system was all part of that.
Are we doing everything together?
Technical and— okay.
So then I'll just, I'll do this so I don't have to do it again later.
Very broadly supportive, as I mentioned.
I think when we talk about transportation, I think most of the public conversation is around things like potholes or encouraging electric vehicles in fleet.
Yes.
But having conversations that are significantly broader than single occupancy vehicles are important.
Our absence of direct oversight of TriMet has often been used as a, we should talk about walking and we should talk about biking, we should talk about cars.
I'm glad that we're having this conversation here in particular.
And I think a good entry point for that conversation is the fact that we are an employer of 7,000+ people.
I think we should be talking about expanding access for all for free.
And so I do want to disagree with the idea of anything that has means testing associated with it.
And I think this is a really good first step.
And not to disagree with the mayor of New York too often, but I do appreciate that this is free transit and not just free buses.
And that's, I think, a really important distinction as someone who is pretty close to the MAX myself.
I also just wanted to take this opportunity to say this is going to be very helpful in the context of the I-5 closure.
And one other thing that should be a higher priority in the context of the I-5 closure is something that I don't think the administration has been considering enough, which is remote work.
And I understand somebody said, and I don't want to repeat it because I'm scared of what it's going to mean for those employees, that 8% of folks are remote working right now.
That number should be going up.
I'm afraid that the fact that it was mentioned means that they're going to be targeted for being forced to come back into the office.
I think that's a great thing.
By the folks over on this side.
Um, but we need to be talking about how we can, uh, reduce the, the, at least temporarily, the load on the system, um, while the I-5 closures are going on, um, by allowing folks to work remotely.
Um, we have thousands of city employees who live north of, of I-84.
Um, obviously, as someone who represents North and Northeast Portland, I want to make sure that for safety but also timeliness and efficiency reasons and, and, and sort of protecting the taxpayer payment that's going into these employees while the closure is going on, that employees in my district or further north are not taking needless trips to the office, um, during this period of time and, and beyond.
So, uh, I'm glad we're thinking about how our public servants are going to get to work.
I'm glad we're thinking about where, uh, we're investing our dollars to impact climate change, preserve infrastructure assets from wear and tear.
And of course, health impacts, pollution, and all of that.
So reducing vehicles on our roads through transit passes and remote work advance our goals, and I'm excited to support at least the first part here as we work towards the second.
Councilor Carnell, if I can address your comment around remote work for employees, especially during the closure, that is the plan for the city.
For the first 2 weeks, everyone who is currently a hybrid employee, which are the folks who are coming into the office at least 50% of their time, will have the opportunity those who do not have that as an option, managers and supervisors and leadership within each bureau are working to adjust schedules, reporting sites, all of the things that would help to ease the burden on both the employee as well as the system.
So plans are in place for people to be able to work remotely.
At the beginning of the closure and during the second week of the closure, there will be an evaluation of the traffic.
Thank you.
Impacts and whether or not we need to continue to engage staff to allow for that extended period of time where they will be able to work fully remotely.
But that is the plan, and we look forward to updating all of the councilors on how we've progressed our work on preparing for the I-5 closure.
Well, whoever got sign-off from the 3rd floor on that, great job.
I can only imagine that that was challenging.
I did want to ask if we can, um, you said for those who are, who don't have the option, managers and supervisors will, you know, but, but managers and supervisors themselves also don't have the option right now.
That's correct.
So is that something that their managers and higher-level managers and supervisors will be evaluating, or is it because they're not hybrid, are they still expected to get here?
Because they are not hybrid, they are still expected to report however, there are, on a case-by-case basis or bureau-by-bureau basis, arrangements being made to support staff through this period.
Recognizing that there are any number of folks for whom transit is not an option based on their reporting times, we need to make sure that we're creating the opportunity to get their children to school safely based on the regular reporting times and the schedules that we anticipate.
So all of those things are areas of opportunity for managers to support their team members with, recognizing that there are a number of staff that perhaps manage people who are required to show up every day that may have some flexibilities with their schedules.
I can speak for PBOT.
We're asking that those supervisors, even though they may have the option of doing remote work, That they show up for their teams.
So it is not something that is dictated from the policy perspective, but rather the practice perspective.
We've had the conversations with our labor management groups.
I just had an LMC meeting earlier this week to talk to the partners that work directly with PBOT to support responding to their questions and support the members of those organizations.
Thank you.
So we recognize that it is an opportunity for us to test a lot of capabilities and to understand what's reasonable, what's— where we have some flexibility.
But everyone is being encouraged to lean in with all due flexibility to ensure continuity of operations, but also to ensure that staff are treated fairly consistently across the board, um, but that, uh, the individual, individual needs of each bureau are being met based on what the bureau does.
I, I'll— I appreciate that, and I'll try to make this really brief.
I, I do— when we're talking about remote work, I keep hearing the phrase fair and consistent.
I want to just add in a different word here, which is equitably.
If you live in North and inner Northeast Portland, you are not affected by this fairly and consistently with someone who lives elsewhere.
You're affected more.
And so having that be a primary factor in determining eligibility for temporary remote assignment is something that I think would be the equitable thing to do.
And I just wanted to get that on the record as well.
Councilor, if I may, I just want to put some numbers to the conversation.
Just— and we've covered this in a prior work session, but I want to repeat it here.
We've got around— again, these are rough numbers— 500 fully remote staff in the city right now.
We've got around 2,000 hybrid employees that will be remote during this closure, and we've got about 1,000 managers that are in person.
But a subset of those managers do oversee teams that will be fully remote during the first 2 weeks of the closure.
I think that's where the flexibility lies, not for those managers that are managing in-person teams where they probably need to continue to show up.
Sure, and I recognize that there are I think there's a broader conversation to be had about— there are jobs that are clearly in-person jobs, and there are jobs that are clearly not necessarily so.
I think there are also jobs which, for whatever reason, have been determined to be required to be in person that have no basis in the actual workload of it.
When I worked next door As someone who supported advisory bodies that met remotely, my work requirement in person was the same as everybody who worked with people that were exclusively in the Portland building.
I have people I worked with for years who I never met in person and had the same work requirement.
And so I think this probably affects our CPPW workforce the most, but I'm aware of a lot that— of jobs, and they're not— I think that's a great point.
Necessarily broad classifications.
They're not necessarily broad, uh, you know, offices.
But in terms of those sort of granular cases, I think it's not a handful of exceptions.
I think it's probably a 3-digit number of exceptions or, or special cases perhaps.
And so I'm just trying to make sure that those, uh, are, are considered in that way.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Thank you, Councilor Knoll.
Colleagues, I'd like to just quickly note that it is almost 11 o'clock.
We have not We have not yet gotten to either of the substantive issues we have today.
There are 40 people signed up to testify, and we have 5 more councilors in the queue.
Vice President Clark.
Thank you, Council President.
I'll try to bring us back to the issue at hand.
I, as a former TriMetian, I'm very supportive of this, and I actually got in the queue because I wanted to follow up on the questions, the issues that Councilor Pirtle-Guiney brought up.
So I'm interested in pursuing this because I do believe that some of the people that are contracted, the janitors in particular, are some of the people that need this the most.
So what I'd like to do is to find out if there is an amendment and if we can fast-track that, because I don't want to hold up this process.
It's imperative that we get these into people's hands as quickly as possible because September 11th is just around the corner.
Councilwoman Loretta Smith.
So I'm not sure how best to proceed here.
If someone has an amendment that we can expedite, let's do it quickly and let's, let's get on with this, because I think there's a lot of support for both an amendment as well as the underlying emergency ordinance.
Thank you.
Thank you, Vice President Clark.
I do believe there are a couple colleagues who are contemplating an amendment.
I will continue this through the queue, but if anyone wants to introduce an amendment, jump in Councilor Green walked away.
Councilor Zimmerman.
Thanks.
I think that I don't want to get silly over $7,000.
All right.
So the billing practices is not my concern.
The relationship with the contractor is not my concern.
We're actually in a unique position today.
There are 4 former county commissioners in this room right now.
And I'm reminded when I was a county employee that we extended this to all county employees all the time.
This is a norm.
I think we're actually catching up as the City of Portland.
So on the underlying, fully supportive, ready to go.
But I'm going to propose an amendment.
I'd like Councilor Pirtle-Guiney to co-sponsor this amendment with me.
But really, folks, instead of getting into the weeds here, I looked at the document that is included, and the document from TriMet says not to exceed 10,000 passes, right?
And I think we noted 8,900 FTE and not to exceed.
So we got a lot of room.
So my amendment is basically to direct the city administrator and your designee to put a program together to apply this, and recognizing that this is a last-second change, and if you need more money, you can come back.
But I think we're talking about such a small number, uh, the term wrapped around the axle is coming to mind.
So I am going to therefore move adding Section 3: Council directs the city administrator or designee shall extend the benefit to contracted employees providing sole service to the City of Portland and determine an operational plan to work with those contractors to ensure that their employees are properly covered under this benefit while providing service to the City of Portland in a manner considered by the city administrator to be sole service.
This proposed— the proposed TriMet contract dictates a maximum of 10,000 passes under this contract, and the city administrator shall request additional funding if needed in order to execute this section.
It is recognized that this section is an amendment to an existing plan and may require slightly more time to implement.
Second.
Councilor Zimmerman moves.
Is it Zimmerman, Pirtle-Guiney, one?
Happy to.
Yes.
Okay, and Councilor Pirtle-Guiney seconds.
Colleagues, to the amendment, is there any discussion?
I will see if anyone changes the queue.
Can we move it?
It's been moved and seconded.
So, uh, Councilor Green.
Yeah, I was actually in the queue before because I was going to sort of signal my support for something like this, So Councilor Zimmerman, Councilor Pearl Guinea, thanks for bringing this little quick solution forward.
I fully support it.
I have other things to say about this that I won't, you know, muddle this kind of a motion up, so I'll get back in the queue for that.
But yeah, I'm going to vote yes on this.
Let's just get it done.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Smith, any to the amendment?
Thank you.
Yes, and I just want to remind everybody that this is a pilot.
So going forward, we would have to renegotiate this for, for the, um, actual program if we continue this and have some other conversations.
And one of my concerns is, is when once we open this door to one contractor, we're going to have to open this door to all of our contractors because we're doing something different for a group of contractors.
And as a grandmother, you got to be fair.
You got to give all these grandkids the same thing.
Right.
You can't do one that you don't do for the other.
So I'm just reminding y'all.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Novick, to the amendment?
Yes, um, I agree with Councilor Zimmerman.
This is a small amount of money.
It seems like it should be a simple thing, but I'm also hesitant to, uh, for us to order the administration to do something which they haven't had a chance to think about for more than a few minutes.
So I just want to have a chance to ask Administrator Lee does this seem like something that gives you incredible heartburn, or is it something that you figure we could work out pretty quickly?
I don't think it's something that we can work out fairly quickly as it relates to trying to pull together these different contractors to work something out with them.
Is this something that we could work out in the midst of something long-term of an agreement if we continue this program?
No question we can do that.
I do worry about the time constraints.
Uh, that we have to be able to work out something to this degree.
Uh, does Councilor Zimmerman's language about we understand this might take time allay your concerns at all?
I'd have to lean on staff to take a look at that.
I don't— just hearing it from just the face value, I'd have to evaluate it some more.
I don't initially see concern with that, but it's hard for me to say on the fly like this.
I would just add that earlier there was a question that asked, uh, confidence level with getting these passes into people's hands before September 11th.
It was high, I said, in terms of our current employees.
I think if we were to move forward to try to do this in coordination with contracted employees with an indeterminate amount and impact, I would worry about our ability to deliver that in the next week or so.
May I respond, Councilor?
I speak only because I think it's to legislative intent.
And I think that the legislative intent is that we're a city that says yes.
And it's always easier to come in and say, hey, this is new, it's gonna take some time, please let us work it out.
But I think sending this signal of intent is important today.
And that is what is the heart behind this.
And because it is such a diminutive amount of money, The risk is so minimal as well.
And while we have plenty of contractors, we have few who provide full-time service or only work for the City of Portland.
And just to be clear, we're talking about janitors, folks.
We're talking about security folks who report to the same workplace every single day.
So that's really where my intent is at.
And I give a lot of grace to the administration to take intent from the council.
We don't need to iron out all the wrinkles on the dais.
I actually think that's that's the council-manager form of government.
That is where we've given you intent, and I look forward to a program delivery at a later date.
And I will certainly not be jumping on anybody's office door on September 11th if we have not fully executed.
Thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
Councilor Novick, any further questions?
Nope.
Okay.
No, I appreciate Councilor Zimmerman's remarks.
Thank you.
Councilor Knoll, to the amendment.
Uh, just one question.
Do we have a definition that we're working here with for sole service?
I asked him to determine— it's in there so he can determine what he considers that.
I, I guess, yeah, no, that, that's fair in terms of implementing it.
My, my question is, are we going to come back with— because there's a gap between the $7,000 and the $10,000— is there— are there other employees we haven't thought about?
Or sorry, other contractors we haven't thought about is my big question.
The, the way I— excuse me— the way I wrote it was so that they could put their best estimate of what our intent here and what they hear from this discussion about what that means.
And I, and I'm calling out the difference between— I think it was Councilor Pirtle-Guiney who brought up like a contractor who's a consultant that has 6 different clients.
That's not the intent I'm talking about.
I'm talking about folks who otherwise walk like, report like, stay until 5 like all other city employees.
That's kind of where I was going.
But I think this is also where when we allow a little bit of time for the administration to wrap its head around it to come back with here's what we're applying to be sole, sole service, and then we can, you know, evaluate that at a later date.
But this allows them to start that work.
Councilors, may I suggest, um, you know, the opportunity for us to come back with what that would look like for council to react to with all of the details, and maybe the intent be great.
Thank you very much, Councilor.
Thank you, Councilor Khan.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Thank you, Council President.
I wanted to reiterate the importance of the words at the end of this amendment about time, right?
This piece does not need to be implemented by September 11th.
There is still time to move forward with the very speedy transition needed over the next 2 years.
The next week and then to, to consider this.
Tracy, you just asked for something, and Councilor Zimmerman said that he believed that's the intent of what this section directs.
Do you believe that you can, um, that you can comply with the language of the now proposed Section 3 in the way that you just laid out?
Bring us back a plan.
Let us know how you're going to do this.
You've got a little extra time to figure it out, but you're hearing council intent that we do want to make sure these workers are included.
Yeah, I hear council's intent and I appreciate the intent.
I respect and appreciate all the work of our janitors and security team who mostly provide a lot of services for city operations, right?
So I want to be really clear about that, and I think the language is very specific, um, and some of the terminology in there could be confused with other, uh, contract and procurement language that we use.
And so what I'm— like, sole source is typically when there's one provider who can provide that service.
And so, um, that could entangle the language for us.
And so I'm thinking more, could we loosen that language to be a little bit more broad that the city will provide a plan with the intent that council has an interest in providing, you know, contracted employees who provide regular ongoing services to the city.
Let me just clarify.
I think sole source is highly different than sole service.
Oh, I'm sorry, I missed that piece.
Okay, so the, the intent behind sole service is folks who only work for us to do this work, right?
So they have— there is a contractor that we're in contract with.
Let's call it ABC Cleaning Company.
And ABC Cleaning Company has Eric report to the City of Portland's building every single day, or that's where I work.
That's what sole service is intended.
It's also why, um, the city administrator to, uh— excuse me— in a manner considered by the city administrator to be sole service.
Yes.
Meaning that is the, let's do a look.
Does that mean 50% they're part-time employee?
Does it mean 75%?
But instead of carving that out and having a debate over that, that sole service allows the administration and designee to determine that and apply the value statement as you're hearing this discussion.
And so I think that's quite different than sole source procurement.
And I don't want to confuse that.
Yeah, I appreciate that, Councilor.
And what you all are probably seeing is a nervousness in me sure.
With trying to react to language that I can't really see in front of my face and trying to give you all the best advice possible on how we move forward in a way that doesn't create additional risk or delay plans that we're really looking forward to for our workers.
Council President, if I could, I just, I think that this is an opportunity for us to exercise the council-manager form of government that I think the city has asked us to be more aligned with.
And it's one of those when the risk is low, and I think the risk is low here when we're talking less than 5 figures, given the fact that the City of Portland can go over a speed bump and cost more than $200,000 at times.
So the risk is low.
I think we've— I think this amendment gives the city administrator everything that he needs and his team needs to figure out all the— work out all the kinks of this.
But council's intent is clear, I hope, if we're able to adopt this.
And Um, I think we've also set fair expectations if it's adopted that we recognize it as a last-second change.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, any further questions?
Okay.
Councilor Smith, to the amendment.
Thank you, thank you.
Um, now that you all have totally hijacked my, um, my agenda item, thank you.
Uh, could I talk to the city attorney?
Because I'm not clear, because there's some issues.
It looks on the surface that it is a minor deal, but is the city attorney here?
We have a city attorney here.
But the city attorney— is Robert here?
This is— one's right here.
I, I'm here, but I wanted— I was— I guess I would defer on which city attorney you have been working with because it is not something I have been working on previously.
If you're listening, Robert, please come down.
Yeah, I think what— Because I don't think we did our due diligence.
This, from, from a surface level, I think we all up here agree that we would want to offer this benefit to, um, some of our contractors, and I, and I support that.
But, um, at the risk of, uh, not getting this out before the 11th, I'm concerned, and I'm concerned that we have not asked all the questions.
That we need to ask to make sure that this is something that we can do from a legal standpoint.
And I need to hear something from our city attorney at this point because I hear the concern that you're talking about, DCA Warren, in regards to this.
I just want to make sure that we're, we're, we're very emotional people and we're invested to folks who are underserved in our community and for folks who who are the janitors, and I think they deserve to have that.
But my— also, my other fear is if that we open up a contract and then we start talking about one issue and they want to bring up something else, then what happens?
We've opened up these contracts and we're beholden to other things as well.
So does that limit the conversation, uh, to be narrowed just towards this transportation?
So when you open these contracts up Do they have the ability to ask for other things as well?
So, and I, and I need to hear that from the attorneys, that this is not going to bind us to additional things while opening up these contracts.
While we up here want to give this particular benefit to our janitors, but are we opening ourselves up to additional asks?
Councilor Smith, Hi, Robert.
I'm glad you heard me.
City Attorney Robert Taylor, could you kind of— did you hear what I was asking?
Because I'm concerned.
I want to do this, but I don't want to do this at the expense of us opening up other things when we open up contracts.
Is this going to put us at risk?
Hi.
Thank you.
For the record, Robert Taylor, City Attorney.
Um, I don't believe it would, and, uh, I believe this is a limited program, uh, the pilot— to a pilot to meet an immediate urgent need given the closure of the interstate.
So I, I don't think this would necessarily cause us issues down the road.
There you go, DCA Warren.
Okay, thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Kanal, to the amendment.
I request the, uh, closure of the list, limiting debate on both the amendment and on the underlying.
I will adhere to that.
That sounds great.
Debate is now limited.
Can we please Move to a vote on Zimmerman, Pirtle-Guiney 1.
Moved by Zimmerman, seconded by Pirtle-Guiney.
Keelan McClymont
Koyama Lane?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Keelan McClymont
Murillo?
Angelita Morillo
Aye.
Keelan McClymont
Novick?
Steve Novick
Aye.
Keelan McClymont
Clark?
Olivia Clark
Aye.
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
The amendment is approved with a vote of 12 ayes.
Thank you.
Councilor Green, last word on the underlying now amended emergency ordinance.
Thank you.
Just briefly, I, I do want to ask the city administrator, um, did we restart the PCF e-bike program yet?
We were able to turn that funding back on?
Yes, I believe so.
Great.
I just want to make that clear because there was, there was a, a pause because there had been some sort of Okay.
I wanted the public to know that.
Thank you.
And then there was a person providing testimony that pleaded with the city to find ways to use our authority, our road authority, to provide travel lanes for buses.
We should take that very seriously because I think what we're going to find is buses sitting in traffic for 2 hours as well.
And so if you need support from council, please ask.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Colleagues, this is an emergency ordinance, requires 9 votes to pass.
Keelan, can we please call the roll?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Good use of emergency ordinance.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
The ordinance passes with 12 aye votes.
Okay, it is now 11:15.
I'm going to give us a 15-minute break.
We'll be back at 11:30.
Uh, just a programming note for everybody, we will be doing our absolute best to get to everything today.
We will be extending past the 12:30, uh, time.
I'll be working to let everybody know what's going on.
Please come back at 11:30.
All right, everybody, thank you very much.
I am calling back to order this meeting of the Portland City Council.
Can we please call item number 5?
Oh, programming note for folks in the room, we are extending this meeting until 1:30.
Thank you.
Document 2026-243, authorize exception to Code Chapter 17.93, renaming city streets, and authorize the renaming of Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard.
Allow exceptions to Code Section 17.93.010, 17.93.012, Thank you very much.
This is the first reading of a non-emergency ordinance.
Claire Adamsick with Council Operations is here for a committee staff summary report.
Claire.
Thank you again, Council President and councilors.
For the record, Claire Adamsick, Council Policy Analyst.
The ordinance before you is document number 2026-243.
This ordinance was heard as document number 2026-171 in the Public Works Committee on May 26th, where it was referred to full council with the recommendation to pass.
I'll just make a quick procedural note that the ordinance has a new number because it was subsequently referred back to the sponsor's office and needed to be refiled prior to its return to council.
Councilmember Herbold.
The ordinance renames Northeast and Southeast Cesar Chavez Boulevard as Northeast and Southeast Campesinos Boulevard and waives the requirements of City Code Sections 17.93.010 through 17.93.050.
It directs the city administrator to notify affected agencies and property owners of the name change through public notice and other appropriate means.
Thank you, Mayor.
It also directs the Bureau of Transportation to replace old street signs and install new street signs in accordance with the provisions of City Code 17— Section 17.93.060.
The full impact statement on this item includes information on financial and budgetary impacts and community impacts and community involvement.
10 People provided verbal testimony and 82 people provided written testimony on the item prior to committee action on the 26th of May.
The general themes of this testimony included Honoring the contributions of Latino and immigrant agricultural workers and preserving the original intent behind the previous street renaming to acknowledge the farmworker movement.
A desire to swiftly change the street name at a time that immigrant communities feel vulnerable.
Concern regarding waiving certain city code provisions without broader community process on the street renaming, as well as the cost to the city to update signage.
Allowing more time for the inclusion of residents impacted by the change due to their proximity to the street being renamed.
A proposal to return the name to 39th Avenue to restore consistency with Portland's numbered street grid and improve wayfinding.
And finally, aligning the street name change with community values of labor rights, equity, and social justice.
And that concludes the committee staff summary.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Claire.
Vice President Clark, this came out of the Public Works Committee.
Any opening remarks?
Thank you, Council President.
I think Claire did a great job of overviewing it, but what I'd really like to do is turn the over to my Vice Chair of Public Works and sponsor of this measure, uh, Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Council Vice President, uh, Clark.
I appreciate this.
This is a great day.
Um, before I begin to talk, could I have, um, Marta Gomez, uh, come up to the front, who are a part of my invited guests?
Jose Romero, Mayor Potter, uh, Ronnie Herndon, could you all come up to the front?
And I'm going to also have, after they speak, um, could Kathleen Sadat come up as well?
And I will have Maria from Pikun, uh, speak after, um, Kathleen to, to wrap it up and bring us home.
You know, every city, uh, we write its own history, not just in the archive books, but its street signs, uh, its monuments, Thank you.
The names we cast in metal and post at our intersections are silent teachers.
They tell our children whose stories mattered, whose sacrifices paved our avenues, and what principles we elevate as a collective community.
And that is why we all fought so hard uh, in 2009 to change 39th to Cesar Chavez.
Having a street name can be something that we can all be proud of, particularly the Latino community, and that is the reason why I am supporting the name change.
To Caposinos.
Because I believe throughout our city's history, renaming a street has always been a profound moment of reflection, a reckoning with who we were, who we are, and who we aspire to become.
Today, as we bring this ordinance forward for its first reading, we take up that historic thread once more.
When we look back at the farm worker movement, we see one of the most vital chapters in the ongoing struggle for human dignity.
It was a movement born out of systemic neglect dangerous conditions, and the quiet dignity of men and women who bent their backs so a nation could eat.
The true heart of that movement was never centered on a single individual.
