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.
Vivian Satterfield
Okay, and then other than that, do you have everything you need?
Lynn Felton
Yes.
Vivian Satterfield
And I'll be in the queue.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Councilor Bryan, that's all.
Perfect.
Good afternoon.
It is September 8th at 2:03 PM.
I am calling to order today's meeting of the Civic City Life Committee.
Thank you all for being here today.
Wendy, could you please call the roll?
Councilor While you're getting your microphone working, I will just apologize that we're starting a few minutes late.
My computer screen was doing some sort of weird blitz thing.
Sonrisa Cooper
And calling the roll.
Hazel Chan
Morillo?
Angelita Morillo
Here.
Sonrisa Cooper
Zimmerman?
Eric Zimmerman
Present.
Beth Gilden
Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Present virtually.
Vivian Satterfield
Ryan?
Dan Ryan
Here.
Sonrisa Cooper
Pirtle-Guiney?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah, thank you.
And colleagues, we have a new council operations staff person starting today, or starting last week, I guess, but we didn't have a meeting last week.
Kevin, welcome and thank you for being here.
Could you please start us off with our rules of decorum?
Thank you.
Eric Zimmerman
Welcome to the meeting of the City Life Committee.
To testify before this committee in person or virtually, you must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at www.portland.gov/council/agenda.
Thank you.
Public testimony is available online at portland.gov/agenda/city-life-committee or by calling 311.
Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link.
Registration for virtual testimony closes 1 hour prior to the meeting.
In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard.
If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for 3 minutes unless the chair states otherwise.
Your microphone will be muted when your time is over.
The chair preserves order.
Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others' testimony or committee 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, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually.
Your testimony should address the matter being considered.
When testifying, one, state your name for the record.
If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent.
And 2, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name.
Jules Bailey
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you very much, Kevin.
Colleagues, today we will have 3— we have 3 things on our agenda.
We will take public input on City Life Committee-related topics.
We will hear from the folks bringing us Portland Geek Week and the Sneaky Squatch Search.
And then we will spend the bulk of our meeting talking about climate and our city's climate policy.
I'll speak more to that last agenda item when we get there, but we have a packed agenda.
So for now, I'd like to lead us right into our first agenda item.
Wendy, could you please call our public input agenda item?
Sonrisa Cooper
Thank you.
Yes, item number 1, document number 2026-317, public input on City Life Committee topics.
We have 4 people signed up.
Um, the first 2 I'll call up, Ghalib El and Joseph Howard.
Please come on up.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Welcome.
Thank you both for being here.
Sonrisa Cooper
Just a reminder, you'll hear a 2 timers staying, one indicating you have 30 seconds left and then a second one indicating your time is up.
Please state your name for the record and get started.
Charles Joseph Howard
My name is Charles Joseph Howard.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Go right ahead and begin.
Khalid bin El-Mutab El
I defer to you.
Beth Gilden
Okay.
Charles Joseph Howard
Good afternoon, Chair Pirtle-Guiney and members of the committee.
My name is Charles Joseph Howard.
I'm a District 4 constituent and a public sector strategy consultant and an active volunteer with Potluck in the Park here in the Pearl.
I want to bring to you an observation from the pavement and a low-cost, high-impact opportunity to make the city's existing resources work smarter.
When I began volunteering in February of last year, we served roughly 250 meals a Sunday.
Last month, we did not have a single week below 400.
Recently, we broke our post-COVID record, serving just shy of 600 meals in one afternoon.
Roughly 60 to 70% of the people we serve return to the same exact few hundred square feet on the North Park blocks at the same time every Sunday.
From an operations perspective, that is remarkable.
The city has a population with significant needs voluntarily assembling in a predictable, predictable location every single week.
Many struggle with addiction, mental health challenges, or both.
First responder dispatches during service are not uncommon, sometimes with— for violence and sometimes for overdoses.
Yet in 18 months on the pavement, I personally have not seen a single city outreach presence taking advantage of that window.
I know Portland has the resources, but as you all know, the problem is that having a resource and successfully connecting it are 2 very different things.
The problem is the connection gap.
Someone trapped in addiction may not know to call 311.
They might not have a phone, internet access, or the mental stability to navigate the system.
But every Sunday, they know where we are.
Potluck has already solved one of outreach's hardest problems: where and when to find people and how to establish trust.
I'm not asking you to create yet another program.
I'm asking the city to strategically deploy existing outreach, behavioral health, and benefits navigation resources directly into this existing Sunday touchpoint.
Meet the people where they already are.
Measure those results.
Determine whether earlier intervention can turn someone's next interaction into a path toward recovery rather than an ambulance or a police car.
That's compassionate policy.
Thank you.
It's also smarter government.
My professional background is in public sector strategy and implementation.
I would gladly help your teams think through how an integration like this could work.
Our first responders deserve it, but I think most importantly, the Portlanders trapped in these cycles deserve it.
Let's show them there's a way out of the valley.
Dan Ryan
Stick to the topic, sir.
Eric Zimmerman
I'll leave my information with the clerk and If I could also encourage you to make this testimony at Multnomah County as well, since— oh, I'm sorry, Councilor, I'm so sorry.
Dan Ryan
I agree with Councilor Zimmerman.
That's why my hand was up.
And thank you for your service.
Thank you so much.
Everything you said was really easy to follow.
But I think a lot of people don't realize that the county has the majority of the staff that do that type of work, as they have the Office of Homelessness at the county.
Their meetings are Tuesday, Thursday.
Sonrisa Cooper
Thursday mornings.
Eric Zimmerman
Yeah, they have the— when it comes to outreach workers, mental health workers, that, that really falls within their wheelhouse, to Councilor Ryan's points.
And your testimony was great, and I would encourage you to share it with them as well.
And if you're in District 4, you're represented by Commissioner Moyer like I am, and I'll definitely share your testimony with them as well.
And for the, I think, 3 that we have at the city, because we hired them because the County wasn't making it out to spots, we'll certainly share that.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah, we do have those workers at the city.
We can make sure to pass that on.
And I think the advice to make sure that the city and the county are both hearing from you on this is important.
Thank you so much for being here.
Dan Ryan
And really, your point about meeting people where they are is so important.
I always make this comment to the county about the MAX trains and along the TriMet service lines as well.
And I never see one outreach worker there.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Mr. L, go right ahead.
Khalid bin El-Mutab El
Oh, I'm sorry.
Wow, I'm sorry, that, that was, that was inspiring what he just said and did here.
Um, greetings, beloved committee members.
Um, I am Khalid bin El-Mutab El.
My domicile is in District 4.
And let me get right to it.
In the book Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, one character, I believe it was either Francisco de Anconia or John Galt, said that wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.
If I think, therefore I am, then according to that logic, I overthink, therefore I am wealthy.
Not sure if you suffer the same affliction, but I find myself thinking at times even when I don't want to.
I'm always thinking about something.
I actually signed up for testimony just to say hello and spread my love unconditionally and freely to you guys.
Then I got to thinking— darned affliction— thought about a thought that I had the other day when I was thinking about a wonderful world.
So in thinking about what to talk about here, I thought, might as well check the agenda to see if I had any thoughts on an agenda item.
Imagine my surprise when I saw a presentation for Target Zero, a presentation for a wonderful world, an ambitious, well-imagined plan being implemented to be realized by 2050 with a 50% goal to be achieved by 2030.
Some ambitions deserve support.
That's what Target Zero is.
There should be no expense spared in achieving that target.
It saves lives, ecosystems, and most importantly, it puts us back in a harmonious dance with nature, a dance that's more necessary for us than it is nature.
As a civilian born of the land upon which my ancestors achieved a harmonious balance, I understand the benefit of tying our infrastructure and economic footprint To our carbon footprint.
The benefit?
Abundance.
Think a power grid free to the city, cheap to the resident, with the surplus being sold to other municipalities.
I have submitted a document to the council for the clerk's committee's— I mean, I have submitted a document to the council clerk for the committee's review.
Thank you.
This I would like to see in front of the council in whole or in parts if possible.
However, as long as it's progressive, something towards this target.
Be whatever comes, just know this much: I truly do love you all unconditionally.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Thank you for being here, and we'll take a look at what you submitted.
Jason Lewis
Thank you.
Sonrisa Cooper
Lynn Felton is joining us online.
Lynn, go ahead and unmute and begin your comments.
Lynn Felton
Committee Chair, Councilors, Lynn Felton, D1 constituent.
As you are thinking of equitable distributions of climate burdens and benefits, I would like you to think of East Portland.
Specifically, I would like you to be curious about the Interstate Bridge remodel project with tolling and its impact on East Portland.
According to Oregon Walks, a third-party study showed that presently 130,000 trips daily go across Interstate Bridge.
With tolling, that'll go down to 80,000.
Some of those will disappear.
But tens of thousands of those will become diversion traffic.
Into East Portland.
We already know that East Portland has multiple public health issues with the highest number of high-crash corridors in the city and the highest temperatures during a heat dome with minimal climate resiliency built into the area.
Into that mix will be dumped tens of thousands of new daily commuter trips.
You may say this is a state issue.
Thank you.
A regional issue, which is true.
But you have ways to influence that discussion and to protect East Portland.
As you know, Portland's Office of Government Relations can advocate for funded diversion traffic mitigation plans for Iberia in the upcoming session.
As you, you can persuade the mayor at JPAC that there needs to be more robust measures than a study.
Thank you.
And to advocate for funded diversion traffic mitigation.
I-5 is closing for repairs.
Is there any study, traffic counts on the impacts to East Portland?
Where is the curiosity and care?
We are part of a whole.
You know, here's the perspective from East Portland.
Portland's big initiatives, Moda Center surrounding development, Waterfront Reimagined, grants received for an emission-free delivery zone in downtown.
East Portland, gateway boarded up, the Columbia River at our doorstep but barely accessible, natural green infrastructure like the Columbia Slough inaccessible, a tsunami of traffic heading our way and nary a plan, a study out there, let alone funded.
Now is the time for all councilors to be curious about what you can do to prevent that tsunami of traffic from creating once again climate burdens that once again fall disproportionately to East Portland.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you very much for being here with us today.
Sonrisa Cooper
Charisse is joining us online.
Charisse, go ahead and unmute.
Charisse Bach
Good afternoon, councilors.
This is I'm Charisse Bach, she/her, and the Climate Policy Director at 350 PDX, an organization working toward climate justice in Portland.
And wanted to also speak to the climate action plan today, co-sign on that last comment of paying attention to the I-5 bridge replacement and also District 1 in all of this.
And wanted to particularly draw your attention to remembering the climate justice audit that was done by the city auditor earlier this year.
And also just to note that in the news just this last week, the United Nations Environment Program came out with a new report showing that globally we're going to overshoot the 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming that scientists say we need to stay below in order to not feel the worst effects of climate change.
And so they're saying we need to as quickly as possible move away from fossil fuels.
Yeah.
In order to stay below 2 degrees and then get back down to below 1.5 degrees as soon as possible.
So although the United States is struggling to take climate action right now, cities are where much of the pollution is, so we can still do our part and make a significant positive impact.
And the rest of the world is really moving towards zero emissions energy and transportation, and so the more Portland can participate in that, the less were left behind in the global economy.
So I appreciate and endorse the work that the Office of Sustainability is doing to develop a new climate action plan with the Sustainability and Climate Commission.
And as I said, wanting to draw your attention to the climate justice audit that the auditor did in February of this year.
That audit identified that in addition to continuing to work on climate change mitigation, We also need to work on our adaptation strategies to ensure the safety of those who are feeling climate change first and worst.
Additionally, it identified the problem of not enough authority for the Sustainability Office.
Though the office is right under the mayor and city administrator, the Chief Sustainability Officer has no direct link to oversight of bureaus and service areas tasked with working on climate and sustainability-related projects.
And a third finding of that audit was that the Sustainability Office lacks funding.
So although it's great to develop another climate action plan, it just sits on a shelf unless the City Council directs funds for implementation.
Next year, the city will also begin working on a new PCF climate investment plan.
And so I encourage everyone to consider how to strategically use the PCF funds that are allocated to projects within the city budget to help move the climate action plan forward if they're focused on equity.
And affordability, but PCEF can't be the answer for everything.
So integrating climate and sustainability awareness into every project the city does and into the whole budgeting process needs to occur in order to make it useful to do another climate action plan.
Thank you very much.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Sonrisa Cooper
That concludes public input.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, colleagues, we are going to move to our next agenda item, which is a little bit of a shift away from the last 2 pieces of testimony on climate before we head back there.
Wendy, could you please call agenda item 2?
Sonrisa Cooper
Yes, item number 2, document number 2026-318, Portland Geek Week and Sneaky Sasquatch.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, colleagues.
Sonrisa Cooper
Sneaky Squatch.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Sneaky Squatch.
We are going to hear from a couple of leaders in our community who are bringing us Geek Week, as well as our own council president.
Geek Week is the latest— it starts this coming week, I believe— opportunity to bring Portlanders together and get us out into the community and really lean into some of the things that make this a fantastic space.
And if you did not get an opportunity to notice our new Sasquatch friend in the atrium on your way in, I encourage everybody to head downstairs after this meeting to, to see that addition to City Hall.
But with that, I am going to turn it over to our guests.
Thank you so much for being here today.
David Raycroft
Hello, thank you for, uh, allowing me to speak with you, um, councilors, Council President.
Thank you for being here.
Um, I'm David Raycroft, uh, constituent of District 3, um, and, uh, advocate for, uh, our streets and neighborhoods and the quirky life that is, uh, Portland.
Um, so what is Geek Week PDX?
It is a citywide festival celebrating the quirky, the nerdy, and the creative in Portland.
Um, it's the only event of its kind in the world.
So there are lots of comic conventions, there are lots of festivals, there are lots of events that gather people together, but nowhere else in the world is there a city that so uniquely demonstrates on a daily basis The creative vitality that is geek culture.
I think a great example of that is when we decided as a city to protest ICE, we did not throw rocks, we inflated frogs.
That is the nerdy heart of our community.
So Geek Week PDX is only about 3 years old.
It's not about 3 years old.
It is in fact, this is our 3rd year Thank you.
This is the 4th year of putting it on in a row.
We've gone from an idea that a couple of nerds had running around the city to 101 nights of programming in a 10-day period of time.
That involves over 200 small businesses, community groups, and organizations.
Why does that matter?
Takes place in every district.
There are events happening in District 1, District 2, downtown, Central East Side, and everywhere in between.
A great example of that is the Sneaky Sasquatch Art Hunt.
It's sort of like the, the, uh, Like a Crow's in that it is a citywide art hunt.
But it's completely grassroots.
It is an idea that was put out into the ether, and over 25 artists have created unique works of art.
