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.
Ruth Levine
Cool.
Jamie Dunphy
Good afternoon.
I'm calling to order this work session of the Portland City Council.
It's hello, friends.
Welcome, colleagues and folks watching at home.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Does anyone watch at home?
Olivia Clark
I don't know.
Jamie Dunphy
Usually they watch at home, and when I say something dumb, they let me know.
So, uh, hopefully that won't happen today, or it might have already.
Dan Ryan
That's right, that's right.
Jamie Dunphy
So, um, welcome to what we're— you know, welcome to the adventures of what will be happening with the budget next year.
CFO Biery and Budget Director Levine are here to be leading a presentation and a Q&A.
I'll be running the queue, keeping us on time and on topic.
You know, we've already had quite a lot of after-action and some postmortem discussions about what happened with this year's budget.
Our goal today is to begin to translate some of our concerns and our desires into a set, a concrete set of deliverable priorities for staff to execute for us.
Our job is to be as clear to these amazing professionals.
As we— and to tell them exactly what it is we want to see and where there is limited capacity, what we want for them to do first.
Where there's a misunderstanding or confusion, for us to find a way to clarity.
CBO is going to be on deck to begin communicating with new expectations to bureaus very soon.
So it's up to us to get those expectations solidified.
The staff presentation today is going to lay out some key areas that council has taken interest in with some options for how we could approach each.
And I'll let them do their full preamble here.
But to frame today, I want to talk a little bit about where I think we are and the clear changes that I know I'd like to see come about next year.
In general, I'm relatively happy with the way that we managed things this year between the mayor's proposed budget and the end of the fiscal year.
The introduction of the current service level budgeting was a huge benefit.
However, when we cut the city administrator's report and the early year budget work, we created a situation in which the mayor's proposed the proposed budget appeared to come out of a black box, and much of our legislative time was spent trying to decode what was in the proposed and to access the information used to craft it.
I would like to see us return to public work sessions on the budget prior to the CA report and the proposed.
These should be fundamentally about what the bureau is doing now, a clear and rational look into what we are currently spending our resources on.
We should expect that bureaus come to the table with concrete ways for decision makers to understand the program commitments of bureaus and have insight into what comprises bulk thank you.
I'm interested in understanding the increases and decreases, but not as keenly as I want to make sure that we clearly see what our government is actually doing today.
That way we'll be able to understand what a bureau is and what it does so that we can have the decision packages on the table and we can understand them in the context of the work of the enterprise and make informed choices.
Yes, no, or have you thought about a third thing.
I want to see that happen in public with council, the mayor, and city administrators sitting side by side to receive it.
We all play our roles in shaping the budget, and the process of communicating what that task should start with is us all at the same table with the same information.
We're a government in transition.
The city has a longstanding practice of using bulk appropriations and non-standardized budgeting practices across bureaus.
In a world where commissioners were the executives in small portfolios of bureaus where legislative and executive actions were mixed and there was not really a single central city, this was problematic but at least natural.
And here on council, I think we have a lot of agitation about missing information that— about missing information that is that the budgeting practices have not really changed, but the law controlling how the legislative and administrative— administration communicate very much has.
We haven't created norms that serve us adequately.
It's also worth saying that the city administrator is trying to centralize and standardize how bureau budgets— bureaus budget and report.
But this work also has not been completed yet.
Sometimes when a councilor does not know what something in the budget means or does, what does the enterprise service line in Bureau X or Y actually mean?
The city budget office also doesn't know.
I want to remind us all that this is what we're solving for, in addition to shaking out the relationship between the executive and the legislative branches.
So As always, let's keep it clean.
No slide tackles, hands above the waist.
Let's have fun out there.
Ruth and Jonas, take it away.
Jonas Biery
Great.
Thank you, Council President.
We'll keep our yellow cards handy if necessary.
For the record, Jonas Biery, the city's Chief Financial Officer.
And thank you, Council President, for the introduction.
I'm going to kind of expand on, I think, a lot of what you said about the process to get here and kind of set the stage a little bit as we launch.
So as you mentioned, why are we having this work session?
Over the last 2 months since adoption of the '26-'27 budget, we often think of it as a pause.
We didn't pause.
We immediately, as soon as that ink was dry, began doing robust and intentional after-action activities so that we could try to identify the opportunities to present to you today for potential budget process improvements.
We received feedback from council, from community members, and from internal technical budget So the information presented today is kind of our attempt to synthesize that feedback that we've collected for feedback, for consideration and discussion and feedback from Council.
I think some— the good news side of this equation is that that additional coordinated dialogue has helped us identify opportunities that we think generally align for Council, for the public, and for the administration.
We'll talk about that in a second.
I'd say in particular, the work that we've done with the City Budget Office, In particular, largely hearing a request for consistency in process and in expectations, which will then enhance accuracy, will enhance timeliness, and ultimately support decision-making all along the chain.
And so I think that'll be an important kind of baseline.
And I want to acknowledge that, as you know, we're also working on developing actions related to broader financial stabilization.
More info will be coming to you on that in a couple of weeks at a future work session on September 23rd.
But I do expect and anticipate that the ideas that are bubbling up today will align and relate to recommendations that'll come forward in that work.
So maybe less good news, and you alluded to this, Council President, is that we can't do everything all at once in one budget cycle.
Some things will need to occur in phases or in successive order.
Others will be constrained by limitations on time or limitations on financial resources.
So it is critical for us today to get your thoughts and input.
Thank you.
Because we really begin the preliminary work on the '27-'28 budget right now.
A lot of the work that happens behind the scenes and under the ocean really does start in September.
And so it's really critical that we have your perspective as we begin doing that work, getting ready for spring.
So the agenda today, kind of run of show, is that I'm going to provide some quick background.
And summary of just the general feedback, and then we'll get to the meat of the presentation, which is really discussing possible process improvements.
We'd love to make sure we make space at the end, and I think one more slide ahead, Ruth, sorry.
Dan Ryan
I don't—.
Steve Novick
Cool.
Jonas Biery
Make space at the end to talk about next steps so we can really move things forward.
Couple of notes.
One is we were so excited to talk to you that we didn't factor in time for a break, but we certainly expect to do that.
And so at some point we'll look, I think there's a natural breakpoint here after the second theme, but look to add a break thank you.
I just wanted to break in for sanity.