Its lifeblood was the collective strength of the campesinos, the field workers, Who marched, who boycotted, who risked their livelihood, and who stood resilient against injustice.
It was powered by visionary leaders whose contributions demand our enduring honor.
Thinkers and organizers like Dolores Huerta, whose fierce leadership forged the movement's strategic heart.
And Larry Italong, the Filipino labor leader whose courage sparked the historic Delano Grape Strike.
So for too long, public memory has collapsed complex history in the myth of a single icon.
As history matures, so must our understanding.
We cannot ignore the painful complexities, the documented flaws that stain Cesar Chavez's legacy, and the oppressive altitude that ran counter to the very solidarity the movement sought to build.
So to honor truth in public memory, We must be willing to separate a movement's noble purpose from the shortcomings of any single man.
That is why this ordinance proposes a new path forward.
We do not name this street for one leader.
We rename it Campesinos Way to honor the collective spirit.
Thank you.
The quiet sacrifice and the enduring resilience of every farm worker, past, present, and future.
I know that changing public symbols naturally evokes really strong feelings.
Reexamining our past can feel uncomfortable, and honest disagreements will rise, but I welcome those friendly debates.
Thank you.
Let this chamber be a place where we discuss our history openly, not to deepen our racial or political divisions, but to bridge them through truth and through mutual respect.
Debate does not have to divide us when rooted in good faith.
It clarifies our shared values and unites us around our common humanity.
Thank you.
This first reading is the beginning of a conversation about memory, about justice, and about solidarity, and I look forward to walking this path together with my colleagues and our community— thank you— in the days ahead and in the next hour and a half.
So thank you all for coming.
Thank you for the fight the struggle, all that you did in 2009.
And we want to make sure that we have streets named after our entire community, not just the few that we see.
And Marta, would you like to, to start this off?
Thank you.
My name is Marta Wembes, co-chair of Por la Causa Committee.
I was one, also one of the Original leaders of the effort to rename 39th Avenue to Cesar Chavez Boulevard.
First, I want to thank Councilor Loretta Smith for leading this effort and your leadership.
Also, Council Vice President Olivia and everyone who took the time to meet with us, listen, and engage.
We connected with nearly all of your offices and worked hard to keep you informed about the purpose and the growing support from our community.
We are here today to urge your support for renaming Cesar Chavez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard so that it promptly honors the campesinos that it was always meant to recognize.
But before I speak about the name itself, I need to make something very clear.
This is not a reality show.
The process behind this effort has not been celebratory for many of us.
It has been painful, hostile, and at times deeply traumatic.
Many now drive down Cesar Chavez Boulevard without knowing that the Latino leaders endured to secure that recognition.
We were mocked, publicly insulted, and faced intimidation in our own neighborhoods and simply for asking visibility and dignity in this city, our city.
The truth about Cesar Chavez sexual abuse, violence against women and girls, have caused deep pain in our community.
For survivors, for— and for those of us who had lived through similar violence, this has been especially painful and re-traumatizing.
But we will not be silent.
We will not protect the legacy at the cost of survivors.
We will not let nostalgia erase the truth or excuse harm.
The ordinance before you today is about telling the fuller truth and choosing values larger than any other symbolic individual.
There has been too much indirect talk about who belongs, who is right, or who deserves recognition first.
The truth is that we need everyone, and we cannot ignore the deeper harms that can exist within organizing spaces.
As my dear friend and sister in the movement, Senator Abel Gordy, will say, no movement grows stronger by refusing self-reflection.
It also requires historical memory.
Those who fought for farmworkers' rights years ago were once the next generation themselves.
Yes.
Building on the wisdom of those who came before them.
That is how movements survive.
In the Latino and Indigenous cultures, elders are the living memory of the community.
The younger generations are not a threat to that legacy, but its continuation.
Movements grow when people listen to understand, lead with humility, and carrying forward the future that campesinos fought to create For their children.
This is why we believe campesinos deserve permanency in our city.
Not a single figure, not mythology, but the people.
The mothers working in the fields before sunrise.
The workers breathing poison and dust just to reach their goals, coughing but continuing because they have no choice.
The immigrants who bend their backs in pain so others can eat.
All of us.
The children forced to grow up too fast, translating for their parents in hospitals, school, and government office, words too heavy for their age.
The ones who die working in extreme heat or cold, who never made it back home and were forgotten by the system they sustain, and the generations upon generations of Black and brown people who carry this country on tired shoulders.
And ultimately, the campesinos always represents hope, esperanza.
Long after we are gone, people will still ride this boulevard.
What story will name will tell?
We are asking for the name that reflects our community strength, honesty, and inclusion.
So please vote yes for Campesinos Boulevard.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marta.
And I just want to say, um, today would not be possible if I didn't have the support and the work with one of my co-sponsors, and that is Tiffany Koyama Lane.
And I want to thank you for the work that you've done and, and help to, to bring people in.
I can have you wrap up, or you can speak now, or you want to wrap it up at the end.
Thank you so much.
We're going to go to Mayor Tom Potter, and then we'll go to, um, Ronnie Herndon and Jose and, um, Madam Kathleen.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you very much, uh, Councilor Smith.
My name is Tom Potter.
Um, I've been a resident of Portland for 80 years now, and I have been involved both with local government and other governments in the area, all with the intent of improving the quality of life for people here and around our country and our state.
And names make a difference when you go to a new city or you haven't been before.
Some of the names that you see on street signs will give you a good idea of what's going on with that community.
I'm very pleased to support the change of Cesar Chavez to Campesinos Boulevard.
I think it's appropriate.
I think that it will say something to a community that has not got the recognition that it deserves.
Much of the food that comes to our tables is directly involved with the campesinos that are out there in the fields on a daily basis, making sure that our stores of food are suitable and that they're there for everybody.
So this change, I think, is important.
Thank you.
When I looked online, I found that there's been no involvement of any city in the United States that I could see, that it told me, has a street with this name.
So I'm very proud of Portland to consider it, and I hope that you support it by saying yes and setting perhaps a sort of flag in the sky for other cities to do the same.
When you see the hard work that is done by these folks, you understand why it's important to acknowledge them and to say yes.
Without them, our lives would not be the same.
So thank you so very much for hearing this, and I would appreciate your support, and I know that the communities in Portland would appreciate it as well.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for your— thank you for your very wise words, Mayor Potter.
Ronnie Herndon, Executive Director of Albana Head Start and community leader and, and all these great things, could you give us a few words?
Emphasis on few.
Thank you, Council Member Smith, for bringing this forward and your work and helping to thank you, Mayor.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Mayor.
I'm honored to be here to help push this hopefully across the finish line.
I have a few written remarks.
Naming public places represents what Portland feels is important for all of its communities.
Renaming the street Campesinos reflects the city's appreciation and respect for the Latino community.
Change reflecting the aspirations of historically marginalized communities every change Martin Luther King fought for was controversial and was met with resistance.
Every change.
Those changes made America a better country.
The street change before you, I believe, will continue Portland's efforts to remain a welcoming city for all of its communities.
Thank you, Mayor Wilson.
I would sincerely hope that as this moves forward, that no one gets caught in the trap of thinking that it's not that important.
It says a great deal to all communities when we have to have a debate about one name for an entire community.
One name.
And certainly there will be those who resist for a variety of reasons, but I often think that yes.
I'm aware that when Martin Luther King died, some say that 50% of the country did not support his movement.
And I am also aware of people who were honest enough— I lived through that, I heard him speak, the anti-war movement in New York City at the time, 1967.
There were people who came to me, these are white people who I've become to know, who said, I'm ashamed to tell you, but I was in high school when it happened, we cheered.
We cheered.
I sincerely hope that we are far beyond that today and that we will support a name change.
One, one street in a city of hundreds of names that a community is asking us to support.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Herndon, for your historic words and background.
We're going to go with Jose Romero.
Could you give us some very wise words?
Good morning.
Buenos días, honorable councilpersons.
My name is Jose Romero.
I'm an 85-year-old person who has spent the last nearly 60 years in the movement, especially the causa.
Along with— I also served as co-chair of the Cesar Chavez Boulevard Committee from 2007 to 2010.
Currently, I'm co-chairing with Marta the Por la Causa Committee for the renaming effort.
We've been doing this— we were 19 years ago, we thought we were there, but we're back again.
And but I'm happy to say that many of the members that were part of the first group are now part of the second group, and then some.
Our work in the previous years has not gone by the wayside.
Our group reconvened shortly after the news broke, and we took immediate steps to address the wrongdoing by our former icon and role model, Cesar Chavez.
We are the group who has taken the responsibility, the leadership, and the obligation to do the right thing.
Our survivors cannot be disregarded.
We are the same group who persevered for nearly 3 years in the street naming process honoring a Latino leader.
And by the way, in the city of Oregon, there are over 2,300 streets, and not one, not one pays tribute, recognizes the presence, and acknowledges the Latino community within the city boundaries.
During that campaign 20 years ago, 19 years ago, we followed the rules to the letter.
Thank you.
We collected signatures, we paid fees, we attended numerous hearings, we survived the hostile neighborhood association meetings, and they were bad.
Martha is very descriptive of some of those.
We complied fully for the first time with City Code 17.93 and finally got our street by a unanimous vote of 5 to 0.
Thank you.
From the City Council in 2009.
So here we are again.
Collectively, our group has chosen Campesinos Boulevard.
In doing so, we have chosen to focus on the migrant, the immigrant, and the farmworker communities in particular.
Personally, as a seasonal farmworker in the mid-'50s and '60s in Oxnard and Stockton, California, I experienced firsthand what farmwork entails and how important farmworkers' hard work sustains and impacts our daily lives.
My grandparents, my parents, my— some of my brothers and sisters, and much— many of my extended family all started their work history in the fields.
And, and so we know what it's all about.
We also know that for a fact that there are no farms, there's no food processing plants, there's no packing sheds, there's no nurseries, there's no farm work done without campesinos.
Thank you.
We know that there is no food on our tables without campesinos, as they are an essential part of our daily lives, and they have been so now for over 100 years.
There is no Portland without the presence and daily contributions of the immigrant and campesino community.
They do the work other Americans will not do.
In the, in the mid-'60s, the wife and I joined the farmworker movement called La Causa.
And we've been with it for 58 years, and we'll continue so as many years as we have left.
During those years, we marched with the farmworkers, we picketed, we boycotted grapes, head lettuce, Gallo wines.
We demonstrated along with the farmworkers in the pursuit of justice, and we supported them totally.
Now, as a result of what we've heard and what we've discovered about Cesar Chavez, We're in the process of correcting a wrong and doing the right thing.
We didn't have a lot of time when this broke to reflect and, and, and feel sorry for ourselves.
We decided to move immediately and address the issue, and that's why we're here.
We're here because we wish to honor the sacrifices and dedication of our ancestors, those that put forth the food on our tables to make a better life for our entire community, our entire nation, and future generations.
We are here to honor farmworkers, campesinos, the campesino legacy.
Their lives, past and present, matter.
Campesinos are the salt of the earth.
In closing, I want to thank you for the opportunity to share our position and solution to this matter.
We value and appreciate your support.
Thank you.
We urge you to support the ordinance and rename the street to Campesinos Boulevard.
Muchas gracias.
Thank you.
Thank you for your service, and thank you for being a lifelong example of what it means to fight in this movement.
And I have 2 more, Mr. President, and I'm going to call Ms. Kathleen Sadat.
Good morning.
I am Kathleen Sadat, pleased to be here.
I'm retired.
I've been involved with renaming 2 other streets in Portland.
One was the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and the other was Harvey Milk.
I was involved because I think it's important for us to have visible signs of the presence of communities and groups that live in our community.
I'm here this morning to give my strong support of renaming Cesar Chavez Boulevard DeCampesinos Boulevard.
This name more directly recognizes the people it was originally intended to honor.
The winds of change, the winds of circumstances should not remove a symbol of honor and respect for the people whose lives are entwined with ours.
We must retain and teach the reality of the farmworkers' struggle It has been long and hard, filled with pain, setbacks, betrayals, and disappointments.
This civil rights movement, made up of hardworking men and women, has helped to push America further toward our aspirational goal of a more perfect union.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you.
In the heat of our nation's escalating state-sanctioned bias and bigotry, we need to find ways to publicly take a stand to support the ideas that shaped America.
This is our opportunity for us to demonstrate that we are still in the struggle to build that America.
We must continue to display our diversity and to respectfully present examples of the many contributions made by the people who formed the foundations of our country.
Campesinos are significant part of that foundation.
The renaming of the street will honor the collective contributions of farmworkers, immigrants, and families whose labor sustains Oregon and the rest of the United States of America.
These people are our neighbors.
They are our friends.
They're our partners.
They're our teachers.
We are still working with these people together to continue to push forward.
They are still working and contributing to the health and the welfare of all people in Oregon.
Let us give them our respect.
I ask that you agree to rename Cesar Chavez Boulevard Compensinos Boulevard.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you, Kathleen.
Thank you for all your words.
And I want to thank all of you for coming and being an invited guest today.
It's so important to have that historical, uh, blueprint of what happened before so that we know how to go forward.
And I appreciate you all, each and every one of you.
Thank you for coming.
Could I have, uh, Maria, Cecilia, and Ernesto come up, who will be the last of our invited guests.
Maria is the Deputy Director of PCUMN.
Yes, thank you so much, Maria.
Cecilia Hinojos Pressy.
I am the Deputy Director of PECOON, Oregon's farmworker union and only farmworker union in the state of Oregon since 1985.
We were founded by 80 farmworkers in order to end exploitation and all of its effects.
And by exploitation, I do mean the fact that the Oregon agricultural industry is a $42 billion industry.
And yet your average farm worker makes less than $30,000 a year.
The Oregon agricultural industry contributes 1% to the United States GDP, and yet farm workers are still fighting to access overtime pay for work over 40 hours.
And Sebastian Francisco Perez had to die for common sense rulemaking to be passed.
Thank you.
Such as ensuring access to cool, clean water that hasn't been exposed to special pesticides, especially during high heat events.
Council members, I am here and honored to be sitting alongside a long legacy of elders, alongside a coalition of community members, to ask you to honor the legacy of those that pick the food that goes on our tables food that oftentimes they can scarcely afford themselves.
A legacy of a dedicated workforce that the United States has been importing since World War II.
We ask for a humble acknowledgment of their sacrifices because this movement goes beyond one person and it will live on amongst the many.
So I urge you to vote yes to changing Cesar Chavez Boulevard to Campesino Boulevard.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Maria.
Thank you so much for level-setting us.
I appreciate your words and giving us the historical background.
And Ernesto, could you go?
Yeah, Councilor Smith, uh, present, uh, Council President, thank you very much for letting us speak today.
My name is Ernest Fonseca.
For the record, I am the chief executive of Hacienda CDC.
Many of you already know Hacienda, but just for context, you know, we house nearly 5,000 people, many of them Latinos.
But for that matter, you know, Latino, just as a reminder, is not a race.
You know, we are white, we are Black, Indigenous, brown, and Native American.
Therefore, you know, I believe that we are here representing a large group of people, and I am so grateful, you know, for these elders that came before me.
Thank you.
And represent us and supported us, you know, from Ronnie to Kathleen to Marta and many others that do not need any introductions.
With that said, I will say that, you know, regardless of why we're changing the name of Cesar Chavez, which we should, you know, given the allegations that came up, came forward, we need to move on.
And we need to move on to, uh, but not necessarily to change the name to anything else because representations matter.
The Latino community typically tends to put their heads down, work, keep moving forward, stay out of the courthouses, stay out of the limelight, simply because we don't want to have any troubles.
Because of that, I do believe, and much more on the contributions that the farmworker community have contributed to this entire country, not just to Oregon, we believe that this name change to Campesinos is only focusing on the collective work of the many and not of the one.
And I think that, uh, asking for such a little thing from a city not of hundreds of streets but thousands is a very, very small ask.
As I said, representation matters, and having that particular name change means a lot to all of us.
It means a little bit of power.
It means a little bit of recognition of the work that we do that we are in many cases not able to speak up because of fear of whatever came— can come after.
So I encourage you all to please support this small change, and hopefully, you know, by the end of the day today, we can celebrate together with a new name for that boulevard as Campesinos Boulevard.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank all of you for coming.
And now, Mr. President, I am turning the program back over to you.
Thank you much.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
Thank you.
First, I want to deeply thank each and every one of our speakers that we just heard from who are here with us today.
This is, this is a decision we are not taking lightly nor making in a vacuum.
This ordinance comes after months of public input and honestly years and years of community organizing.
It reflects the voices thank you.
Thank you, Mayor.
I'm so excited to be here today with so many members of residents, farmworkers, many organizations who have been closely involved in this effort for a really long time.
And to be clear, this effort started back in 2007 with the intention to recognize the many farmworkers and immigrants who have and continue to contribute so much to our communities, to the city, to the state.
United Farmworkers, UFW, translates, translates to La Unión de Campesinos.
Campesinos literally translates to farm workers, and campesinos have historically and continue to provide the backbreaking labor for our— for the food our community needs while facing food insecurity themselves.
My family ran Coyama Farms in Central California for decades, and I remember hearing about the conversations that my grandparents, aunties, and uncles had with members of La Unión de Campesinos.
About supporting workers.
The work of Campesinos has only gotten harder with climate change, heat domes, the terror of ICE raids.
In this particular and very unfortunate situation with the revelation, revelation that Cesar Chavez was a pedophile and abuser, the history of this name change matters.
This is not a neutral do-over.
Councilmember Loretta Smith.
Reverting to a number only feels neutral if you set aside the history behind it.
The history is central to this ordinance.
The original naming to Cesar Chavez Boulevard came after years of organizing by Latina leaders and advocates who did their due diligence, due diligence twice over, followed the process, and endured racially motivated hostility and unfortunately, that racially motivated hostility is still alive and well here today.
And by today, I mean literally even in this building.
And you'll hear more about that from one of my colleagues.
Advocates fought hard for Cesar Chavez Boulevard, and it's heartbreaking to learn the truth of what Cesar Chavez did to women and girls.
Councilmember Herbold.
The original naming committee, Por la Causa, in addition to many, many allies and advocates— I don't know if I've seen like a list this long of supporters— have proposed Campesinos Boulevard.
They want to preserve the intention of the original name change.
They have told us that reverting back to 39th Avenue feels like a painful form of erasure to all they endured and to the intention of the name change.
Which is to honor community and legacy.
And just to clarify, we've waived code requirements for other communities and movements.
Union Avenue to MLK Boulevard, which Ms. Kathleen Sadat just shared, was involved with in 1989.
That was really important.
It sent a modern precedent and formal framework for changing street names in Portland.
Front Avenue to Naito Parkway.
Yes.
For example, there was a 5-year requirement after someone dies to get a street named after them.
That was waived with William Nadeau, Bill Nadeau.
Portland Avenue to Rosa Parks, Stark to Harvey Milk, Southwest Jackson to Southwest Rose Hill Street.
Just this past February, we waived those code requirements because Rose Hill had not been deceased for 5 years.
And that proposal has only changed a part of the street.
The conversation is still going about More for that one.
So the proposal for Campesinos Boulevard has been a community-led effort by residents, farmworkers, many organizations and leaders to honor the collective contributions of so many whose labor often goes unnoticed and unrecognized.
I know this is fraught, and some residents have raised real concerns, and I hear those voices, and I hear that.
A numbered name is wanted for ease of navigation, consistency with neighboring streets, cost, a desire to avoid renaming the stream— the street again down the road.
And I need to really acknowledge and ground us in the fact that this is all happening at a time when our Latini neighbors are being targeted, abducted, tortured, even left to die in federal detention camps.
Thank you.
For literally doing nothing wrong.
Changing Cesar Chavez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard can be a form of declaration that says Portland sees you, Portland values you, Portland recognizes your contributions, and we want you here to stay.
So I want to thank all the many, many, many community organizers who have been at this for so many years.
Thank you for keeping us moving forward and Thank you to Councilor Smith for her leadership on this, along with her team and my team.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Colleagues, a couple of quick programming notes.
The 2 o'clock executive session has been canceled.
We are going to be extending this meeting until we are done.
We have a lot of people signed up to testify on this item and the next, so we will be continuing this until— not continuing, we will be having this hearing until 1:30.
We'll take a 30-minute break.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Smith and Koyama Lane.
Before we move to public testimony, there is an amendment that I, along with Councilors Koyama Lane and Novick, have filed and will be introducing.
I'm not actively moving it at this moment, but I'm sharing some opening remarks just so the public knows about what this amendment is.
Before they testify.
So Dunphy, Koyama Lane, Novick 1 is an amendment that comes from a realization that I had while I was working through the proposed name change and thinking through the serious differences of opinion on this matter that we've seen both in written testimony and heard aloud.
That realization was that when the city changes a street name, we almost always do it by suspending the rules in of city code, Chapter 17.93, rather than just doing what the code says.
Earlier this year, as Councilor Koyama Lane was saying, we suspended the code to start the process of renaming a section of Southwest Jackson by Portland State University.
The city suspended the code to rename Naito Parkway in 1996 and Rosa Parks Way in 2006, and of course, Cesar Chavez Boulevard in 2009.
Before the renaming process was in code, it was a process set by resolution, and we overrode that as well to rename Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in 1989.
So the only exception to a rule-breaking norm that I'm aware of is when, uh, the city renamed Southwest Harvey Milk Street, an awesome but very short street.
Um, in so many of these cases, the fault lines of the conversation have been agonizingly similar.
In 20 years, the process as laid out in code has not It's also an extremely expensive process.
Since 2023, PBOT has paused taking applications for street naming changes due to stated resource constraints.
So the thing clearly isn't working, and we shouldn't just keep going as though someday it will and just keep suspending the rules along the way and when it suits us to do so.
So my— this amendment asks the Bureau of Transportation to take a year to look at our code and come back to us with some ideas on how to rebalance and streamline the street naming code.
It also asks PBOT to include a proposal for street co-naming.
For example, did you know that 82nd Avenue is officially also known as the Avenue of Roses, or that our colleague Councilor Novick championed the work to nickname the road directly to our west as Positively 4th Street in order— in honor of Bob Dylan.
Co-naming could be an option for the city to use street signs to commemorate and celebrate without triggering all the paperwork and expense that a legal street name change can cause to the community.
Just to be clear though, I'm not asking for anything, uh, specific to the proposal to rename Campesinos.
This is more about the house— the city getting our own house in order.
Um, I feel that the change before us today, unwieldy and challenging as it may be, is fundamentally a tweak to a decision that this city made decades ago.
I think it's best that we move forward on this, but let's fix the process and not keep having the same fights over and over again.
And so, after we conclude testimony, I will be moving this amendment.
And before we dive into testimony, I will see if there are any tech.
Technical or clarifying questions from my colleagues.
Councilor Morillo.
Yeah, I just had a question on the amendment itself because, so my understanding, and forgive us, we just got this a few minutes ago and I'm excited to support the underlying policy, but I'm curious about, so the purpose of the policy that we're passing today to change the name is to cut through the red tape So that we don't have to retraumatize the community that has already done so much work to change it once before and not have to go through that again.
So this is just adding in a line saying that just all moving, all things moving forward, they're going to look into, but today we're going to continue on this.
Absolutely, yes.
Uh, since we have this vehicle open, since we have this conversation happening right now, it seems appropriate to I recognize fully that the members of the community who have been doing this for decades, specifically on this, have been doing their absolute best to work within a system that does not work.
My amendment would not impact the underlying efforts to try and rename Cesar Chavez.
This is specifically about us making it right-sized for future conversations about other names of streets that we absolutely will probably have to change because there are some dark histories of some of the people who our streets are named after.
So it is my hope to make this a process that is more accessible for the broad community.
Okay, so if Campesinos passes today, it will stay as is.
It will not be revisited under this ordinance?
Correct.
That is my intention.
Thank you for the clarification.
Thank you, Councilor Morillo.
Councilor Kanal.
Thank you, Council President.
Just 3 quick things.
One, I'm pretty sure that the requirement is that streets are renamed for their entire length.
So I'm pretty sure Harvey Milk actually does, uh, was also a waiver because Stark, uh, remains on the— yeah, so there, uh, there may be other things in there, but I, I think your, your broader point holds that, um, we've waived it a lot.
Um, I am going to be proposing an amendment because, uh, to your amendment that I wanted to be transparent about because since June 25th, I have had on the committee the whole update that council would be leading a conversation on fixing 17.93, not outsourcing that work to the administration.