We—.
You can start downstairs with the 8-foot statue made from recycled garbage bags, um, and has been turned into a wonderful work of art.
There are 9 pieces within walking distance of the front door.
I encourage everybody to take a look and see what you can find.
It's a way to inspire not only the artistic community to get involved, but to inspire people to explore maybe beyond their front door and go somewhere they haven't been yet.
Last but not least, I wanna touch on the impact of nerd culture.
Because there is no such thing as geek culture or nerd culture.
It is just culture.
It is food nerds, it is sneaker nerds, it is craft nerds, it is geeks of all walks of life.
As a matter of fact, in the city of Portland, there are more than 300,000 of us.
If you take us all together, we're probably the, the largest constituency.
Last year during Geek Week, if you take all of the events, we had 20,000 people participating.
That's a stadium full of people, but instead of in one place at one time, they are in— they are 40 groups of 40 people in 200 small businesses, 10 nights in a row.
Wow.
That is economic impact.
That is a way to drive ongoing and sustainable business.
So to finish out, it's really—I really wanted to highlight not only the events of Geek Week, which you can find at geekweekpdx.com—not only to inspire you to go out and explore the.
The amazing artwork that people have volunteered and donated and created.
But really to understand that there are a lot of us.
There are more trivia nights in one week played in bars in the city of Portland than there are sports broadcasts in an entire year.
So tells you a little bit about what inspires the people of Portland, and I wanted to share a little bit about what the hidden masses that you may not be aware of.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you so much.
Council President.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you.
Thank you, colleagues.
For the record, my name is Jamie Dunphy.
I serve as the president of the Portland City Council and a District 1 city councilor.
I have done no scientific research to back this claim up, but Portland is the nerdiest city in America.
And, you know, I believe I hold the title of the nerdiest city councilor in Portland history, from the Batman poster in my office to the Darth Vader belt buckle I'm wearing every day, or the Ninja Turtle tattoo that you cannot see.
I also, you know, I love living in Portland because it is a place that allows you to have your geek flag fly.
I am a I'm a prop maker in my private time.
I make a lot of recreations of Star Wars masks and things from Marvel movies.
And I also get to be one of the nerds who walks around the convention center at Comic-Con every year.
So you won't see me this year because I'll have a mask on.
But, and lastly, my team hoped that I would come to this meeting dressed as Sasquatch in order to advertise this squatch but unfortunately, I don't have a Sasquatch costume quite yet.
I'm really thankful to be part of this year's kickoff, and thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, for bringing this to the City Life Committee and for continuing to champion this.
I think it's really important.
Anything that gets people out of their houses and out into the community and around each other and building the sense of community that Portland is known for is really important.
So whether it's the crow scavenger hunt that's associated with the Leicas celebration of the new movie, Wildwood, or now the Sasquatch Hunt for Geek Week, there's gonna be a lot of really good reasons for people to get out and go explore the city.
Try and find these statues and find something new that you've never seen in the city that you have.
I will spend the next month out there looking around, and I hope that everybody at home will come and join us.
I really wanna thank PDX Monsters for creating the Sasquatch Hunt, and I really wanna thank David right here for the 3rd week— or 3rd year of Geek Week PDX, for all the hard coordination that it is to wrangle all these nerds.
So thank you for all your work, and I hope I hope everybody will get out of their house and enjoy themselves.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
And David, do we have any of the artists with us up here?
I'm not sure if anybody made it upstairs.
David Raycroft
They did not.
They had to scurry to their day jobs.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Pass along our gratitude for all of the amazing creations that they have given to our city to enjoy over the next week and a half.
Colleagues, are there any questions for David before we move on?
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
David, I just want to acknowledge your steadfast persistence on this.
I remember you coming to my office in late 2023, and, uh, here you are, and it, it's working.
And I'm not going to dispute the findings, that's for sure.
But, um, I can actually validate that.
You are validating the city.
So thank you for, um, loving the city and getting people activated and having joy again.
I really appreciate it.
I'm really proud of you.
It's great work.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
For folks who are interested in learning about the 101 programs that are happening over 10 days, what is the best place to find a comprehensive list of all of the Geek Week activities?
David Raycroft
Yeah, so the best place is geekweekpdx.com, and we have them categorized by day.
So every day you can see what's going on that night, oh well, night and day, and also by interest.
So cosplay, Dungeons and Dragons, food and wine, whatever you're into.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Fantastic.
Thank you so much.
And thank you for bringing together all of the various nerddoms that we know exist in our city into one place so that folks can, can realize what a broad range of interests there are and how much the folks who pursue those interests really have in common when it comes to caring about the culture of our city.
Thank you.
Thank you both.
We are going to move on to our 3rd agenda item, and Wendy, can you please call that agenda item for us?
Beth Gilden
Thank you.
Sonrisa Cooper
Yes, item number 3, document number 2026-319, Council Action on Climate in Anticipation of 2030.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
And colleagues, we have We have 4 presentations before us.
I am going to give us a little bit of an overview because this is something that I actually think is quite important.
Then we will hear from our Vice Chair and from Councilor Morillo, who chaired the committee that previously, or co-chaired the committee that previously took on this work.
Today is a really important conversation and one that we haven't gotten to dive into yet in this committee.
Among the many important topic areas that we cover here, Perhaps none is more pressing in terms of its broader impact than the topic of climate.
Anthropogenic climate change remains the greatest threat to people, to a healthy, habitable planet, to the future of humanity.
And despite this, governments across the globe, including our own, the United States nationally, Have rolled back their climate progress, have rolled back their implementing policies, and have begun to put us further out of reach from our climate goals.
We'll hear more about the city's climate goals from our first presenter, but as a reminder, the City of Portland's stated goal is to achieve a 50% reduction from our 1990 emission levels by 2030 and get to net zero by 2050.
Thank you.
2030 Is 4 years from now.
Let's be clear, though this sounds big, these are not actually bold goals.
They are the bare minimum that international experts have said we need to accomplish in order to achieve our obligations to our planet and to our neighbors.
And yet we know it will take bold actions to get there.
We are merely one city, and our impact alone won't turn the tide, but we should not fool ourselves into thinking that means that our contributions are unimportant, because we can reduce emissions, and the power of our example is significant.
This, I hope, is all the more clear as we see the dangerous impacts of climate inaction on the news every day.
It is worth noting that just this weekend, the most recent incident of devastating flash floods in Nepal, intensified by climate change, claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people.
The impacts are real.
Colleagues, today is not the start of this conversation.
This council undertook important work on climate and sustainability last year, Through a committee led by Councilors Murillo and Novick.
And we were a leader on this topic years before that.
But it is, I hope, a moment for our city to renew our focus as we hear just how far we are from our goals.
We have some big decisions ahead of us.
We will adopt a new climate action plan in 2028.
And that same year, we will adopt a new 5-year climate investment plan to direct PCF dollars Towards critical achievement, critical undertakings.
Our first presentation today will be from our Chief Sustainability Officer, Vivian Satterfield, who will overview Portland's climate goals, our progress or lack of progress, and outline some of the key decision points ahead.
We also have a significant amount of work to do, though, in the private sector, work we cannot legislate quite as directly, but which we can incentivize, especially in our transportation and industry sectors.
Industry today will be a focus as well because we already have important, critically important work underway in this sector.
Done right, done the Portland way, industry can provide high-quality, high-wage union jobs to people in our community.
Better enabling those who choose to live in Portland to actually be able to afford to do so.
Industry provides vital goods and services to Portlanders, contributes to the tax base that funds our essential public services and programs, and at the same time, it can minimize their burden on our environmental challenges, the chief of which is the unprecedented and colossal threat of global climate change, but only if we are intentional about ensuring industry here does so.
Inaction is not acceptable, and therefore our second presentation today will be from the many stakeholders who are a part of the Clean Industry Partnership, facilitated by their executive director, Jules Bailey, who will share more with us about the work that is underway there.
And the opportunity for more.
Third, we'll turn to a presentation by a fantastic group, the Climate Optimists.
This is a group that was working with our former committee last year, and which we have been waiting for a long time to hear from on City Council.
There's a tendency in climate discussions to frame choices as trade-offs between jobs and emission reductions, between growth and sustainability, And that framing we know is outdated and short-sighted.
What we will hear today from the climate optimists points toward a different path, one where climate action drives economic opportunity, where innovation lowers costs, where doing things in an environmental way is also doing things in a smart economic way.
I've asked the climate optimists, represented by their executive director Jason Lewis, to share some of their win-win climate ideas with us.
The ideas could save the city money, improve livability, or achieve city goals alongside major climate action.
And then finally, we'll turn to a presentation by the Multnomah County Youth Commission Climate and Sustainability Committee.
I'll take a moment here to brag on my own office's Youth Commission liaison, Hazel Chan, who brought this issue forward to me.
She will join her colleague Enzo Carpio to share with us some of the work that they are hoping to take on.
We know that too many young Portlanders feel like we are not moving fast enough on climate.
I have heard directly from young Portlanders who tell me that they think that with all of the immediate crises facing our city, we've lost sight of the biggest before us, our work on climate.
That frustration is warranted, and our responsibility is not just to acknowledge your concerns, but to meet them with action— credible, measurable progress that demonstrates we are not stepping back, but stepping in.
And to that end, I've asked Hazel and Enzo to present what their committee is working on and what they hope to see as a way for us to better have a finger on the pulse of what we need to be doing to meet the calls of young people in our community to take bold action.
I want to note that while some of the things we hear about may involve PCF dollars or be solvable with PCF dollars, today is not a conversation about PCF broadly.
It is a conversation about how we address our own climate goals and the needs of our community.
PCF is but one tool to get there, one that we will certainly talk more about over the coming year.
Thank you.
As we lead toward building our next climate action plan, but I hope we don't get high-centered on PCEF in our conversations today.
So colleagues, let's make today about focus, about not losing sight of the progress that we must make on climate, about finding the path forward that does not pit climate against good jobs, economic growth, or social justice, because they are all critical.
Portland desperately needs That hard to define, hard to find, hard to grasp Green New Deal.
But we have to craft it carefully, deliberately, and together.
I hope that by the end of the day today, we will have some new ideas for how we can do that, that we may be able to move forward on jointly as a committee as we complete our work over the next few months.
With that, I am going to turn it over to my vice chair, Councilor Zimmerman.
Khalid bin El-Mutab El
Councilor?
Eric Zimmerman
Thank you, Chair, and thanks for just framing it up that way.
I think those are great opening remarks.
I know that Multnomah County just took their— up their climate justice update, and I was thinking about that, and I think there's some room for us to be aligned from a City of Portland perspective, and I think that's probably the right approach.
Way too many times in this community we see the 2 largest governments not, and this is one where I think we can get it right.
I kind of think of it in terms of what's the win-win climate solution and the future of Portland.
And for me, I just want to frame that up in terms of, you know, we have an opportunity for creating family-wage jobs as we think through the funds that we use, how we use them on climate-related projects.
I think that that is the, the first step of getting serious to this was getting ideas out there, and some of those have been Going great, and the next phase is to make sure that they're growing great for everybody who's involved with them.
And so, um, I think that this can be achieved through ensuring that the city projects that are, you know, utilizing compliance and standards similar to what we did with the electrical vehicle, um, that gives us an opportunity to kind of take the high road, be a responsible contracting organization Make sure that we're legally defensible and enforceable, because I think when we do that— and we're just coming off of Labor Day, right?
When we do that, it means that Portland dollars stay with Portland workers, stay with families who are in Portland who can see a future here, who are contributing to the greater good and climate impacts.
And I just think that that's an important thing to keep centered here.
At least that's where my eyes will be while I'm centering this conversation.
So thanks for framing it up.
Thanks for putting this all together.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Vice Chair.
And before we jump into our first presentation, Councilor Murillo, you helped to lead a lot of this work last year.
If you can just share a little bit with us about what we're picking up from, that would be fantastic.
Angelita Morillo
Yeah, thanks so much.
And sorry I can't be there today.
I blame Novick for whatever cold he spread around the District 3 office.
But thanks everyone for being there.
I was the co-chair of the Climate Committee along with Councilor Novick before that committee was dissolved and sort of reconvened into this.
And we covered a lot of different topics that were very important.
We talked about the CEI Hub.
We talked about sort of the myth of renewable fuels as an option that's going to save us in this new economy and in this new world.
And we talked about the electrification of city buildings.
Those were just a few of the items that we covered.
But I think that a central focus of what we discussed really was I think what Councilor Pirtle-Guiney said is correct, right?
We are in an urgent moment.
We are seeing thousands of people die at a time, and those are predominantly happening in the Global South and other areas that are going to be impacted first due to the United States exporting a lot of the harm that we do to the environment to other countries and benefiting from that.
So we have a responsibility to take action, no matter how small or big, at the local level.
In order to address that.
And in large part, my focus as a committee chair was not just to talk about the good feel things that we could do at the climate committee or at the local level, but to also address the greenwashing that happens.
There are a lot of fuel companies in Portland that are going to tell us that we have magical options for renewable fuels that are just as combustible and flammable as other fuel storage types, and that still exists along the Willamette River.
We have discussions here at council right now about the Zenith oil train, the franchise transfer of Zenith to a new company.
And we have to do our due diligence when it's politically inconvenient because, as was stated before, it's my generation and younger that is going to bear the brunt of these climate impacts.
I just turned 30 this year.
The vast majority of my friends are not having kids and are not starting families because they don't know what type of world we're going to leave them with.
And so I would urge my colleagues to say that we're actually not going to be moving at a moderate, slow, deliberate pace on these things because we don't have time to move at a moderate, slow, deliberate pace.
We have to take aggressive action where and when we can.
And that was the goal of the Climate Committee before.
This committee is in a strange spot because we have to balance the needs of industry and climate.
It doesn't have a focus specifically on climate anymore.
But I hope that we will take that very seriously and weigh it differently because there are no jobs if Oregon burns down.
So I will leave it at that.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Councilor.
Colleagues, I am going to turn it over to Vivian Satterfield, our city's Chief Sustainability Officer, to lead off our work here today talking about Portland's Climate Action Plan.
Thank you, Vivian.
Vivian Satterfield
Great, thank you, Chair Pirtle-Guiney, Vice Chair Zimmerman, members of the committee.
For the record, I'm Vivian Satterfield.
I'm your Chief Sustainability Officer and a very proud climate and sustainability nerd.
I appreciate the invitation to join you today and for the opportunity to begin today's discussion on climate policy.
My presentation is going to pull on a few of the threads that Chair Pirtle-Guiney helped offer today and give a little bit more detail in that, and I think it'll go nicely also with the One moment, please.