The other thing I wanted to note here is that the kind of byline at the bottom, I want to direct attention there both for council and for the public.
While it's an imperfect resource, the CBO, the City Budget Office, does produce a budget dashboard that has really good kind of digestible snapshots of city bureaus and programs.
It's certainly not perfected yet, but it is a really valuable resource.
And one of the things that we've learned over the last couple months is that many people don't know that that exists.
And so I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight that for folks today, and we'll probably continue to highlight that as we go forward.
The presentation cadence will be that for each of the 4 themes, which I'm gonna present in a moment, I'll provide a general introduction to the feedback and the theme.
Ruth will discuss some potential improvements, and then we'll look to get feedback from you.
Each option, each— within each theme, there'll be a series of options that you've probably seen if you've seen the presentation.
Each option will include information It'll include an indication of who we think would be in the lead to implement that.
It'll include information about who we believe key implementation support partners are and an indication of whether we think it's a task that's easy, challenging, or maybe somewhere in between.
We do need to get through all the content today, as I said, so we can move forward.
So we'll look to Council President and look to all of you to help manage that time.
We've set it up so there's around 30 minutes collectively for each theme, which will allow us to get through everything today.
Jamie Dunphy
And, Carl, I will be holding us to those times, limiting colleagues to 5 minutes per councilor.
And that means that obviously not every councilor will get to talk on each of the 4 themes.
So please, let's be as succinct as possible and get through this.
Jonas Biery
Great, thank you.
And then the last few introductory points before we move to the real content.
I want to acknowledge that many of the options that we're going to review are interactive and interrelated.
And so these are not organized in a I want to sort of reiterate that a chosen path in regard to one option may impact another option.
This is not all or none.
It's very dynamic.
I think of it more as a kind of choose-your-own-adventure opportunity we have here.
We're going to obviously look to continuously improve.
Thank you, Council President, for acknowledging the improvement last year, and I think we'll continue to see that.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Mayor.
Jonas Biery
I also want to note that nothing that's presented here should be interpreted as being unanimous feedback.
There will be things that are less clear.
I expect there will be disagreement about where some of the suggestions may lie, and that's part of the reason, the value and reason for this conversation.
We will catch all that feedback.
We'll work with council leadership and administrative leadership to prioritize improvements for '27-'28 as best we can.
Lastly, by design and by intention, you'll notice that nothing in here is identified as a recommendation.
Dan Ryan
Yes.
Jonas Biery
While Ruth and I, and certainly everyone here has opinions, we're really looking today for your input so that we can develop actions.
So I want to be really clear that we're not presenting these as recommendations from the CBO or the CFO or the administration.
It's just a synthesis of the feedback that we've heard so we can receive your input.
Loretta Smith
All right.
Jonas Biery
So just to summarize what we've done last year, as you recall, we pursued one-on-one conversations with councilors, We had some other kind of interspersed input, and that guided some good improvements.
I think with a couple years now of experience, we hope to really accelerate, to use these conversations to accelerate that continuous improvement process for the next budget cycle.
This year, we expanded our efforts to collect more robust input and kind of 3 legs, so to speak.
The Finance and Governance Committee of the Whole Chair, and initiated committee conversations about the budget process, and we've listened to that dialogue.
So that was really important input to this.
The City Budget Office pursued a survey for council offices, and then we again pursued one-on-one conversations with each of you.
Additionally, and this was a really enhanced piece over prior years, is we undertook additional information gathering on the administrative side, including a survey, an after-action retreat for the humans who do the technical side of the budget work, and a focused conversation.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you.
Jonas Biery
With the CA's executive leadership team.
And again, I would just reiterate, I think one of the values that I've found in that is that there are many, many things that we are aligned on and that we all want to see.
So I think that's been really valuable.
So these are how we've kind of bucketed the themes in the kind of categories that we think were universally shared.
The outcomes are better earlier.
Dan Ryan
Yeah.
Jonas Biery
Information and shared access to that information, better decision-making supports, improved community engagement, and improved budget accuracy.
So with that tee-up, we'll now move straight into talking about the themes and improvement possibilities.
And reminder, I'll tee up a theme, Ruth will talk about the options, and then after we talk about the options, we'll pause for some Q&A on each theme.
So the first theme is around information and access.
And within this theme, the general feedback was a desire for information to be shared with council earlier in the process, efforts to improve visibility into program changes and funding, including breaking out one-time versus ongoing funding and year-over-year changes, expanded access to financial data, and staff support for council.
More consistent reporting on equity impacts and performance measures, and providing both narrative information that has both less dense narrative and more detailed spreadsheets.
And so that's the quick summary of that general feedback that's informed the possibilities that Ruth's gonna now walk through.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Great.
Ruth Levine
And just a quick reminder, these options aren't mutually exclusive.
They're also not exhaustive.
So interested in any additional ideas you all have here today when we get to the Q&A.
So for this one, and this is probably the most robust theme, so we put it first, but the information access.
So the first— thank you.
Also for the record, Ruth Levine, Budget Director.
Haven't been here in a while.
So the first one is really around program offer data and reporting.
And some of the pieces of this that we could, I think, improve include better breaking out of one-time versus ongoing funding within a program offer.
That's a little confusing.
It's mostly an issue in the general fund, but it comes up in a few other places as well.
Performance measures that are tied to specific program offers and potentially also to the bureau as a whole or the service area as a whole.
And then consistency in the equity, we call it impacts, but it's really considerations or objectives within a program.
And then continuing to improve on format and tone and, you know, what type of information is included.
You know, we've talked about introducing character limits, for example.
So that's the kind of thing that would go into that bucket.
And then just a note here that this is probably a multi-year plan.
The piece that I just wanna highlight for you that's probably not obvious from where you sit is that these are all connected to financial data in SAP and they have, There's like multiple layers of it.
And so combining programs, renaming them, getting rid of old ones, that's work we can do, but it takes a lot of time and effort and many people across the organization, not just budget staff.
So that's part of the reason this needs to be a multi-year effort is kind of the first step is really a triage and figure out what needs to be done.
And then the second step is take the most high-value ones and work on those, and then we'll eventually work through it.
So just wanted to flag that.
That's why it's kind of listed as medium and there's quite a few other people involved.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Sorry.
Ruth Levine
The next, Council President spoke about this in his introductory remarks, but work sessions earlier.
This kind of just shows you the trade-off of earlier versus later.