And so I'm disappointed to have that be kind of dropped on us here after that work has been going on.
And the only reason it has not been placed on an agenda is to allow this process to finish first on the specifics so that it would not be, uh, so that the conversation about 17.93 would not impede, which I think is everyone's goal here.
Um, and so I must also note that this amendment may cause that— not mine, but the one to, to do.
I, I do, uh, it's just to the last piece there to try and reword how the new E, um, I believe is E there, uh, is worded, um, by, uh, instead of asking the city— Portland Bureau of Transportation, sorry— to, um, go away and come back with options.
And I appreciate the amendment to the amendment that Councilor Novick put forward, but to say that they'll collaborate with us from the start, um, because that's been something, again, that's been on the Committee of the Whole's agenda items list since June 25th.
Councilor Um, and was mentioned verbally prior to that.
Um, I have no other technical questions, but I'll make that motion later.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor Knoll.
Councilor Novick.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Um, technical legal question: is it true that under our code, um, the old street name will have to remain that, that, um, for up for 5 years during a transition period?
So you'll We'll have both Cesar Chavez and Campesinos.
I think that's a provision which was not waived.
Uh, Councilor, for the record, Ken McGare from the City Attorney's Office.
That is correct.
Uh, the provisions of 0.060 were not waived.
There are other provisions in there about notice to the community, to the U.S.
Postal Service, and the like.
So that, that was all left in.
Okay, so we're not getting rid of the existing name anytime soon, um, although we will be making it clear, you know, what the new name is.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
Oh, um, it was my understanding that it would not take 5 years to make that change.
And that's what we thought, that we were waiving that as well so that we could get started on this as soon as possible.
So I think what the code says is that the old street name remains up for a period of 5 years.
It doesn't mean that you can't get started on renaming it Campesinos Boulevard.
Before the 5 years?
Correct.
Okay.
And is Millicent Williams here?
Could you help me and, and, um, kind of explain to the community what this would look like with our current budget and how soon could we actually get started on, um, changing those signs if this is passed?
I'm actually going to— uh, Millison Williams, for the record, uh, director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation.
I'm actually going to ask, uh, that Wendy Cully, a city traffic engineer, come forward.
She can help with the process around how we would engage community before we began to make the street name changes, um, how we would need to engage, um, our partners at ODOT, uh, the US Postal Service, thank you.
And any number of other community partners before we would be able to make those changes.
They're— making a change of this scope and scale is significant, and the impacts are to those not just on the main street but on the streets that intersect as well.
So there's a lot of work that will need to be done, but Wendy can provide a little bit more detail.
Yeah, I don't know if I have a good answer for engaging community given some of the things that were waived when this ordinance came forward.
But there— the, the reason the requirement is in place to have both Chavez and the new name posted for a period of time is because emergency service providers need some time to adjust.
USPS needs some time to adjust.
I know the last time we did this I think we left the signs up for 2 years maybe.
So there may be room to shorten that.
But it has become apparent after the most recent name change that we've been working on that there is a desire from service providers to have dual signage for a certain period of time.
The other question was about how soon we could get started.
That's a really good question.
We need to have new street name signs printed.
There's quite a few over a 7-mile-long stretch.
So we would need to do that.
We would also need to shift priorities for our maintenance bureau.
Some projects that they have in the pipeline would need to be pushed out in order to get this done.
It does take a long time to move down the street block by block.
Thank you.
And get that done.
So I would need to speak to the teams to see, like, exactly the timing for that, but it would have an impact on other projects.
And it also, of course, has a financial impact to PBOT, and we would need to find the funding to be able to do this.
And thank you.
Do we offer any, um, any help for businesses who need to change their, their letterhead or any of those things that we could provide for folks who are on We have not historically done that, to my knowledge.
Um, we've only had some very minor adjustments in recent years and then a very short segment of Southwest Jackson, um, that, that we're dealing with.
So we haven't come across that.
Um, yeah, I'm not aware of that.
I would be looking— yeah, and I know this is kind of, um, an unusual request, but if there are some, some ways that we could help some of those businesses, um, because they're going to be impacted a great deal again, to make sure that we can, um, offset some of the costs that they're going to have to, uh, to make some changes.
Uh, they, they also have to go into, um, the directories and get those changed.
And some of those— I don't know what that looks like, but I'm just throwing it out there.
Thank you.
If there are some miscellaneous funds that we could use to give them some assistance.
Thanks for the recommendation.
We'll take that back to the team to consider how we might be able to support the request.
As Wendy shared, we will also be analyzing how the Bureau will be able to support the request, given that we don't have any discretionary funding.
To do this work.
We would need to reallocate, not do something else, frankly.
We would be making the choice to delay another effort in order to make sure that we could do this.
And I appreciate you looking at how you reorder things to make this a priority.
Thank you so much for coming up, and thank you for giving us the background and the history.
Thank you, Councilor.
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Avalos.
I have some more questions about that, but I'll wait until after the testimony.
But, uh, one question I want to get out of the way: is there anything that we need to know as it relates to voter registration?
Is for the upcoming election, is that all secure?
Is it that people just have their current address, we don't have to consider or anything like that?
Just trying to figure that out based on the timeline.
I'm not sure, I'm not clear on when things are going to start moving.
And I received some questions about voter registration.
Um, I can almost 100% guarantee you that this, while we may do the planning work, uh, the address changing would not occur before the, uh, November election.
Uh, as Wendy shared, printing the signs, reallocating the work, identifying the staff, defining the plan will take some level of effort.
And so we would not— I don't think we will need to be concerned about that.
But we can, at a later date, come back and speak to what that process looks like, when people will need to begin to make those changes.
But that's part of why it's important to have the overlap in the street names.
Thank you.
So that there isn't a hard break, but rather the opportunity for people to transition into that new naming.
It's kind of like if you get married and/or divorced and you get emails or mail with both names sometimes for a period of time until it settles itself.
So, but I would not be concerned about November election.
Thank you.
And I raise it because not just not just for this upcoming election, but future ones.
Sure, absolutely.
Just a question that has come up, and we know that there are lots of— there's lots of drama around mail voting and all that.
And so just know that constituents have raised that, and I would like you all to make sure to communicate those things so that people don't fear that they're not going to get their ballots.
Thank you for that.
We will make sure that we include that in our outreach.
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
I just wanted to say I appreciate the— what Councilor Avalos just brought up, and that I wanted to share that my office has done a lot of work talking to the DMV around this, and there we got clarity that you can keep your physical ID, your driver's license, permit ID with an old address.
You do not have to buy a new card until you normally just have to replace it.
And because we don't— they don't issue those change of address stickers anymore anyway.
And also, the USPS still seems to route mail correctly.
Okay.
Correctly when 39th Avenue is used.
So that's important to remember since addresses are really based on the zip code.
And Councilor Smith, I appreciate your bringing up small businesses, and I suggest that Prosper Portland be brought into this conversation, and maybe we can talk about their small business grants.
And I also welcome if any constituents who have small businesses in District 3 and are affected want to reach out to my office.
I'm more than happy to help.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Okay, uh, that concludes our technical and clarifying questions.
Can we please move to public testimony?
Yes, thank you.
We have 26 people signed up for this item.
I will call folks up in groups of 5.
First up, we have Serena Cruz, Mike Schmidt, Pastor Dr. Leroy Haynes, Cully Thorn-Ladd, and Michael Taylor.
Just a reminder, you'll have 2 minutes to testify.
Thank you.
Welcome, folks.
Feel free to jump in.
Thanks so much.
Good afternoon, Council President Dunphy and members of the Portland City Council.
My name is Serena Cruz.
I am a Save a Neighbor candidate for the Multnomah County Commission, and I thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on this item.
And I especially thank Councilors Smith and Koyama Lane for their leadership in co-introducing this ordinance.
I want to start by acknowledging those who've submitted testimony in opposition.
A street name is woven into our daily lives— business cards, letterhead, leases, school enrollment forms.
Changing the name will cause real impacts, and I respect that.
Here is what I ask council to sit with, though.
Any change is disruptive.
Reverting to 39th Avenue requires the same updates, the same administrative burden from an adjustment from every business and resident along the corridor.
The question before you is not whether to absorb disruption.
Some disruption is unavoidable.
The question is what name this city chooses to carry forward.
Keeping the name Chavez is not a neutral option.
We now have credible and substantiated evidence that he abused women and girls in his care.
Maintaining that name, knowing what we know, is a choice.
It's a choice the city should not make.
So the real question is, what do we put in its place?
I believe the answer is Campesinos because it reflects the belonging that we want this city to be about.
Street and place names reflect community values.
Um, some opponents have called to name this something else.
Uh, nothing— name something else after farmworkers.
Nothing stopped the city from naming something else in the intervening 16 years.
There is not another single city site, building, or place that's been named for a Latinx leader or that reflects our heritage or contributions in that time period.
Removing our one small reflection in Portland life amounts to an erasure of our community at a time when Latinx and immigrant communities are being targeted by the federal government naming this corridor Campesinos Boulevard sends a message that Portland cannot send loudly enough.
Your labor, your sacrifice, and your story belong on the streets.
I urge council to pass this ordinance.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, for the record, my name is Cully Thornladd, and I'm the CEO of the Children's Institute.
You may be wondering why I'm here today to focus on a street naming when my work is mostly about children, but it is twofold.
For one, I'm a member of the community, a resident of District 4, and I remember the original fight to change the name to Chavez Boulevard.
I worked in City Hall then.
I remember the opposition and the vitriol and the racism that was attached to it, the unwillingness to change the name despite not one street in the city paying homage to the Latino community, which is the fastest-growing community in our city.
I was supportive of it then, just as I am now.
And I'm here for a second reason as well.
I believe that we should change the name to Campesinos Street because our young ones are watching.
Children are under attack, as has already been said.
Latino children in particular are under attack with an administration that is targeting them specifically and is allowing racial profiling to terrorize their community.
Children are often vulnerable victims in all of this.
Their humanity is being undermined at a time when belonging is everything to their developing brain and their sense of self.
While it's a small gesture maybe to some, the street naming gives children something that says, I see you, you belong here, you matter.
Few things can be more powerful for a child, and since they often don't have a say and don't have a vote, I wanted to elevate their voice, their rights.
It's just not the right thing to do this matters, I think, most of all, especially right now in this day and this moment in history.
Our children are watching.
I hope you will make the right decision to name it Campesinos.
Thank you very much.
Good morning, Council President and councilors.
My name is Mike Schmidt.
I'm general counsel at the Urban League Portland, and I'm also here as a resident of Southeast Portland in District 3, and I drive, uh, this boulevard every single day.
On behalf of the Urban League, this vote is about who a name should honor.
The Urban League has spent decades fighting for the recognition of the contributions of marginalized communities, for making sure the people who actually did the work get the credit, not just the person whose name ends up on the sign.
This ordinance does exactly that.
It doesn't erase the farmworker movement.
It corrects who gets credited for it, moving the honor from one man's legacy to the workers who actually built La Causa.
We support making that shift swiftly.
Now, as a neighbor, like I said, I drive this street constantly, and to be honest, I'm not aware of another street in this city— and it's been said there may— there is not one named to honor the contributions of Latino people in our community.
And that matters.
People need to see themselves reflected in the places they live.
It's It's part of what makes a community feel like they belong.
This name change is also giving us something else, a reason to talk.
I've already had this conversation with my own children about why this matters, and as far as I know, Campesinos would be a nationally unique street name.
I hope that uniqueness sparks that same conversation in families for generations to come, not just here, but as a model elsewhere.
I urge you to move this ordinance.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
My name is the Reverend Dr. Leroy Haynes Jr., President of the Albina Ministerial Alliance, the oldest ministerial alliance in the city of Portland.
To President Councilor Dunphy, To distinguished members of the City Council, I come in support of the name change from Cesar Chavez to Campesino Boulevard.
I had the privilege of serving on the original steering committee for the name change of Cesar Chavez Under Mayor Adams at the time.
The AMA believe this name change will continue to express the Latino community great legacy and heritage in our great city and our vision of a multiracial democracy, as well as the fight for civil rights dignity, livable wages, and farmworkers' compensation for their labor.
This struggle reflects, Council, the dreams and vision of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in building the beloved community.
May we continue the struggle to fulfill the dream and vision of Dr. King by passing this ordinance.
Thank you very much.
Thank you all very much.
Michael Taylor.
Are we going to do the same thing with 4 people, or— You just come on up.
Feel free to just jump on in.
Yeah, next up we have Michael, uh, well, Michael Taylor, Jerry Hansen, Tom Sollitt, Anna Munoz.
Anyone want to start?
Okay, good morning, council folk.
Um, my name is Michael Taylor.
Cesar Chavez's name should be removed from the boulevard, but removing Chavez and choosing camp Campesinos are 2 different decisions, and the record does not establish a widespread consensus across the community claimed in this ordinance for the proposed new name.
I ask council a simple question: what does, quote, community, quote, mean in that finding, and what evidence demonstrates truly widespread community support specifically for Campesinos Boulevard?
Councilor Smith described PCUN as an important stakeholder and told Willamette Week that it was central to the name selection.
PCUN and other rural farmworkers organizations supporting Campesinos represent important voices, but consultation only with selected stakeholders is not the same thing as a representative public process involving people who live and work along this lengthy avenue.
On June 23rd, after hearing the proposal and public testimony, the Portland Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend that Chavez's name be removed, but also that the council should conduct a more robust engagement process to determine the new name.
That distinction is important.
Agreement that Chavez should no longer be honored can be counted— cannot be counted as agreement that Campesinos should become the default street name.
And face it, if Chavez had not fallen from grace, not one of us would be here now proposing it.
There is no need to choose between honoring farmworkers and respecting public process.
We can do both.
So I'd ask council to remove Chavez's name from the street.
Don't waive public process in order to impose Campesinos Boulevard.
Seriously consider 39th Avenue.
There's a massive amount of community support, so they should be given some consideration.
And follow the Planning Commission's unanimous recommendation for a robust the terrible revelations concerning Chavez providing a compelling reason to consider renaming, but they don't justify abandoning Portland's standards for public participation.
Thank you.
Next.
Councilors, my name is Jerry Hansen.
I'm a Richmond neighborhood resident.
A Native American group came to the city in 2024 and asked for a street name change.
Jackson Street runs in front of the PSU Native American Center.
All they asked for was to change the name, covering a mere 3 blocks.
Jackson is the same president who practiced genocide on the Native Americans in 1830.
Thank you.
There's never been a more righteous name request for a name change.
What did the council do?
You said, okay, but you've got to go out and collect 2,500 signatures.
It's a very large ask for a small group of people, but they did it, and they'll be coming back to the council soon, about 3 years after Yes.
They started the process.
Today, the process— the ordinance you are considering now does something very, very different.
You're considering the name Campesinos Boulevard for a major street that runs 7 miles through many neighborhoods.
It was a name chosen secretly behind closed doors, a name chosen without any community input.
It waives all 5 subsections of Chapter 17.93, every process requirement.
Why does the smallest minority community have to gather 2,500 signatures while another gets every requirement waived outright?
This is not a small inconsistency.
This is a gross double standard.
Councilor Smith.
It's blatant favoritism of one minority.
It's not fair.
Do what good politicians do and find a compromise.
There are many, many good compromises out there.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Next.
Okay, greeting, um, city councilors.
My name is Ana Muñoz.
I'm Director of Community Defense at Latino Network, and I'm here joining groups of longtime Portland community diverse leaders, leaders who have shown commitment in collaborating with city leaders to advance equitable and just policies to make sure our communities are considered and included.
Today should not be about words.
It should be about actions, actions that stand firmly against hate, Thank you.
Councilmember Herbold.
Thank you, Mayor.
I'm pleased to be here today to speak on the ordinance to rename the former Cesar Chavez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard.
It's an opportunity for the City of Portland to demonstrate what it means to stand against racism, advance equity, and collaborate with diverse communities.
City Council members, you have an opportunity to demonstrate through your decision how the city core values are put into practice.
With intentionality, accountability, and courage, our campesino communities have contributed immensely to the fabric, economy, and history of this region.
39, On the other hand, is a simple number.
In this case, a number that does not tell a story of the working people.
This is more than changing a street sign.
It's about Whose history we want to recognize, whose contributions we want to honor, and what values we, we choose to uphold as a city.
Today I'm not here asking for a favor.
I'm asking you to show respect to the people who deserve to be seen and recognized.
Stand against racism, advance equity, and show meaningful collaboration with diverse communities.
Thank you.
Please move forward in renaming the former Cesar Chavez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard.
Portland is also my home.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Tom?
Hi, for the record, my name is Tom Sollitt, a Portland City Council District 3 candidate, and I'm here not necessarily in favor or opposition of any particular name.
I'm just here to Urge the city council to follow city code.
I believe that how we do things matters, and to waive this city code cuts out not red tape; it cuts out the involvement and inclusion of different people who will be materially impacted by this name change.
I would invite everyone here.
City Council and anyone here in the audience to also revisit their own personal values, their own organizational mission statements when it comes to inclusion, equity, and having a voice at the table.
To achieve a goal by circumventing other people's right to be involved undermines that effort in a way that I don't believe anyone here is seeking.
I once again invite City Council to not waive the city code, but to engage with all sides in this conversation about this renaming, make it amicable, and make it educational.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks to all of you.
Keelan?
Next up, we have Beth Warner, Maria Rojo-DeStefi, Maria Rubio, Nora Herrera, Nathan Ong Norris.
Welcome.
Who wants to start?
Beth?
I'm happy to start.
My name is Beth Warner and I live in Southeast Portland in District 4.
Until 2009, the street in question was named 39th Avenue.
Our forefathers were very logical in naming Portland streets.
North-south streets were listed numerically and east-west streets were named.
This makes for easy wayfinding in Portland.
Today in 2026, we find out that Cesar Chavez was not an honorable person and the street needs to be renamed.
I recognize the good intentions of wanting to rename the street Campesinos Boulevard in honor of farm workers, but does it really make sense?
I sent a suggestion to District 1 councilors recommending that they consider renaming the East Portland Community Center in their district as the Campesinos Community Center and return Cesar Chavez to 39th Avenue, its historic name.
I emailed a copy of my recommendation to all council members.
Thank you.
District 1, where the East Portland Community Center lies, has the highest Hispanic population of any district in Portland, with approximately 26,000 Hispanic residents, or 16% of the District 1 population.
Wouldn't it be a win-win for everyone if 39th Avenue was restored and farm workers were recognized by naming a gathering place in their honor rather than a street?
You say there is overwhelming support for Campesinos Boulevard.
I certainly don't see that when I view the testimony of Portlanders on this ordinance.
At last count, I see 839 pieces of written testimony in the public record.
79 of those residents support the name Campesinos.
760 Do not.
The majority of those would like to see the street returned to 39th.
Councilor Smith.
I hope you will do the honorable thing and listen to your constituents and give good thought to my suggestion of the Campesinos Community Center.
It's a win-win for everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Maria?
Good afternoon, uh, council members.
Um, street names are public honors.
They tell us whose lives and contributions our community chooses to remember.
The history of this particular street makes today's decision especially important.
Many of you have said that the city has waived the process for naming streets such as Naito Parkway and Harvey Milk Street and Rosa Parks.
Thank you.
And I, um, I'm sorry, I'm having a little issue today, but some of these were done in legislative or symbolic fast track.
And I'm proud to live in a city that recognizes our heroes, our heroes like Martin Luther King, Harvey Milk, Rosa Parks, and Bill Nadeau.
Our Latino community was required to travel a very difficult road in the early 2000s.
For more than 2 years, as many have said, leaders organized, gathered signatures, attended hearing after hearing, and complied with every requirement imposed by the city.
They endured racial slurs, threats, resistance, and even violence, and that history should not be erased.
Portland should carry forward the recognition that the community fought so hard to achieve.
Returning the street to 39th Avenue would be the wrong change.
It would erase the meaning of the struggle that farm workers have been through.
Campesinos Boulevard transfers the name from one individual to the farm workers, campesinos, whose labor sustains our food system and contributes to our economic well-being.
And we all, not just Latinos, enjoy the fruits of the labor.
And don't put us in a corner somewhere with a facility named after us where all the Latinos live.
It needs to be spread out throughout the community because we are as important as all communities.
Thank you.
Good morning, city councilors.
My name is Maria Caballero Rubio, a former 15-year resident of the city of Portland.
And a proud campesina.
I come from a family of farm workers.
There were 13 of us in the fields every day during the harvest.
The word campesino is a farm worker, but behind that, I think what it represents to me is hard work, perseverance, and pride in our work.
I'm here to support the name change of Cesar Chavez to Campesinos, our farm worker Boulevard.
Many of you have either heard, read about, or personally experienced the effort to name a street for the farmworker civil rights movement and leader Cesar Chavez.
This effort brought out the worst in a segment of the Portland community back then.
Those were ugly and strange days, unlike what I had previously experienced in Portland.
It was painful, sad, and frightening.
Those leading the effort sitting in this room received death threats and were screamed vulgarities in their faces, and yet here they are.
They persevere.
It is that important to us.
I proudly run Centro Cultural, a nonprofit organization that was founded by a group of Mexican-American, Chicano, Tejano, and Californian migrant farmworker families 54 years ago.
Those days were not easy.
Those of us who were farm workers lived in labor camps while we planted and harvested crops from May to October and then returned to our home states, eventually making this our home.
Our building there stands as a testimony to the hard work, perseverance, and pride across our— pride across our nation.
Street— streets named after our farm worker civil rights and worker rights movements stand as reminders that we are here, we contribute, and we have rights.
This is why it's important.
I'm here today because I took a job almost 12 years ago out in Washington County, and I realized how much Portland is watched, admired, and revered by people in your neighboring counties.
Portlanders have always seemed to do the right thing and to make the right policies.
As Oregon's downtown, Portland is exciting, creative, Progressive, foodie, smart, and lovingly weird.
As they say, as Portland goes, so go the rest of us.
You set the tone, Portland.
Do the right thing, Portland.
Thank you.
Nora is joining us online.
Nora, you're muted.
Can you hear me now?
Yeah, we can hear you.
Hi.
Um, my name is Nora Herrera.
I've lived in Northeast Portland for nearly 40 years, and I am a 30-year federal employee in a science agency here in town.
I am here to oppose renaming the street to anything other than 39th Avenue.
And to be clear, this has nothing to do with whatever name the council wants to use.
It is about returning 39th Avenue to our neighborhoods.
So back in 2007, I think we've heard about this, a committee decided to rename a street in Portland.
After back and forth rejections for Interstate and 4th Avenues, the committee turned to Broadway, Grand, and 39th.
As part of the process, the city surveyed these streets, businesses, and households, and regardless of the 88% opposing the renaming, City Council voted to rename 39th Avenue anyway.
Thank you.
And here we are again.
This item today was already proposed in May under a different item number.
Over 600 written comments were submitted, overwhelmingly opposed to re-renaming 39th Avenue to any name other than 39th Avenue.
Instead of voting, it was pulled, and now it's back today unchanged.
Well, unchanged except now with verbal testimony, the sponsors and supporters have recruited city leaders to fill many of these spots.
They've armed themselves with the 2-page community supporter list and provided a template used by at least a dozen individuals to submit supporting testimony.
But that doesn't mean the overwhelming opposition to renaming 39th Avenue via the 2009 survey and the over 800 pieces of written testimony testimony, most opposed, submitted to council this year don't matter.
Even the Planning Commission noted public opposition to the proposed street name in favor of 39th and a lack of time for outreach.
Discussions today indicate this council has the ability to resolve this issue as a win-win by the use of highly visible honorary sign topper plaques to honor whomever they wish.
I'm asking you to reject this ordinance and give thank you.
Good afternoon, councilors.
My name is Nathan Ong Norris.
I am a candidate for Multnomah County Commissioner in District 2.
I support the proposal to rename this street Campesinos Boulevard.
This change honors the true backbone of La Causa, the farm workers, immigrants, and labor organizers.
I'm a third-generation Asian American I am the descendant of immigrants.
I am the descendant of farmers.
Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino farmers played a critical and often forgotten role in the Oregon agricultural industries.
All along the West Coast, from Vancouver to LA, the solidarity between immigrant farmworkers from Mexico, Central America, and Asia have created some of the strongest labor actions and true solidarity that we still benefit from today.