As Vice Chair Zimmerman observed, Portland and Multnomah County have been tracking local carbon emissions for more than 30 years using an annual sector-based emissions inventory.
It's helpful to remember that City Council declared a climate emergency in 2020 and directed city bureaus to restore a safe climate for all Portlanders.
Which requires that we meet 2 carbon reduction targets.
By 2030, we must slash Portland's climate-warming carbon emissions 50% or more compared to 1990 levels.
That's an ambitious but necessary goalpost for us to achieve net zero by 2050, as called for in the Paris Agreement and our own policy documents.
By 2050, we must reduce carbon emissions to net zero.
These goals are grounded in climate science and shared by the United Nations and the numerous networks and agreements that the City of Portland is signatory to, which informs our approach to addressing one of the most pressing but solvable challenges of current generations.
Over the years, Council has adopted a range of ongoing programs and policy initiatives grouped by the sectors by which carbon comes from.
That's electricity, buildings, transportation, and industry.
And you'll hear more from the second panel about our strategy for the industrial sector to reduce emissions, pollution, and waste and follow inclusive practices that benefit workers and fence line communities.
So just to ground us in the data here, as previously mentioned, Portland and Multnomah County have been tracking local carbon emissions since 1990.
We have a long history of climate action collaboration with Multnomah County, but there are also specific datasets used for the emissions inventory that are only available at the county level.
The numbers I'm sharing today are from 2023, and that's because our emissions inventories run about 2 years behind because of how long it takes fuel sales data to move through federal reporting.
We are just ahead of this fall's release of the 2024 data, which we'll be reporting and sharing out this fall.
We hit peak emissions in 2000.
As of 2023, Portland's emissions are 26% higher than they were in 2000.
That's a lot.
Below 1990 levels.
And that's a real departure from the United States as a country, which is still only about 2% below 1990.
That 26% below 1990 figure is only 1% above our lowest point ever during the 2020 first year of the pandemic.
So we've essentially erased the post-pandemic rebound.
Notably, in the period when emissions have declined to 26%, The population has increased 38% and job growth is at 35%.
But 26% is not where we need to be.
To hit 2030, we need roughly a 5.5% reduction every year from here, about 320,000 metric tons of CO2 annually.
From 2030 to 2050, that pace eases slightly to about 230,000 tons a year.
So the next 4 years are the steepest climb we will face in this entire effort.
What we decide now in this budget cycle and the next determines whether we make that climb or fall further behind it.
Unsurprisingly, the top sources of our emissions come from electricity, gasoline, what's referred to as natural gas, and diesel.
Gasoline emissions are down, but diesel is up an alarming 69%.
Since 1990, and that's driven most entirely by freight and delivery demand.
Natural gas emissions are up as well, 18% overall.
The residential sector alone is up 62% since 1990.
It's the one major fuel source moving in the wrong direction because there's no market pressure shifting consumers away from it the way there is with gas prices.
On electricity, the emissions inventory runs on the regional grid mix, A few notes here.
State law requires utilities to hit 80% by 2030 and to eliminate 100% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
And it's worth stating here, the city's own goal via the 100% renewable resolution has committed us to achieving 100% renewable electricity by 2035.
Lynn Felton
Second, the since city's own goal via the 100% renewable resolution has committed us to achieving 100% renewable electricity by electricity 2035.
Vivian Satterfield
Is our— currently our number one emissions source, we can't reach our adopted goals without the utilities also hitting their mandated 80% reduction in emissions by 2030.
Due to the cost of procuring or developing new renewable resources, we don't really expect the utilities to significantly increase that 33% renewable rate until the state deadline.
Achieving the 2050 net-zero target requires extensive action across all sectors.
By sector, transportation and commercial buildings are our 2 biggest sources, 40% and 24% of emissions respectively, followed by residential buildings at 18% and industrial emissions at 12%.
So something to sit with is that nearly 2/3 of what we need to cut comes from how people get around and how buildings use energy.
There are also the sectors where we've seen some real progress.
For example, since 1990, industrial emissions are down 58%.
Residential is down 27%.
Transportation is down only 13% and is an area where our ongoing efforts to work with regional, state, and federal partners is needed to massively decarbonize and transform how we get the places we need to go.
You'll hear in one of the subsequent panels today about how important mass transit is to that goal.
And so I want to give some appreciation and acknowledgement and thank the council for expanding that access to city employees just this week.
The Climate Emergency Work Plan was our prior climate action plan with 47 actions across decarbonization and resilience, many of which we're still executing today.
In 2020, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability hired a consultant to build a decarbonization pathways model to help understand what it would take to achieve the targets adopted through the Climate Emergency Declaration.
The purpose of the tool is to help policymakers and the public visualize the scale and combinations of specific climate strategies needed to meet net zero.
Called Pathways, this tool can model different reduction scenarios and was recently aligned and updated with updated inventories and newly adopted state policies.
You can click on this link and play around with a lot of those assumptions.
It's a very powerful and really cool tool that you can offer various inputs into and see some of the challenges of what it's taking all of us to try to reach net zero.
The top line, however, is that net zero is still possible by 2050.
The change in the baseline trajectory alone since the previous version of this pathway tool shows what can be achieved with focused action.
Improved building energy codes and state-level grid decarbonization policy, which have shifted the baseline dramatically towards net zero.
It'll take continual effort to ensure those goals are met, but the near-term impacts are significant.
Okay, I'm going to widen the lens here for a moment.
Everything so far has counted emissions produced inside Multnomah County's boundary.
Consumption-based emissions count something entirely different: the full life cycle impact of what Multnomah County residents and governments buy and use.
That's materials, food, goods, services, wherever in the world that production happens.
That's increasingly important in our globalized economy.
Here you can see Multnomah County consumption-based emissions compared to our local emissions.
In 2015, Portland was the first this Venn diagram is useful because it shows the comparison in scale between Portland's 2 types of emissions inventories while simultaneously telling the story of the impact of our consumption globally.
Total emissions are 20 million, but sector-based emissions are only 7.1 million compared to consumption-based emissions at 18.8 million.
Thank you.
This shows that 65% of our emissions resulting from our consumption are not produced within our boundaries.
When looking at these emissions through a lifecycle lens, it's clear that our traditional methods of climate planning that focus solely on use and disposal phase emissions are just far too limited.
However, it's difficult to reduce production phase emissions when most production occurs outside our city boundaries.
This challenge is heightened by continued outsourcing of manufacturing and supply chains to other countries.
And this requires us to use both supply and demand-side interventions, influencing production supply chains where we can and addressing the demand for those products when we can't.
However, the City of Portland can use its own purchasing power to shift demand.
A great example of this is Portland's own low-carbon concrete procurement policy.
Which requires suppliers of concrete for city infrastructure projects to disclose carbon emissions and supply lower carbon concrete, changing the local demand for low carbon concrete with our own purchasing power.
So let's look at our consumption and sector trends together.
Consumption-based emissions are increasing year over year as local emissions have declined.
We are solving one problem while a second larger one grows underneath it.
Our net-zero pathway is a modeled scenario.
It includes building electrification accelerating starting now, electric vehicle adoption climbing with all new passenger vehicles sold in the state of Oregon being mandated to be electric by 2035, heavy-duty vehicle electrification beginning in 2027, Renewable fuels replacing all fossil fuels that's left.
Pardon me.
This all requires sustained state and local policy starting now.
Rapid action starting now is essential to longer-term success and minimizing cumulative emissions.
Delaying action now means steeper cuts are required later to achieve Portland's necessary climate goals, which on the one hand will potentially increase the costs and disruptiveness of necessary climate actions, and on the other hand, will lower the chances of meeting the 2050 goal.
The difference in cumulative emissions if the city takes action now versus waiting until 2030 could result in more than 15 million tons of additional GHG emissions, more than 25% higher than cumulative emissions under the rapid action net-zero scenario.
And so that brings me to the work required of us to meet that challenge.
I want to highlight findings from the city auditor's recent climate justice audit.
The audit found that while Portland has committed to climate justice, significant gaps remain in implementing effective strategies to follow through on our climate commitments.
The audit had 5 recommendations in response.
One, the city needs clear central authority to guide and coordinate climate policy across bureaus for consistent climate action and prioritization.
My role was elevated in our new form of government to help address this.
2, We need to consider climate cost considerations.
City Administrator Lee responded that we need to coordinate climate budgeting in our next climate action plan, which also required, required by C40, one of the global networks that we're associated with, alongside the Portland Clean Energy Fund's next climate investment plan and the City Budget Office.
Our next climate action plan does plan to address this.
3, We need to integrate climate adaptation and mitigation.
And I want to spend a moment here because this is where I think we've actually been incomplete.
Thank you.
Everything I've shown you so far is just mitigation, reducing the emissions that we produce.
But even if Portland hit net zero tomorrow, we would still face the heat, fire, and flooding risk already locked in by a century of global emissions.
Our next climate plan must reduce emissions and prepare Portlanders for the impacts already coming.
Resilience is not a nice-to-have alongside mitigation.
It's the other half of the same obligation, and our next plan treats it that way.
4, We need to develop a prioritization framework for the next climate action plan.
As part of the development for the next climate action plan, we are working with staff subject matter experts and the city's performance lab to accomplish this.
And 5, community is a critical partner, especially our frontline communities, in all aspects of climate work.
We're currently working on a citywide climate engagement strategy, which will include engagement for the next the Sustainability and Climate Commission has already taken up the charge to identify near-term climate actions that the city can take while we're developing the next climate action plan.
You'll hear from the co-chairs of the Policy and Implementation Committee in describing the touchpoints council can anticipate in the CAP development.
Thank you, Councilor Elana Pirtle-Guiney.
And you can expect to hear from the Policy Implementation Committee when their first recommendation is ready.
I want to address 3 areas where we can take near-term action.
On resilience, the climate change risk assessment identifies heat as one of our most urgent threats.
We expect roughly 60 days each year with a heat index above 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's 3 weeks more than in the past.
We're also looking at increases of 9 to 11 days of extreme fire danger.
Earlier this year, as part of another panel in front of this committee, I emphasized the opportunity to align our energy and resilience strategies.
That could look like adopting carbon performance and cooling standards for buildings to become more resilient to hotter days.
Advancing resilient hubs citywide, adopting a smart surfaces approach, which means investing in trees, solar, reflective and permeable surfaces, cool roofs that can reduce urban heat, save energy, and lower long-term costs.
Another idea is the municipal energy strategy, because Oregon is at a critical juncture in the energy transition because of landmark statewide legislation over the last several years.
These developments require a fresh look and a reframing of energy policy and practices at the local level.
At the same time, PSEF is helping to reshape the local landscape for clean energy investments.
The City of Portland has several key roles in this transition as a leader in lowering carbon emissions from our own operations, as an energy consumer and ratepayer, as an advocate at statewide legislative and regulatory tables, And as an investor in clean energy projects and energy justice communities.
A first step in this strategy is to invest in a centralized energy management information system for city facilities to track energy usage, identify energy-saving opportunities, and lay the foundation for a connected network of city facilities.
Long-term, integrate sophisticated energy management controls to operate city facilities as resilience hubs and as a connected microgrid and virtual power plant.
And as I mentioned earlier, climate budgeting.
Climate budgeting is an iterative process which embeds climate targets and considerations into decision-making on policies, actions, and budgets.
Findings from cities that have already successfully implemented climate budgeting, such as Oslo and New York City, Show that climate budgeting is most effective when treated not as an environmental add-on, but as a reform of public financial management, translating climate goals into actionable fiscal strategies.
Staff are working on a proposal on climate budgeting pilot for the next fiscal year.
So while the Sustainability and Climate Commission is working on near-term actions, they're also developing the next climate action plan.
With an immense amount of support from staff.
I'm leading executive leadership input, and this includes the mayor, the city administrator, all DCAs, bureau directors, and ultimately I'll be bringing the climate action plan to the council for adoption.
The project lead, Elaine Viska-Livingstone, is working with staff teams and the Sustainability and Climate Commission under my direction.
I want to say a word about PSEF here because while I do know that council understands that program separately, But it's worth connecting the dots here.
PCEP's climate investments are directly capacitating and accelerating this work.
The next climate action plan and PCEP's next climate investment plan must be coordinated to deliver on our climate and community commitments, and this includes coordination across priorities, implementation, and climate budgeting.
The Sustainability and Climate Commission, beginning in October, will host 8 workgroup sessions each month For a year to develop the next climate action plan.
The commission is public-facing, and they'll be offering the role of vetting and is ultimately the steering committee for the CAP process.
They will also lead community engagement.
These are the 8 focus areas which are tied to our sources of emissions and community needs.
I'm not going to spend more time on this slide.
It's a lot of words, but it's just to serve as a resource for you.
I would now like to invite the co-chairs of the Sustainability and Climate Commission to discuss City Council touchpoints.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Welcome.
Thank you both for being here, and if you want to go ahead and introduce yourselves and jump right in, we'd appreciate hearing from you.
Jason Lewis
Sure.
Thank you, CSO Vivian.
Uh, for the record, my name is Vivek Shandas.
I co-chair the, uh, Policy and Implementation Committee.
I use he/him pronouns.
And, um, I'm here, I'm here to talk a little bit about the CAP.
Uh, the commission spent its summer working on the CAP work plan and deliberating district-specific recommendations and considerations.
We're already reached out— we've already reached out to council, uh, to offer our time and discuss work plan, the district considerations, and we're trying to understand the priorities for the next CAP.
I really— we all really appreciate your generous generosity with the time and meeting with us for these discussions.
Later this month, the commission will hear from staff about climate change risk assessment so we can provide our input.
This report will be finalized this fall, and we highly recommend that committee invite CSO Vivian to brief you on this.
I'll pass it over to Co-Chair Charity to close us out.
Sonrisa Cooper
Thank you, Co-Chair Vivek.
For the record, my name is Co-Chair Charity Fain.
I use she/her pronouns, and I am also the co-chair of the Policy and Implementation Committee of the Sustainability and Climate Commission.
In the spring, the commission will begin community engagement on the next climate action plan.
You will hear from us, and we hope we can activate your pathways to engage your constituents, and we will invite you to key engagement events.
Later in 2027, the commission will host a, a CAP discussion draft for public comment.
This is outside of the council public comment period.
We hope to again capture your input at this point so that it can be integrated into the draft that we will submit to you for adoption.
At any time, we welcome sessions with you to co-create this plan.
In 2028, council will hopefully adopt the plan along with the climate budgeting.
We hope all engagement leading up to that time will incorporate your and your constituents', constituents' concepts and desires in a plan that will be implementable.
The commission and CSO Vivian will hand you a prioritized plan.
We'll do the work, and we need you to fund it.
By virtue of the decisions you make, you will make this plan real.