You know, more likely you'd end up somewhere in the middle, but the, you know, the earlier, obviously we have It would be basically focused on the current year's budget data and what do the bureaus do and how do they deliver their services.
The later would obviously include more information about what the options are to expand or reduce services and what would that look like.
Somewhere in the middle, you could get a mix of both depending on exactly when it happens.
Improved budget book materials.
This is listed as easy, but that's just to say we will improve the budget book materials.
But I think the question is really how.
We heard a lot that we want to make narrative more concise.
I think that's fairly easy to accomplish.
Reporting budget decisions at the program offer level.
This ties to the program offer piece, but, you know, So what is currently delivered, what would be changed by a particular decision or set of decisions, and what would the resulting program look like if those decisions were approved by council is the kind of information that I hear you all saying you want.
That's a little bit more challenging, but I think we can make progress on that.
And then the third one I think we can certainly do and improve is providing a spreadsheet with, you know, prior year's budget by program offer.
Thank you.
Sort of base budget changes, budgets before proposed changes, and then changes and the resulting total by program offer.
And we can certainly provide that in a way that's hopefully easier to digest.
The next one is around expanded staffing and data access.
On the staffing front, there's sort of 2 flavors that I see.
One is more people during the peak.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yes.
Ruth Levine
Season in April, May, and the second is more, more like lengthy or constant support throughout the year.
And then on the data side, um, you know, there's ways to give council staff view-only access to budget data.
You know, I want to make sure we would provide the appropriate trainings to do that so that you're understanding what you see.
Um, and then obviously there's sort of considerations with that, potentially, depending on which way we go.
So that was theme 1.
These questions are just to get you started.
Obviously, you can go whatever direction you all want.
The—.
These— for each section, we've highlighted the questions where we have the most uncertainty.
And so the first is around budget work sessions, and the second is around staff support.
But feel free to take it away.
Olivia Clark
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
And colleagues, both in your inbox and on your desk in front of you, there is a draft very, very, very much so draft.
This is something my staff threw together of a potential calendar of what the year might look like, just so you can physically look at it, but also interested in just getting folks' feedback.
So folks, feel free to jump into the queue.
Olivia Clark
Councilor Maria.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you both so much for being here and for being willing to talk even more postmortem about the budget and what we can do differently this time.
I agree.
I think that this year's budget cycle was a lot better than the first time around.
And so I think there were already huge improvements made from our user standpoint.
And I think having shared information as councilors, I took a lot of notes on this prior.
And I think one of the things that we heard a lot of feedback on from the past meetings is that a lot of us want information by bureau, by program for the final adopted budget.
And I bring this up because the first request has the goal of grounding ourselves in current service levels before budget development and budget work sessions.
So I think that would be a more helpful breakdown.
I think this could also be accomplished by returning to the publishing program offers the way that we used to have in the prior form of government.
The adopted budget used to include a whole volume that was dedicated just to the program offers that we no longer do anymore.
And I think that's I think that's just limited our ability to see what different things are available to us.
I also feel like the prior program offers were a really good place to start, and I think that they could also provide more information if we wanted to enhance that, which could include descriptions on sources of revenues and the kinds of expenses incurred in the course of regular business too.
And as far as timing goes, I think it makes sense for us to have those after the mayor has proposed in order to understand the changes that are being suggested, but only if we receive this other adopted baseline information in the fall, because council and the public need to have those available if we need to make those decisions.
Ruth Levine
So is it possible or feasible for you guys to reestablish the program offers that existed before, or is that I can speak to that real quick.
So we do have program offers in the book.
They are just incorporated because we have a new budget book software.
So the printed volume has 2 volumes now, but the online version doesn't have volumes just because it's on a website.
So the program offers are there.
They have changed slightly since the before times, but we are also totally open to changing what information is in there to help you yes.
Get what you need to know.
I think, so, you know, encourage folks to obviously look at the adopted budget book online and look at the dashboard.
But also I've set up 2, like, workshops, I think I called them, on the 21st and 22nd of this month for council staff and for council and staff to look at, like, hold up program, hold up whatever piece of information it is, and we can talk more in detail about what what it is that you're not finding in there, just so that it's easier to have a conversation about it offline.
So hopefully that's helpful.
Angelita Morillo
Yeah, I know that they're incorporated into our books, but they're very different than how they used to be, and they don't have that same amount of information.
So maybe we can connect one-on-one after this to talk about the types of information that we need.
But I think that that would help address a lot of the issues that people have right now.
Thank you.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Morillo.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Council President.
Um, first of all, I want to start with a thank you to our budget team for including that current service level identification this year.
I think that fits within this category.
That was really helpful for me in understanding not just what the across-the-board increased— increases in costs are but what we have been doing and how, how we're going to be able to budget to do that again.
So I hope that we can stick with the current service level, whether it's alongside or instead of the current allocation level system.
Not an answer to the questions you have, but just a piece that I didn't see anywhere in the presentation here or to follow that I want to make sure we're not losing.
And that is that we have had conversations about the level at which we budget and that idea of bulk appropriations versus line item budgeting versus position budgeting or something in between.
And I know it will take us a few years to get to the right level, but I don't want this theme to drop off of our to-do list or out of our conversations because I do need to— I do think that we need to move away not just from listing our appropriations as bulk appropriations in the budget book and the information that's publicly available, but from budgeting in bulk appropriations.
I think a position-by-position budget is too heavy-handed and too detailed.
We need our bureau directors to have the flexibility to do the work that we are asking them to get done, and we need to understand that sometimes midway through the year there are changes in priorities that they have to be able to carry out.
But there has to be a level that is somewhere in between the bulk budget appropriations and that position-by-position budgeting that allows Council, and by extension Portlanders, to have confidence that the priorities we lay out are what is actually going to be enacted.
Once this budget moves through the different layers of folks who have been paying attention to what we say at the dais, to the folks who are actually implementing on the ground and making sure those programs work for Portlanders.
And so if that's not in here because not enough people said it and it's not a this-year priority or because it takes too much effort to put into place, I understand, but I'd like to make sure that it continues to be part of our record and our discussion of the types of changes we need to make broadly over the next few years.
Ruth Levine
Can I just add one quick thing?
Didn't exclude it on purpose, one.
Two, so thank you.
Two, I just, in part for folks who are listening, I think there's maybe a little bit of confusion, at least in the difference in the way people talk about things.