We are in a moment of rising costs.
Worsening climate and increasing precarity.
This is a moment to remember how far we have come, and the strategies we have used, still use, and will need into the future to organize ourselves out of this crisis.
I am always in favor of recognizing movements and people over an individual, no matter who that individual was.
Movements need leaders, but leaders are not movements.
No matter what the street is named, it will still lie.
It'll be how Portlanders of every stripe get from place to place.
Campesinos Boulevard rolls off the tongue pretty well.
Let's do it.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Next up we have Armando Gonzalez, Elizabeth Perry, Loyalty Hustler, Karen Chire, and Veronica Dulac.
Welcome, folks.
Feel free to jump in.
Whoever sits down first, it's you.
Yeah, great.
Go ahead.
Good morning, city councilors.
I'm Armando Gonzalez, a business owner, retired educator, a 37-year resident of South Portland.
I was born in Nissa, Oregon, into a large farmworker family, and for the better part of my young life, I lived the migrant farmworker life.
I'm here this morning to ask your support for naming Campesinos Boulevard.
Growing up, my parents taught me to work hard, study, and support the community.
My parents believed in education and advocating for those in need.
From them, I learned to participate in local.
Community issues and to work for social change.
At home, I also learned the importance of being bilingual, bicultural, and being proud of my heritage.
While working as a farmworker, I witnessed the significant contributions we made to the economy.
I also saw the tireless work of campesinos.
The farmworker movement inspired me.
As a result, I pursued a higher education, earned my master's degree, retired in education, and started my own business.
17 Years ago, my family, my wife, and our 3 children worked on the campaign to rename 39th Avenue to Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard.
While we at times encountered hostility, we also received overwhelming support from the local community.
Ultimately, in 2009, the City Council voted to approve the name change to Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard.
Our Por la Causa committee believes that the name change to Campesinos Boulevard Boulevard represents the shared struggles of the farmworker movement.
This morning— afternoon, I agree, I urge you to formally support the official naming to Campesino Boulevard.
Recognize the immense contributions of farmworkers who work every day, often in the harshest conditions, to grow and harvest our food.
When my family was working in the fields, we were invisible and certainly never recognized for our work.
Campesinos are essential workers who deserve respect and recognition.
My family and I ask you to join us in honoring the past and present contributions of Oregon's campesinos.
Support the name change.
Yes for vote for Campesinos Boulevard.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Hi, good afternoon.
My name is Elizabeth Perry, and full disclosure, this is my husband.
So he just mentioned that our family has been active in the community for years.
I'm originally from the border, from El Paso, Yes.
And Juárez, Mexico.
But our family came to Oregon when I was just 5 years old, so I consider Portland my home.
And I've seen all the good, the bad, and the ugly that Portland has to offer, and the weird that Portland has to offer.
I've worked for social justice.
I've worked as an educator all my life and worked on behalf of many, many students.
Many of those students have been farmworkers themselves.
As you heard just a moment ago, our family was active 17 years ago in the effort to name 39th Avenue to Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard.
Names matter, as you've eloquently heard from many of our distinguished speakers, and the story of the farmworker movement in the United States labor history is critical.
Especially at a time when farmworkers had little power and lived through horrendous living and working conditions, the United Farm Workers showed the power of organizing and winning against all odds.
Today we have an opportunity to honor that legacy here in Portland.
To suggest that Campesinos Boulevard belongs elsewhere or that we should just go back to 39th Avenue is to erase the contributions of those who labor in our fields, greenhouses, nurseries, and kitchens right here in Portland.
Farm workers are an essential part of our city's fabric and deserve to be recognized as such.
By renaming Cesar Chavez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard, Portland will send a clear message that we uphold our core values of dignity, equity, and anti-racism.
Thank you.
Let's remove systemic barriers and center the voices of those who have been marginalized for far too long.
Let us honor and reflect to farmworkers, not just in words, but in the very landscape of our city.
I urge the council to take action and rename Cesar Chavez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard.
This change will tangibly reflect our community's commitment to social justice.
By honoring the ongoing struggles of farmworkers who continue to fight for worker justice while putting food on all of our tables.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My name is Veronica Ramos-Dulek, and I am a Portland resident and daughter of immigrants, um, from Mexico.
My parents came here in the early 1970s I am here to ask your support, uh, to pass the ordinance renaming this street to Campesinos Boulevard.
I believe this decision is about character and it's about leadership, so I would urge you not to couch it in cost or process.
On March 18th, as our community was preparing to celebrate its legacy of civil rights activism, The New York Times broke the story about Cesar Chavez.
The timing was not an accident.
What did timing matter to a dead man?
It was meant to break spirit.
It was meant to break the spirit of a community already facing raids, detention without due process, and rhetoric— some of the ugliest rhetoric in our country in a long time.
In March, I sent you all a letter, and in my letter, I'll repeat a little bit of what I said there.
There is no legacy large enough to excuse what Cesar Chavez is accused of, and I stand with those survivors.
But the farmworker movement was never one man it was thousands of Mexican American and Filipino American workers who walked off the fields in 100-degree heat.
It was women running boycotts while raising children in poverty.
It was families who risked deportation to demand toilets in the fields.
Campesinos is the name that tells the truth about who did the work.
Councilmember Loretta Smith.
Reverting to 39th does something else.
It erases them twice.
And I'm asking you to see that erasure for what it is.
It is of a piece with the dehumanization and dispossession happening to this community every day.
Culture is built decision by decision.
Thank you.
We got to get you to wrap up.
Unfortunately, we are at time.
Thank you.
Um, I ask you to pass Campesinos Boulevard.
I appreciate your time.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next up— well, let me check to see Loyalty Hustler or Karen Shirey.
Next up we have Deeds Nuts, Adam Murray, Benjamin Gilbert, Welcome.
Thank you, councilors.
Uh, my name is Adam Murray.
For the record, I'm a resident of District 1.
I'm here speaking for myself today.
Um, I just want to say that this is a very complicated thing that you're asked to decide on today.
It seems that the reasons for doing it in this way are couched in sort of protecting a community, which I admire.
And at the same time, I worry about the Streisand effect, where trying to hide something ends up drawing attention to it.
I urge you to think about what it does when you talk about racist grievance toward a group of people when you subvert a public process in order to honor that minoritized group of people, it can further endanger that group of people.
And rather than spare them from that racist vitriol, they'll still see that in their daily interactions.
And so the things that give me pause about this Um, are really just the, the scale of 5 exemptions to city code.
Um, and it's worth noting, I was, you know, taken by Councilor Koyama Lane's, um, history of— there's a precedent of these exemptions, but it seems that with every action, the exemptions start to mount.
And I'm fully in support of the Dunphy, Koyama Lane, Novick amendment To ask PBOT to engage in a process to really review the code honestly.
I just want to leave you with a hero of mine, Thurgood Marshall, who was known for using the Constitution to impact racial justice in a very unjust society.
And I urge you to similarly ground yourselves in the law and Constitution and think about Perhaps, you know, as you pass these policies, whether you might be able to defend them against constitutional challenges such as the 14th Amendment and equal protection.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
My name is Ben Gilbert, and I'm a volunteer lobbyist with the Portland Democratic Socialists of America.
I support the ordinance brought by Councilor Loretta Smith and Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane to rename Cesar Chavez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard.
This call is coming from organizations like Pecun, Latino Network, Apano, and the Urban League to honor the workers whose essential labor sustains our region.
Renaming this corridor to Campesinos Boulevard is a small symbolic recognition of the workers who feed our communities.
Many of these workers will be losing access to healthcare as the Healthier Oregon program, which provides OHP healthcare to the 40% of Oregon farmworkers who are undocumented, is likely to be gutted.
By our not so— by our not so super Democratic supermajority going into this legislative session in January.
I urge council to swiftly pass this ordinance to establish a lasting tribute to our farmers, farmworkers, and immigrant community.
But I also urge this council to go further beyond important symbolic gestures and to address the material needs of these workers.
As a city council, urge the state legislature to pass healthcare for all so that all workers, regardless of status, have healthcare in Oregon.
Support statewide efforts to implement just-cause employment to end the at-will employment that has made Oregon farmworkers some of the lowest-paid workers in the state.
Demand the state follow through on HB 2548 to create an agricultural workforce standards board so that farmworkers can have sectoral protections and less exploitative wages.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Jordan Lewis.
Hello, we see you and hear you.
Hello, City Council, my name is Jordan Lewis.
I'm a volunteer lobbyist for Portland Democratic Socialists of America.
I'm here today in support of the renaming of C Chavez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard.
I want to thank the co-sponsors, Councilor Koyama Lane and Smith.
I think it's crucial to honor this movement, a movement which continues to this day.
So much work remains to be done to fight for dignity and safety of farmworkers in this country.
Solidarity to Windmill Mushrooms, uh, farmworkers who to my knowledge still do not have a contract after several years.
I felt like I had to speak on this when I heard concerns about street wayfinding being raised.
Thank you.
As a transportation advocate, I do not agree that it is confusing to navigate a grid with major street name that is not numbered.
In my experience, the street functions mostly as a landmark, and in the age of Google Maps, it actually prevents some confusion between Southwest and Southeast numbered streets.
In my experience, lastly, I'd be remiss not to mention that if someone chose to raise a family or to grow old on Southeast Camposinos Boulevard.
Crossing that very street may often become a life or death affair.
It's tragic how approximately every year we lose another human life on this busy street.
I appreciate the city's movement for safety from Lafayette to Schiller Street, which could have saved a life on Southeast Boise Street in 2025.
But I must note that many fatalities have occurred north of Powell Boulevard.
I'm thinking of a 2025 fatality on Southeast Harrison, a 2023 fatality on Southeast Taylor.
Councilor Mitch Green.
Thank you, Jordan.
John Coney.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
My name is John Coney.
I'm a 25-year resident of, uh, the— on the corner of Northeast Knott and 39th Avenue.
And I ask of you, all of you, to please simply let this revert back to 39th Avenue.
There need not be any fanfare, any, any ribbon-cutting ceremonies or anything like that.
Restore some numerical order to this city and some navigational predictability to this city.
If this legislative body and this city want to do something to honor this community or any other community, there are much more unifying ways to do so.
Maybe it's a public park, maybe it's a public marketplace.
Street renaming is inherently divisive and unpredictable.
I think it's time to get out of the street renaming business once and for all.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
That completes testimony.
Okay, colleagues, we have, uh, about 15 minutes before we are going to take a lunch break so we can come back and hear the final item on our agenda.
Uh, I'd like to make a note that in conversation with Councilors Koyama Lane and Novick, we will not be moving forward our, uh, proposed amendment at this time and look forward to having a more robust conversation at the Committee of the Whole with Councilor— as Councilor Canale outlined.
So we are now in discussion.
Councilor Morillo.
Thank you, Council President, and thank you everyone so much for being here today.
I think it's really special to get to hear from people who have been doing this movement work for such a long time and who have brought their expertise and their hearts into this space.
I think it's not lost on us how special that moment is.
This is obviously a very unique issue for me.
I'm Latina.
I'm a Paraguayan immigrant.
I'm the only immigrant on City Council right now, and the attacks on our community are extremely difficult right now.
So I'm grateful for Councilor Smith and Koyama Lane for bringing this forward.
And there are a lot of times where process does matter, and there are also times where cutting through the bureaucracy Democracy matters too.
And when our community heard about what Cesar Chavez had done, it was really difficult.
And personally, I don't believe in lionizing any individual people because no matter how good they are, we find out that people are human and they cause harm and they do a lot of good and a lot of bad in their lives regardless of who they are.
And so I think that when people talk about what local government should do, it's really hard to hear that it took over 5 years for Jackson Street to be changed after they already collected all the signatures.
It shouldn't take that long.
And people's frustration with government is the lack of expediency on certain issues like this, where it is so clear what needs to be done, and we make it painful and long and drawn out in ways that it doesn't have to be.
So I, I am very grateful that we're going to take that to Committee of the Whole and discuss how we make those changes moving forward.
I think that's the right way to do that, and I think it's also the right moment right now to change this expediently and not force the community to go through that long, drawn-out process.
I appreciate that Campesinos is going to honor our community.
I think that's really special.
And I don't want to gloss over the fact that the reason we're here is because we had to change the name because Cesar Chavez had done harm.
And that harm was specifically sexual abuse against women and girls in the movement space.
And with a federal government that's unwilling to investigate the Epstein files, with what's happening to women and children and boys and men in our detention facilities.
It also means that we have to take action now.
Renaming, I think, is a really important symbolic act to address the harm that was done, and I hope that my colleagues, that we will take our responsibility for addressing sexual abuse and harm in the present seriously as well.
And I say that because one of the fastest-growing populations of unhoused people in our community are Latinos.
And because of the ICE raids and other attacks on our communities, people are unable to go to work.
People have had to have their neighbors deliver food for them.
People have had to come collectively together to make sure people don't get evicted and lose their housing.
And so when our council has the opportunity to address potential sexual abuse and harm in our shelter spaces, we need to do our due diligence to have oversight and investigate that harm for the people who are alive today, for the people who need our help today.
And so.
Angelita Morillo
And it's not enough for us to say that we are going to address the harm of certain people in our movements.
Loretta Smith
Councilmember Smith.
Angelita Morillo
Once they have passed.
We have to do that when the opportunity presents itself to us now.
And as someone who is Latina, as someone who has dealt with homelessness in the city of Portland, I hope that we will honor the people who are alive today and how we take care of them.
So I will be very supportive of this.
Thank you for the work that you've done.
Thank you for your testimony and for For taking time to be here today and for trusting that your government will be responsive the way that it should be and that it shouldn't take this long.
And thank you for creating a pathway forward for us to address this process in the future as well.
I will absolutely be voting aye.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Morillo.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you to the carriers who brought this forward.
Thank you to everybody who's provided testimony today, both invited and both just through the community process.
I'm going to support this ordinance, and I'm going to speak to the family of complaints or sort of oppositions and just address them one by one.
One of them being that 39th Avenue is historic.
It's a number.
It's—.
12Th is historic, 13th is historic.
You know, it's fine.
It's fine to change our cities.
What's historic is farmworkers organizing to change a system that was unjust.
Councilor A street.
That's historic.
So that one's— that first one's not compelling.
It makes it easy for wayfinding.
If I'm driving east or west on, say, Powell Boulevard, or I don't know, any other main thoroughfare, Burnside, and I know I'm at 37th Avenue and then I'm at 38th Avenue, I'm not going to suddenly be confused because I'm faced with a street that's named after a movement, because then I know I'm going to have 40th, then 41st.
So that's, that's a ridiculous argument.
Um, we should just reset it and let a new process unfold.
That one's probably the most interesting one because there's at least some grounding in our code, and I think those are legitimate concerns.
But again, there's— if this was any other street, there'd be a claim there.
But this is a street that was renamed after a person involved in a farmworker movement.
So this idea that we would hit the reset switch and go back to the beginning is erasure.
I've heard that multiple times.
I want to validate that it's erasure, and I don't support that erasure.
Um, there was another complaint or opposition that says, well, not here, we should do this somewhere else.
Let's make it a park, or let's make it a community center where, where Hispanic or Latino people live.
Thank you.
I reject that perhaps the most of any of these things, and I want to speak to a very specific thing that Councilor Koyama Lane had referred to at the beginning of the proceedings, which was before this meeting started, somebody came up to me and said, you know, we shouldn't rename this after streets.
Maybe if this was Woodburn, maybe if this was Hillsboro, that would be appropriate, but not Portland.
And I found that to be appalling because I don't think that that person would have said that to someone who's a person of color.
Thank you.
I think they said it to me because I'm a white man and that felt safe.
And so that's a form of racism that I think you're hearing a deep anxiety among this community that they don't want to have to experience again because they already experienced it when they went through the neighborhood association process, the violence, the erasure, and all that.
So I needed to name all that.
And for those reasons, I'm willing to supersede our code and do this one thing this time.
I'm really glad that the other sort of councilors brought forward this other I agree.
I mean, it's not a great piece of code if you're constantly suspending it.
That's a very valid recognition.
But I wanted to name those other things and validate that, that this is the right thing to do, even if we have a volume of written comment that says take it back to 39th.
Sometimes you have to take a leadership stance that's right.
Steve Novick
Councilor Smith.
Mitch Green
And this is the right thing to do.
Thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Colleagues, just a programming note.
It is 1:23 right now.
We are taking a— well, I'll get through the councilors in the queue, but we are back here at 2 o'clock.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you for sharing that, Councilor Green.
I'd also like to speak directly to the comments about process.
I absolutely understand we're stuck with a process question.
And to be crystal clear right now, Councilor Smith and I are legally and legitimately attempting to use the processes That are afforded to us in the charter by proposing an ordinance.
Our ordinance explicitly and transparently waives specific sections of City Code Chapter 17.93, the standard street naming— street renaming process, and it says so on its face.
Waiving parts of this chapter doesn't remove constituent input.
It removes specific bureaucratic steps.
The channels for constituents to be heard have been fully intact.
Thank you.
This ordinance went through review, has been open to public testimony, both in committee and now as it's here at full council.
We're here before you in a public forum today.
And that said, we know there is a problem with our code.
So as mentioned, most of these street name changes have had something, some component, some process component waived.
I'm really glad to hear that my colleagues are dedicated to working on improving that code.
And processes around future changes.
And I want to be very clear about why I'm not supporting going back to 39th or looking to another street or building to rename instead.
And it's as simple as we're already here.
We already changed this particular street to honor farmworkers, and it was a really hard, long battle that started in the summer of 2007.
And that proposal was for Interstate Avenue.
Angelita Morillo
Right.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Then, and, um, I mean, looking at the way— it's one thing to hear the people who led this were, um, had to go through harassment and, and threats.
It's another thing— I have a list of the things, some of the things that people endured and had to hear that I can't read.
The one thing that I will read is someone literally said at an event I'm going home to get my gun and shoot you.
And Carmen Rubio, the then-director of community engagement, had someone physically try to pry materials from her hands when she was giving testimony.
So it's bad, and I'm glad that Councilor Green actually named what was said to him this morning because it can be hard to feel it in your body.
But there are really awful things here.
So many different streets, and when we talk about it's a name street, Broadway Street, Was, um, an option for a while.
Grand Street, 39th.
It was going to be in Old Town, Midtown, um, Old Town, uh, Chinatown, and then that didn't work out.
So like, this has been through a lot until, um, in April 2009 there were enough signatures on, on the petition, and in July 2009 council unanimously voted yes, and in January 2010, then the first signs were installed.
So it's important for us to remember the historical context, and proposing any other street to be Campesinos instead would take us right back into that fight.
We're already here, we've already done this.
Let's just do this.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Council President.
Thanks everybody for being here.
Um, I, I supported this in, in committee, and I'll be supporting it again.
I, I do want to acknowledge Thank you.
I want to acknowledge and discuss a few of the things that came up, but I want to start by just noting there's an immense amount of emotional labor that's been done on this, primarily by people in the community who've gone through this before.
And I think when you're sitting out there or when you're watching at home, you see the backs of people's heads or you don't see folks at all.
I'm seeing their faces from up here when some of the comments are being said, and I can recognize the hurt that's being felt and the memories that are being brought back up.
Of the first time at this.
And I, I, you know, one of the challenges of, of becoming a city councilor is you own the mistakes of the past, uh, and you have to try to dig out of them when there aren't always perfect options.
And I don't think there are perfect options on this particular one as well.
But I also want to recognize the emotional labor done by first the 2 Latina members of our council who led on some of the engagement immediately on it, and then by Councilor Smith and Koyama Lane.
Thank you.
Um, not coincidentally, the 4 women of color on this council, um, who've done an immense amount of work to get us to a place where we're having this conversation.
I don't think people in any community who have fought to have recognition and then had the rug pulled out by revelations are desiring and wanting to have these conversations again.
These aren't fun, right?
They do it because— we all do it because we need to.
There's a need to revisit this.
There's a need to ensure that it doesn't get messed up.
And there's so many ways this can get messed up.
The obvious ones are 2 that we've been talking about.
One is leaving it the way it is, right?
It's important to recognize, and I think this is a shared thing by everybody here, naming it after someone who has had— and I use revelations and not allegations because there's been enough validation of the allegations that I think we can call them revelations about the conduct of Chavez.
That's not an option.
Um, the other challenge, the other mistake that we could make is reverting it to 39th.
Now I want to first note, on this side of the building is 4th, that side is 5th, then comes 6th, then comes Broadway, then comes Park, and then comes 9th.
It's not been mentioned at all, right?
And I gotta tell you, when you're a tourist here, you know, I tell folks, you know, Broadway is 7th, you'll figure it out, you know?
And so we get it right.
The other thing, and I think Councilor Green did a lot to talk about a lot of the refutations, I'll mention that between this, the pronunciation is another thing that's come up I've heard, between this and the park, Uh, that was recently renamed as Chitwe Onwu, right?
And I've, I've said this before, I'll say it again, if you can say Daenerys Targaryen and you can say Timothée Chalamet, you can learn to say campesinos.
Um, and I think it's worth putting that in here into this conversation.
Um, another group that has not, um, that I haven't mentioned yet, regardless of the, uh, identity with relation to the street is folks who are watching this entire conversation about sexual harassment and assault and not seeing us take quick action.
As Councilor Murillo mentioned, that's an important thing for us to do because those folks matter in this city regardless.
And I recognize that for those who would like there to be a better process, hearing that this one's different because we've already renamed it does feel like, well, we can come up with a reason.
Right.
I get that.
I also want to recognize that if we were to even temporarily bring it back to 39th while we did a whole process, I think it's very fair, and I hope everyone has heard how little trust there is that it would ever not only be renamed back to something else, but also that anything would ever be named after, uh, in, in honor of Latino communities here.
And I did want to add one thing about, um, the geography of this, um, because this does go through District 2 as well.
Um, the idea of having it be somewhere else where there's maybe more Latinos does not recognize the history of displacement, the history of migration, but also recognize that a person does not have to be here to be— or does not have to be actively working right now to be a campesino.
Um, and also the fact that Generations move, and a person can be a campesina and have— outside, I assume, of city limits— and have their daughter be the first Latina ever elected to this chamber and then the city council.
Um, and that's how this works, right?
We are honoring the past as people and generations and communities move forward.
And the last thing I did want to recognize is that There's so many good examples of people here fighting for folks that are not of their community.
And I really appreciate that because there's a shared understanding here.
I will say for me, I had a hesitation about, you know, I do actually like the idea of naming things after people.
I think even people become symbols through that process and there are weaknesses to that.
But, you know, I think maybe this is about replacing the The way we do history, where it's not about one person and maybe about replacing the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism in our historical memory.
But it's also about, I think, hearing from the people most affected, because these aren't— there's a lot of people who aren't here on multiple sides of this.
I want to acknowledge because they're not 100% sure how their feedback would be taken or their, their physical, emotional safety, um, doing this.
Many of them wrote in, um, some didn't, and I want to recognize that as well.
I, I've heard out and about in community a lot of different opinions about it.
Um, and I, I've watched— I want to give an example of, of erasure, and I'm going to pick one that is deliberately nuanced and deliberately difficult to, to address because I support naming a park as Chitway El Nu.
Thank you.
But originally that park was named after Custer, and originally it was a person wanting to rename something after Beatrice Morrow Cannady, um, a co-founder of the local NAACP.
And through an extensive public process, which did end up honoring a community that also needed to be honored, nothing got named after a local Black leader who did a lot here and also deserves something to honor her.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
And so we— and part of this has to do with the city creating a scarcity around what is available real estate for historical memory, metaphorical and literal historical memory.
I reject this scarcity mindset.
I don't want to see it applied here.
I don't want to see it applied to future street renamings.
So in addition to supporting this, we need to be looking at the advice of those who are supportive of this.
And I'll also note some of the written testimony against this gave really good ideas too for future conversations.
I, I specifically appreciate John Russell's written testimony as well, and I hope that we can pursue that after this.
Um, but I, I think that we have to do a better job here, and, um, that starts with but doesn't end with this ordinance.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Knoll.
Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman
Um, thanks, Council President.
I was just looking over some names here.
O'Brien, Markham, Failing, Ladd, Kooch, Vaughn, Laird Hill actually is a name.
I thought it was about the hill, but Laird Hill.
Oh.
Hawthorne, Shattuck, it goes on, right?
Lovejoy, uh, Ankeny.