Vivian Satterfield
And that concludes our presentation.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, colleagues.
We're running a little bit behind, but I want to make sure we have a few minutes for questions.
Does anybody have questions for Vivian or for our, uh, for our co-chairs?
Okay, I will just ask a quick question, which is, it sounds like we'll be hearing more on the process for council engagement and the timeline there, but are there specific things we should be preparing for now as councilors to make sure that we are ready to engage with you all and to have conversations about the plan as you appreciate the question, Chair Pirtle-Guiney.
Vivian Satterfield
We believe that through your— this unique form of government in which you have the connections with and representation by district, that the touchpoints would really be any sort of engagement that you already are having in district.
And we encourage open lines of communication to let us know how we can be invited to help table or to help be in attendance In order to hear those climate discussions if they do come up in those district-specific engagements, and also the direct outreach that the Sustainability and Climate Commissioners have already been doing to district offices to meet one-on-one to help create those feedback loops.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Great.
So it sounds like as well as the work with us, there's an opportunity to partner on some of the outreach in our districts.
Absolutely.
It's probably important for us to take you up on pretty quickly here before you get too much further down the work that you're doing.
Vivian Satterfield
Correct.
It's also the benefit of having a 20-person commission is that these are all incredible ambassadors for this work of developing the climate action plan.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Great.
Thank you so much.
And I'll just note, because I look like I'm alone up here, Councilors Murillo and Avalos are online and watching and listening and with us in this meeting as well.
So we do still have a committee quorum.
Thank you all for the presentation.
I know we're all looking forward to learning more Our next presentation is on industrial decarbonization, and I'd like to call up Jules Bailey, who is leading the Clean Industry Partnership, Sonrisa Cooper with the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, Kate Merrill with Prosper Portland, Mary Pivetto with Neighbors for Clean Air, Corky Collier with the Columbia Corridor Association, Randall Friesen with the Columbia Pacific Building Trades, and Beth Gilden from Portland State University.
And Jules, I'm not sure if we can fit everybody up at once, but we can squeeze chairs, or if you want to do it in 2 panels, that is fine as well.
Jules Bailey
I think we'll hit you in waves, Madam Chair.
I think we'll start with this 4 and then bring up the closers.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Sounds good.
Jules Bailey
All right.
Well, thank you for the opportunity, Madam Chair.
For the record, I'm Jules Bailey, and I guess after the initial presentation here, I'm struck with the question, how do you know when it's Geek Week in Portland?
I grew up in Southeast Portland.
It seems like it's every day.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I think every week is Geek Week in Portland.
It's just that for one week we bring all of the events into one space so it's easier to find new things to go to.
Jules Bailey
I love it.
I think the through line here actually with this presentation, and I'm making my colleagues nervous here by going off script, but is I'm reminded of the quote from Anthony Bourdain when he said that Portland is a city of obsession, and it's a place where you can find what you're passionate about and dig in.
And it's something that I've been passionate about for a long time, is the intersection of how we solve our climate crisis and grow jobs.
And I know that that speaks for a lot of people here, and how we make it good for the community as well.
And we think back to just as recently as 2021, The business community and community groups and climate activists and the city were at odds about how we move forward, specifically on the issue of industrial decarbonization.
As you heard from Vivian Satterfield's presentation, industry in Portland is one of the tricky areas to decarbonize.
You have a lot of heavy industry, you have a lot of industries that are very important to job creation, to our economic future, and that also And so how do you get in and do that?
And we took a page from an international model in Denmark that has led the way in doing a public-private partnership around industrial decarbonization.
And taking that here and making it our own and making it uniquely Portland is something that we've been able to do because of the collaboration that's happened across a number of different sectors.
The Portland Metro Chamber has been a partner in this and has asked me, as well as the partners, to be the initial executive director to help get this effort off the ground.
And we're calling this effort the Portland Partnership for Clean Industry.
There's a lot of moving pieces to this, and we're only at the beginning of the collaboration, but it is remarkable.
And it's the kind of collaboration that PCEF— and I know we're not here to talk only about PCEF— but PCEF has catalyzed.
Thank you.
This collaboration.
And that's because it takes everyone together to grow industry while reducing carbon and other pollution.
The public sector, the private sector, community groups, business groups, researchers, and labor.
And really, that's the Portland Clean Energy Fund at its best.
The Portland Metro Chamber's Charitable Institute has taken the baton to provide fiscal stability to the partnership at this initial startup phase, and with a stated commitment from the chamber to the goal of meeting the carbon reduction targets in the City of Portland Climate Action Plan.
So we could present to the committee for hours on this topic.
We're all a bit obsessed with it, but we'll only get a chance to scratch the surface today.
And we're really glad you could take up this topic of clean industry, and we'd love to come back to talk to you many times to update you on our progress and let you know what's going on.
But for this particular session, you're going to hear from each of the partners that's working together to get dollars deployed quickly Thank you.
So I'd like to turn it over to Sunrisa Cooper with the Bureau of Planning Sustainability.
She's going to talk about the industrial sector and how BPS and PCEF have seeded this partnership, and then you'll hear from a number of the other partners, both public and private, who are collaborating together to make sure that we're getting dollars and resources where they need to be for a good carbon and economic future.
Sunrisa?
Sonrisa Cooper
Thank you.
Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee.
Thanks for having us.
For the record, my name is Sonrisa Cooper.
I use she/her pronouns, and I'm a member of the climate policy team at the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.
And today I'm going to give a brief overview of the Clean Industry Initiative and the PSEF Industrial Modernization Grant.
The Clean Industry Initiative is a collaborative effort to reduce industrial carbon emissions air pollution, and waste while supporting equitable economic development and a just transition for communities and industrial workers.
This work started as a pretty small partnership led by BPS, Prosper Portland, and Portland State University, but over time it's grown to encompass a much larger tent of people and organizations that are all committed to a future vision of our industrial sector.
As you saw in Vivian's presentation, industry comprises about 12% of our sector-based, local sector-based greenhouse gas emissions.
And as Jewel said, this— these types of emissions are hard to abate.
Industrial carbon emissions require very expensive solutions that may be new to the market, or they're very complex customized systems that are The city began working in earnest on industrial emissions in 2020.
We have gotten a lot done in the last 6 years.
In 2022, we conducted a landscape analysis of our industrial sector, and that study told us what types of manufacturing we have here in Portland, how much carbon those, those types of manufacturing produce, and what opportunities there are to reduce emissions.
Thank you.
And priority areas that we should be focused on.
That study also looked at international best practices for clean industry, and what we found is that around the world, the most successful projects took a collaborative governance approach with partners from multiple sectors all working towards a shared goal.
In 2023, we received $300,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to strengthen our relationships with industrial businesses, to identify potential projects and prepare them for coming investment.
And that led us to 2024, when the BPS climate team submitted a competitive proposal to the PSF Collaborating for Climate Action funding solicitation.
That funding was intended for government entities partnered with community coalitions to enact transformative climate projects.
We received $20 million from that funding solicitation to launch a first-of-its-kind program that invests in industrial decarbonization and community and economic benefits over a 5-year period.
And we're very excited to announce that next month we will be officially launching that grant.
It's called the Industrial Modernization Grant.
Now, I know that industry means a lot of different things to Portlanders.
As we've heard, as we've heard from you on the dais, as well as lots of the speakers here, the industrial sector is really important here.
It is a major employer.
It's a driver of our local economy, and it has been that way for over a century.
Portland is a manufacturing town.
At the same time, heavy industry has also been a source of harm.
And environmental injustice to many communities living in Portland.
So any investments that we make into this sector must contribute to the well-being of both our economy and, and our community.
Every partner that you see on this slide brings a different perspective, relationship, and expertise when it comes to industry.
What we all share though is a vision of a resilient industrial economy that serves all Portlanders.
BPS Climate Team is the official grantee from PSEF, but this program is jointly led by a coalition of local government, economic development, environmental justice, higher education, workforce development, and technical experts who all bring a nuanced understanding of industry in Portland.
And every, every organization on that last slide is connected to numerous other collaborators that are also aligned with this work.
The support from community-based organizations and business stakeholders has been especially valuable in shaping the program.
What you see on this slide here is a very non-exhaustive list of some other groups that have— that are not directly funded by the program but who have been involved in its development.
We are constantly engaging with new partners as the program comes to life, and you will see this list change as the work continues to grow.
This is PSAP's first-ever investment into industry, and we do not take that lightly whatsoever.
As stewards of the funding, we understand that we have a responsibility to uphold the principles of PSAP through these dollars, and we can do that while also supporting economic development and transformative climate action.
Now I'll turn it over to Kate Merrill of Prosper Portland.
Kate Merrill
Good afternoon, Chair and council members.
My name is Kate Merrill, and I am the Metals and Machinery Industry Liaison for Prosper Portland's Business Advancement Team.
Our team is part of the Economic Development Department under the direction of Andrew Fitzpatrick.
We work alongside the Office of Small Business and the Inclusive Business Resource Network to ensure that Portland— Portlanders have access to quality jobs.
Prosper Portland's business advancement team focuses on supporting growing businesses that sell goods and services outside of the region.
Our assistance enables businesses to expand and invest in Portland, creating more living wage jobs, growing an inclusive economy, and maintaining and increasing the city's tax base.
The manufacturers we support include some of Portland's renowned Food brands, knife producers, and shipmakers that are growing their businesses in Portland.
Manufacturing creates access to quality jobs and career pathways for Portlanders, including job seekers without a traditional 4-year college degree.
This $20 million grant from PSEF supports these manufacturers and industrial facilities in modernizing their facilities and processes While benefiting the community directly, reducing pollutants and reducing the carbon emissions that are leading to climate change.
The grant will also leverage over $3.5 million in private, private investment.
The Industrial Modernization Grant, which will be administered by Prosper Portland, will be granted in several rounds.
This grant comes on the heels of the Building Energy Efficiency Grant, which is primarily targeted to small commercial businesses, and this has been administered successfully by Prosper Portland for PSEF over the last year.
This first grant round will launch in October, and it will be for energy-saving and process improvement projects up to $300,000 per grant.
There will be additional rounds of larger grants available beginning in early 2027.
Uh, there is a 25% match requirement on all funding for businesses, and we will also have workforce and green building policies in place that Prosper Portland implements for all construction over $300,000 to ensure fair and equal workforce engagement and sustainable building standards.
The program design has been informed by the partners at this table and a cohort of nonprofit environmental and community groups convened by Neighbors for Clean Air, which Mary Pivitto will be presenting on in just a bit.
We have also solicited feedback from industry and community, and we look forward to working with all those partners as we develop guidelines for the second round of funding next year.
The Industrial Modernization Grant reflects the values and goals of the city's economic development plan, Advance Portland, and PCEF's objectives of decarbonization, inclusive growth and innovation, equitable wealth creation, and high-quality green jobs.
We look forward to sharing our progress with you, and I'll kick it back to Jules.
Jules Bailey
All right, go one more slide.
This is actually really cool.
And just to editorialize for a second, Portland's a maker town.
And just through this effort, we've gotten to see a lot of really amazing businesses that are doing very cool things that are putting Portland on the map in a lot of targeted industries.
The trick now is how do we map dollars into those businesses to make sure that they're able to be competitive by having efficient processes and lowering carbon emissions at the same time?
You can see this slide that's up there now, and it talks a little bit about the constellation that's around this Portland Partnership for Clean Industry.
And just to make it clear, we have a large amount of the PCF dollars that are going through Prosper for the decarbonization grants.
We have a little bit of dollars that are catalyzing this stand-up effort through the Portland Partnership for Clean Industry.
And the goal here is to take those dollars and turn them into more through philanthropic partnerships, through leveraged business investments, through other things, so that we can take seed money Stand up an organization that's independent and be able to deliver those dollars directly into projects in collaboration with businesses to make them more competitive, to help them grow, and to provide a model to the world that we can be proud of.
You can go to the next slide.
So what we do is we have last-mile capital projects that are investable.
What does last-mile capital mean?
The good news is there's a lot of different layers of financing that are available for some of these businesses.
They might have private loans that might make it work.
They might have Energy Trust of Oregon incentives.
There are other grants and programs that Katniss and Risa talked about.
Where the PPCI can come in is with a flexible, a final dollar that says, hey, we're going to take this project to a place that it works for your business right now.
And I can give you a specific example.
We're talking to one particular business right now.
I won't name it, but it's an industrial business that's looking at doing some fuel conversions.
From propane to electrical for some of its equipment and forklifts and using solar to power that electrical.
That's a great thing for that business.
It's going to make that business more efficient and more competitive.
It's also great for climate.
It's expensive.
And so layering on all of those different incentives and then coming in with those last-mile dollars can take that kind of project from something that hypothetically might be, say, a 15 or 16-year payback Thank you.
That's the kind of thing that we can document, that we can verify, that we can show the emissions reduction, and then we can take that to philanthropy, we can take it to investors, we can take it to private groups and say, hey, if you want to put your dollars here, we can deploy those in a way that are going to make meaningful differences on the margins for bringing down carbon for businesses in this sector that's hard to decarbonize.
So the end goal here is an independent partnership where the public and the private sectors channel this sort of highly leveraged capital from philanthropy, business, and government into industrial projects that traditional financing might not otherwise be able to make complete.
And it's that last-mile dollar that makes good projects pencil that's, that's really special and attractive to mission-driven funders.
So with the initial PCF investment, we'll have a few small pilots Over the course of the next couple of years.
We'll be partnering really closely with Prosper Portland and their $20 million and promoting that, finding— helping find businesses that can take advantage of that.
But we have a discrete set of dollars, and then we'll send projects to Prosper Portland while retaining the ability to pursue nimble, discrete opportunities of our own.
So these roles are complementary and they're not duplicative.
We're doing— So the, the other opportunity here is to make sure that we are having a high-quality labor investment in these projects and that we are operating them transparently, that we can do market-verified success, we can attract more private and philanthropic capital, and we can work with our research partners to ensure that we're getting the best and most robust and Stickiest, to use a phrase, results over time.
You can go to the next slide.
So essentially, we have 3 years on this grant and to prove the model and attract new investments.
So we're starting with the build, the implement, and then the grow.
So the first year is about building the infrastructure, establishing the board, the stakeholder advisory group.
We have a lot of different actors.
You saw some of them on the slide there, but there's a lot of people with a lot of deep expertise in this in Portland.
We have a great group of 30-plus individuals representing public, private, nonprofit, and others that are informing this work and making sure that we have both technical capacity and are connected to the community.
We're going to partner tightly with Prosper Portland, bring in technical assistance, and identify the investments.
Then year 2 is implementation.
So we identify the projects in year 1.