The appropriation schedule that you all adopt is set by the categories that are laid out in Oregon budget law.
So program expenditures, contingency, debt.
We obviously budget at the commitment item level.
And the question is, what are the rules and really what are the policies and potentially code that govern when can the administration change that and when do we have to come back to council for approval?
So we do budget specific positions, but we have a position management, it's an HRAR, Policy that governs when and how those can change.
So I think it's the connection between— there's the appropriation schedule.
Yes, that isn't likely to change because it's sort of set by budget law.
But then there's other rules that govern how do we change, because we can't obviously cross categories within the appropriation schedule.
But within that, how do we— when and how can the administration change things, I think is what you're getting at.
So just for—.
Angelita Morillo
Yeah.
Ruth Levine
For budget folks who are listening, we're like, we do budget people.
That's, I think, where the—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
What you're talking about.
Yes, and thank you for parsing it in the right words.
I'm not using the right words.
And it is, it's outside of the budget calendar.
It's a conversation we don't have during budget time.
It's a conversation we need to be having now and over the next 3 months and next summer around those budget policies.
And so I I understand it's not how does our actual budget process work, but it is a theme that comes out of these after-actions every year that I want to make sure we don't lose as we are talking about how we build the budget for next year.
Jonas Biery
And Councilor, I might add to take this opportunity so I don't have to say this like 20 times today, but bring that energy as well when we talk about financial stabilization, because I think there'll be a close connection to thinking about how we recraft those policies in the context of the stabilization actions that's very closely related.
And so I think that will occur a lot today.
I'm not going to say it 20 times, but wanted to take this opportunity to drop that.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I'm very excited for us to get to the conversation around financial stabilization, and I'm looking forward to seeing what my colleagues who have been working with you on that are coming up with.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Thank you, Council President.
I just have a couple of questions.
You know what I, I want?
I want some spreadsheets, and I want the spreadsheets to include the document that I gave you from the county with the year over for the last 2 years, which, um, funding is— which program is being paid for with, um, restricted dollars, um, general fund dollars On one page so that I can see if this is a new program or old program.
I, I— it's really difficult for me to have a, a story, and I keep saying the same thing, having those stories, um, it just only irritates me.
I don't need a story for you to explain.
I just need a spreadsheet.
Let me see what— what did we have this program last year?
How much did we pay?
How many FTEs did we have?
Councilwoman.
How many FTs are we losing?
I can see the up and over, so I can see where the changes are.
It, um, it is distracting to have everything in paragraph form.
It would make our lives a whole lot easier.
And I would challenge you all, and I wouldn't mind taking a road trip one day and just going over and getting the, the last year's budget of Multnomah County and us sitting through it and going through it so you can see it.
Thank you.
I don't want to keep saying it 20 times.
I don't have anything else.
I love this, this, this new way you all changed things around.
Council President had some suggestions that were really good in terms of what we hear.
And so I'm good with it.
I think a lot of this will be solved if you just give us a spreadsheet.
I know the mayor uses a spreadsheet.
He's getting a spreadsheet of some stuff, but we're not getting the spreadsheet.
I'm going to get you a spreadsheet.
Mitch Green
Yes.
Loretta Smith
So I just want to see how many, how many, how many, um, FTEs are we cutting this year so I can see directly.
Go to it, go to the page.
It just makes it easier because when we have to keep coming back to you and reading through all this stuff and say we took 24%— that's the other thing, you all use percentages.
Don't give me a percentage.
Tell me in dollars, in cents, how much are we reducing.
When you say we're reducing this by 24% and then don't tell me what that reduction— what number that reduction is, That's a problem.
It's— I don't— the storybooks, the percentages, just give me a spreadsheet and all of our lives will be much better.
Thank you.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Green.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, yeah.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Council President.
I've started my timer.
Um, uh, thanks so much.
I just—.
I'm going to echo some things for the sake of brevity.
I echo that it was an improvement from the first year.
I really want to laud the diligent work that y'all are doing.
My office, when we had questions, we got answers to those questions, but that interaction is under-resourced relative to the demand of the questions.
And so I'm glad to see on one of the slides that you guys are grappling with the challenging sort of feedback that how do we get It's important to be honest that there are constraints.
And if we have to talk about how to resource to invest in those, that's what we need to do as a budget committee.
I would like to think that we could front-load this more, but I think at the end of the day, we're always going to have a situation where we respond to the mayor's proposed budget because Oregon budget law sets a certain thing.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I think that's a good point.
Mitch Green
And so I want the next proposed budget to contemplate an investment in our ability to staff up that capability.
And if it's in the CBO, that's great.
If it's contemplating training council operations staff or some FTEs that have the right skill set, that's also fine.
I think that maybe some training— I think it's mentioned here, but some training for councilor staff Mm-hmm.
To, to engage in that SAP query on a standardized basis so we can trust each other when we do that work.
Because some of our offices do that, but I think it's like if it doesn't come from the CBO, then it's not real.
Uh, so I want to get away from that place of skepticism.
So I support kind of taking this on.
I recognize it's going to take some work and it's going to take some decisions from this body to resource that.
Um, I've got 2 minutes left.
I also want to lend my voice in support of moving to a more granular level of budgeting.
I think one of the things I'm— well, I won't spoil the story on the financial stabilization stuff, but I think when we go into the community and we talk to Portlanders, there's a desire to have a clearer understanding of what we're spending our money on.
Thank you.
And that, that exerts itself in a lot of different ways that we have those experiences.
And I was, I was doing some reading on previous councils because I like to do a little history work on this, and I came across an article where Tom Potter, Dan Saltzman, Eric Sten were at a community budget listening session, and everyone was thrilled because they got a printout of line item expenditures, and they were just having really honest conversations.
And so I think that if we can give councilors the rough kind of spreadsheet-level, commitment-level data presentation, the kind of stuff that Councilor Smith's asking for, the stuff that we've gotten kind of as we've asked for it ad hoc through our offices.
If we can do that after the proposed, I think we can probably do that with our current budgets as adopted.
And just lastly, on— like, with the caveats that this is all rough, this is all as it is now.
These are not—.
Right.
Necessarily proposals.
This is all going to change.
But just being able to be radically transparent with Portlanders, I think, is, is something we can and we should do because it'll allow us to talk to them at a higher level of detail than, than saying, well, it's complicated.
You see, there are these categories and this is service area, this is restricted, that's not restricted.