I think I've just hit some of the elected officials.
Chapman.
Um, the reason I say that is that I think, I think we have a rich history of recognizing people, their accomplishments, recognizing individuals.
I think that this is a unique recognizing of a group of individuals.
It's an interesting moment.
And for me, I think that, you know, I was born in Portland.
In my head, I still say 39th.
Unidentified speaker
39Th.
Eric Zimmerman
When I drive, because for me that was a road I was on a lot as a child and it was still called that then.
And it's never caused me any issues or problems since its renaming.
Neither— I was, you know, at the University of Portland when Portland Boulevard was renamed Rosa Parks.
Never caused any concerns there in terms of life after the initial change.
And so yes, I acknowledge there'll be some costs here.
Councilor Dan Ryan.
I acknowledge that I'm not really one who holds the word process in some sanctity of process.
I think process is an aspiration, but it's not a requirement always.
So I look at this and I know that if we turn it back to 39th, that based on at least some of the testimony, especially the written, will make a lot of people happy.
But we will also have done a minority harm.
And I think that that's an important distinction for me.
Unidentified speaker
Councilor Smith.
Eric Zimmerman
Like Councilor Green, given who I am and what I am, I often have people approach me and we kind of have the silly conversation about, oh yeah, it's now called something else.
And there's a comfort that men and women will have that conversation with me, and I get that.
And because for me it falls into the, oh yeah, they renamed a street, that is the indicator If we really mean things like being a good ally to another person, it means that if it doesn't really hold a ton of space for me personally, but I see that it holds a ton of space for others personally or as a community, that you have some deference to that community.
Harvey Milk means a hell of a lot more to my community now than Stark ever did, and that, that was important to me.
Councilor so you can see that in our history with MLK, with Rosa Parks, with what we hoped was Cesar Chavez in 2009, and what Campesinos can be.
And I think that's part of being an ally.
I think that's part of what is being a leader.
I think it's part of what, you know, I represent a good portion of 39th Avenue, where that number would be.
And I say, I understand that this will frustrate some voters, right?
Unidentified speaker
Yeah.
Eric Zimmerman
And that's okay.
But I think that this is a moment where you say satisfying a majority to do harm to a minority is not the right move.
And so for me, I'm easily supportive of this.
I think this is a quick and appropriate process that the councilors who are sponsoring it have brought.
And I do recognize the deep community work that members who showed up today have done to share your perspective.
Thank you.
To rally the troops to make sure that the right thing came out in your minds, and your volunteerism and your organizing on that is deeply appreciated.
And for the community, let's be the city that says yes to raising up somebody.
And lastly, I just say, you know, the way in which we recognize history is always against the moment in which we're in.
Thank you.
And the moment we're in is real tough for the community that we're talking about right now.
And so this is the right time, and I think that that's— that is the right place, the right time, and this is the right council to do it.
So you have my full support.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr. President.
Um, quick question for the sponsors: was there any direct outreach to, like, neighborhood associations, business associations along Councilor Chavez, about this name change proposal?
Jamie Dunphy
Councilor Smith, there was a question to the sponsor.
Loretta Smith
Yes, there was.
We had a Planning Commission meeting where they, they took an 8-0 vote, and some of those folks Through the Planning Commission project—.
Steve Novick
Project process and the committee and council process, there wasn't sort of like visits to neighborhood associations, uh, business associations along the route?
Loretta Smith
Attend a neighborhood association meeting?
Is that—.
Steve Novick
Yeah, yeah, neighborhood associations or business associations.
Loretta Smith
I did not attend a neighborhood association meeting, but I have had many conversations with Councilor Koyama Lane?
Jamie Dunphy
She has stepped away for a moment.
Steve Novick
Oh, okay.
So, um, I am supportive of this ordinance for all of the reasons people have given.
I think it was a very eloquent, elegant solution to a very painful problem, um, and I think that it establishes what I hope might be a precedent, um, That we should honor organizations and movements rather than individuals.
I do want to take a moment to address myself to the hundreds of people in District 3 who oppose this and think we should just change it back to 39th.
And first of all, I want to say that the resolution says that this proposal is a consensus proposal, and we recognize that.
Actually, there's a lot of people who do not like it, who would rather go back to 39th.
Um, and we don't mean to dismiss the— your existence or your concerns.
Um, I understand there's people who think that, uh, numbers should be numbers and names should be names.
Uh, but, um, as Councilor Koyama Lane pointed out, there's— and others have pointed out, this street has already been changed from a number to a name.
And if we were to do something like say that we changed the rest of Stark Street to Campesinos and change 39th back to— and by the way, Stark is a very problematic figure, pro-slavery, anti-public education— then that would mean that we're going to have people along 2 major streets go through the renaming process and it would cost twice as much money.
So I just want to be clear that, um, we recognize that there's a bunch of people who said in 2009, gosh darn it, keep numbered streets numbered streets, and now they're saying, see, we were right.
And I just don't want to ignore those people's existence, um, and want to acknowledge their frustration, but to say that, uh, in this situation, um, we have to change the name of the street.
Thank you.
Uh, we do not want to say we are no longer going to honor farmworkers, which was the original idea, I think, of naming the street after Cesar Chavez.
Um, this is, this is the best option.
Uh, and yeah, that, that's, that's all I wanted to say.
I don't want the— I mean, the truth is that the majority of the individual comments we've gotten on this issue have not been supportive.
They've been going back to And although I think all of us disagree with that, that does not mean that we're dismissive of you or your concerns.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Thank you, Council President.
Mayor Potter, I know you had to leave, but it was so good to see you, your former staff members and friends.
Your tenure had many legacy moments as you served our city from 2005 to 2009, and this was a big one.
It is remarkable that the civic volunteers you gathered then reconvened so quickly after this incident that made it clear a name change is in order.
As such, this is a thank you to all of you, all of you, you know, for your perseverance and for your love of our city.
Thank you.
And thank you for showing up and responding thoughtfully.
I was fully supportive of your good work, and it was inspiring to see your faces And hear your voices today.
I trusted all of you 20 years ago as I was an active friend with many of you on this issue, and I heard the stories, um, as you went through that process.
They were painful, and I trust you again today.
As I said to Marta and to Shelley when you called me back in March of 2026, I'm grateful you called, that you are involved, and I look forward to supporting what you decide.
And how wonderful it is that you're bringing back the band to handle this.
Thank you.
Truly, the stories you shared today were profound.
All of us needed to hear this more than you need to hear our speeches.
Thank you for your, um, words today, and I will be supporting this.
And thank you so much, Councilor Smith, for jumping on it, never wavering, and for stewarding this along.
Campucino as it is.
Unidentified speaker
Thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Council President.
When we get to a vote on this, I will be voting yes because I believe the street name needs to be changed, as we've heard from so many.
When the revelations about Cesar Chavez first came to light, we heard a clear message from across Portland that we needed to change the name of Cesar Chavez Boulevard in a way that continued to honor and uplift The farmworkers whose movement the original name change was meant to honor.
I hold that as we consider this ordinance before us today.
Campesinos is literally the people of the movement.
For that reason, this is the right thing to do.
I want to note, though, that I also will take that vote holding the frustrations of some of my constituents.
We've heard that process doesn't matter, but the reality is that there are people in my district who feel that the intentional avoiding of our city's official street naming process was an intentional avoiding of conversations with them, and they have some questions that they didn't get the opportunity to ask because of that.
This is a council that talks a lot about how we center the people most impacted by our decisions, and in the case of a change like this, the people who have brought this to us The women who were victims of Chavez, they are directly impacted, but so are the people who live along the street and have questions about what this will mean in terms of the cadence and the timing.
I know this because I personally spent a weekend walking up and down Cesar Chavez Boulevard through my district and talking to as many residents as I could because I had heard that they didn't feel like their voices were being considered, and I wanted to make sure to take the time to hear from them directly.
Thank you.
I'll share with you, colleagues, that I heard a lot of different opinions.
I did not hear consensus.
There were some who supported the change in today's proposal.
There were others, as we've seen in the testimony, who supported a change to 39th.
And I'll note that I talked to multiple people who didn't want to see any change at all, and there were a few reasons for that.
Loretta Smith
Councilor Smith.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I'm going to vote yes because I want to ensure that we center the voices of the women who are affected by Chavez's actions and the gains the movement has made.
I can't vote against a proposal that gives those women some justice, and I'm not willing to go backwards on supporting having a street that honors the movement.
But I am also deeply sorry to the folks who live on Cesar Chavez Boulevard.
For how this played out and for the fact that you feel that your leaders intentionally avoided hearing from you.
Because of that, I want to ask a couple of questions of our PBOT staff that were asked of me when I was canvassing my constituents and my neighbors who live on Chavez Boulevard to make sure that they have some sense, maybe some answers of how this process moving forward will actually work, uh, because there were some challenges last time around, and there are people who are wondering if they'll face those challenges again.
So I'm hoping there's somebody here from PBOT who can answer a couple of questions about what will actually happen.
Thank you, Director Williams.
I appreciate it.
Millicent Williams
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
I'm sorry, I was, um, on a call, uh, reviewing an issue of importance, uh, but, uh, this one is also important, and I want to make sure that I answer your question completely.
Could you repeat it, please?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I actually haven't asked it yet.
Oh, okay, perfect timing.
And I will keep it as quick as possible so you can get back to your call.
So functionally, how does this change work in terms of the timing?
And what I'm wondering is, we make the official change, we update our official city records, we notify the Postal Service, Do we directly notify the map app folks?
Do we directly notify the, uh, rideshare folks?
How does the information about the name change roll out?
What is the sequencing and cadence there?
And I'm asking this question because there are some people who have lived on the street for a very long time and said that when the name was changed before, that cadence was choppy.
And there were periods of time where, for example, because the technology that the pizza delivery company used hadn't updated, but the street signs had, they literally couldn't get pizza deliveries.
So what— we're 20 years from there.
I assume technology is better, but what is the actual cadence of the rollout?
Unidentified speaker
So you'll have to forgive me, I don't have the information that informs the actual steps that folks will be taking to ensure that everything is taken care of.
We have had a number of street name changes since that time and had greater success.
And in fact, some of those helped with the navigation for people who were concerned about getting to different locations.
And we did South Portland and got rid of the leading zeros because people could not— first responders could not find those homes.
They were appreciative, and we were able to very quickly make contact with all of those service providers to ensure that there was not a break in people's ability to receive deliveries.
Thank you.
To get information to be responded to in the event of an emergency.
So there are a number of steps that our staff would take.
It's both from the Office of Government Relations within our bureau, as well as the traffic engineering teams would work together to move through the process.
We would also engage our community engagement team members to ensure that, again, that communication is happening with community members to let them know that it's coming.
So there will be a series of mailers, There will be a website that people can refer to.
There will be information that is comprehensive and updated on a daily basis as changes are made.
With regard to the connection with the partners, we would have the direct relationship with the Postal Service, with UPS, with FedEx, with DHL, and whoever else is delivering.
We would have direct conversations with Uber, Uber Lyft, Uber, Lyft, all of the ride-hailing services, as well as—.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Uber Eats.
Unidentified speaker
The Amazons and others of the world so that they would know that that change has occurred.
We have really good relationships with the mapping services and have a direct line into both Google and Apple to be able to ensure that the information is updated on a comprehensive basis.
And then internally, from the city's perspective, we would have, again, the website, but we'd also make sure that our GIS teams are working closely with BTS to ensure— or out of BTS— to ensure that the information that's reflected in Portland Maps and where people are doing construction.
All of that is updated at the same time.
So the sequence of that, it will take a little bit of time because we first do need to make sure we've done the pre-work.
That is the identification of how we will get the signs— not procuring, well, we will be procuring them— produced.
And then we'll need to schedule the work to get the signs installed.
We would need to make sure that we have several weeks, if not months, advance notice of those folks who would be having those changes made to their street at that time.
It's not going to all happen at one time.
We would need to roll it.
And so it's a series of months.
And in the case of— and I'll use the most recent street renaming— it's taken over 2 years to get to the point of changing Jackson to Rose Hill because of all of those process steps.
Thank you.
So it's going to take a little bit of time, but the communication about it happening can start as soon as we're able to organize that effort.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
And I'm less worried about the communication.
I think most folks who live on this street know this is coming.
It's those other steps.
It's when is the official change actually happening?
Unidentified speaker
And we would need to—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
How does that roll out?
And it sounds like we don't know a date yet for this.
Unidentified speaker
I don't know the date.
We would need to develop the project plan so that we can provide the timeline and the sequence of things that will be happening.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
In addition, it sounds like Since this street was last changed, the street name was last changed, our processes have improved, it sounds like, and we've had more success with other street name changes.
And we have direct lines to some of those providers to make sure that the changes all roll out at the same time.
Unidentified speaker
Yes, we do.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Is there a process if an individual is not able to get a certain service, has a conflict somewhere, is there a process for them to reach out PBOT to say, hey, there's a, there's a gap, there's somebody that maybe didn't get notified, can you help with that?
Unidentified speaker
People can always reach out to PBOT.
We'll make sure that especially on the website we have contact persons, the project lead.
Um, the, the recommendation, however, would be that people would simply call 311, and 311 will work with PBOT to ensure that they have the— we will work with 311 to make sure they have the scripts, that they have the links, that they have the information, uh, the specific project people so that they can make a direct connection.
I know that people don't like— I don't like for people to be bounced around from system to system or answering service to answering service.
Um, and so we would work with 311.
That's the best way for us to, uh, both centralize our response effort, ensure that we're tracking it appropriately, and then be able to respond in a way that, uh, reflects, um, excellence in service delivery.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
That's great.
And I, I think what the method is is less important as having a method that's clearly described so that individuals who, um, are going through all of the necessary changes know that if they run into a certain entity that can't deliver, they know how to share that information so that we can get that cleared up as soon as possible.
Yes.
That good government piece of it.
Um, I heard very specific examples of people who were concerned about things like refinancing their house and applying for FAFSA for their kids and a need to have a continuous address.
We have heard that in the labeling there's a period where Street is often labeled in 2 different ways, but on the technical side, there's a moment where a switch is flipped.
Do we do a better job than we did 10 years ago about making sure that those official forms where you need to have address history are— that you can manage through those processes?
Unidentified speaker
Yes, we do have a process in place that helps to affirm that X Street today is the same as X Street was yesterday, but by a different name.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, I really appreciate those answers.
I appreciate getting those on the record.
Those are the types of questions that I had people ask me when I was talking to folks in the community, um, that they felt like there wasn't a place for them to get answered.
And I just think it's really important to, to state the answers here.
Unidentified speaker
So your questions and many of the questions that have come up since, uh, we started talking about this, not just today but, um, for several weeks now, have informed PBOT's strategy for how we will make sure that information is available and shared.
I am certain that there are people listening right now who are writing down all the things that we're saying and will be able to help to ensure that there's, if nothing else, an FAQ that we can share with your offices so that people can know who to go to, how to get your problems resolved.
And we do want to demonstrate that we hear you, we want to be responsive, and we want to help to solve the problems if there are any.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Millicent Williams
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Colleagues, it's true, as we have heard, there is no neutral choice before us.
And the asks from the individuals who first brought forward a change to the street name years ago are asking us to move in a different direction.
And that matters.
That matters a lot.
We need to center those voices.
We need to center the women who were abused.
We also need to make sure that as we move through these processes in the future, it doesn't look like this again, because we have Portlanders who feel like they were intentionally avoided.
So colleagues, we apparently are not going to have the opportunity to vote on an amendment that ensures that's the case, and I am disappointed by that because I was hoping we could move this forward and say to our community, we will make sure we have a better process in the future.
Thank you.
Because the impact, the policy, and the process all matter.
So I, I will just implore us all to make sure that it doesn't happen like this again, that we hold ourselves to a standard of actually coming up with something, that we don't delay on that end either, just like we shouldn't delay on this change, and that we make sure that we have a process that is democratic and responsible and respectful, respectful of those who are looking to honor a movement or an individual, respectful to those who will be directly impacted by the change, and respectful to our community in being consistent every time this comes forward.
I hope that we do that work even if it's not encompassed here.
Thank you to the folks who brought this forward.
Thank you to my colleagues.
For making sure we had this before us.
Thanks, Council President.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Um, obviously we are not going to be reconvening at 2:00 as it is currently 2:00 and our staff deserve a full half-hour lunch.
There are 3 more councilors in the queue and we will end at that point.
Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos
All right, thank you.
Um, let me start by, uh, thanking all of the folks who were here today, all the community members and organizers who have carried this work forward.
I know that the last several months have been very painful for many people, and I'm grateful for the time and care and the heart that people have put into figuring out how we move forward.
Um, as the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants and as a survivor of abuse, this has been very personal for me too and very painful.
Um, the history that we are talking about belongs to the generations of farmworkers and immigrants and organizers and families who have been fighting for dignity and justice.
And that history has always been much bigger than one person.
And I think that is part of what has made these revelations so difficult, because people are trying to hold pride in a movement and its history alongside the very real harm that we now know occurred.
And so I'm grateful to the people who have been willing to sit with that complexity and help us find a path forward.
I also want to acknowledge the residents and businesses along this corridor who have shared their concerns.
You're hearing that from some of our colleagues.
I appreciate Councilor Pirtle-Guiney's line of questioning.
I share those questions, uh, about what the change will mean.
Um, I was surprised earlier to hear that resources to support residents and business owners with this change hadn't been allocated or considered.
And so I do hope that as we move forward into implementation, that the city is working closely with them to make this transition as thoughtful and supportive as possible.
And I'll also note, as someone who does represent the district with the largest Latino population and where over 100 languages are spoken, I would ask that PBOT consider how these kinds of infrastructure changes are available in multiple languages.
I'm receiving a lot of constituents that are concerned about the I-5 stuff and, uh, and other, uh, transportation-related things that, um, often impact our communities but are not, um, given them information in languages that they understand.
Uh, and I really hope that this is another way that PBOT Thank you.
I do think there are some practical questions that we need to work through, and I will be following up over email with the leaders of PBOT, including the cost of implementation and how PBOT will fund it.
I'm concerned that the ordinance simply asks that PBOT absorb the costs.
I— as a budgeting philosophy, that confuses me.
I wish that we had more clarity on what services will be lost or delayed.
Um, and so I look forward to getting clarity on those pieces as this moves forward, and I hope that council will also have the chance to weigh in on those trade-offs because I heard Director, um, Williams say that there will be, and, uh, I, I hope that those decisions are getting brought back to the council in some way.
Um, but overall, uh, I just want to express my gratitude and thank everyone who's organized and testified and shared your really difficult stories.
And engaged through this conversation.
I'm glad that we're taking action.
I'm grateful that the name we're considering honors not another individual, but the countless people whose labor and courage and organizing have built this movement, because this movement has always belonged to the people.
And I think there's something meaningful about making sure that the name of this street reflects that.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you, Council President.
This has been very enlightening going through this process, and I just want to say to the folks in the community who came to me asking to have this change made, um, it was an immediate yes.
I did not flinch at all.
I knew it was important.
I actually happened to be in DC at a National League of Cities Conference when the story broke.
And to listen to everyone today on this, um, dais, I just want to tell my, my colleagues thank you.
Um, I am so grateful for your kind thoughts.
I am grateful for the audacity that you all have being willing to call out sexual abuse, bigotry, and hatred, and talk about history.
History is not always about the past.
History is now.
History is what we're getting ready to do now in this chamber to change Cesar Chavez Boulevard to Capicinos, to acknowledge a group of people who have broken their backs to make sure that our community across the United States, not just in Oregon, that we have food to eat.
And that many cases they didn't even have healthcare and all of those things.
Thank you.
So when I'm sitting here listening to every single councilor up here, I just want to say thank you because you all really took this very seriously and it meant something to you.
And knowing that you are, you are bringing the words from your constituencies, while I don't live directly in, um, District 2 or District 3, but a lot of the folks that live in my district, in District 1, they pass, they pass by Cesar Chavez Boulevard, and this is actually going to help them to heal because our community, um, took a big blow when we heard the information.
Thank you.
But I just want to say thank you to you guys.
Thank you so much.
This really feels— I've had a couple of moments where I've really felt like, um, it was very historical in nature and that it is a game changer and that I truly do believe that it probably would not happen if it was not for us.
I felt like that with the Albina descendants.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you.
Loretta Smith
And I feel the same way about this particular, uh, ordinance.
It has the same kind of flavor.
So you all didn't have to do this.
I mean, especially the folks that are in District 2 and District 3, um, where you are impacted.
And that's why I asked the question about the businesses.
Could we give them some sort of relief or support?
So again, I can't say it enough.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Vice President Clark.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you, Council President.
Uh, thank you everybody here today.
See friends in the audience.
And thank you, Marta, for contacting me early.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I appreciate it.
Angelita Morillo
And I think everything's been said.
All I have to say is good bill will pass.
Jamie Dunphy
Colleagues, seeing no one— oh, Okay, great.
Seeing no one else in the queue, this is a non-emergency— the first reading of a non-emergency ordinance.
This item now moves to second reading.
Time is 2:06.
Uh, I'm gonna give us a 30-minute lunch break.
Everybody please be back here at 2:36 to breathe, to have our final item of the day.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
We got 7.
All right, um, welcome back, folks.
I am calling back to order this meeting of the Portland City Council.
Hey, there I am.
Welcome back.
Can we please call item number 6?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Item 6, document 2026-263, consent to franchise transfer from Zenith Energy Terminal Holdings LLC to ISQ Springer Housing— oh, sorry, Springer Holdings LLC, amend ordinance Thank you very much.
Jamie Dunphy
This is the first reading of a non-emergency ordinance.
This came out of the Committee of the Whole, and we do not have staff summary reports from Committee of the Whole.
Uh, but Councilor Kanal, any opening chair remarks?
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, thank you.
This, uh, item was heard on August 6th, so, you know, everybody remind where you were, what you were doing before recess.
Um, it was referred out 7 to 5.
The conversation that occurred prior to it had a lot to do— there's obviously a lot of testimony That had a lot to do with the, uh, findings and specifically the, um, the existence or not of information that sort of supported several of the findings, as well as some suggestions around private rights of action and things like that.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I won't—.
Sameer Kanal
If I kept going, I'd just be repeating what's in the, uh, committee staff summary.
So even though we don't have it here, there is a document online, um, right above the, uh, or right below the amendments.
That are proposed.
So yeah.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Knoll.
Um, so colleagues, we're going to start with technical and clarifying questions if anyone has any for the queue, and then also we will get to, uh, Councilor Green has an amendment that we will preview prior to public testimony.
Um, but I want to put myself into the queue first.
Um, I, you know, colleagues, I voted to support advancing this item out of Committee of the Whole because I knew that we would be able to have this conversation today.
I'm having a really hard time with this, and I have some technical questions that I'd like to get answered from staff if they are available.
And I'm sorry if some of this is repeated from last time.
I had to leave, miss part of the discussion last time because of a medical appointment.
But here are some of the specific concerns I'm contemplating.
So, you know, the City Council is in a peculiar position here where we are assessing whether a staff recommendation is adequate for the legal terms of a franchise contract or whether additional conditions are needed and appropriate.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
This bears more resemblance to a quasi-judicial matter than to a legislative one.
And the item before us today, the item is before us today because the conditions of the franchise agreement, there's a mandated council action in case of transfer of ownership.
Yet in those same terms, the scope of our ability to engage on the merits of the franchise transfer is severely limited.
To quote from code, the city may condition any transfer of this franchise upon such conditions related to the technical, legal, and financial qualifications of the prospective party to perform according to the terms of this franchise.
So if this franchise is being transferred to an agricultural firm instead of a fossil fuel company, we would have a clear path to intervene.
But the authors of this agreement severely limit the future council from acting with autonomy by putting such limitations in the terms.
This ordinance is being labeled as a In public as a legislative action.
But the legal team is telling us to treat it, to really think of it more as a quasi-judicial action.
And yet when we approve the transfer on the record, it will be a legislative decision, which frankly feels inaccurate to the moment we're at.
So I think it is appropriate to ask a couple of questions here.
Councilor Smith.
Actually, there's one other thing I need to say on here.
You know, I also want to say that I personally believe that the former city council inappropriately tied our hands here, if they are in fact tied.
If I vote yes on this, it's not because I think I should on the merits, but it's because I understand that it's the only legal thing I can do.
And I'm thinking about where we should be using our limited resources for litigation.