Year 2, we start to then say, okay, we can move these projects into funding and implementation.
And then year 3 is really about measurement, reporting, telling the story, and growing the pool with new investment, and then starting the cycle all over again.
So the city can help us in, in 3 practical ways.
First, you've heard it on many things before, but I'll say it again: coordinating permitting, infrastructure, utility, just making sure that all the bureaus are aligned on problem solving.
We've seen the ability of the city to move very quickly on some of these things.
And so getting some of these things done and being in partnership with these businesses just makes everything a lot easier and gets, gets folks to yes a lot faster.
We just don't want them to stall between institutions.
Second, aligning city funding and project pathways so that businesses can reach the correct program without navigating the system alone.
And BPS and Prosper are doing remarkable work on that.
And making sure that they're working directly hand in glove with a lot of these businesses.
It's very high touch and it's very effective.
And then third, insist on transparent outcomes and independent evaluation, not only conventional economic development measures, but carbon pollution, public benefit, equity, community impact, and cost.
And that's one of the ways that we're partnering very directly with our research partners who you'll hear from.
So we want to reinforce I think there's the operating commitments here that as we're growing this sector of the economy, that we're also using the highest quality labor that's available.
And the reality is we want the job run— the job done right the first time, every time.
It doesn't help anybody if these investments don't produce the kinds of savings that they're supposed to produce.
And so that's why we have a commitment to working with really high-quality labor to measure and report and then to use these credible results To really market Portland as a place where industrial businesses can grow while reducing pollution and emissions.
So I want to transition to some of those partners that I talked about.
Now we're going to first hear from Mary Pivoteau, and then we'll bring up the next panel and you'll hear from those as well.
Mary.
Mary Pivetto
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
My name is Mary Pivoteau, co-director of Neighbors for Clean Air.
Thank you, Chair Pirtle-Guiney.
Thank you, Good afternoon, everyone.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, other councilors here in the room and those who are with us virtually.
I really am honored and appreciate the opportunity to speak today about the community work that's involved with the industrial modernization grants.
I want to say that it was a great honor to be selected as a partner in this, and it was a terrifying responsibility to represent community in this work.
PSF adds another layer of scrutiny and accountability to community, and it's a huge opportunity.
So I, I just want to speak a little bit to how community has been involved and engaged.
And I will say that because of the experience that I've had doing advocacy work for over 15 years in this area, I knew that You know, you don't represent community as one person.
And we started our work almost from the get-go to do over 25 individual conversations with community organizations and other leaders, many of whom have been very involved with establishing PSF, helping, you know, create that, as well as doing ongoing very important work.
From that, we narrowed it down to folks who were very interested in this.
Thank you.
There have been many community members who have been involved over the years with the clean industry convening that had been happening through the— over the last 5 or 6 years.
And we narrowed it down to a collection of individual organizations that we designate as our co-design team, meaning very much that this is not a committee of folks showing up reviewing information.
This was very much—.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Intended to be a collaborative working group that we're going to come up with the community benefits that we would, a list and criteria that we would be passing on to the other partners in the organization.
So you'll see in this group collection of individual organizations that's represented a lot of different expertise.
And I wanna say we were not afraid to bring in the skeptics and critics.
In fact, I feel very strongly that those voices should be at the table and should really be helping inform us.
Better to inform us as we're creating than to just complain or criticize later.
So we have really important voices and people that are involved in this that have very strong reputations in climate work, also in community work, workforce development work, particularly in BIPOC populations and communities.
So that was the intentionality around the The final decision around who the co-design team was, was the different expertise that would all be at the table informing and sharing their thoughts with us.
Next slide.
So I wanna say though that we also asked for one thing of people other than general interest.
We asked, and I really appreciated your talk about the optimism group, We asked for the same thing.
And so we started out, as we embarked on our meetings, we started out with actually getting everybody to agree to one statement of purpose in terms of what the group was committed to doing.
And that was that fundamentally they were optimistic and confident that we could be successful, that we can reduce carbon emissions, we can support our local industry and economy, And we can all do that with meaningful community benefits.
And I thought that that optimism and sense of purpose was critical to our success.
And so it was a very important beginning point for us.
So then we went through the process of everybody bringing their interests and expertise.
We learned a lot from Prosper, from other partners to understand really the granting process, what that takes.
And so, but we also wanted to figure out where can we distinguish this from other grants that are already out there that are trying to do sustainability work, because we do believe that PSF brings some additional criteria and requirements.
So that was also, we would work from what we already understand about energy trust grants or B trust sustainability grants and start to see where we could be additive.
Yeah.
To other granting to ensure that PSF is really delivering another layer of value to the community.
So I will say, after we've been through this and Prosper and the city and our partners took on our benefit criteria to feed into this first tranche of money that's coming out later this year, we then actually revisited with individual conversations what we call temperature checks of all the individual Thank you.
And out of that, I just want to give you, you know, with— you can— so out of that, I just want to give you an idea of where people are standing today of feeling.
They've participated now in this collaborative for about 18 months, and they haven't seen any money go out the door yet in investments to industry, but we wanted to find out how they're feeling about it.
And I will say, people continue to remain optimistic.
They continue to feel that they've been heard and that the community benefits can be embedded in this grant.
And they're excited.
They're actually excited that if this is a real indication of what local industry leadership and business leadership is offering, they're excited about this direction.
And they're eager to continue to work on it.
That was the other thing we asked because we've got, as Jules laid out, 3+ years ahead of us and they are continued to excited to be part of this, which I thought was really good.
Thank you.
And I just want to share one quote from one of the members because I thought this was a really great indication of what they feel like the process has been to date.
And they were very happy to be part of this process.
They saw the uniqueness of it, that it was cross-sector.
We did bring in all the partners, businesses, and we really shared information.
And people felt that that was very unusual to truly bring a collaborative process forward that values community input at the equal level of the other inputs.
And so I just thought that it was really important to share that because, again, we are in the middle of process that is very hard for community to sustain.
And I feel really, really confident and great about the ongoing work here.
So thank you very much.
Jules Bailey
Chair, with your leave, we'll bring up our other panel members, but we'll be here if you have questions.
Mary Pivetto
That's great.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
And thank you to the 3 of you for sharing information with us.
Corky Collier
I know I'm up next because I like following Mary.
She's great to work with.
So is Beth.
I'm digging a hole here.
I'm going to stop.
My name is Corky Collier, Executive Director of the Columbia Corridor Association.
A few months ago, I was introducing this program to a big aluminum company in the Columbia Corridor, and I talked about how carbon reduction is good for business, and the plant manager interrupted me and said, I've got 5 big ovens venting heat into the air.
Can we do something with that?
I said, yeah, I think we can do something with that.
And then there's the food manufacturer in North Portland that's considering extracting starch from their wash water for washing vegetables so they can reuse the water more, a little bit more, before sending it to the sewage and then a few months after that, I'm having coffee with a landscape company, and I asked them if they could use water with starch and little bits of vegetables in it to water plants.
That would save the food manufacturer from sending waste— sending off wastewater, and the landscaper from buying fresh water.
And all of this saves carbon emissions.
There's a thirst out there for industrial decarbonization.
We saw this with our Department of Energy grant that Sunrisa mentioned— she— I don't think she mentioned that that won second place in the nation.
People want to do this, but they lack the resources and the knowledge.
There are some simple projects like electrical connections for idling food delivery vehicles, and then there's the more interesting projects like one I discussed with the Silicon Chip Plant about upgrading their heating and cooling systems with new equipment which is tied into a district heating and cooling system for a nearby housing project.
These projects are based on partnerships, which are based on trust.
This program is a tremendous step toward building those partnerships and making those more complicated projects pencil out.
And here's why this is important.
When we create projects with multiple partners, we get multiple carbon reductions.
Kind of a 2-for-1 sale.
This program helps us create complex projects that create jobs, reduce carbon, grow the economy, and improve resilience.
And maybe, just maybe, it'll make Portland the U.S. leader in industrial decarbonization.
Thanks.
Jason Lewis
Good afternoon, Chair Pirtle-Guiney.
I'm Randal Friesen, and also the rest of the committee members too, thank you.
I'm Randal Friesen with the Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council.
We represent over 20,000 workers in the Portland metropolitan and Southwest Washington region.
Labor is committed to the intersection of equity, economic growth, and sustainable environment.
PSEF plays a critical role in catalyzing transformational projects, and the funding is doing something remarkable here.
A large portion of dollars are going through Prosper Portland, which will help get big projects going quickly.
But there are also catalytic dollars going through the new business-led Portland Partnership for Clean Industry, This innovative and— this is innovative and will put Portland on the map.
The PPCI is still identifying projects and organizing outside capital to match and exceed PSAP dollars, but it has already made commitments to use the best quality labor possible.
When investments in business reduce carbon, create community benefits, and support good jobs, that's where Portland wins.
Quality labor means projects done right the first time.
We look forward to partnering with the partnership as it rolls out as an advisor, as part of the project pipeline, and as a resource for the workforce that can make these projects the best they can be.
Thank you for the opportunity to voice our support for this important work today.
Appreciate it.
Beth Gilden
Hello, thank you for having us.
I'm excited to speak with you.
My name is Beth Gilden.
I am the city's deputy city attorney.
Sustainability and Resilience Partnership Manager at the Center for Public Service at Portland State and the lead for the Clean Industry Initiative.
I've had the opportunity to work with the partners here through the PSF-funded Industrial Modernization Grant Program, but also the larger vision that everybody's shared with you today.
I believe that our vision, bridging alignment and bridging sectors and creating alignment across different interests a strategy driven by both values and expertise, a focus on genuine collaboration and trust building, and critically following through to implementation, we can pull off something truly transformational for Portland.
Portland State is contributing to this larger vision by supporting effective collaboration, partnership alignment, and identifying funding pathways to implement projects that support our shared goals.
We're also asking what the Clean Industry Initiative is producing for the community.
Thank you.
Successful implementation means dedicating real resources here, prioritizing this work over other choices, and being strategic about where we invest.
That's something we would not want to do without measurement and evaluation.
The typical ways we measure success in economic development or carbon accounting might not fit here.
Those measures are useful, but they don't necessarily tell us whether we're reaching our complex goals or producing a real public value.
So as part of our work, we're asking what are the actual public benefits, who benefits, what are the equity and environmental implications, what are the costs, and how do we know what adjustments to make along the way.
My colleagues in PSU's Economics and Public Administration departments are developing a program to help answer those questions.
From the university perspective, their role is to provide an independent look at programs costs, benefits, and outcomes, and they provide feedback to us about where we are achieving and where we might need to improve our work.
Their work draws on academic expertise, but it's grounded in data from the Industrial Modernization Grant and other work that we're doing, and uses a transparent methodology to describe the impacts.
As this initiative expands, the Portland State role can grow to support related regional-scale research questions, invest in talent development, and be a resource or technical challenges presented by decarbonization and the energy transition.
If we get this right, we will demonstrate how to build a distinctly Portland model of economic development that aligns the city, businesses, community-based organizations, and academia around shared goals.
We will deliver on our environmental values and provide an example that other cities can learn, learn from, and we can be proud of in Portland.
Jules Bailey
Madam Chair, I know we are over time, and I said at the beginning that we could talk for hours about this.
We could.
There's so much to talk about here, and we look forward to coming back and talking with this committee as much as possible and keeping you updated.
And with that, we'll conclude the presentation.
Thank you so much for allowing us to present.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you all for being a part of the conversation today.
I do want to move us toward a quick break, but committee members, are there any quick questions that we need to ask now before we move on and then come back to it in committee discussion later.
Dan Ryan
Will the panel members be here after the break?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Do you have at least a few people who are able to stay to the end?
David Raycroft
Yes.
Hazel Chan
Okay.
Candace Avalos
Thanks.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Perfect.
Thank you.
And I just want to highlight before we take a break the emphasis that I heard through many speakers on equity and making sure that this is not only the alignment of environmental and economic, but that we get that 3rd E of equity in our impact as well.
I think having all 3 of those values coming together in this work is, is part of the critical sweet sauce.
Dan Ryan
I want to thank you, Vivian, for our one meeting about the big picture.
I feel listened to, that I wanted to really see cross-collaboration.
Um, usually this doesn't happen, and that's why we're not getting the results that we need.
So it's hard, But it's necessary.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, thank you all.
We are going to take a 10-minute break.
We will be back here at 3:55 to hear from our final 2 panels and then have time for a quick council discussion about what some next steps might be for us to take.
With that, we will take a quick break.
Thank you.
Thank you all for giving us that quick We are going to get started again as soon as we have a quorum back of committee.
To that end, Councilors Murillo and Avalos, do I have either or both of you back yet?
Yes, I'm here.
Fantastic.
And Councilor Avalos.
So we have a quorum back.
We are going to go ahead and jump right into our 3rd presentation today with Jason Lewis, Executive Director for the Climate Optimists.
And I know Councilor Ryan will be back momentarily.
Uh, thank you all for bearing with us for a quick break.
And Jason, go right ahead.
Thank you.
Jason Lewis
You know, we tried to make it happen during the Climate Committee, and so then the change of committees.
So appreciate this is coming to fruition.
So briefly, uh, as mentioned, I'm the executive director of Climate Optimists.
Uh, we're a Portland-based organization focused on educating people on climate solutions and ways to advance those solutions through a number of mediums— podcasts, newsletter events, etc.
You know, I— this topic in terms of climate change in Portland is special to me.
I'm a native Oregonian, grew up on a farm in the northeast corner of the state, and have spent 20 years of my career working in the energy sector in various capacities.
Including building wind farms in, in the US and Canada.
So I know we've talked about this a little bit already, but I think it's worth just stepping back and talking about, you know, a case for a bolder climate response.
I think first and foremost, this is something that matters to Portlanders.
The data I have here are from Multnomah County.
But as you can see, you've got roughly 80% of Portlanders that are worried and want to see us hit that net zero mark by 2050.
In addition, while most people feel like, you know, addressing climate change falls to state and national, still two-thirds of people feeling like local officials should be doing more.
And I would argue that's all the more important given the current administration and the As we all know, impacts are worsening.
I think it's worth just calling out some of the events that we've seen so far just this year.
I know someone mentioned the tragic events in Nepal earlier.
There was heavy flooding in India that resulted in 50 deaths and 700,000 folks displaced.
In Europe, the extreme heat there has led to 35,000 Heat-related deaths.
And if we look more locally, even in Oregon, we had a record-low snowpack this year, which not surprisingly led to a record wildfire season that is still continuing.
But, you know, I think the most important point to be made here is that transformation is possible.
And, you know, as somebody who is kind of engrossed in this stuff, a climate geek, if you will, It's fun to see all the progress being made in other places in the world.