That doesn't land well with our communities.
And so to the extent that we can pull that off easily, I, I'm going to advocate for that.
And lastly, I, I think that when should we— the question is, when should we start to talk to them?
I think that, that should start in late January, early February.
I know that the forecasting work is not done.
It's always a bit of a cutoff point.
You have to pick and choose your trade-off between precision forecasting versus like how early you can start talking about this.
But again, I think if we can say this is our best guess today, recognizing things will change, Gives us more time to talk to our constituents so that way they don't feel blindsided.
And, you know, 3 weeks for councilors to respond to the mayor's proposed— you know, I don't think it's nefarious.
I just think that that's the time constraint that happens, and we need to be able to start talking to them earlier.
So I think those are my suggestions.
I really want to say you guys are doing hard work, and you need more help.
So we need to give them more resources.
Thank you.
Dan Ryan
Thanks.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr. President.
Um, following up on what Councilor Green just said about communicating with the public, but I think this would also help communicate with us.
What I would love to see is for each bureau, like a one-pager that says here's what percent of the budget goes to personnel, and then maybe a few examples of what those personnel are.
Like with the police, here's patrol, here's investigations, here's other people.
And then an explanation of what do we spend on materials when we're actually buying stuff for maintaining stuff.
Like for the Friar Bureau, it would be maintaining the stations, buying new vehicles, maintaining new vehicles.
For parks, it might be paying for water, the Water Bureau for water, like paying for fertilizer, etc.
And then the external services part, To the extent that we're paying people to do people-type stuff as opposed to just buying stuff, have a line for that and give some indication of what that might include.
I realize that it might not be possible to divide it up that way for some things.
Like, it occurs to me, I think that PBOT uses contractors to— maybe they don't— to do paving.
So it might be hard to, you know, break out the asphalt from the people.
But I think that just having that would be useful just so that we can tell people you know, here's how much the budget for this bureau goes to people.
Here's how much goes to like buying material stuff.
Here's how much goes to paying other people to do stuff.
Thank you.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Ryan?
Dan Ryan
Yes, thank you, Council President.
I like that we have timers.
I think it'd be great if we had a visual up there for all of us.
Olivia Clark
Working on it.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, let's work on that.
Answering your questions that I see here, Yes, I want to hear about the work areas before, and before we go into the proposed.
And I think adding on to what Councilor Novick said, I think them coming with a standard one-pager is a really good idea, and we'll figure out what that looks like.
But in that, include the money that goes both to our private sector and our nonprofit sector partners.
Thank you.
I think that 1-year look back is necessary, but as a trained executive, I always wanted to see the 5- and 10-year patterns because that tells me a better story.
And so I think at least you should try to have the decade back look.
Is that it?
I agree so much with what I've been hearing from others.
I think that ditto to what Councilor Smith said, definitely on the FTEs.
I look at FTEs as a benchmark more than the dollar amount because our fixed costs have been going up rapidly compared to, say, our revenue.
So it's really important for me to see how many people it takes to do this.
Oh, the one final thing I would add, when they give their presentations, I'm always missing a crisp summary of what their 3 to 5 strategies are, like what matters to them.
When we're in an efficiency crisis, I want to hear what they must— what we must invest in.
Like these are our top 3 to 5 things that we must do at the Bureau this year.
And in that measures how they're measuring success with each of those.
And then we'll get to this continuous improvement world that the CA Lee talks about.
Thanks.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Jamie Dunphy
Colleagues, just FYI, we have about 6— I think, well, according to my calculations, we have until— we have like 8 minutes left in this group.
So, Councilor Avalos, and then Councilor— yeah, we'll try and get through as many as we can.
Loretta Smith
Okay, you can hear me?
Jamie Dunphy
Yes, we can hear you.
Ruth Levine
Okay, great.
Candace Avalos
So, um, thank you.
Uh, I think lots of the councilors have raised many similar things that I would say.
I think what I'd add to this is as it relates to staff support and data access, as you all know, as I've shared multiple times, that I care a lot about how we train not only ourselves but also future councilors because we are standing up a new form of government.
Excuse me.
Aye.
And so I would love for I think it's important for us to think about how we're providing not just all of the information to councilors, but how to navigate the information.
I have been sitting looking in the— I guess they gave us 2 binders of the budget, the current fiscal year budget, and I sat down with CFO Biery to just be like, can you just show me where are the important places to focus so that I'm using my energy wisely?
Because obviously It's a lot of information to take in.
And so I would love to see more effort.
And I am— that's part of why I'm doing this with the CFO, because I'm trying to help create those kinds of systems.
It's the educator in me.
I can't help it.
But I really think that would be helpful to just not only have as much information.
I think everyone has shared the ways that we should have it or what types.
I think all of that is well and good, but how to navigate the information I think is more key, at least for me.
Um, I'll leave it at that.
Thanks.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman
Uh, thanks.
The spreadsheets and straightforwardness is important from an access perspective though.
I think too much of the budget offices— and I say that broadly with different budget groups— too much of the back-of-house data is used in the forward-facing documents.
And I'll give an example of fund INV-002-123 transfers $500,000 to the same exact thing, but -104 is a meaningless document when it comes to decision-making.
And we have way too much of that that is coming forward.
And so I really, to Councilor Smith's point, it was like, I don't want to have to keep saying it, because what, what is great about the spreadsheet is that we also get a program description.
Names help, numbers don't.
Numbers and titles don't.
Numbers and actual budgets do.
But that rears its ugly little head in way too many places, and it, it means one of two things to me.
Either there is a lack of understanding about how nonfunctional that description is for funds, Or it is a strange bureaucratic practice of you don't have our decoder ring, and so we don't want you to know.
And I don't think that's the case.
And so I think it is just a matter of we've got to get descriptions.
And so data and access— and it is a little frustrating to have to say it because it should never have actually been presented.
And we see it in ordinances and we see it in budget a lot.
And so that has made it, um, challenging to make decisions because we get way too wrapped around back-of-house details when we just needed the first and the last, not all the in-betweeners.
So I concur with everything else.
I just wanted to highlight that last piece for me anyway.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
Councilor Kanal, last word and we'll move to the next section.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Appreciate you all being here and thanks for the opportunity.
In addition to reiterating everything we said in the last 2 conversations, I know this is coming later.
Since it was brought up, I would prefer commitment items i agree with Councilor Morillo about budgets including program offers.