There is a term called manufactured consent, and it's a known tactic of the fossil fuel corporations.
Unidentified speaker
It puts Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Jamie Dunphy
This decision places every single elected official on this dais in the position of deciding between a potentially significant lawsuit against the city or representing— and representing the interests of our constituents.
These aren't minor interests.
They're concerns of life and safety of our city and our region.
So I'm hoping you all could help me answer a couple of questions.
First, when considering the eligibility of ISQ to uphold the franchise agreement, did you all assess the risk to the public since the company has multiple subentities Specifically, would it be possible for this new entity to jettison their liability of an accident to one of their subentities?
Do you want to—.
Andrew Spear
Uh, thank you, Council President.
My name is Andrew Spear, and I'm the Franchise Utility Program Manager from BPS.
Um, I guess I want to clarify your question.
Are you asking, did we evaluate the risk Of a financial risk by the company being transferred to a subsidiary?
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah, specifically the term of the franchise is for us to be able to determine the financial— of the categories, the financial capability of the new entity to be able to meet the terms of the franchise agreement.
But with ISQ having multiple subentities, Something in there that is supposed to be either protective against transferring that liability, or is there something more explicit in how you all are approaching that to make sure that the identified party is the responsible party?
Andrew Spear
I guess the way I think about it is the way the contract is structured, that the transfer of a franchise has to go to a certified company with certified to do business in the state of Oregon.
So you can't then Transfer it, you know, once it transfers to that new entity, that entity is the one holding the franchise and operating the franchise.
Unidentified speaker
And so it would need to come back before council again in order for there to be another transfer of that liability.
Okay.
And all the provisions within the franchise agreement still stand related to indemnification and all the things that protect the city.
And of course, if legal has more Uh, good afternoon.
Nancy Thorington
Nancy Thorington with the City Attorney's Office.
Um, I, I just wanted to add a little bit of clarification to that.
Um, first, uh, if, if it's going from one related entity to another, there is a provision in the contract that, uh, doesn't require it to go to council.
So I just want you to be aware of that.
Um, and also We did look at, and they did actually, ISQ did basically say that they were having ISQ, they said, you know, ISQ Springer, which is the entity that's actually gonna be taking over, is backed by I Squared Capital.
So they made several— I think that's a good point.
You know, assertions to that effect, that the, you know, parent entity would be backing the entity that's actually taking over.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay.
To the specific sort of legislative action before us at this moment, is it considered outside of the scope for us to think about environmental, social, or governance factors when assessing the transfer of a franchise?
Robert Taylor
The short answer is yes, in that you're limited to the legal, technical, and financial ability of the transferee to perform.
Jamie Dunphy
So why is this considered a legislative action then?
If we are, if we are limited in our scope to look at the terms of the agreement and to actually amend it from a legislative— from the dais, how is this a— why is this a legislative Councilor Herbold.
Robert Taylor
Yeah, it's a great question.
It is a little unique for sure, and it's governed both by the charter, because there's charter provisions on franchises and granting a franchise, and then there's a separate provision on transferring a franchise.
Those charter provisions contemplate that it's done by an ordinance.
There's different procedures depending on if you are granting the franchise in the first instance or if you are Transferring it.
Um, and, and it's also governed by the terms of the, of the franchise that the city has, has given.
That's a contract.
That's a contract right.
So we're governed by that contract.
Jamie Dunphy
So is this— is there— I guess, is this language within the charter current?
Like, the new, uh, amendments that happen to the charter, is that updated, or is this a bit of a holdover from the times where this item may have been brought forward by a commissioner in charge who had some administrative oversight of a, of a bureau in order to be able to have some level of, of oversight from the elected side.
Unidentified speaker
The—.
It's—.
Robert Taylor
It is the, the language in the charter regarding granting franchises and transferring franchises, that is something that has existed in our charter for a long time.
It was updated as part of the, the transition in the form of government to change the— conform the number of votes that are required.
It used to be, for example, to grant a franchise, it used to be 4 out of 5 councilors.
Now it's 9 out of 12 to grant it.
Under the separate provision regarding transfers, that's just passed by a regular So that's 7 votes or 3 votes in the old form of government.
So it's been there a long time.
It was updated in contemplation of this expanded council.
And there has been work in the city on the right-of-way code that has taken place that for at least some franchises involving utilities in the right-of-way, once Once existing franchises expire, they'll then be governed by this new code, um, and instead of a franchise, it would be a license that's issued.
So there's been a lot of work in this area, and it has evolved over time.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay, um, you know, my concern, uh, and I believe, uh, Councilor Green will be bringing an amendment here to talk about this, but the concern that I've heard from the community over and over again is about oversight and the ongoing idea that after this City Council votes on this, what is our— hello?
Oh, opposite.
All right.
Hey, Council in the Dark.
Council in the Dark.
I'm sorry, that was distracting.
Our responsibility towards broad oversight has been sort of called into question, like whether or not this council can change the terms of either the ordinance or the underlying franchise agreement to give the public an assurance of oversight that is lacking in this form of government compared to the old form where potentially a commissioner in charge was still overseeing both the development approval and implementation.
I'm unclear if we have a path forward to be able to increase our own authority for oversight.
If there's not a path forward for us to change this, What is our responsibility in the moment to our constituents, both as environmental and fiscal stewards?
I mean, like, I understand that there's legal risk in this and that there's some externalities that we are considering about this, but how should the council be balancing risk with responsibilities?
Robert Taylor
That's a great question.
Unidentified speaker
Councilor Smith.
Robert Taylor
You know, I think in, in, in my mind, there is a— um, the, the decision before you is on the transfer.
Do you consent to the transfer?
And under the contract, we cannot unreasonably delay or deny that.
So we have agreed to that in a contract.
There's already litigation pending over whether or not we have unreasonably delayed.
Given the amount of time it has taken for this item to move through our process.
Um, the, the decision on the transfer in my mind is different than a decision on amending the terms of the franchise itself.
And if you want to have a conversation with the current owner or the new owner About, hey, we would like to amend this and change the terms of this contract we've agreed with you on to include more oversight provisions.
That's a conversation you can have, but that's a separate conversation.
Right now the conversation is around, do we consent to this?
And, and we can't unreasonably delay or deny.
We can put conditions on it.
Thank you.
We're, we're limited in that, but that is possible.
Um, so that's kind of where we're at.
So I, I understand it sounds— it feels to me like there is a desire in the community to go and amend this, this agreement more, more fully, and that's a conversation that can be— that can happen.
We amend our contracts all the time with a lot of different people, and we sit down and we negotiate in good faith.
Thank you.
Um, and that's something that could happen, but that's not really the question before us today.
Unidentified speaker
Understood.
Jamie Dunphy
That makes sense.
Thank you.
Uh, thank you, colleagues, for your indulgence on some of those questions.
Again, we are in technical and clarifying questions at this point before we head to public testimony.
Uh, Councilor Knoll.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, thanks.
I just wanted to get on the record, um, one thing, which is this, this item was referred to the Committee of the Whole on June 10th.
And was placed originally on the Committee of the Whole agenda on July 23rd.
That's about 40, 37 days.
There was a recess in there as well.
It had to get pushed back because that agenda was too full and got heard in early August, as previously mentioned.
I did want to ask, in the committee conversation, we asked for the documents that were used to justify some of the findings.
In the, um, Section 1, uh, paragraphs to be added to this, and I don't see either the documents added or a proposed technical amendment to add them.
Um, that was something that multiple councilors said would be impactful upon their final votes.
I just wanted to ask staff, uh, where those are.
Unidentified speaker
They were added to the, uh, website with, with this item on it, uh, in the item number at the bottom underneath There's multiple links underneath the ordinance language, and there was about— I think there was 5 different PDF documents that were included.
Sameer Kanal
Those are all dated before—.
Jamie Dunphy
Are those—.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, like I see committee staff summary, and then I see 5 supplemental information docs, and those are all dated like January.
Are they dated for— so they're, they're normally, they're dated by the clerk's office when they're added here, as opposed to when they're created.
So, or So this, this, the fact that the dates, it's the creation date of the document.
Unidentified speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
I can't speak to the creation date and what the process is for the council ops to get that on there.
But those were, to my understanding, what council was requesting and what were added after that meeting.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, I'm gonna be more specific later on, but I'll stop there for now.
Unidentified speaker
Thanks.
Thank you.
Robert Taylor
This, this might help.
We, we've also, on our GovQA trending topics website for public records requests, we've also been adding documents to that website that, um, in response to public records or other records that we have affirmatively gone and looked for in response to the last council discussion.
So they're on that website.
And I think at one Point, there was a link from this item to that website that people could go to.
Jamie Dunphy
So great, thank you very much.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Uh, thank you, Council President.
I, I just thought I would, um, before testimony, uh, take this moment to introduce what the amendment is that, uh, Councilor Morillo and I are proposing.
Um, so So folks who are giving testimony can have time to contemplate that as well as city attorney.
And, um, I apologize, we got to use this, this to you late afternoon.
And so as we get into this conversation, just know that Robert Taylor has had less than 24 hours to contemplate this.
So, um, we are trying to be nimble here.
Uh, but what the amendment does essentially here is say let's be responsive to the volume of community testimony that we're hearing.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Mitch Green
Maybe with the exception of one or two people, I, I didn't hear a demand to stop the franchise transfer.
I heard a demand to put conditions on the transfer.
And so the amendment does not seek to delay unreasonably the transfer, but to say, um, is there, is there a path to place conditions that are relevant to the technical, legal, and financial ability for the new, new owner to perform the services that are required yes.
—Reform to contract, and we believe that there are, with the inclusion of a citizen suit provision.
And the basic idea is we've added some findings that establish the resolution that this body adopted 11 to 1, I think it was, or 11 to 0, which found warrant with public interest to take up an investigation of the Zenith franchise agreement because there had been Okay.
With DEQ in particular, uh, and then sort of link that to, um, what does the environmental legal tradition show us in terms of how to, um, provide assurances and also, uh, methods of compliance, uh, when there is, um, uh, a matter of public interest when it comes to the environment.
So drawing upon the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, We think that the inclusion of a citizen suit will actually help the new franchise owner perform to the legal capability of the franchise, and we're prepared to get into that discussion as we go on.
It also makes it clear that ISQ, or I Squared Capital, would— is not relieved of any potential liability or actions committed by its predecessor.
Thank you.
So it's— that piece is in there as well, and I think that is relevant to the legal performance and conditions of this transfer.
So we'll get into the conversation, but it doesn't add anything.
It doesn't change the terms of the franchise.
It doesn't change the cost to the parties.
It doesn't add broader ESG requirements.
It just says the City of Portland, in the interest— and there's another finding in the ordinance, by the way, that acknowledges that this council as a body has adopted legislation through a budget action in '25-'26 that recognizes the need to expand our volunteer and partnership capabilities with the private sector.
We did that in the context of the Clark 3 and 7 budget note amendments.
I think it was largely related to parks and asset management and that sort of thing.
But that is a thread that we are saying we believe that the City of Portland should find ways to And so we believe that this amendment will actually bring us into closer relationship with this franchise holder and, and help the community feel a lot better about the performance of this, of this contract.
So we'll get into the testimony and we'll, we'll take a debate on that.
Thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Council President.
I just want to say that I'm very pleased to see that the city is Follow the thread that Councilor Knoll started there.
Is every document that was used by our attorneys to get to the recommendation that ISQ does in fact meet the required ability to perform the legal, the economic, the technical, the, the various pieces here Are all of the documents that were used to get to that recommendation this point linked to the record on our official webpage, on our official record for this agenda item?
Because that was that was that anything that was used to arrive at that conclusion be available for the public, and I think that needs to be attached to.
The actual agenda item to make sure that it's easy for folks to access.
So has that happened, or are there things that are missing at this point?
Nancy Thorington
Um, I can, I can answer that question for you, uh, Councilor.
Yes, everything is linked.
And I can also answer, uh, Councilor Kanal's question.
The reason for the dates on those is it's the dates of the letters.
So, so that's why you're seeing some January dates and a March date on there.
And then the last one says supplemental information Zenith Public Records Request Responses.
So that's everything else.
So the, the, um, first set of documents are the actual documents that are referenced in the ordinance itself, and then the, the link underneath that is everything else, which includes all of the documents that were relied on.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Perfect, thank you.
I appreciate that being laid out clearly.
I was left with some doubt Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Jamie Dunphy
Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, I, I maybe— I, I have looked at all the, the letters.
I, I can't say that I'm— I've caught everything in the public records portal.
Um, I guess what— there, there's a lot in here that are things that the proposed new operator, the proposed You know, recipient of the transfer have sent that assert their position that this particular type of qualification is met.
I feel that there is adequate information there to show what was received.
What I guess what I was asking for is, and I doubt there's a necessarily for all 3 of these bodies of qualifications a checklist, but there's nothing that I can see unless it's in the public records portal showing sort of the, the analysis done.
Does that make sense?
Like, I, I'm here, I, I'm, I'm just going to read from, from one piece here.
But in terms of financial qualifications, I Squared has greater than $50 billion in assets under management.
The ETIF is close to $1 billion in commitments.
It's, it's a 2-short-paragraph thing in this particular document.
It's also referenced in another document.
I don't have anything showing the city saying $50 billion is enough, or maybe that's irrelevant and $600 million of available capacity is enough.
That sort of The analysis that will ultimately lead for me to be able to say is, I think one of the concerns is if something goes wrong, it's the people up here who are going to be asked, why did you approve this, right?
And I want to be able to say, like, we had analysis done that shows, and, you know, A was greater than B, or whatever the, the particular metric is for that.
And I don't know that I have necessarily the transparency into the basis by which this information was, was deemed sufficient.
Thank you.
Is that somewhere that I'm missing in the public record, or is the idea here that your recommendation is for us to make the determination that this information is sufficient?
Why?
Because from what I understood in the committee, you were recommending based on your assessment that it was sufficient, and I don't think that's a distinction without a difference.
I think it's actually a fairly important one in terms of who's Who's ultimately making the call.
Does that make sense?
I'm mostly looking at Director Andrew.
Unidentified speaker
Yes.
I mean, I wouldn't say there's like a rubric that we have to evaluate this or that I used in making my recommendation to the director.
I mean, just practically, right?
I reviewed the information and then crosswalked that with the obligations of the franchise agreement.
Um, to make that determination or recommendation.
Um, so there is not like a separate document to reference that would, I think, get at what you're asking for.
But I think what is embedded in your question and comments, I think, is that we're, we're talking about that crossing of Front Avenue, and it's very, very tight and very small.
And so it's the operations of that Right, of course.
And, and the infrastructure underneath.
And so from that lens, right, there's also bonding and insurance requirements within the franchise agreement, you know.
So there's— and there's indemnification provisions that keep the city held harmless.
So there's, you know, I, I don't— yeah, I don't know how to get at exactly what you're asking for in the sense of there being a evaluation tool or anything that I referenced.
It's not like land use where there's a tradition of findings in a—.
Robert Taylor
In that way.
Sameer Kanal
Maybe another way of, um, getting to the same question, because I think you're— we're getting closer to what I'm trying to understand here.
In one of these letters, there, uh, is a response from, um, I Squared's legal team.
Miller and Ashe.
To questions that you sent to them.
And in it, you asked about who the particular employee would— employer would be of the 21 employees, whether it's I Squared or it's another.
You asked about whether or not the executive chairman of the board, who has ultimate accountability for the operations of the facility, would be a— or is a full-time employee.
And they, they answered them.
I think maybe the overall idea that the recommendation is yes, this criterion has been met, does not give a little bit of the detail level for me to know why was it important whether, um, Mike Burgett is the— I apologize if I'm mispronouncing that— is full-time or not.
Why was that a relevant question to ask?
Like, what— and maybe we should have gotten into this in the committee a little bit more, but I'm, I'm hoping to kind of understand Does that affect your— did that have any effect on your assessment of— I probably wouldn't be financial, but technical, right, qualifications to receive this transfer?
Unidentified speaker
I mean, I'll just share what my perspective was in asking that follow-up.
Eric Zimmerman
I just wanted to ensure continuity with the operations folks on site, just that there would be someone there to practically manage anything, whether it was a, you know, critical disaster response or just normal operations issue, that they're— that the plant manager would have someone that they're in touch with regularly.
Unidentified speaker
That it was just a practical question in my mind, just in order to help ensure for council to understand that, like, it's not just a figurehead on paper, but that it's someone operationally they'd be engaging with.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah.
And, you know, I think they answered it pretty directly.
In that particular letter that the person involved is not a full-time employee, does have a consulting arrangement with the potential to join as a full-time employee later, but also adding that the employee is 100% of their time, um, is for this particular company.
I, I ask you, Springer, um, and therefore, you know, maybe saying not— your concern is not, uh, your concern is addressed by these other facts, not necessarily by a particular type of employment relationship is— appears to be what they're— and, and so I can see how that would be relevant.
I'm just trying to understand, like, I, I assume there were factors, and that's what I'm, I'm trying to get at here with any of it.
Um, because again, in, in the event— and obviously this is less about the new potential recipients of the transfer, but the current, um, franchisees have been documented to have violated that by the city in the past.
So I think it's fair for us to try and do our homework on and ensure that doesn't happen again in one of the few inflection points that come to council.
So that's, that's the kind of basis of it, and we'll get into it more after testimony.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Um, are we voting on this today?
Robert Taylor
No.
Loretta Smith
Okay.
Jamie Dunphy
It's the first reading of a non-emergency ordinance.
Loretta Smith
So it's a non-emergency ordinance, and let's just say if we do vote for it, what would a, uh, a yes vote Attorneys, what are we affirmatively voting on?
Nancy Thorington
A consent to transfer.
Robert Taylor
So Zenith would no longer hold the franchise and the ability to operate in the right-of-way.
This new end— this new entity would take over that, that franchise agreement and ability to operate in the right-of-way.
That's what we're voting on.
Loretta Smith
We're trying to see to be able to transfer that over to the new company.
Okay.
Robert Taylor
Correct.
And Zenith is selling this operation to the new operator.
So they're in a financial arrangement to buy or sell this operation.
This franchise is a grant of permission by the city for them to use these pipes in the right-of-way.
So it's, it's this— it's a final piece of the, uh, of the transaction that the, the purchaser needs to have in place so that they can actually use the pipes in the right-of-way, just like the old operator did.
Loretta Smith
Okay, and so just— it's just a technical question, um, Council President, because I was looking at the amendment that Morillo and Green put forward, and it was asking to give— to invite the public to sue, um, this new entity.
Is that something that we can do?
Robert Taylor
Um, I have, I have some thoughts on that.
I'd be happy to—.
Loretta Smith
Did you see, did you see that?
Robert Taylor
I did see it.
Loretta Smith
I have some thoughts in the proposed minutes.
So that's That's why I got nervous.
It's like, are we voting on this today?
Robert Taylor
Well, that amendment, you could vote on that amendment today if you, if you wanted to.
That would be normal on a first reading of a non-emergency ordinance.
Okay.
I, I do have, um, I have thoughts on that, uh, proposal that I'd be happy to share.
An executive session might be more appropriate to that.
Loretta Smith
But if we're going to vote on the— that's what I was asking.
If we're going to vote on this amendment today.
Um, I didn't know that we could invite the public to sue us specifically for something that we do.
Robert Taylor
We, uh, we, we have in our code, uh, in other provisions where we provide what's called a private right of action.
Okay.
Uh, where we give members of the public the ability to sue a company or, or somebody to enforce a regulation or a right.
So, uh, that what this proposal from Councilor Green and Councilor Murillo would do would impose that private right of action as a condition in the, in the franchise.
Loretta Smith
Well, I would— from a technical standpoint, um, we obviously can't have our executive session on this, and I would be interested in hearing what you had to say in executive session before this was actually put up for a vote.
And that's generally— the amendments are voted on before the underlying.
So that's what I'm trying to figure out.
It's, um, obviously there's some, there's some concern somewhere if you want to have an executive session.
Robert Taylor
Yeah, and I do, I, I, I do think that there may be some— this amendment may have some bearing on the pending litigation by Zenith, um, and we could have an executive session to discuss those concerns about that if the council wants to, uh, wants to do that.
Um, I also believe ISQ's, uh, legal counsel is here.
If they, they may want to give their reaction to that proposed amendment, that might be a possibility as well.
Loretta Smith
And since we, you know, um, Mr. President, since we just got this, I, I haven't had really time to digest.
I've been trying to go through it as we were sitting here talking.
I, I would like to have a little bit more time, if you will, and not take the vote on this today.
Jamie Dunphy
I will love to get through— well, I'd love to let Councilor Murillo respond also, but my intention is to get through, or my priority is to get through committee, uh, the testimony today.
If the council— if we run out of time, which we almost certainly will because we are chatty today, um, we will continue this item, uh, for further conversation.
So, okay.
And there is also— if there is an overwhelming interest of this council to, uh, temporarily move into executive session to discuss this, we could also accommodate that.
Loretta Smith
I would love to do that.
Jamie Dunphy
Councilor Maria.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you, Council President, and thank you.
I, I think that's a good idea for us to have that discussion privately.
I think, you know, if it makes our attorneys more comfortable and if it makes you, Councilor Smith, more comfortable.
I just wanted to offer a distinction about our amendment.
It's not the same as a private right of action.
Citizen suits are really common in the environmental law world, and they offer, you know, a different option besides a private right of action, in that private right of action is for remedying the harm to the individual bringing the suit, whereas a citizen suit is for remedying harm done to the public.
It's making an allowance for individuals to be deputized for enforcing laws on behalf of the state, but it has certain guardrails to that.
And I also want to add for my colleagues that this is, again, as Councilor Green stated earlier, it's not uncommon.
The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Federal Pipeline Safety Act, those are all federal laws, and they specifically talk about, you know, enforcement over oil pipelines and that sort of thing.
And this type of amendment is standard within that federal law as well.
So it's nothing unprecedented, it's, uh, very common.
Loretta Smith
Can I respond, Council President?
So if that's common, why wasn't it in ours if that's a common thing?
Because it sounds like to me if someone files this, that will hold up the sale or the transfer from Zenith to the new company.
That's what it sounds like to me.
That it will be held up?
Angelita Morillo
No, I— this is not to hold up the sale.
This is to say that once the transfer has happened, the public has a, a form of recourse if I Squared, uh, does something that they believe, uh, violates the terms of the agreement.
Loretta Smith
Okay.
And, um, Attorney Taylor, if this is a standard that's supposed to be in, in agreements, why didn't we have it in our land We do not have anything like this in any of our other franchise agreements.
Robert Taylor
We— the franchise agreement in this case and in other cases, there's a whole section in there about remedies and enforcement that the city has.
Loretta Smith
So this is adding above and beyond the remedies that we already have in our standard agreements?
Mitch Green
Point of order.
I thought we were doing text amendment.
Technical amendments to the underlying, and then we were just— I was just giving a courtesy to people testifying what my amendment is.
And so when we get to the part where we talk about the amendment, I think these are all fair questions, and I, I can explain my, my motivation too.
Thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Fair point.
Okay, with that, we do have more than 20 people signed up to testify, so, uh, if there are no further specific, uh, technical or clarifying questions to the underlying Can we please move to calling, uh, public testimony?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
We have 25 people signed up.
A reminder that there— you'll have 2 minutes to testify.
I will call people up in groups of 5.
First up, we have Jules Bailey, Jerry Zhang, Ben Harper, Nick Caleb, Connor Lennon.
Jamie Dunphy
Come on down, folks.
Feel free to, uh, introduce yourselves.
You're welcome to share your pronouns, and you will have 2 minutes apiece.
Go ahead.
Jules Bailey
Chair Dunphy, members of the council, first off, thank you.
Eric Zimmerman
It's been a long day.
Jules Bailey
We appreciate your perseverance through all of this.
My name is Jules Bailey.
I'm here today in support of the franchise agreement transfer because I genuinely believe this is good for Portland and good for our environment.
However, the item in front of you concerns just 2 pipe The history behind this terminal is not narrow.
The history has been controversial for good reason— crude oil, crude by rail, fossil fuel infrastructure, safety concerns, and a breakdown in trust with the community.
But the decision before you is whether Portland uses this moment to change the operator and the direction of the facility, or whether the status quo remains in place.
I Squared is committed to complete the transition to renewable fuels by the end of 2027.
Which is consistent with the DEQ permit, but it is not limited to regulatory compliance.