The EU, for instance, just this year hit a milestone where they produced 50% of their electricity from renewables, which is pretty outstanding.
The city of Paris has been diligently working on getting more folks on bikes and was able to double their numbers to 11% of trips by bike in just the last couple years.
And China, we all think of as a leader in EVs, and no doubt 50% of new car sales there are now electric.
For context, the U.S., it sits at about 7%, so we've got ways to go.
And then finally, the city of Boston last year became the first city in the U.S. to require that all new buildings are net-zero carbon upon opening.
Which is, which is pretty dramatic.
So what's a win-win climate opportunity?
First and foremost, it provides multiple benefits.
I think the focus with climate solutions tends to get caught up in just reducing emissions, but the reality is that in many cases climate solutions also provide health benefits.
They help with, you know, road safety.
They help with affordability.
And I think it's important not to lose sight of those things.
I think it's also important to have climate actions that provide a, a high return on investment.
Um, the reality is that money is always finite, and we want to ensure that gets stretched, uh, to its maximum.
In addition, win-win opportunities should build momentum.
Uh, we need to close a gap, and so having things that help Get the ball rolling is, is really essential.
And then finally, um, in our context here, we're talking about things that, that address policy gaps.
Uh, there's obviously a lot of great work, um, underway in city bureaus and with PCF.
Um, some of these concepts we're floating are just things where we see additional opportunity.
So the first one we wanted to talk about, uh, is yes.
One of the things we looked at is reducing Biketown rates.
I don't know how many folks have been on a Biketown bike in the last year, but I can tell you that it's not cheap.
Lyft, the operator, has raised rates a couple times, and we are now at the upper end of the range looking at some of the cities we examined.
We think reducing those rates could not only bring about some modest emission reductions, but more importantly, really help encourage more people to get on bikes.
You know, you have one good ride on a bike that, you know, leads to the next, and then hopefully, you know, those sort of things becoming habits.
With high gasoline prices, I think having a good way to get around by bike also helps with transportation affordability, in addition to helping with local air quality, health outcomes, and reducing traffic congestion.
In each of these, we were sort of asked to come up with a kind of yeah.
Hypothetical scenario with reducing bike town rates.
We said, well, what if we were to cut the rates by 75% and that led to a 50% increase?
What would that mean in the context of emissions?
We'd be talking about roughly 400,000 more miles traveled by bike per year in the city than by car, and you'd have a revenue shortfall you'd have to fill second opportunity we wanted to highlight is kind of an expansion of car-free zones.
There are some small blocks, you know, each folks probably has some in their neighborhood where, you know, been closed off to cars, some of that, you know, because of COVID we also have a Green Loop project that many of you are probably aware about.
Jamie Dunphy
I'm not.
Khalid bin El-Mutab El
Okay.
Jason Lewis
But we want to see, you know, basically car-free zones at scale.
And the reason for that, admittedly, car-free zones are not going to yield direct emission reductions, at least not very measurable.
But I think critically, they demonstrate the value of having areas without vehicles.
And when you talk about having to build the cycling and pedestrian infrastructure we need to move folks around, It's important to have the community at large be supportive of those sort of improvements.
In our case, you know, having car-free zones downtown offers the potential to revitalize things, right?
Becomes, you know, an attract— attract locals down, attract tourists, in addition to providing, you know, other, again, health and air quality benefits.
In terms of scenarios here, the most obvious one for us is to accelerate the Green Loop it's my understanding it's been in planning since at least 2018, now going on roughly a decade.
And so, you know, looking to some of these other car-free zone projects, while it's hard to compare apples to apples, the photo here of a street in Vienna, their major shopping district, basically started in 2011 as a concept, and in 2015, was implemented.
And so we think being able to accelerate that Green Loop project could bring big benefits.
Uh, the third opportunity we wanted to touch upon, uh, is focused on expanding EV charging at rental properties.
Um, we recognize that, you know, one of the biggest impediments to owning an EV is having access to charging.
As an EV owner myself, uh, I can't say I You know, want to be having to travel around and to try to charge at high-speed charging that's far more expensive.
As far as the current state is concerned, we do have good EV-ready requirements for new construction, but access to charging at rental properties is very limited.
And while PCF does accept grants for charging, there have been limited sort of dollars doled out there so far.
Of course, benefits.
Everybody who purchases an electric vehicle, that results in direct emission benefits for the city.
It also— having charging removes a key ownership barrier for people who might not otherwise consider buying an EV.
And, you know, while we tend to focus on, or hear the media focus on, the price of EVs, luxury EVs, the reality is purchasing a used EV The cost of ownership is at the end of the spectrum, right?
It's some of the cheapest driving you can do is in a used EV, especially with a $5 gallon of gasoline.
As far as a potential scenario is concerned, you know, we envision something like an incentive program that leads to, say, you know, 1,000 additional charging ports spread throughout the city.
And in turn, you know, seeing 2 EVs for every charging port that's put in.
In that scenario, we'd be looking at, you know, the equivalent of taking roughly 1,500 cars off the road.
And financial impact, if looking at incentives that we looked at in New York, probably around $3 million price tag.
And not to leave out buildings, our final opportunity is It's really about focusing on incentivizing greener new housing.
The city is obviously in the midst of trying to increase housing supply.
I feel like it'd be a huge missed opportunity if those new housing units aren't fully electric and high efficiency.
Excuse me.
PSEF does have dollars— PSEF does have dollars that they're, you know, have available for affordable housing, you know, complexes 20 units and above.
But when you start talking about incentives beyond that, they're pretty nominal.
Obviously, the benefits of having a, you know, a greener new housing stock is direct emission reductions.
I think maybe equally important, it improves housing affordability.
When we talk about utility rates going up, that trajectory is not set to change.
And so, you know, having a home that consumes less energy means less out-of-pocket money for future tenants and homeowners.
And then, you know, additionally, you know, having a home that operates on electric, you improve air quality internally.
And, you know, the benefit of doing this with new housing is, as you can imagine, it's far more expensive to come back later and try to do this to existing buildings.
As far as the scenario is concerned, given that our existing, you know, kind of housing supply, new units coming out about 5,000 a year, we said, well, you know, in an ideal world, 90%, you know, 90% of those would be fully electric and high efficiency.
Admittedly, when we started to go down the path of trying to estimate emissions and costs for those, You really need more data in order to do that.
And partially it's about deciding what kinds of incentives need to be put forth.
You know, is it streamlining permitting?
Is it, you know, property tax abatement?
Is it cash incentives, etc.?
But I do feel like there's a big opportunity there.
So in summary, win-win climate actions improve affordability and livability in the city.
I think it's really important as we're looking at climate actions to remember that this isn't just about reducing emissions.
These things come with other benefits.
And it's about building momentum.
We have an emissions gap to close and having things that we can do that give us some of that incremental progress while we're getting to the more transformative actions, I think is really essential.
And so sort of leaving you with kind of high-level recommendations.
Yeah.
From us, I think, you know, and we heard some of this here today, but recommitting to the 2030 targets.
You know, if we're going to achieve them, I think everybody needs to be on board with the work that that's going to take.
Establishing climate metrics, not just metrics for tracking the progress of an action, but also metrics for helping us select our climate actions.
Again, like, there's a lot of potential solutions out there.
Thank you.
They're not all apples to apples.
Some of them are far more expensive for the amount of emission reduction that they generate.
And then our, I guess, challenge to you would be to pick some actions in the next year and find some you can refine and implement while the broader climate action plan is being formed.
And at the end of the day, we need a high-level strategy.
The beauty is with climate action, we know what the solutions are.
It's just a matter of figuring out about how best to implement those solutions, so.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you so much.
And thank you for, in bringing these forward, having that section there about what this could actually look like and what the impact would be and what the cost would be, being able to really see those trade-offs spelled out as we think about some of these proposals.
Dan Ryan
Well, you used the word quick.
Can you tell me why?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
We have about 5 minutes left for this presentation before we move to our Youth Commission representatives.
Dan Ryan
Oh, okay, great.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
And so I just don't want a meandering 10-minute response to any of the proposals.
Well, I'm not going to be meandering.
Dan Ryan
Well, it's too bad we don't have more time right now because I was listening to the whole thing and it was really fascinating.
So I'll just get rid of my notes and look at Vivian.
I think if you came up, that'd be helpful.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
We'll have time for discussion on all the presentations at the end.
We still have one more presentation.
Dan Ryan
Oh, sorry.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
This is for quick questions specific to this presentation.
Dan Ryan
It's not a separate presentation.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yes.
Dan Ryan
All right, I, um, I stand corrected.
So thank you.
And I can't wait to hear the— on the Youth Commission.
Jason Lewis
And happy, I talked to Devin already, happy to provide additional context on this stuff.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, you'll be around when we do our debrief.
What's that?
You'll be here after the Youth Commission to do the big picture.
Thanks.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yep.
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
Dan Ryan
Sorry about that, I wasn't following.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
That's okay.
One more presentation in this.
There are even more groups we could have invited.
I'd like to move us to our final panel, which is our representatives from the Multnomah Youth Commission.
And Hazel, if you want to bring— is it you and Enzo, or do you have other folks coming up as well?
Just us.
Okay, perfect.
Why don't you guys come on up, and if you can introduce yourselves, and then we'll have your names on the record and you can get right into the materials that you brought.
Hazel Chan
Thank you.
Good afternoon, committee members.
It's a pleasure to be here, and I want to thank City Life Chair Pirtle-Guiney for inviting the Multnomah Youth Commission to this meeting.
My name is Hazel.
I live in District 2, and I am a junior at Jefferson High School.
I am also a member of the Transit Equity and Environmental Advocacy Subcommittee of the Multnomah Youth Commission.
Enzo Carpio
Good afternoon, councilors.
My name is Enzo.
I also live in District 2.
And I am a junior at Reynolds High School.
I am on the Multnomah Youth Commission where I serve as the co-chair for the Education Youth Voice Subcommittee.
Next slide, please.
Housed under the Office of Community and Civic Life, the Multnomah Youth Commission, or MYC, is the official youth policy body of the City of Portland and Multnomah County.
The goals of the Multnomah Youth Commission are to uplift youth voices in city and county decision-making, as well as advocate for issues outlined in our city and county's own Youth Bill of Rights.
Currently, the Youth Bill of Rights is undergoing this process of being updated, as it was created by the NYC 2 decades ago.
It is lacking in certain issues that are more prevalent now than in the past.
We will be reaching out to all of you in the upcoming year as we continue through that process, however.
Additionally, the Multnomah Youth Commission divides its work into 3 subcommittees, one of which is the Transit Equity and Environmental Advocacy Committee, which aims to protect youth in our community from the impacts of climate change And reduce barriers to accessing public transit for youth.
Next slide, please.
Hazel Chan
Let's get into our Transit Subcommittee's 3 current initiatives: Youth Pass, a TriMet Youth Survey, and climate mini grants.
Are we on the next slide?
Slide 3.
Thank you.
Youth Pass is the free TriMet pass available to all PPS students.
And a small number of youth from 2 neighboring school districts.
NYC's ultimate vision is Youth Pass for all youth in TriMet's service area.
The Multnomah Youth Commission started advocating for Youth Pass in 2005, but the cost of public transit for youth was already a recognized concern.
A few years before, Sisters in Action for Power, an organization made up of girls and women of color, successfully campaigned for free transit passes for low-income youth in the PPS district.
The Multnomah Youth Commission's efforts, along with other partner youth organizations, have since expanded the program to include all high schoolers in PPS, as well as eligible students in the David Douglas and Parkrose districts.
The MYC sees multiple benefits to Youth Pass.
Aside from reducing Oregon's chronic absenteeism rate, free public transportation opens up more job opportunities for youth.
Thank you.
Promotes extracurricular participation, and most appropriate for the topic at hand, it builds lifelong transit users who would make a measurable difference in the city's carbon emissions.
Increased ridership has immediate as well as long-term climate impacts.
Our idea for a TriMet survey for youth emerged when we learned that TriMet is prohibited from gathering demographic data on people under 18 years of age, meaning that youth perspectives are not currently represented in their attitude and awareness In response, we have created a youth-specific survey which will be distributed to schools in the next few months.
We are hoping to identify why youth ridership remains low and what steps we can take to make TriMet more safe, reliable, and affordable for youth.
Finally, we have the Community 101 grant, which is made possible thanks to pass-through funds of the Oregon Community Foundation.
Every year, our committee gives out $7,500 in grants to youth-led, youth-serving organizations within the tri-county area.
Previous grant recipients include Trash for Peace and the Oregon Rohingya Myanmar Muslim Society.
Trash for Peace is using their grant to hire a student coordinator for a bicycle repair shop in Fairview, and the Oregon Rohingya Myanmar Muslim Society is conducting a report on heat islands Next slide, please.
Enzo Carpio
Now we will get into the Multnomah Youth Commission's climate priorities.
Our first priority is equitable access to the benefits of the city's climate efforts.
Going back to our youth transit survey, we know cost is a barrier to riding public transit.
Additionally, other environmentally friendly initiatives also come at high price for everyday people.
Solar panels are too expensive for many property owners, and proper recycling requires people to navigate a changing and somewhat complicated system.
Therefore, one of our climate priorities is to make sustainable choices accessible.
Thank you.
Our first priority is to make climate action accessible for everyone.
When thinking about climate projects that involve public participation, it is important to consider who can participate, and if it's not everyone, then what we can do to minimize the barriers.
Our second priority is to include youth in the climate conversation, especially when speaking about the long-term visions for the city.
As a Youth Commission, We see youth as one of the most important demographics when talking about the environment.
Climate action plans are proposals for a future that our generation will inherit.
And if governments and corporations fail to adequately address climate change, the youth of today will have to live and see those results.
Thank you.
Therefore, youth have a very big reason to be deeply concerned about environmental issues, as well as bringing their essential perspectives to the table.
Thirdly, the Multnomah Youth Commission has worked with Portland Parks Urban Forestry team in the past and recognizes the need to increase tree coverage in significantly— in low canopy, in low in Portland, low-income and minority neighborhoods have significantly lower coverage with a tree canopy that's over 2.5 times denser in the area west of the Willamette than it is in the east of the Willamette.
The number comes from the July report from the Urban Forestry Division of Portland Parks and Rec.
Thank you.
Planting and caring for trees will help mitigate extreme heat, poor air quality, and stormwater runoff in historically marginalized neighborhoods.
It is an economic project that offers substantial and long-lasting benefits for the city's environment.
Hazel Chan
In conclusion, and above all, is our work to center and prioritize YouthPASS expansion.
We know that research shows Youth access to transit builds the next generation of transit riders, and a fully inclusive and expansive Youth Pass program would reduce congestion and carbon pollution.