I like Option A on the whole.
I don't think we need more performance measures or equity analysis determined by the executive branch in here.
This should be part of our direction to the bureaus or our consideration of the budget conversation.
I don't like the idea of the bureau saying this is what we're here to accomplish when we established the bureau or our predecessors did for reasons that are often I do like improved consistency in equity analysis, but because of the inconsistency, I think it's probably something that, that shouldn't be assessed by the people proposing the change because there's an incentive there to say it's going to be good for equity no matter what.
I like Option B.
Uh, we need to see it before the mayor is proposed no matter what the, the schedules.
I, I'll also add that I need Portland Solutions to be as early as possible.
And generally, if you think council may propose more amendments to a service area, that's a reason it should go first.
Um, we've seen that, that scheduling it after the amendment deadline was done to make it harder for us to go into the Portland Solutions budget this year.
Um, so I think getting that earlier, um, in particular for that one, which is the thing I think most of us hear about the most and out in community, would be great.
I like Option C, no notes.
I like Option D, no notes.
Um, I disagree with the CSL conversation.
I think it distin— it erases the distinction between ongoing and one-time.
And I'd like to move back towards the idea that things that were funded with one-time dollars should be one-time, instead of establishing a benchmark that we're then comparing ourselves to that assumes that things that were funded last year with one-time dollars will continue.
Um, and then finally, I agree with Councilor Smith on spreadsheets and everything Councilor Zimmerman just said.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Jamie Dunphy
On to Section 2.
Olivia Clark
Awesome.
Jonas Biery
Thank you guys.
That's fantastic and well-formed and very much appreciated.
Maybe before we move to 2, I do want to just circle back because I think one of the things that I keep coming back to as I've been thinking about improvements, and Ruth maybe is less enthusiastic about this than I am, but I'd really emphasize maybe putting some energy into looking at those existing dashboards because I think that is a really good construct to execute a lot of the things that I've heard just in the first 30 minutes of this conversation today.
It's a lot of work to execute that, but I think we've really got the bones there to start delivering on some of what was just discussed, particularly in the vein of describing program histories, outcomes, changes, et cetera.
So just as we move this conversation forward, would be helpful.
Thank you.
Maybe draw some attention back to that as well.
All right, moving to theme 2, which was decision-making.
Olivia Clark
Real quick, Jonas.
Sure, go ahead.
Mitch Green
Sorry, just on that, I'm glad that you raised that.
I don't know if it's possible to make that dashboard be able to export like detail at a good format and level, but if that's a thing that we can flip a switch on, that would be— that would solve most of my problems.
Dan Ryan
Thanks.
Jonas Biery
Thank you, Councilor.
All right, so theme 2, decision-making support.
General feedback here summarizing what's on the page, but suggestion that budget development guidance should include multiple scenarios, including both add guidance in reduction years and reduction guidance or reduction scenarios in add years.
So not just looking at one side of that equation, ensuring that prior council legislative directives are included in Bureau I'll say there's an area of the first appearance of the word disagreement, but there is disagreement about whether to issue a CA report, what should be included.
I think general agreement that if it proceeds, that it shouldn't be overly specific and certainly shouldn't have balanced recommendations.
Feedback about relaunching or reconsideration of the budget equity tool.
On the administrative side, administrative staff really value clarity of about the process and communication related to decision-making so that they're clear about why and how and when they are doing some of the work behind the scenes to produce that information.
Clear desire for broader employee input and engagement, including doing that earlier in the process.
And then some thought around potential adjustments related to amendments.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Great.
Ruth Levine
Great.
So the first of these is pretty straightforward.
It's the scenario-based guidance for— that comes out typically in November.
Budget guidance typically comes out in November.
You know, this, for example, contemplates like you could give a request for up to 3% increases for specific priorities.
Guidance in general could be connected to policy priorities.
Given by the mayor and/or by council in, you know, either more or less formal fashion.
A couple of things I want to know, I think it would be helpful to hear more on this about whether council wants to see multiple scenarios to achieve the same, say, 3% reduction, or whether you just want to see like the 3 and the 10.
I think we're going to see multiple scenarios.
So you could, you could give either A or B to get to 3%, or you could say A to get to 3% and B to get to 10%.
So that those 2 things play out differently in terms of how we run the process.
The CA report, you know, I think there's an option to kind of maybe hit some middle ground between what happened the past 2 years.
So last year was just gaps and surpluses from current service level.
I think that's what we're going to do.
The previous year had recommendations.
So real—.
Jamie Dunphy
Sorry, real quick question from Councilor.
Dan Ryan
I'm sorry, could be an after-lunch moment.
Um, what did you just say, 3% or 10%?
I think I lost that.
Ruth Levine
So sorry, say if there's— like last year, the guidance— what the scenario guidance was, 3% and 10% there of a cut from the year before.
Correct.
From, from, yeah, from current service level.
But yeah.
And, and you might say, I want to see— you could do option A or option B to get to 3%.
That may not always make sense, but that, that's not— you know, council may want to see multiple ways to get to the same sort of dollar figure.
Or you might just say 3% is one level of cut, 10% is another level of cut, or you might, you know, interpolate and pick one in the middle.
Um, so that's kind of what I'm— it's I guess the reason I bring it up, it's harder to get A and B that both get you to 3%.
It's just a harder thing to collect.
Our systems aren't set up for that right now.
But so I wanted to hear feedback on whether that is of value to Council or not, or if you're just interested in like, if you cut by this much, this is what happens.
If you cut by a bigger number, this is what happens.
If you add by a small number, this is what we would prioritize.
So that's the question.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
You answered my clarifying question.
Okay.
And I'll reflect now.
Jamie Dunphy
2 more slides or something before we jump into—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yes, yes, yes.
Ruth Levine
Okay, let's get through the slides and I'll get colleagues in the queue.
So yes, the potential, I guess, middle ground, maybe that's overly optimistic, is to have some sort of high-level options or levers that could be pulled, but not specific, like not like we're gonna cut 3, we would cut 3 staff from this program, but, you know, high level, what are the kinds of things that could be done?
The next one is sort of connected to that, is having some kind of template or way of describing to council and the public how a bureau chooses between different options.
So if we say, if we come forward and say we would propose to cut 3 staff from this program, well, what else did you consider and why is that the option you went with?