As you've heard before, I Squared is acquiring the asset through an Article IX energy transition fund.
That matters because the business purpose of the investment is renewable infrastructure, and the transaction only makes sense if the facility becomes what Portland's climate policy now requires— infrastructure for lower carbon fuels.
As you know, Portland and Oregon have ambitious clean fuel requirements that create demand But demand alone does not decarbonize transportation and industry.
We also need supply, storage, and distribution.
These fuels are necessary and have a lower carbon footprint verified by lifecycle analysis.
They also represent a materially different risk profile from crude oil.
Renewable diesel must be handled safely, and Skyline will be held to that standard, but it is not crude oil.
It is, it is not transported, stored, or handled with the same crude oil vapor explosion concerns that have driven so much of the discussion around this facility.
We also want to put a transparency commitment on the record.
Skyline and I Squared will voluntarily provide an annual public report to the City of Portland and the Oregon Department of Energy that details the Article 9 commitments, including total fuel stored, the fuel mix, estimated avoided emissions from renewable fuels, facility greenhouse gas emissions, greenhouse gas intensity, results of do-no-significant-harm analysis, record of safety drills, any regulatory violations or fines, and a summary of neighborhood engagement that will be available to the public.
This vote does not decide whether Portland has a fuel terminal.
The terminal exists, the permits exist.
The practical choice is whether to leave the current operator in place or allow a new operator with renewable fuels mandate to take responsibility.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Jerry Zhang
Good afternoon.
My name is Jerry Zhang, and I'm a vice president on the investment team of I Squared Capital.
I'll focus on 2 things that matter for your decision: who the buyer is and what our plans are for this asset in Portland.
First, I want to be clear, I Squared is not Zenith.
This is a private asset purchase.
We are acquiring the Portland Terminal, not Zenith, nor its other terminals, nor its organization.
We are a separate entity and we have neither threatened or initiated litigation with the city.
The Zenith corporate team will move on after the sale.
We are keeping the onsite team that'll safely operate this terminal and as they're doing currently.
Second, the conversion.
Beyond the regulatory requirement to phase out crude handling by October of 2027, the fund that is acquiring this terminal is bound by a binding obligation We are acquiring through an Article IX fund, the European Union's most demanding sustainability classification, for which converting this site to 100% renewable fuels is the core investment mandate reported publicly every year.
Zenith operates under no such obligation.
That commitment is backed by real capability.
We're a global infrastructure investor in the essential services that people rely on every day.
Thank you.
Energy, utilities, transportation.
And we operate bulk fuel terminals in Europe and the Philippines, where regulatory compliance and safety are core to how we run our assets.
Unidentified speaker
Our success and Portland's clean energy goals are the same outcome.
We will convert the site to renewable fuels, keep the local team, invest for the long term, and be good partners and neighbors.
We respectfully ask for your support so we can get to work.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Ben Harper
Good afternoon, Council President, Councilors.
My name is Ben Harper.
I'm head of sustainability at I Squared Capital, and I want to thank you again for your time today.
So I want to be direct with you about what the change in ownership means on how this terminal will be run.
As Jerry's just said, we're acquiring this terminal through our Energy Transition Infrastructure Fund.
As previously discussed, that fund is classified The highest tier the EU has, reserved for funds whose stated objective is sustainable investment.
So that classification binds us.
It requires that every asset in the fund contribute to a stated objective.
And here the stated objective is decarbonize hard-to-abate areas such as transportation.
Thank you, Mayor.
It requires us to run a do no significant harm test against a defined set of environmental indicators, and it requires us to publish those findings every year with regulators supervising whether or not those disclosures are accurate.
So I know you've heard this in prior testimony, so let me be concrete about what that test measures.
The do no significant harm assessment is run against adverse impact indicators set out in regulation.
18 Of these are mandatory.
3 Are almost word for word the concerns that have been raised about this site: emissions to water, which covers discharge of pollutants, hazardous waste generated by the operation, and activities that adversely affect biodiversity-sensitive areas, which on the banks of the river is not a hypothetical.
Thank you, Mayor.
So environmental stewardship at this terminal is not something from a— from the regulatory test.
It's evidence for it.
We, we do not satisfy do no significant harm by describing our intentions.
We have to produce and measure our performance against these indicators.
A responsibly run terminal produces the data that passes the test.
A terminal that operates poorly produces the data that fails it.
There's no option where we operate poorly and report our way through it.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Nick Caleb
Council President Dunphy, Vice President Clark, and esteemed council members, my name is Nick Caleb.
I use he/him pronouns.
I'm the climate energy attorney at Breach Collective, and I'm registered as a city lobbyist.
We support the citizen suit third-party enforcement condition proposed by Councilors Green and Murillo.
As an environmental lawyer and a law professor, I can tell you that citizen suit provision— provisions are a bedrock of American environmental law.
The reason they were adopted in federal law is applicable here to instill trust in the enforcement of laws by trusting the public to play a direct role in their enforcement.
Citizen suits are effective because they add a secondary route of enforcement of the law if the government refuses to do its job, which is highly relevant for our mayor.
A citizen suit third-party enforcement provision would not affect I Squared's operations at all.
It doesn't change any standards or rules of theirs.
All it does is allow Portland residents to enforce the terms of the existing franchise agreement on behalf of the city if the mayor continues to Given the behavior of the mayor on Zenith since he took office, this is a highly reasonable exercise of your legislative mandate and would give the public trust that you care about their concerns.
Given the— given that last year you adopted a resolution that recognized a consistent record of violations and dishonesty by Zenith, and that Section 10 of this franchise transfer ordinance says I Squared will retain all of Zenith staff to manage this facility, there is a continuity and there's ample reason for— to allow for this additional oversight measure.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Nick Caleb
Were you to accept— adopt this condition into a conditional approval, which you should, I Squared Capital would have 30 days after the closing of its acquisition to accept the ordinance.
Because it would not affect I Squared's underlying operations, the only reason I Squared would refuse to assent to this condition would be because they intend to break the law.
And having watched Zenith act with impunity, they expect the City of Portland to let them do it.
Actually, it's very straightforward.
You could probably drop a lot of public opposition if you all would.
Thank you.
Embrace this.
So I encourage you to look at it closely, and if you think it's— you're not planning on breaking the law, it's quite easy to say sure, the citizens can enforce the law if it's ever broken, no problem.
So thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Thank you all.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Connor is joining us online.
Sameer Kanal
Awesome, thanks.
Hello, Councilor President Dunphy and Portland City Council.
For the record, my name is Conor Lennon.
I'm a resident in District 4.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I am here today testifying in support of the Green-Murillo Amendment for the citizen suit third-party enforcement agreement.
Sameer Kanal
We have seen time and time again that Zenith Energy does not frankly care about the safety of the people of Portland and And a transfer to I Squared Capital with the retention of the current Zenith employees does not give me or anybody else in this city confidence that we will be moving forward in a way that has consistent oversight that truly protects the people of Portland.
This amendment allows us an opportunity for oversight, and in the event that our council chooses not to exercise their amendments and powers to do so, the citizens of Portland can.
So I, I really encourage you all to vote yes on this amendment and support the Green-Murillo amendment.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you so much.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Next up, we have Max Brumm, Jordan Lewis, Deneen Crowe, Bea Marston, Randall Frizen.
Jamie Dunphy
Whoever wants to go first.
Deneen Crowe
Hi everyone, my name is Deneen Crowe.
I am the campaign director at 350 PDX and I live in District 2.
Um, I've been up here for several years now about this issue, and I'm wondering how many times we have to come and testify to you all about how the safety of Portlanders should matter more than the business interests of the fossil fuel industry.
Section 10 of the ordinance we're talking about clearly states I Squared intends to retain all facility employees that are currently employed by Zenith to maintain technical expertise at the facility post-sale.
So it's the same facility grounds, same employees, same dangerous fuels being transported, same greenwashing PR.
In response to the greenwashing you just heard just now from the ISQ reps, I want to remind you all of a work session in March 2025 about the misconceptions of, quote, renewable fuels That provides the truth of this matter from scientists and experts without all the industry PR.
If anything, ISQ could be worse.
This is a shell company with an extremely confusing structure, or lack thereof.
So when laws are inevitably broken or permits violated, as we've seen over the years with Zenith, or if there's a spill or explosion, how will they be held accountable?
Will it open up a bureaucratic headache of who will pay the damages?
Councilor Loretta Smith.
Please take your time with this decision.
Talk to community members, listen to people who live near the facility, file amendments.
We enthusiastically support the citizen suit amendment from Councilors Green and Murillo.
When 350 PDX hosted our mayoral debate in 2024, we heard from a candidate, then Mayor Wilson, that if there was malfeasance If we find out there was not transparency, we would revoke Zenith's LUCS permit.
And yet in his first month in office, he granted this exact permit after they received a huge fine from DEQ for malfeasance.
So this is exactly why we need third-party enforcement, because the community does not trust the mayor to hold this company accountable.
We've seen no accountability in the past.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Deneen Crowe
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thanks.
Randall Friesen
Good afternoon, uh, Council President Dunphy, Vice President Clark, and city councilors.
For the record, I am Randall Friesen, Executive Director of the Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council.
I represent over 20,000 construction professionals across the Portland metropolitan and Southwest Washington regions.
Our 22 local unions build and maintain the critical systems within the critical energy infrastructure hub because over 90% of Oregon's liquid fuel supply passes through this hub, this is a statewide infrastructure necessity that must be treated with gravity.
The city, county, and state have set aggressive climate goals requiring fossil fuels to be replaced by nearly 100% renewable gas and diesel by 2030.
This terminal is a necessary component to reach those goals.
Any delay puts these mandates at risk.
Sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel are absolutely required to meet our targets.
We have heard opponents voice concerns over the current operator, Zenith.
Transferring this terminal to I Squared is the first step to resolving those concerns.
The new operator has not only agreed to meet the 100% renewable fuel mandate, but has also committed to using skilled union labor for system upgrades and safety improvements through a project labor agreement.
These agreements can include community benefits components that allow for local partnerships, ensuring safety, quality, family-wage jobs, and community engagement.
Along other Horizon projects like the Next Clean Energy, this hub will decarbonize— help decarbonize 90% of the state's fuel system.
We ask the council to approve the franchise transfer and the needed right-of-way access so this deal can proceed.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Max is joining us online.
Unidentified speaker
Hi, thank you.
Max Brumm
My name is Max Brumm.
Unidentified speaker
I use they/them pronouns.
I gave my testimony while this was in committee, and I still stand by that testimony in opposition of this transfer agreement.
And I'm just asking, please just don't rubber stamp this and say yes just because it's the easy way to go and it's what all the lobbyists are telling you to do.
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
At the very minimum, please support the amendment that was being proposed, and thank you for your time.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Jordan.
Unidentified speaker
Hello, City Council.
Jordan Lewis
My name is Jordan Lewis.
I'm a registered volunteer lobbyist for Portland Democratic Socialists of America.
I testified on this in committee as well, and I urged— I continue to urge that we at the very least assign conditions to the franchise transfer if we're going to do that.
I think a citizen lawsuit is a very reasonable pathway for accountability.
I mean, we're talking about a potential firebomb that would explode and kill many people.
I feel comfortable speaking for DSA when I say that would be very bad.
We don't want that to happen.
We would like accountability so that that does not happen.
Uh, I'm thinking about the context that I've been living in the past couple weeks.
We have witnessed historic floods in Nepal that have killed American citizens, historic floods in the Grand Canyon, uh, smoke in the air because of a warehouse industrial fire in Northwest, very close to the Xena facility.
These are very reasonable, sober reasons to be concerned.
Jerry Zhang
Thank you.
Jordan Lewis
About the facility.
And we need to talk about the profit motive.
Like, why— the narrative here is that the operator is changing so it'll be safe.
Why?
And people keep asking me, why did we put this huge glowing weak point, this explosive red barrel, in right next to Portland's downtown?
Because it's cheap.
And it's cheap because it's neglected.
And the new owner wants it because it is cheap, because it is neglected.
People ask, why don't we move it?
Because that would cost money.
And the profit motive is the reason.
The problem is being used to endanger people to this potential for a massive urban wildfire, for a Fukushima-level oil spill, uh, an evacuation all over the Portland metro area.
It would be disastrous, uh, and it could happen tomorrow.
We don't know geologic timelines.
So, uh, let's do the right thing.
Um, hope we can survive it in the event that it happens tomorrow.
And if you voted the wrong way, Thank you.
Uh, you need to find a way out of the city very quickly.
Check.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Uh, B, Marston.
Next up we have Jeremy Bossele-Smith, Benjamin Gilbert, Sarah Foster, Adam Murray, Michael Weisdorf.
Unidentified speaker
Good afternoon, Council.
Um, thanks for the opportunity to speak on this item.
Um, I want to reflect on the 8/6 committee hearing, um, on this item.
At that meeting, community members were asking for more information and documentation regarding the transfer of the franchise agreement.
And in that meeting, City Attorney Robert Taylor acknowledged that they would be able to release those documents now that they can acknowledge that there is a significant public interest.
I want to ask the question, what is your theory of change as a body?
And how do you use committee to get there?
I've noticed that there's sort of a practice of the administration to selectively Um, produce documents related to actions you all are expected to take, and you're often placed on a really abridged timeline to get there.
Uh, and, and so far, the suit that's before the city today from Zenith, um, seems to be related to what they're seeing as an unreasonable delay.
And I just— I would posit that it seems easily defensible in a court of law and before a judge that it's It's not an unreasonable delay if a legislative body doesn't have a full scope of information.
And so, um, I, I think it's actually a negotiation tactic to pressure you all into a situation where you have to agree to this thing.
On a qualitative analysis between both parties, it seems that I Squared is just a better partner to the city than Zenith is.
And so I think that as this moves forward, you should consider approving the franchise agreement.
But as you think about conditions, I would actually take the opportunity to place more conditions on the administration.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
For the barrier to entry for items that they bring before this council and how fast they expect those items to advance to the full council where you're expected to make decisions where the public are going to, you know, make intimidating statements to you all about what will happen if you make the wrong decision based on incomplete information.
Thank you so much.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
Ben Gilbert
My name is Ben Gilbert, and I'm a volunteer lobbyist for the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and I live in Northwest Portland.
I support the amendment from Green and Murillo.
We have no confidence in this franchise agreement or the mayor's willingness to enforce it.
It must be strengthened to allow third-party enforcement.
The city has refused to enforce this franchise agreement against Zenith Energy, even though Zenith was notorious for breaking the law and deceiving regulators and the public.
Eric Zimmerman
Thank you.
Ben Gilbert
Are Portlanders really supposed to believe that none of Zenith's lawbreaking violated the franchise agreement's provisions, despite several that explicitly state that violating federal, state, or local law is a violation of the agreement?
Either the agreement is incapable of holding lawbreaking companies accountable, or more likely, our mayors have refused to enforce the agreement based on political calculus.
Public records clearly show that the city attorneys repeatedly told I Squared Capital That they would need 9 votes at the full City Council for the franchise transfer to pass, but then changed its legal interpretation so that the City Council only needs a simple majority to adopt the ordinance.
This changing of the rules mid-process is of questionable legal merit and is certainly undemocratic.
This must have been what I Squared Capital meant when they said the city attorneys would manage potential public opposition.
It is outrageous that once again the city has chosen to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry rather than working to protect Portlanders.
Eric Zimmerman
Thank you.
Ben Gilbert
This process has been opaque and chaotic, but as usual for the Portland Metro Chamber and their buddies, it's all going according to plan.
Unidentified speaker
Whose side are you on?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Michael.
Unidentified speaker
Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
Michael Weisdorf
My name is Michael Weisdorf, he/him pronouns, and I am an analyst at McCullough Research and a resident of Southwest Hills.
Portland.
The lawyers might tell you this item is pro forma, but I would remind you this is an issue of paramount importance to everyone living in this city.
On the one hand, we depend on the energy supplied by fuels such as those handled by the franchisee, and on the other, we know there are tremendous risks to our city arising from the existing infrastructure that handles those fuels.
U-12 are tasked with oversight responsibility of the city's franchisees And thus with weighing those critical needs and risks against one another.
Unfortunately, you currently lack access to the necessary information required to perform your obligations.
This franchise and all similar agreements should be conditional on the franchisee's regular and timely disclosure of data regarding the types and volumes of fuel products being loaded, received, and transshipped by terminals such as this one.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Michael Weisdorf
This information is essential to your oversight responsibility.
It is not possible to judge whether the risks we face every day are justified without having a clear picture of the actual benefits to Portlanders and Oregonians arising from these kinds of operations.
We're all aware of the documented history of this franchisee deceiving the city and the public when it comes to the nature and scope of their operations.
I— even now, it remains unclear exactly what type of fuels and petroleum products are being handled at this terminal because the city does not require this type of disclosure, as it should and must do in order to exercise responsible oversight.
I urge council to implement a monthly reporting requirement for this franchise and all similarly situated so that we might finally understand what kinds of fuels are being handled and transshipped Such reports should specify the types of products being handled, their volumes, their places of origin, and destinations.
It's impossible to exercise effective oversight of bulk fuels operations without regular and timely reporting of this data.
Thank you for your time.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Jeremy is joining us online.
Unidentified speaker
Good afternoon, Council.
Jeremy Bosalais-Smith
My name is Jeremy Bosalais-Smith.
My generation wants a livable future.
We want air we can breathe, water we can drink, and rivers and forests we can enjoy.
Over the past week, we have choked on wildfire smoke that poisoned our air, and we can't swim in our river without getting sick because of toxic algae blooms.
Both of these issues are a direct result of climate change.
My generation wants to live long lives, and we want to die peacefully.
But if we don't fight back against fossil fuel corporations and hold them accountable for the danger they pose, and the damage they've caused, then we are damning my generation to an uninhabitable planet.
Issues surrounding fossil fuel corporations can get muddled with talk of job creation and a strong economy, but what does any of that matter when we can't breathe our air, drink our water, and face constant natural disasters?
What kind of future is that for us?
There's no amount of fuel that can be safely stored at the critical energy infrastructure hub, and we cannot allow any further development there.
I Squared Capital's own public statements demonstrate their intent to expand operations at the Zenith Energy site into a regional fuel hub.
This is completely unacceptable.
Expansion of fuel storage at the CEI hub compounds the existing catastrophic health and safety risks of this facility for Portlanders, our rivers, and our environment.
We all know that I Squared Capital has a record of safety, employment, consumer protection, and environmental violations.
Councilmember Herbold.
This is not a company we want in town.
We must stand up to fossil fuel corporations if we have any hope of a habitable planet for my generation.
Please do not allow this franchise agreement transfer to go through and allow Zenith to skip town without being held accountable for their illegal actions, unsafe practices, and the damage they've done to our community.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Sarah Foster.
Next up we have JT Hendricks, Lynn Handlin, Emily Hawley, Diane Meisenhelter, Danny Noonan.
Unidentified speaker
Welcome, folks.
JT Hendricks
Good afternoon, uh, President Dunphy, Vice President Clark, and the rest of the council.
My name is JT Hendricks.
I'm a lifelong Oregonian.
I just lived up the road, up Highway 30 and Warren.
I've had the honor of working at the Portland Terminal for the last 23 years.
As a member of this community, I place the highest importance on safe operations and stewardship of our environment.
I've served as terminal manager for the last 8 years and am proud to report that there have been no reportable spills during my time as terminal manager.
The Portland Terminal is the largest renewable fuel storage facility in the Northwest in the Pacific Northwest, provides essential supply to meet Oregon's climate goals in the transition sector, and is critical to accomplishing the City of Portland's renewable fuel standard.
Since there is no pipeline delivering renewable fuel into the Oregon market, storage is required to handle the rail and marine imports.
My job is to ensure the handling of these renewable fuels done safely in full compliance with Thank you.
In addition to the ongoing oversight from all 5 regulatory agencies, 2 state agencies, and 4 local agencies, we are required to have robust emergency response plans.
These, these include spill prevention control countermeasures plan, earthquake response plan.
To better understand the terminal seismic readiness, 2 site-specific vulnerability assessments were conducted by Oregon registered Um, engineers in both '20 and '22.
Uh, these, these included soil borings and cone penetration tests throughout the facility.
Third-party engineers concluded the terminal poses a low risk in connection with a 9.0 magnitude seismic event.
The Portland Terminal is the essential piece of the region's and city's renewable fuel infrastructure.
I urge the council to approve the franchise agreement And to continue— so we can continue to serve the market safely.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Lynn Spitaleri-Handlin
Um, hi, Council.
Been a long day.
Uh, my name is Lynn Spitaleri-Handlin, and I'm here—.
Sameer Kanal
I hope I was supposed to start.
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah, go ahead.
Lynn Spitaleri-Handlin
I am here to support the amendment for the citizen suit provision.
If we must do this dirty deed we're doing today.
I Squared Capital, IQ Squared, I don't know who we're talking about.
It is a slippery spaghetti of corporate interacting things that are destroying the planet around the world.
They say they're not Zenith.
Apparently they got wind that community members are really not happy with Zenith's many, many violations, dirty backroom deals, and general bad behavior.
We are different says IQ Squared, or whoever they are.
But then they say, no worries about running this operation, we're keeping on all the Zenith people.
I'm sorry, you cannot have it both ways.
And as to their Article 9 fund that they like to refer to, it's basically a high-level greenwashing organization.
Not great.
So here we are.
This new company seems to be saying they'll do all the same bad stuff Zenith did, only more so.
They apparently do not have the expertise to run this operation without Zenith people, but Zenith people behave badly and demonstrated they can't be trusted.
The mayor and the city administrators have been complicit and lack transparency in this matter, failing to act to enforce the prior franchise agreement when Zenith repeatedly broke the law and deceived the public and regulators.
Therefore, the city council has no option except to approve the Green Morillo citizen suit provision.
And honestly, if I Squared is really a better company, as you all claim, then you should welcome— they should be welcoming this provision because, you know, they're amazing.
I know we're all told that this is not the time to talk about climate change, but really, in these times, climate change should be considered in every decision that is made.
So let it sink in.
This is a huge They're a huge climate-fueling entity around the world, and they want to continue the destructive behavior here in the disguise of renewable fuel, which is not climate-friendly at all.
So at a minimum, please include the citizen suit provision to do the enforcement that our mayor and bureau directors absolutely will not do.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Emily?
Emily Hawley
President Dunphy, Vice President Clark, and councilors, my name is Emily Hawley.
I'm a lawyer and atrocity crimes investigator with a focus on corporate accountability and such abuses.
In committee, my testimony explained the simplicity of the community's demands.
All that was asked was for committee to do their due diligence, to ensure public transparency, and to allow genuine public engagement on this issue.
Unfortunately, the committee failed.
Instead, Members hid from their responsibility and their own power.
First, it was stressed to the public that the councilors were not responsible for the fact public had been denied access to necessary records.
We even saw the public scolding of the administration for this unforced error.
But I want to stress that until the committee voted to move this item on, the public had not yet fully been deprived of their right to engage in this process.
The city's misstep still had a remedy.
It was in fact the committee's vote that deprived Portlanders of this crucial procedural step for effective committee-level interrogation.
Second, councilors argue that the franchise transfer is just a tiny little decision of no real consequence.
Councilors, you are too smart for this argument.
If this transfer is so insignificant, then why is a private equity firm sending people from Miami and New York City to lobby the city?
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Emily Hawley
Why is Zenith suing the city to rush this through?
What's the urgency?
These actions are evidence of your power.
You're being demanded to rush a decision based on a wafer-thin record.
You can demand more information.
Granting the public adequate time to review is definitionally reasonable.
I also have serious questions about any legal finding which would suggest that this franchise would your duties under the Charter, or this insinuation that a private equity firm can be a good steward, steward without changing their incentive structure, which a voluntary commitment to an EU ESG guideline does not do.
Unidentified speaker
It's not too late to remedy the harms of the committee vote.
The worst thing you could do would be to rush this through.
Third-party enforcement is the minimum, and it's actually a commitment to protect the public against the failures of this city, if the city fails to uphold its own commitment to public safety.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Diane, Diane Meisenhelter, you're muted.
Unidentified speaker
Sorry.
Um, please support the Green-Murillo amendment today.
We know the city did not do a thorough review process with their own in-depth research or written report, but accepted ISQ's self-reporting at face value.
The fact that there is going to be a continuity of operations with Zenith staff is not an argument in favor of the transfer because these same bad actors have done multiple illegal things, as has ISQ.