This is why we will continue our advocacy efforts and ask that you include this in our next climate plan.
So that covers all that we have for council today.
Thank you for your time.
We are happy to answer any questions, and our contact page is on the last slide.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you so much for being here today.
And I'll word this a little bit differently this time.
Any questions specific to this panel before we move to the broader discussion and questions that cross the different panels?
Dan Ryan
I just want to thank Hazel— you're Hazel, right?
And Zell for being here.
Thanks for the presentation.
I thought it had been a while since you've been advocating for that youth pass.
Yeah, 2005, Mayor Potter was really big on that.
So I like that every group that comes on continues to carry that message forward.
So good work that you have a streamline of productivity.
And I have to say, I miss being the liaison to the Youth Commission, which I was for a few years in the old form of government.
So it's good to see both of you.
If you would—.
She goes to Jefferson High School, right?
All right.
In our district.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
In our district.
And if you would like to work with a youth commissioner, you can still do that even though you're not the city liaison anymore.
Lynn Felton
Really?
Mary Pivetto
Yes.
Dan Ryan
Who knew?
Okay.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Um, I'll just note as we're talking about YouthPASS that there's a—.
Dan Ryan
I just wanted one more.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I'm sorry, I thought you were—.
Dan Ryan
No, I just wanted to ask Vivian, are you, um, making certain that all of these, uh, committees that I see in the slides earlier that That was one of their asks.
I want to hear how we're doing on that.
Vivian Satterfield
Yeah, I appreciate the question, Councilor Ryan.
For the record, Vivian Satterfield, CSO.
I can speak for the Sustainability and Climate Commission, which does have 4 dedicated youth seats, and council did confirm all of those members.
You'll recall that the youth seats actually expire on June 30th, so we have 4 seats to fill.
On a year basis rather than the rest of the adult commissioners expire on a 4-year basis.
Dan Ryan
But all the new, the new ones that we'll talk about in depth in a minute, um, do they also— are they going to be targeted to have youth at the table for some of them?
Vivian Satterfield
Um, I am unsure.
The Sustainability and Climate Commission is the only commission that's attached to my office and therefore the only one that has response that, um, I can seat.
Um, However, I do know that the—.
Dan Ryan
Community, environment, government, workforce, contractor.
I mean, some of them make sense, maybe some of them don't.
Ah, I understand.
The current collaborators.
Vivian Satterfield
I understand now.
I can describe a little bit more about the climate action planning process and why there are those focus areas.
Youth empowerment is one of the cross-cutting focus areas we have in the climate action plan, and all of our youth commissioners are dedicated to that That'd help.
Thanks.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
And I'll just note, as we talk about a youth pass, that TriMet ridership is free up until age 7, and PPS students get that pass, though it's not comprehensive enough yet when they enter high school.
But youth between the ages of 7 and entering high school who are within PPS Still have to pay that youth fare.
So we have a lot of work to do, I think, broadly on this.
Thank you both so much for being here.
I think we're going to move into our broader conversation and, and questions right now.
And colleagues, I know that there's been a lot that we have thrown at you over the last 2 hours or so.
I'll note that across the presentations there have been some themes.
Yes.
Themes around recommitting to our 2030 targets, themes around making sure our work is data-driven.
We know what will have the largest impact on carbon reduction.
We know what has the highest cost, and we know what has the highest impact on people and the day-to-day lives of individuals in our community.
And starting with those solutions that have high impact is always a good place to start.
A lot of that work has been done.
We're getting down to the next level of work that has to happen, but we can continue to be data-driven.
We know that we need to couple the high-level strategy— what policies are we trying to move toward, things like getting more people into transit ridership— with the evidence-based initiatives.
What do we know is working in other communities that we haven't yet taken on that we should make sure to adopt?
Thank you.
And we know that there is cross-sector interest, there is cross-community commitment, and when we work collaboratively, we can have longer-term solutions that really work to sustain our community.
And we heard some of that with Councilor Ryan's questions about making sure that our youth members of our climate Commission are engaged in every piece of the climate plan, but I think there are probably more pieces we should explore there as well.
I would like to open it up to broad discussion and questions for any of our panels and Councilors Avalos and Murillo.
We have representatives from all of our panels still in the room, but I also hope that if you heard something today that you would like us to take on as a committee, that you point that out because we had concrete proposals from a few of the panels that we heard from.
And if there are things we should start working on now to make sure that we're moving, as Mr. Lewis said, before we get to the next climate action plan, let's air those and see if those are things that have broad support across the, across the committee that we might be able to take on.
Thank you.
Councilor Avalos, go right ahead.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Um, I'm processing your question.
Let me see if I can come up with an answer by the end of my, um, comments.
But yeah, thank you again to everyone who, uh, has been here today to present.
I think that this conversation has been really good to not just focus on our goals, but actually what steps we're needing to take to actually make meaningful progress towards them.
And, you know, climate policy, we know, has to be beyond just setting these ambitious targets, of which we have many, but we need these policies that are going to actually reduce emissions.
And we need to be thoughtful too about how those policies affect people's housing costs and health and jobs and everyday lives.
And I think it's important we continue to Thank you.
And I think it's important to connect those dots because I know, trust me, as somebody who entered the environmental justice world, I was— I didn't make as many connections to the way that environmental justice connects to racial and economic justice, for example.
And so I think it's good that we elevate that continuously.
That is very much also the approach that I'm taking with my Climate and Health Standards Policy that, you know, I've emailed to council.
You know, I've been keeping you apprised of that.
We've done some really good outreach, and it will be coming to committee in a few weeks.
But, you know, the goal of that policy is really to meaningfully reduce emissions from our buildings while also thinking intentionally about things like tenant protections and affordability and indoor air quality and public health, and also how we're going to support buildings that may need help making that transition.
Really encouraged by the Sustainability and Climate Commission recently voting to make the climate and health standards their primary policy priority and emphasize the urgency of getting this work across the finish line.
And also Multnomah County recently adopted their climate justice plan, which also recommends many of the same building actions that we're pursuing through the climate and health standards.
So to me, that speaks to further confirmation that this is an area that we all know is the direction that we need to go in.
And we also need to do the hard work of implementing it well, because policy to implementation is always key, as we know.
And I don't think too that the choice should be between ambitious climate policy and things like affordability, for example.
The harder and more important work I also have a personal connection to some of that industry work that we were hearing about today.
In 2022, I had the opportunity to travel to Denmark to study industrial symbiosis and see firsthand how industry and government and community can work together differently.
Obviously, Denmark is a very different place than Portland, Oregon, and America for that matter, but there are important lessons to be learned from that experience.
Thank you.
And I'm really encouraged to see that what came out of that being the Portland Clean Industry Hub initiative.
I'm really glad to see that we're continuing to move forward and evolving towards this broader partnership.
And just in general, that we're, you know, continuing to use that model that we learned from in Denmark.
And that's— there's a larger lesson there that we also don't have to reinvent every climate solution ourselves.
Dan Ryan
Yeah.
Candace Avalos
In fact, there are so many policies moving across the country that I think we as a committee, as far as actions, should be looking to and just seeing what are things that are emerging issues that we can start to adapt here in Portland.
And so that's the lens that I'm bringing to this conversation.
And I have a couple of questions around— maybe I'll start with the Youth Commission since they were our last presentation, but I've got some questions of the industry.
Sonrisa Cooper
Yes.
Angelita Morillo
Absolutely.
Candace Avalos
And just depending on time, we'll see what other questions I have.
But, you know, we started to talk at the end there about what we heard from the Youth Commission, which is one of their goals of equitable access of youth to these, you know, ways to participate and, you know, have an ongoing meaningful role in shaping climate policy.
I know that having the youth commissioners on Sustainability and Climate Commission is great because we have intentional spaces for them.
But I guess just wanted to hear from the youth, you know, maybe there are things that you are seeing either not around, you know, near us in the region, maybe in other states where local governments are taking action to work with youth, and would love to hear if you have any thoughts about any tangible things you think we should be doing better.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah, I'm looking to see if Hazel's able to come back up, or anybody else from the Youth Commission, to weigh in on where we might as a city be able to do better about engaging your peers in a way that we're not currently doing.
Thank you for letting us put you on the spot.
Hazel Chan
Um, yeah, I think I might need a little bit more time to think about that.
We also— the Transit Equity and Environmental Advocacy Committee is starting up again in a couple weeks, and we might talk about— talk more about like citywide climate interests and stuff once that starts up again.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Great.
Councilor Avalos, are you open to a delayed response where we might be able to get some input on more specific and Yes, absolutely.
Candace Avalos
And I would just add to that, I just got an email a couple hours ago of OPAL unfortunately closing officially, but in their email they mentioned that the Bus Riders United is continuing on through a different fiscal sponsor.
I know that has been a space where youth in particular have organized, and so I think it would be great to see how we can just in general get all of these groups together and start looking towards solutions, especially as we're looking at these TriMet cuts and closing that gap of access for youth to our TriMet system is critical.
And frankly, if we're talking about ridership and needing to improve it, I feel like that would be such a huge way to increase ridership by giving access to all youth to the bus so that they can get around and, you know, make the most of their time in the city.
And so, yeah, would love to have a follow-up with you and happy to continue supporting efforts for that.
So thanks for thinking about that question and look forward to talking more.
Okay, thank you, Councilor.
Thank you.
Let's see, let me just move on quickly to one more question.
I guess I just wanted to hear more as far as the Industry Hub, you know, I appreciate that we're hearing that the Industry Hub has been seemingly successful in really bringing together some quite different sectors and to have this conversation.
So bringing business and labor and community and environmental orgs and government into the same place.
And so would love to just hear from anyone if they're willing to share, what are we learning from that collaboration?
That could inform how we approach other areas of climate policy, because I think my underlying message there is that, you know, we need to do more to be more cross-cutting about and thinking about climate policy in all our decision-making.
So yeah, I would love to hear any lessons you've learned building this broad coalition that we could take and apply.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah, Councilor, I see folks looking to decide who from that panel is the best person to Do you want to go first?
Jules Bailey
Sure.
Ask a good question and you get all of us coming up eager to talk about it.
Councilor, this is Jules Bailey for the record.
I think that's a great, really, really, really important question.
And I think coming especially from a place historically where there was a lot of tension between the different groups that are now part of it and now collaborating on this.
I think one of the take-homes that I have is that a focus on results matters, that really being clear about what we're trying to achieve and bringing together the expertise from different communities to be able to achieve it together and making sure that everybody's at the table and has a chance to inform that process about what we're trying to achieve and then have confidence in the results, I think, has built a lot of trust.
And we're not there yet.
I don't want to declare victory on this.
We're still getting this set up.
And so continuing to make sure that we are having those conversations, that we're meeting with stakeholder advisory groups, that we're continuing to bring people into the process, learn from their expertise, and stay humble about it, I think is really, really important.
Thank you.
Going forward as we proceed on the next 3 years of mapping these investments into these businesses.
And then we're, as we said, working with our research partners to ensure that what we're achieving is documentable and verifiable and responds back to the concerns that we heard at the front end.
So I think that transparency is really important.
Sonrisa Cooper
Yeah.
For the record, Sonrisa Cooper from the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability Thank you for the question.
One thing that we do in every meeting that we have is we read our vision statement aloud.
And that vision statement, I don't have it in front of me, but it talks about basically all the shared goals that we have around a resilient economy, industry that is thriving, communities safe from harm.
It's basically like our North Star that we're aiming for.
And we ground our us, our meetings, and that every single time we talk to each other.
And I do think that that keeps us on the right track because we, we brought these kind of disparate partners together with the recognition that everyone has their own lane, their own constituents, their own kind of strategies that they might use.
But we are united in a single goal.
And we We recognize that everyone might take a slightly different path to get to the goal, but we are all working in the same direction.
And there have definitely been times when we have disagreed, but the other thing that we do in our meetings sometimes is we hash it out.
We, you know, we're not always getting along perfectly because we do take different approaches and have different perspectives.
And working really for a long time with the commitment that we all have the same vision has kept us on track towards that.
It will be kind of a test when we actually start putting the money out there and seeing the projects that come out of it.
But so far, personally, I have seen a huge improvement in the relationships between all of our different members of our group.
Portland State University actually, as part of their evaluation, is doing I think every 6 months or so, like an internal evaluation to look at the health of our partnership.
So we all take a survey to see how well we trust each other.
Do we understand our roles and have agreement in what we're working towards?
And that, we've only done one so far, so I can't say how that's gonna change over time.
But anecdotally, we do trust each other.
We work together really well.
And I think that that—.
Thank you.
Grounding in the vision and returning to that regularly is definitely something that we can pull forward into other climate policies.
Candace Avalos
Thank you for those answers.
And, um, yeah, I think that part of why I raise it too is that, um, Mary from Neighbors for Clean Air said, uh, at some point today That it was an enormous responsibility to represent community, and I'm really grateful that she understands that.
I know she understands that.
Hi, Mary, good to see you.
Hi.
I think that it is a big responsibility to represent community because one thing that stood out to me when I went on that trip to Denmark, I was the only person on the trip representing an environmental justice community org, and so I spent the trip Kind of being that voice and just saying, well, what do the neighbors think?
For example, we're touring the industry and the smell is not great, right?
And then there's obviously fumes and all these things.
And it's like, oh sure, they're showing us the ways that all of these industries are sharing waste so that they aren't wasting it.
But also when I would ask questions like that, I didn't always get satisfying answers.
Often people would say, well, what do you mean?
Right.
Or, well, we haven't asked directly.
And so I just say that because we need to pay extra attention to ensuring communities' voices are part of that.
I'm glad they're at the table.
I just want us to not let those be outweighed.
And again, ensuring that we're creating systems in our— as we're continuing to make these plans and, you know, set these visions as a city.
City that we're involving youth, we're involving community, we're talking to people directly impacted in a geographic area, but also more broadly by these things.
And I think that there's absolutely ways to make it harmonious, but it does take effort, and it does take the city, I believe, being responsible, taking the responsibility of ensuring that community is Brought along.
And so that's why I raised that.
I'm really grateful for your answer.
I think that you all have been doing a good job of bringing together partners, and I love what you said, that yeah, you're not always going to agree, and great, duke it out, right?
That's how you make great policy, by having everyone at the table.
And so happy to support with my office.
Like I said, I've got a big policy that's moving soon that I'm really excited to bring to council and to talk about because it is something that the nation has seen a trend towards.
It is something that the commissions have, you know, endorsed, and the recent news that we're hearing, we really need to act quickly on lowering emissions.
And so again, thank you for this panel, and I look forward to your continued partnership.
That's all for now.
Thanks.
Jules Bailey
Well said.