Theoretically, we could get to some sort of standardized template by which they're communicating that kind of information.
Thank you.
I think it's a little challenging to do this year.
We attempted it for '24-'25 before you all were here in that budget process, and it was challenging.
So that's another option.
And then the budget equity tool, again, it could be brought into something like that, right?
You could have analysis that said we brought forward this option because another option would have been worse for its equity impact.
Yeah.
Or something along those lines.
Um, there's also the option to do something like quantifying investment in equity supports such as accessibility, translation, etc.
Okay.
Um, yeah, so our main questions are around the CA report, um, but just generally what's the most helpful for specifically around decision-making and your decision-making.
Olivia Clark
Perfect.
Councilor Smith, kick us off.
Loretta Smith
Yes.
So what I would like you to do is— so let me ask you if, if this is true or not.
Maybe I'm off.
I know at Multnomah County, because most of our money was— is from, uh, the BITI and property taxes, so every bureau knew that they were going to get a 3% bump every year.
So before you start doing it at 3 or 10 you're automatically giving the administration all the money.
I want you to spread the— spread their 3% upgrade and then take the cut of how much cut you need to take away from them in dollars.
See, so after you, after you actually give them their 3%, then you say to them, I need you to cut XYZ dollars out of the budget.
And so I'm not seeing that.
I'm not seeing the upgrade.
I'm not seeing the cut.
And the, the bureaus are not getting their proper upgrade, and it's being held— some of the money is being held in a fund.
So when you give your staff their salary upgrades, you have to wait until your money is spent before you get it.
I don't want to do that.
Just give me all my money, all my money at once.
Ruth Levine
Yeah, so, um, thank you for pointing that out.
That what you just described is aligned with how we were previously doing it.
So we, we took What was called compensation set aside, which accounted for COLA, health benefit increases, and PERS, and occasionally other bits and pieces.
And we would collect it for all of the general fund bureaus, and we would stick it in a contingency account called salary contingency.
We would call it compensation set aside.
Starting in this fiscal year for '26-'27, in the proposed, we allocated it out.
Okay.
In '27-'28, the plan is to allocate it from the jump.
So we will never have the— we will do essentially what you just suggested, which is bureaus will have all of the money for all of their known inflationary increases on personnel.
Loretta Smith
No, no, no, no.
Give them all their money.
And then if you're going to say to— if the mayor is going to say, then I need you to take a 10% cut after you get all your money, then you're, you're being correct.
But if not, you're, you're letting the mayor take their, their percentage and they're not getting their money.
And you have to— well, I know you're shaking your head, but if you do it the way that she just suggested and the mayor says, I want a 3% constraint on the budget, and you don't give them their, their upfront money first, any up— any new monies that come in through BLT, it should be theoretically, you're expected to get 3% of your operating budget up through the BLT and through property taxes.
But if you wait like you're suggesting, they're not getting their full 3%.
And for every— in order for everybody to get their full 3%, then he can say, I need everybody to take a 5% constraint after the money has been given, not whether they're worthy of it or not.
They get it, and that's what I'm used to.
And then once they get their money, and then, then he goes in and says, okay, I want a 10% constraint.
So based on getting their up, their 3%, then they will cut after that so that they at least get their staff's, you know, 3% COLA and all the other things that, that, that are used with their money.
And don't forget the administrative costs for us to pay for, those are going up every year.
I mean, we cannot take the brunt of those internal costs and our benefit costs that are going up.
I mean, we have to spot ourselves 22% every year 'cause that's gonna go up.
And then having to, to, to, to get an increase.
And I don't like— and I'm just going to tell you, I don't like the fact that we met our operating budget based on increasing our internal fees.
They're ridiculous.
They're too high, period.
And so that's how we've been balancing in the budget, is getting ongoing money and, and charging the bureaus and the councilors additional internal fees.
That has to stop.
And I said I wasn't going to say anything today, but I can't help myself.
Raymond C. Lee
Thank you.
Jonas Biery
Yeah, thanks, Councilor.
And I just— it may be helpful.
I think what you— the concept you described is consistent with what we do, but maybe something's being lost in translation.
So I'd be happy to— let's chat, um, and make sure that we're in alignment, or if not, I can get a better understanding of what you're looking for so we can carry that forward.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Council President.
Very briefly, an answer to your questions, because I think these are so incredibly important.
The way that you have laid out a CA report would make me comfortable, uh, doing it like the first year we were here, where, um, it looks like a budget proposal as opposed to an analysis of where we are at with the budget.
Would be very problematic to me.
In terms of the puts and takes we want to see in cuts or adds from each bureau, if doing a comparison is so administratively cumbersome that it would prevent you from making other changes that might be more important, I think that can wait, but only if the direction coming from the mayor and the city administrator is to make deeper cuts than we think we need to make, because that will in effect give us options to choose between without you having to change the software to do a comparison.
I also think it's really important to be asking bureaus, and I know some of my colleagues have talked about this also, about ads as well as cuts, even in a cuts budget, and about cuts as well as ads, even in an ad budget.
But to have room for ads in a cuts budget We need to be asking bureaus what they would do to cut more than the average that we need to cut.
And so I think it's really important to have proposals from bureaus that give us that space to look at different options, and then to be very clear with Portlanders that we're not saying every bureau is going to have to cut to that level.
We are asking for more so that the mayor and council and the public have a better sense of what the options are.
Thank you.
To be able to put forward the least harmful budget that we can, and that that's why we're asking for cuts that are so deep.
Thank you.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Thank you.
I will stick with the dialogue I did earlier when we talked about the percentage of cuts, and it was the 3% and 10% dialogue we were having.
My opinion is that I find across-the-board cuts to be lazy and not very strategic, so I'm not really a big fan of them.
I like to know what are our priorities, what's untouchable, and even in a tough time, you might increase the amount of spending on those priorities.
I think that's what we should do when we're looking at budgets in terms of percentage cuts or hopefully add-ons.
You know, budgets are a strategic tool, and it's really important that we know what we're prioritizing, which is why I've been a big advocate to see if we can get some consensus amongst this body before the budget.
And I appreciate that CA Lee understands the importance of that, and I hope that we can keep improving upon that process this year.
Anyway, I just want our budgets to be that type of strategic tool so voters and taxpayers know that we're really reading the big room called the city, and we're saying what is most important to Portlanders at this time.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thanks.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you, Council President.