Do you mean to tell us that Zenith's operational staff did not know of the pipelines they were building illegally?
Deneen Crowe
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
The CSQ now seems to have little clear knowledge of what our real public concerns are and are using red herrings.
The renewable fuel policies of the city do not cover exports.
Renewables are as dangerous given the seismic issues that the public is concerned about and problematic in so many ways that we need to be educating council about.
Loretta Smith
Um, this—.
Unidentified speaker
The, the operational manager repeated his testimony from last time.
I'm sorry.
Councilor Smith has still not answered how they ended up with a low-risk seismic report to the state when all of the surrounding properties tested— told the truth in their findings.
So that is why council needs to do the due diligence necessary to put enforcement guardrails in place and ensure no further permit expansions until the CEI hub policy is finalized.
Council can look at recent nearby events as long to see the serious consequences of non-enforcement and corporate irresponsibility and know that this is a prime opportunity to take preemptive action given what we know of these 2 out-of-state players with a clear track record of lawbreaking and willingness to put profit over local communities.
ISQ in particular has a history of creating LLC shell games to shield itself through legal firewalls.
ISQ Springer Holdings is is just the, the last— the, the one of these 15 such entities.
If something happens and they dissolve this subsidiary, how are you going to hold this huge $66 billion equity firm accountable?
We're counting on you, our electeds, to have the interests of public safety, our local economy, and climate goals foremost, and not to listen to their greenwashing.
The Green Morillo Amendment is a way forward and should be partnered with a more Thank you very much.
Jamie Dunphy
Sorry, thank you very much for your testimony today.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Danny Noonan.
Next up we have Janet Wheel, Amy Mahoney, Alex Wick, Will Rasmussen.
Janet Wheel
My name is Janet Wheel.
I reside in District 4, 2 blocks from the train tracks where Zenith Oil cars roll into the CEI Hub, and a 10-minute drive from the CEI Hub.
Fire, train derailment, chemical spill or explosion, massive earthquake in a liquefaction zone.
These are all predicted events that could happen at any time in or near the transfer facility.
Zenith Energy wishes to sell to a holding company of I Squared Capital once the franchise transfer agreement is approved.
I say slow the roll.
100% Renewable fuels are not a magic shield of protection against catastrophe.
I have several questions for the council.
We know that the CEI hub is not located in an appropriate place, and if there is to be an expanded regional renewable and sustainable fuels site.
That is up to the people of and the government of Portland to determine and plan, not to meekly accept that this is coming as a gift from a Miami-based corporation.
My next question is what will happen in the case of a catastrophe that is all too plausible and could happen at any time?
Who will pay, and what exactly is the disaster evacuation plan for workers in and near the CEI hub, for the residents on the hills west of Highway 30, for the truckers and motorists on Highway 30, for the truckers and motorists on the St. Johns Bridge?
And what about Amtrak?
Will renewable fuels continue to be stored— just one more question—.
Sameer Kanal
In trains?
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Sorry, we are over time.
Thank you very much for your testimony.
Unidentified speaker
Good afternoon, President Dunphy, councilors.
Will Rasmussen
I'm Will Rasmussen.
I'm an administrative law lawyer here in Portland.
I'm a native Portlander and want to thank you for your endurance today in getting through the end of your agenda.
Uh, I'm just going to touch on 2 points, one fact, and then try to respond to a handful of councilor questions that were raised at the front end of this hearing.
On the fact, I Squared is not Zenith.
This is a private asset purchase.
It's akin to buying a house.
I Squared is just acquiring this one terminal, not Zenith, not Zenith's other terminals, not Zenith's organization.
This is a separate company with a separate ownership and separate management and a separate history.
It's neither threatened litigation nor initiated litigation against the city.
It's buying the site through an Article IX energy transition fund whose core mandate is converting this entire terminal to renewable fuels.
You heard from Jules and Ben earlier that they're willing to report to the city every year on quantities of fuels, types of fuels, Amount of carbon emissions.
This will be thousands of tons of carbon emissions that, that they'll drive at this facility.
These are good things.
The prior owner's history does not belong to my client.
Uh, second, there was a host of questions about a potential amendment, a condition, a potential condition of approval that would create a third-party public right to sue.
And there was a handful of questions.
First, President Dunphy kind of asked City Attorney Taylor, this is kind of quasi-judicial, it's kind of quasi-contractual.
And the attorney correctly said it's, it's both of those things.
And those limit the city's authority to impose conditions here.
It's set out both in law and in a private contract, a 2-party contract.
Neither side can amend that contract except in extremely limited conditions.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Will Rasmussen
And Councilor Smith asked a question, might that condition hold up this transfer?
The short answer to that is absolutely yes.
That is a very material change of terms that's not in the franchise, that's not in the contract, that could absolutely delay this.
And it would just be unusual, to Councilor Murillo's point, that there's a bunch of environmental laws with citizen enforcement measures.
Jerry Zhang
Thank you so much.
Will Rasmussen
Sorry, there's no franchise laws that I'm aware of.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Alex is joining us online.
Unidentified speaker
Hey guys, I know I only have 2 minutes, so I'll skip the intros and the thanks.
Alex Wick
My name is Alex Wick.
I'm a master forester, and I think that the fellow just before me said it very clearly.
You know, I think that the facility is a huge source of carbon emissions.
There is— I don't think any They've not shown the technical competency needed.
I don't know, um, my councilors may have more information on this, but I don't know if they carry insurance for when the Cascadia Subduction Zone inevitably blows up, uh, sending about 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools of oil into the Willamette River.
Uh, that is something which is overdue to happen and should be considered in risk analysis.
Uh, finally, also one thing I want to mention is a franchisee Relationship with an oil and gas company just doesn't look good for the city of Portland.
I mean, I'm— I think we're all more familiar with like franchises like Burger King and McDonald's.
Um, and you know, that makes sense.
If there's an individual McDonald's serving horse meat, for example, McDonald's would terminate that franchise agreement with that individual.
Um, you know, I think that at this stage of the game with Zenith You know, being in multiple violations of environmental laws.
Um, you know, it probably makes sense to let the franchisee agreement expire and they can pick up again with a license agreement.
We can fine them in the meantime if they're still operating.
Uh, there are many things to do, and I think that the fact that the paid individuals from Zenith who showed up today are trying to push this forward.
It's a common tactic in sales, you know, create FOMO, rush the person into making a decision.
I think your job as city councilors is to sit back, to request all the available technical literature, and to make a clear decision based on the people's will, not based on corporate strategic Thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Amy Mahoney.
That completes testimony.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay, colleagues, we have completed testimony on this item.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Thanks so much.
Um, I would like to move, uh, Green-Morillo 1.
Jamie Dunphy
Councilor Green moves Green-Morillo 1.
Is there a second?
Angelita Morillo
Oh, I can second it.
Just kidding.
See, I'm tired.
Second.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay, I'm going to give— I'll give it to Morillo as a second.
Colleagues, discussion of Green-Morillo 1?
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Yeah, I just want to clear some things up here.
Um, so this amendment does not— it does not seek, nor does it affect in any way, the underlying terms of the franchise agreement.
All it does is says, as a condition of this transfer, the City of Portland by this ordinance is establishing the ability for a civil suit proceeding to occur.
And if there is— and that would only ever be triggered in the event of a violation, right?
So if the company, if the prospective buyer of the asset Thank you.
This is an amendment that intends to honor every piece of the franchise agreement.
There should never be a citizen suit.
There's no effective change to the terms of the arrangement between the city and the franchise holder in terms of the franchise agreements.
And in fact, the amendment outlines and makes it expressly Councilor Herbold.
Councilor Herbold, I think you already noted that there are damages awarded to the defendant in the case of a frivolous suit.
And so I think what you've got here is there's a bit of misdirection going on where there's a suggestion that, well, this would unduly and unreasonably delay.
No, this amendment, it says right here, this allows us to get to yes or no.
This is an amendment on an ordinance that consents to a transfer as soon as we vote yes on it.
And so this idea that it heightens the risk of litigation would only be true if the other party decides to unreasonably delay, not the City of Portland.
So the City of Portland is moving forward with this, and this amendment is a, I think, a reasonable basis by which to establish that the city is that the prospective buyer has both the legal and the technical capabilities to actually perform the work, not just tell us what they're going to do, but actually perform to standard.
And so, and, you know, with that in mind, colleagues, I hope that you'll support this.
And, and, uh, yeah, I think I'll leave it there for now.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Oh, I thought there were like multiple other people before me.
I have heard now a few times my colleagues say that, and testifiers actually, that the citizen suit only applies to future violations and that if ISQ is following the law, there is no issue there.
But there's also Section C in the amendment which talks about the retention of liability.
Steve Novick
Yes.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So I'm hoping for a clarification on whether the citizen suit provision would, in conjunction with that Section C retention of liability, allow for citizen suits based on liability, based on violations committed by Zenith before the transfer, or not.
I'm kind of— what I'm reading is different from what I'm That's a good question.
Mitch Green
I don't—.
Angelita Morillo
C does not apply to the citizen suit.
Mitch Green
Yeah, so that's an independent piece.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah, even though you are proposing to extend liability, the citizen— that would be a liability that the city could enforce, but not that the citizen suit piece could enforce?
Angelita Morillo
The, the citizen suit is forward-looking.
So yeah, that would be correct.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, thank you for that clarification.
Second question, I'm not sure if we have Robert Taylor or any of our other attorneys still there to help on this, but I'm trying to understand whether the citizen suit would only apply to the operations of the franchise agreement itself and therefore the operations of that small amount of pipeline under the road, or whether this would extend the citizen suit to all agreements and laws that ISQ would be bound by operating within our city.
Um, and well, let me start there.
Mitch Green
Councilor, before Robert Taylor answers, I just note that the language Our amendment says civil action seeking recovery of monetary damages, injunctive relief, or specific performance of this franchise.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
And what I wasn't sure is if that meant this as opposed to all of our other franchise agreements with other potential franchisees, or if that meant just the relationship with this franchisee under this franchise agreement and not the rest of their operations.
Mitch Green
I mean, I think the way that we wrote it was very specific to the condition on the transfer of this franchise agreement and not to extend anything any further than that.
Robert Taylor
This is Robert Taylor.
I agree with that.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay.
And Mr. Taylor, I know that Councilor Smith started down this line of questioning, but I do want to make sure, because we're very limited in what we can do with the franchise agreement, that we're not getting into a situation where we're We have clarity around whether this specific, the language of this specific amendment is legally allowed under the limitations we have in a franchise agreement.
And what I'm trying to differentiate here is I think outside of a franchise agreement, we could absolutely enact conditions like this.
Either through a negotiation or potentially there may be ways we could unilaterally require this for franchisees generally.
But I'm wondering if we can in this specific moment, in this specific legislation that's before us.
Robert Taylor
Thanks, Councilor.
If you're asking me if this is legally allowed, I think that's a question I would like to answer in an executive session.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, that puts us in a bit of a pickle.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr. President.
Um, it's totally true that a number of environmental laws of general applicability have citizen suit provisions, but a franchise agreement is agreement between the city and another entity.
And normally when you have a contract with somebody, I think you expect that if you get sued, you'll be sued by that somebody.
And I'm just curious, Councilors Green and Murillo, how many examples have you found of other cities granting— allowing for citizen suits to enforce the city's agreement with other parties?
Mitch Green
I don't have that list of case law in front of me, Councilor.
Steve Novick
The reason I ask that is that it strikes me as possible that if we establish a precedent that citizen suits can enforce our agreements with other parties, then other parties might become reluctant to do business with us.
If there are lots of examples of that and those cities didn't have that problem, that would be reassuring.
So one thing I would like to do before—.
If—.
If we're going to move forward with this, I'd want to consult with, like, all of the parts of the city that can— that reach agreements with other parties and see if they thought it might have a chilling effect.
Another question I have is, if this was a good idea to say that there should be citizen suits to enforce this or any other franchise agreement, why didn't you bring it forward like a year ago?
Angelita Morillo
Councilor, may I respond to your first question?
Sure.
Okay, so I think the distinction that you're trying to make between franchise law and environmental law isn't super relevant here because the council can always decide that the commitments are not enough or that the commitments alone are going to be enough.
And today's question is around whether we should, for a fuel terminal on a fault line, create a monitoring record where the The state found years of unauthorized operations the city's process didn't catch.
So based on prior experience, that's what we're gonna be basing this on.
And it doesn't matter if we're enforcing it, the franchise, or enforcing it under the Clean Air Act.
This is, I think, a very unique situation.
So if you're proposing that we—.
Loretta Smith
Councilor Smith.
Angelita Morillo
Slow down our approval of this franchise transfer so that we can talk to every business we could potentially do business with.
That's— I frankly think this is moving too quickly, and I have a lot more questions I could ask and a lot more process I could include that I think circumvented committee.
But we brought this amendment in an attempt to do it in good faith and to say that we are trying to move this forward in a way that is What I was saying is I think there is a distinction, Councilor.
Steve Novick
Um, giving the public the ability to help enforce laws of general applicability is different from giving the public the ability to enforce an agreement between the city and another party.
And I do think that there's grounds for concern that if we establish that precedent, that we could have a situation where the city is not able to enforce its own ordinances.
That there'll be citizen suits to enforce our agreements with other parties, even if we're not suing them, then that might have some chilling effect with our contract— prospective contractual relationships with parties across the board.
I could be wrong about that, but that's something at least I'd want to talk to people about.
Angelita Morillo
I mean, Councilor—.
Steve Novick
My other question again was, if this is a good idea, if the principle is that there should be citizen suits to enforce franchise agreements, Why didn't you bring up that principle a number of months from ago and make it more generally applicable?
Because I think that one potential problem with bringing up now in this circumstance is that it gives Zenith and Zenith the argument that, well, this isn't really a policy choice.
This is just a condition placed on the transfer, and we're really limited in the position.
Mitch Green
I'd like to respond to your question, Councilor.
I thought about this because it was in the context of the specific transfer, not because I was noodling on broad applicability of environmental law to our general franchise problem.
And so it was because there was significant concern from the city attorney's office that there was a significant public about council just passing on a franchise agreement when there are issues of public trust related to both the prior operator, an unknown operator, and previous experience with the City of Portland not really executing, enforcing its laws.
At least that's the perception.
And so in thinking about how to address a complicated situation where There are limited conditions by which you can intervene at this point, but we do have that power because it is in the charter.
The thinking was like, how can we possibly apply something in this moment?
And this is where the idea came from.
So now, but now you got me thinking, maybe I will bring forward an ordinance at some point to, you know, test this citywide.
But this is where it came from.
It wasn't on my docket a year ago.
I didn't know this transfer was even proposed a year ago.
Steve Novick
Do you have any concern?
I mean, I think that the ordinance says that at the end of it, not in your provision, that S² would have to sort of like accept everything that's in the ordinance before taking over.
If they didn't, I mean, it strikes me as at least possible that they would decide, no thank you, let's leave this with Zenith.
Do you think that would be okay?
Because you think S² is even worse than Zenith?
I think it would be okay.
Mitch Green
I frankly don't know a lot about I-Square because there's something like 11 layers of holding company structure.
That's part of the reason why I have some concerns here, and that's part of the reason why we want to add some layer of additional accountability.
It may be the case that they're better than Zenith.
That's what they tell people.
But, you know, they could be worse.
So it's an interesting question, but I think my co-sponsor here has a response Yeah, I would say a few things, Councilor Novick.
Angelita Morillo
Part of the reason that this had to happen so quickly is because the franchise transfer came to us very quickly.
It moved through committee quickly, and now it's at council.
I think we constantly talk on this council about the fact that committee is the place to deliberate and talk through things, but we don't end up using it that way.
And so when you see amendments being brought forward, that is why.
And I would say that If I Squared is going to walk away because we have a very basic form of accountability for them to the city of Portland when this potentially has negative externalities, then we should all want to know why.
Because the only thing that this term makes expensive is breaking the franchise.
So a frivolous or bad faith suit costs the plaintiff, and nobody knows what I Squared is going to accept until it's actually passed on the record.
But proposing a provision that is contained in some of the most notable environmental regulations in the world, that's not bad faith.
We are trying to get to a yes, and we are trying to do it in a way that is going to allow us and the public to feel that we can hold this company that we know very little about accountable.
But it's hard for us to get to a yes with such limited information.
So this is genuinely our good faith attempt and using things that already exist in law.
This isn't new.
This isn't, frankly, very innovative to try to get to a yes here.
Steve Novick
Actually, Councilor, I think we've established, as far as we know, it is innovative because neither of you were able to give an example of a city authorizing citizen suits to enforce its own agreements.
But here's one of my problems.
I'd like to get rid of Zenith.
From what I've seen, I I strongly suspect that I Squared is better than Zenith.
If we adopt your amendment now, then I think that we will get startled up in litigation as to whether we were imposing an inappropriate condition on the transfer.
But if your idea is a good idea, couldn't we take it up again 2 months from now and just say, all right, I Squared is now the company, but we still want to propose this idea to allow citizen suits to enforce the agreement?
I think that's a good idea.
Angelita Morillo
Councilor, based on what evidence can you explain that you think I Squared is better than Zenith?
Steve Novick
Well, I mean, based on their, the environmental commitments that they're required to make by the investors.
Unidentified speaker
But—.
Angelita Morillo
And those commitments are binding?
Steve Novick
Regardless of that, what would be the problem?
Angelita Morillo
Commitments we can't hold them to?
Steve Novick
What would be— Councilor, what would be the problem?
Angelita Morillo
You're asking me questions, so I'm asking you questions back.
Steve Novick
Councilor Mayor, let's— what would be the problem with bringing your proposal— would it be okay— would it— what would be the problem with bringing your proposal 2 months from now?
Angelita Morillo
I think the problem is that we are being told they want to move forward with the franchise transfer, and we're trying to get to a yes on that.
So the commitments that you're talking about are commitments that we cannot hold them to, and you can't negotiate with them on that.
Steve Novick
Okay, let me ask the question a different way.
Do you think that this proposal of yours to authorize citizen suits to enforce a contract is something that can only be brought now, or is it something that could have been brought 6 months ago or could be brought 3 months from now as well?
Is there any— would there be any Would there have been any legal barrier to bringing it beforehand or any legal barrier to bringing it subsequently?
Angelita Morillo
Councilor, to be honest, I don't really understand the point of your question or why there is always a different or better time to do the thing that you purport you want to do.
The time before us is now.
Steve Novick
What I'm saying is that I think that— I mean, we're not going to ask City Attorney Taylor to say this, but I think it's pretty clear that if we adopt this as part of this transfer agreement, then Zenith will argue that it's a legally inappropriate condition on the transfer agreement, and they might win.
Whereas if we adopt it separately and just say 2 months from now citizens can enforce the Transfer agreement, and maybe not just for the franchise agreement, maybe not this agreement, but all franchise agreements, then I think that we wouldn't have that legal vulnerability.
That's what I'm saying.
So that's why I'm wondering if you think that this would be a good idea a few months from now.
Mitch Green
I think the way I'd answer that, Councilor, is I think it's a great idea right now.
And it's still a good idea 2 months from now.
Steve Novick
All right, thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Murillo.
Angelita Morillo
Yeah, I'm just confused about that because this— the purpose of our amendment is that it's— what you're proposing would be forward-looking and would exclude this We're trying to do something that is specific to the unique needs of our people as they are impacted by the negative externalities of this oil terminal and this franchise.
Steve Novick
I'm kind of— but I was suggesting that you could bring exactly the same proposal a couple of months from now when it wouldn't run the risk of being tied up in a question of whether it would And you could 2 months from now have this proposed, the same provision saying that you could bring a citizen suit to enforce—.
Jamie Dunphy
Councilor Novick, sorry, Councilor Murillo is recognized at this point.
Angelita Morillo
Right, but Councilor Novick, they're trying to get us to approve the transfer sooner rather than later.
We are trying to do that in good faith.
And keep things on the right timeline.
So you can't impose a— my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, Robert, is that you can't impose a new rule on something that is on an already negotiated franchise, correct?
So our opportunity to set conditions for the franchise transfer is now.
Am I wrong?
Robert Taylor
Yeah.
Hi, Robert Taylor, City Attorney.
Normally, if you're gonna— you have a contract, you've signed it, the other side has signed it, that's a binding contract.
You need to abide by the contract.
If you don't, you can be sued.
If you want to change that contract, you engage in good faith negotiations with the other side, you come to a mutually agreeable amendment to the contract, you execute that amendment to the contract.
That's, that's how it works.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
Robert Taylor
In the franchise context, you will see in the ordinance it says, um, we can impose conditions that are related to the legal, technical, and financial ability to perform the franchise.
So, so that's what we can do.
If you impose a condition as part of this ordinance, then in the last paragraph of the ordinance it says ISQ has a period of time to decide whether to accept I am not aware that we have engaged in any negotiation with them about this, uh, amendment or this condition.
Um, as Councilor Green mentioned, I saw it for the first time yesterday.
I don't know if they— I don't believe they saw it any sooner than the city attorney saw it.
Um, and So then they would— if you adopt this amendment, they are then in a position of having to accept it or reject it.
And if they reject it, under the terms of the ordinance itself, the transfer is null and void.
If the transfer is null and void, uh, I would anticipate, um, you know, we're currently in litigation with Zenith I would anticipate that Zenith would amend their complaint and add this as another claim in their complaint.
So I think that is the, the, the major— that's how I could see this playing out based on what I have heard today.
Um, and I just want council to be aware of that so they can make an informed decision.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you, Robert.
That's helpful.
I would say that our approval of this franchise transfer is also conditional on whether or not this amendment passes, or at least my vote is.
I'm not sure about anyone else's.
I can't speak for them.
But the— at the stage that you're describing, the contract being null and void would be Zenith's problem.
Jules Bailey
Right.
Angelita Morillo
Right.
So because they would have rejected a good faith amendment to try to get to a yes, it would, uh, it would be Zenith's problem and they would lose the sale.
Robert Taylor
Uh, we are contractually obligated to Zenith not to unreasonably delay or deny the transfer.
They have already sued us alleging that we have unreasonably delayed And I would imagine they would also assert that we have unreasonably denied the franchise by imposing this condition at this time in this way.
And if they are successful in that lawsuit, the city would have to pay damages to Zenith and those who I imagine would be extensive.
So colleagues, that is the risk.
That is the risk.
Jamie Dunphy
We are approaching a point that makes me deeply uncomfortable to have this conversation in public.
If there is more interest in this body in having a more technical conversation, I'm going to move us to executive session.
Is there an interest in this or should we move towards a vote?
Angelita Morillo
Sorry, is this— are you asking to call the vote to move to executive session?
I think my colleagues don't seem to understand the amendment, so we should move to executive session because this is one of the biggest issues in the city of Portland.
We move at a glacial pace for almost every issue that impacts the city that people actually care about, and yet we move very expediently for these types of things.
The fact that half the council isn't here To approve this amendment and that people don't even fully understand what it's about or what our options are is a problem to me.
We should— if the only option to talk about this transparently and openly as a council is through executive session, then yeah, let's hold an executive session.
We're not gonna rush through one of the most important issues of our city that could cause the entire city to blow up in an apocalyptic-level fire.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay, in the interest of the legal interests of the city, I'm going to move this City Council into an executive session in the Rose Room to consult with legal counsel concerning the legal rights and duties of our public body with regard to current litigation or litigation likely to be filed, as provided under ORS 192.660 Sub 2 Sub H. Point of information: executive sessions are not broadcast or recorded, and limited attendance is designated under ORS 192.660.
Members of the press may attend this executive session.
We will reconvene Okay, with that, we will be—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Point of information, what time are you convening this executive session?
Jamie Dunphy
Uh, in 5 minutes.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
5 Minutes in the Rose Room.
Thank you.
Steve Novick
And can we— can we Zoom in?
Jamie Dunphy
I will find a way to get you a virtual option.
Steve Novick
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Hey, Aria, can you hear me?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah, I can hear you.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Great, thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay.
Hey, it's back on.
Okay, Keelan is clerking virtually.
We are reconvening this meeting of the Portland City Council.
This item has, uh, we've run out of time for today, and so we will continue this item to the end of the agenda tomorrow.
Until then, we are in recess.
Thank you.
Council adjourned.
Thank you, everybody.
Robert Taylor
Thank you.