Sonrisa Cooper
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Morillo, go right ahead.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you.
Thank you everyone so much for your presentations today.
I think it was really Lovely to hear the different ideas that came out of community.
And I think that those are— I just took a lot of the bike towns this week when my bike broke, and they are very expensive.
And I think if they were more affordable, more people would use them.
So I think there are easy things like that that we can do to try to adjust how people move through the city.
I think I'm— it was— I don't want to turn this into a whole PSF discussion, so I won't do that.
But I guess I'll just name for the city staff that, and maybe for my colleagues as well, that It was really interesting to hear how much of PSF dollars goes to private businesses and industry in order for them to become up to the green standard that they're supposed to be.
And I'm not even saying that's a bad thing or a good thing.
I'm just noting that.
And it's interesting to see so much of the opposition coming out of the business industry on PSF when it seems like The way it's been rerouted to go straight back to them for these upgrades seems like it's very beneficial to industry.
So I think it would be helpful to see, and I think community has asked for this a lot, and even as a councilor, I feel like I've asked for this and not necessarily gotten it, a full breakdown of how PSF dollars go to private businesses, to industry versus going to an individual constituent's household to help them fix their roof and get it solar upgraded, right?
I think getting to see who is benefiting from those PSF dollars and how on a one-to-one scale is helpful, while also noting that obviously if you help an industry decarbonize, then that's going to have a larger impact than an individual's house.
But this presentation just sort of raised that question in me because You would think from the way that people talk about PCEF that it's actively harming businesses or something.
And then we hear that so much of this money goes back to them.
And I'm just very curious about how those dollars are used.
And I think it goes— I've heard from, you know, it goes to nonprofits, goes to private businesses, and then people have to apply for the PCEF grants to upgrade their homes.
And there's a pretty strict cutoff for individuals trying to upgrade.
Yeah.
To get their water bill, electricity bill down because you have to reach a certain income.
And if you're $1 above that, then, then you get cut off from certain programs.
So—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Councilor, I want to note for you that we don't have PSEF representatives in the room right now.
So I think these are important points.
I just want to make sure that you know that folks from that program are not in the room to hear them.
Angelita Morillo
Yeah, that's okay.
I think the other industry folks that receive these dollars should hear this as well.
I think that's fine for them.
And I'm sure Vivian Satterfield can help us later get those dollars.
But I think that having that breakdown in this committee would be really important for us to see and for the public to have that transparency around how those dollars are used.
So, because at the end of the day, I think that we can pass a lot of policies, but the thing that we struggle with at the city right now is the financials of who gets access to what funds and when.
Right.
And it seems like every time there's a way to use city dollars, Especially within the clean energy movement.
It goes into the private sector for things that they can do for upgrades.
And I'm just thinking about that a lot as I think about the city's finances.
So thanks for that.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Ryan?
Dan Ryan
Yes, thank you, Chair.
And it was really a great presentation.
It's provided me with something that, you know, I promoted for decades in my own professional career, which is Building those cross-sector tables and having measurable goals and doing continuous improvement results-based facilitation.
So you don't have biased facilitators, which is often the case.
So I'm scratching at something here that's very pleasing, and it's something that's been desperately needed in government all over the place.
Don't I know?
It's been exhausting trying to build it in government.
I don't know, maybe it's election cycles that get in the way, but it's really hard for government electeds to oversee that organic objective type work.
And so the only way it's going to work is if it goes beyond election cycles, that you build something really strong.
And so I think what I heard today by who's in the room, which is unique unfortunately, so thank you for being a part of this, to hear those stories.
So Vivian, when I was earlier looking at the current collaborators, are these 4 groups that was advertised, are they frequently meeting now?
And if so, how often do they meet?
How long have they been meeting?
And who's staffing them?
Vivian Satterfield
I'm sorry, Councilor Ryan, do you mind refreshing my memory on which 4 groups?
Dan Ryan
Your presentation provided us with the current collaborators.
They were listed under community and environment, government, business, utilities services.
That's a big kitchen sink one.
And workforce and contractor development.
Is that not what I heard today?
Vivian Satterfield
It was.
I'm sorry, I just didn't catch that part on the microphone.
We've just started the climate action planning development process, and so we'll be having a more public-facing component.
That's the staff-level focus areas that have been gathering currently.
Dan Ryan
So are they meeting currently?
Vivian Satterfield
Yes, they are.
Dan Ryan
These groups?
Vivian Satterfield
Yes.
Dan Ryan
How long have they been meeting?
Vivian Satterfield
We just launched the climate action planning process last month internally.
Dan Ryan
So they're really new.
You guys have had your first meetings basically?
Correct.
Okay.
So we're seeing this at the very beginning state.
Vivian Satterfield
Getting in on the ground floor, that's correct.
Dan Ryan
Sonrisa's coming up.
Yeah.
Hi.
Sonrisa Cooper
Hi, Councilor.
Sunnisa Cooper again for the record.
The slide that you're referring to is actually from my presentation Which is about the clean industry presentation.
The current collaborators, the categories are really just for sort of visual organization.
They're not defined subgroups.
The one that was community and environment is the only one, and that is the same set of individuals or organizations that were in the co-design group that Mary Pivoteau discussed.
Thank you.
The rest of the folks on that list are just examples of a lot of the people that we have at the table.
We have many people that do kind of different configurations of convening partners.
So the Portland Partnership for Clean Industry, they have a stakeholder group that meets regularly.
We have a community stakeholder group that meets regularly.
We have lots of other individuals that we have sort of one-on-one touchpoints with.
So those aren't defined groups, I would say, but it's— the categories were mainly to organize the slide.
Dan Ryan
But so there isn't a group under business utilities and services that's meeting monthly?
There's only the one that's community environment?
Is that what I just heard?
I am confused officially because this slide— got me excited because I finally saw what I've been asking for, which is actually cross-sector engagement, where I'm hoping we have a North Star, where I'm hoping we have community-wide indicators, where I'm hoping you had really, really difficult meetings with a lot of tension in the room to decide upon those.
Yes, I have a background in this.
I know it takes a lot of tough meetings with tension to get there, but we're never going to reach climate goals in Portland, Oregon, which has been I think we're failing miserably in the state and the city of talking a lot about this but not producing results.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Councilor, I think there may be 3 strings here we need to pull.
One is where and how are those cross-sector conversations happening?
Because I think they are happening in this group.
The second is, are there specific great apps?
Dan Ryan
Now, you can sell it for them, but I kind of want to hear it from the—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yes, yes.
But I want to suggest I suggest that we hear this in 3 pieces because there's that question that you're asking.
There's the question around, are there these specific breakouts?
And then there's a question around whether that translates to work happening within the climate action plan separate from the slide that you're looking at, which I should have noticed when you first had it, had a question about it.
I apologize.
That came from the presentation from our—.
Dan Ryan
Well, I'm just kind of in real time experiencing this where I got excited about what I thought I heard and now I'm hearing something different.
Jules Bailey
Councilor, it's a great question.
You get to the heart of it here.
We have a regular meeting.
I mean, just to get very tactical.
Thank you.
We have a meeting every other week in which we have the business community represented by a couple different voices.
We have, in fact, several different voices.
We have community environmental, we have the public sector, we have developers, Technical providers.
We have a lot of different people.
And this is literally every other week we're getting together in a standing meeting.
And it's in that meeting that we even have, as Sonrisa mentioned, surveys going out and saying, how comfortable are you with these people in the meeting?
And what is happening?
And is this vision clear?
And what's happening?
And it is— it can be hard sometimes to see the results of that and say, oh.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's me.
I haven't done a very good job of explaining this to everybody else.
I need to go and explain my side of this back to them.
Or there isn't a lot of trust that's been built here.
We need to dive into this area more regularly.
But those groups, we have a meeting tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Yeah, so we have a meeting tomorrow.
And there are a lot of tough conversations that are happening there that are cross-sectoral.
All of that is very tactical and it's focused on, okay, How are we going to stand this up?
What is this going to look like?
How are we going to actually make these investments?
What's the relationship between the Prosper grants and the Portland Partnership for Clean Industry?
How are we making sure that we're reporting back to the public effectively?
How are we integrating research and evaluation into this?
All of that is happening, and those conversations are regular and ongoing.
And then all of that is then rolling up into this sort of larger work of how the industrial sector then plugs into the overarching climate action plan.
And that's been, I think, really effective.
And frankly, I've never been part of a process like that before.
Dan Ryan
Oh, it's great.
When you use the word comfortable, that word, I want to pause on that word.
If the answer is no, I'm not comfortable, what's the person's response that's asking that question?
Jules Bailey
That's a great question.
So So I will say that I think at one point I had done a less than stellar job of maybe explaining some of the things that we were working on in the Portland Partnership for Clean Industry side, and it was a little bit muddled on how that intersected with some of the work that Prosper was doing.
And so it was just helpful to understand that and to be able to explain it better to people and then get some feedback directly in real time.
And those are the kinds of conversations that we get to have in that group.
And it, I think, makes for a much better, much more collaborative working environment to be able to have that level of trust.
It's hard to get off the rails when you're literally sitting across the table from each other every other week and talking about the issues that are arising.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, I think I'm just reminiscing on when I did this type of work called collective impact work, and my staff would come back and say, that was a really hard meeting.
There was so much tension.
I'd be like, great.
That's good news.
And so instead of doing that Portland polite thing where there must be good people in the meeting and bad people in the meeting, like, that's not working.
So what I hope that you start to do, and I thought I was starting to hear this, is what are the shared goals?
What are the shared metrics that we're all going to look at?
And then of course the real work is in some of those sub-indicators.
Yeah.
Who's staffing that type of continuous improvement type thinking that is necessary for this group to be effective and successful?
Jules Bailey
Before you answer the staffing part—.
Dan Ryan
And why is Metro not a part of the department, by the way, when they're like basically an environmental organization?
Just curious.
But yeah.
Jules Bailey
Just to comment very quickly on your first part of your question, then you can talk about the staffing part of it.
But that's why Sunrisa talked about reading out the vision statement at the beginning every single time.
What are we here to achieve?
And let's get everybody focused on the same thing, and that has been incredibly helpful.
And then to say we're all in the room trying to solve the exact same problem from different perspectives, that's where a lot of that trust building happens, to your point.
I don't know if you want to speak about staffing, but—.
Sonrisa Cooper
Sure, thank you.
To your question about the continuous improvement and who's leading that, Portland State University has been a really fantastic partner and leader in our coalition around that.
They have academic expertise doing the more quantitative carbon accounting and the kind of tracking of outcomes from the grants themselves, but also they are looking internally at how well we work together, what we can do to improve those relationships, improve our workflow.
And that really, I think, speaks to what I mentioned earlier about how everyone kind of has their own expertise, their own lane that they bring to this work.
And that's a major strength of Portland State University as a convener, as a highly respected institution in our city.
They really stand out in that role in this group.
Dan Ryan
That's helpful.
Who's the philanthropic partners so far?
Jules Bailey
I've been working with a number of folks that I don't want to name on the record right now because they're not officially part of it yet, but I'd be happy to have a follow-up conversation.
Dan Ryan
Great.
Love to be helpful there.
I think what I want to just say is that in District 2, we represent the working waterfront.
We are where the Columbia and the Willamette come together.
And there are a lot of great jobs along the waterfront.
We also have a high industry footprint.
Those are jobs that are family wage jobs.
We're also losing some of those mid-sized companies.
A week doesn't go by where I don't hear about another one relocating, usually just to Clark County, unfortunately.
Well, no, that's not unfortunate.
It's really expensive for a business to move.
So this is a red alert.
Thank you.
About the fact that Portland has to figure out how to be a place where green industry really takes off.
And we've lost a lot of time trying to be perfect, and it's not good.
And so how can we start to accept the messiness of this kind of work and have the courage to take steps and to measure what that success looks like, even if it makes about half the table uncomfortable?
Jules Bailey
Amen.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Councilor.
Dan Ryan
Oh, can I just add one more thing?
Uh, who was Jason Lewis?
Is that your name?
Yes.
Um, I am going to call you out.
Um, it's positive.
It was so refreshing to hear data-driven dialogue in that you're actually measuring what you want success for.
And I just hope that when the measurements don't go the way that an optimist would want, we try to figure out why, and then we reload again.
That's continuous improvement.
Indeed.
Big part of continuous improvement, as you know, is acceptance of the truth and then try to move it to a better place by changing behaviors.
Jason Lewis
My background's in engineering, so well-versed.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
And usually adults are the toughest to work with in terms of behavior change.
When I did work in education, the kids were fine, but boy, it was really hard to get adults to change behavior.
Indeed.
Hence looping to the addiction crisis.
So please know that this is so important.
Thank you.
Thanks for being at the table.
Don't give up.
You won't always be popular there.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Councilor.
We have just a few minutes left, so I'll hold my questions, but I do want to note a couple I just want to say a couple of things.
Colleagues, we heard some specific concrete actions today that we were asked to consider taking, and I hope that each of you considers those.
We still have time in some of our meetings later this year that I am making sure we don't fill too rapidly.
My staff is in the back of the room saying no, we don't, but I think we have one meeting with a little time.
So that if we have policies we want to take on as a committee, we can do so.
And there were some standalone asks as well as things that we'll need to roll into other work and questions that we should just start asking as, as habit about the impact of some of the decisions that we make that I hope this committee can take on.
I want to note, when I hear about the work in the industrial sector, that I think this is critical work, and I hope that the next I know there's a lot to do still on this step, but I hope that the next step is thinking about how the solutions that you are currently working on can focus on replicable solutions, on scalable solutions, on exportable solutions.
Finding a solution for one company that lowers their carbon footprint and increases their bottom line, which hopefully is then put toward paying folks more who work there, um, is incredibly important.
But with limited public resources, we need to make sure that we are supporting work that can move to other companies within Portland and hopefully get marketed outside of our city and help bring dollars into our city while exporting solutions to other cities.
That allows us to lower the cost per solution.
I think my colleague noted some concern about the amount of money we're putting in.
Let's make sure that we're stretching it as far as we can.
But it also allows us to ensure that our impact in reducing carbon emissions goes beyond just our own city borders, which we will have to do if we really want to make a change bigger than ourselves.
With that, I will wrap us up, though there is a lot more that we all could say.
Thank you to everybody who was a part of our panels today.
This is such critical work, and there is so much more work that we can and absolutely will take on.
I appreciate everyone making the time, and I just will note a thank you to my team because I know it took a lot of work to coordinate this many panels on a single time.
Thank you.
And I, as always, appreciate the work that my staff puts into making things happen for our committee.
Colleagues, we will be back in 2 weeks.
With that, I will adjourn our meeting.
Sonrisa Cooper
Thank you.