I agree with some of the things that my colleagues have already said.
I think I'm basically going to be saying some of the same things, but I want to make sure I'm emphasizing it.
I would definitely prefer to return to a requested budget balanced at the current appropriation levels, with it noting any adjustments that you guys have to make to fit within the CAL, and then phase for the inclusion of adds and cuts as directed or otherwise needed so that we have full transparency into that process.
And I think that's what Councilor Smith was getting at, which I agree with.
As far as the information that's most helpful for us when we're making decisions on the budget, I would like a lot more detail included in the decision packages.
I think that the level of detail about what is being requested or cut varies a lot across bureaus, and having that be more consistent would be really helpful for all of us.
I'm also hoping that all the bureaus are budgeting under the same set of assumptions.
We found out this year that merit increases were not awarded to non-reps because some bureaus budgeted for them and some didn't.
In cases like that, it's making assumptions about merit and who gets to have it and who doesn't creates a lot of issues within the budget development guidance.
I also want to say within the add or cut options, I want us to be really cautious about asking for deeper cuts than we need each year because we know that we're at a point where this is going to have employees in fear of losing their jobs over and over again.
There are a lot of employees for who the past at least 5 years have thought that their jobs were on the line, and I think that has really lowered people's morale and just creates a negative environment.
So I know that we need to have a lot of options before us, and I would just caution about how we approach that, just given how our employees feel about it.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Morillo.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr. President.
I confess that I didn't print out the presentation and my notes are kind of bad.
I think at one point you said when the city administrator's report, something like high-level levels, and that sounded good, but I'm not quite sure I remember what it was.
The idea about having the bureaus present different options as opposed to just here's where we landed, I really like that idea.
So they say we consider different approaches to getting to a certain place, here's some of them.
Mm-hmm.
In terms of employee engagement, that takes me back to the issues that we always hear about of span of management bloat, span of control, and contracting out.
And I think it's really important that as soon as possible we have meaningful discussions about how much management we have, how much it compares to past years in different bureaus, et cetera.
What do we contract out?
To what extent are we contracting out?
Jobs, the same jobs that are done every year.
And if so, why or not isn't that done by a city employee?
We've talked about having a committee of the whole session on the 54 people who supervise fewer than 4 people.
So I hope we get to that.
But I just want to underscore that I think that having a lengthy discussion of contracting out and of thank you.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Uh, thank you.
Echo what Councilor Novick just said.
Um, I think to the questions on the screen, um, I support an approach that says given our best guess on the forecast today, this is what our gaps and surpluses will be based upon the actual last adopted budget.
I think that needs to be our starting position.
I don't think we should build in necessarily any expectations for growth in those budgets because I think the other part of it needs to— the top lines of the CA report should discuss the risks to that forecast to say, look, here's where we're at in time.
These are the contributing factors at a high level that could move the needle up or down, that could make this gap thank you.
Councilor Dan Ryan.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Councilor Smith, I think you're on the record as having asked for a CA report.
I think the CA report needs to speak to what those council resolutions are as a way to anchor us in what the priorities that are coming out of this body.
And it might illuminate that we're chaotic and we don't have a set of priorities.
But I think that needs to be in the CA's report.
I think those are the 2 pieces.
I mean, I like the approach of gaps and surpluses.
And if we've adopted a financial policy that says here's what we're going to do with our surpluses, CA's report should speak to that too.
Dan Ryan
Thanks.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Councilor Knoll.
Sameer Kanal
All right, thank you.
Um, so, uh, thanks again for all this.
And again, just reiterating the note, uh, about everything I said before.
But also, uh, I support Option A. I, I, I strongly support— my underlying need here is having multiple scenarios that capture council's needs, which is to say add, reduction, hold constant, and a 4th one that mirrors the city budget.
So like some— and, and the add and reduction are again relative to the, the city budget.
I, I agree with that.
I like including council legislative direction in it, and I would add to it, I'd prefer to just have council adopt an annual resolution with the budget guidance as an exhibit each autumn.
I think that, that avoids some of the concern that we have, or a code change that allows some combination of council priority on what the scenarios are and mayor having flexibility within that too.
I support Option B, no notes.
I'm interested in discussing Option C further.
Yes.
I'd suggest including the new citywide performance conversation.
The team I think is being stood up.
I don't know that that needs to be this year.
And one thing you'd asked offline is just for grace and the idea that some of this is not going to happen this year.
This one makes sense to me to make a multi-year process.
Generally supportive of Option D. I like the idea of the budget equity tool returning.
That's not contradictory with what I said on Theme 1, but don't actually have the time to explain why in this setting.
Okay.
I'll get to that later.
Uh, I like— you mentioned employee engagement and input earlier on.
I think that's good.
Um, there's no specific option on that, so that might be something that we need to work with our labor partners and all that.
And then I just wanted to note I agree with Councilor Smith's point on internal fees completely, and I agree with Councilor Green's points on the questions on this slide.
Eric Zimmerman
Thanks.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Jamie Dunphy
Uh, colleagues, I put myself in the queue for, uh, question So I have a question, and I'm not sure if it's best for you, best for the mayor, or possibly for the city administrator.
But under Option C, it says strategic budget practices require evaluating multiple trade-offs against set priorities.
And I appreciate that framing, and I kind of want to build on it.
I think it's important for council to have a clear understanding of what a bureau's priorities are under the leadership of the mayor, under the leadership of the city administrator, and under the leadership of yes.
But we don't necessarily have that.
And if we are going to be strategic against, you know, making strategic cuts rather than what is the easiest cut, we kind of need to know, like, actually the Housing Bureau is going to worry about X, Y, and Z for this year, and that is why we chose to make these cuts in this area.
Is that at all possible?
Is there a way to do that?
Sameer Kanal
I know, again, I don't know if this is from a budget perspective or necessarily looking to the mayor.
Jonas Biery
Yeah, and CA, I saw you come on screen.
I don't know if you want to take a first crack at this.
Raymond C. Lee
I can take the first crack at it.
Thank you, Jonas.
It's a great question because anytime you get into the budget conversation, the budget conversation is really telling the story of what are the priorities of the city, and the budget is really that document that is really describing how you plan on achieving those priorities.
From, from a financial standpoint.
What we have struggled though, uh, in this transition as a government and what we're working on today is really working on what are those priorities that the different bureaus are working on and how do those all align to an overall vision, goals, and objectives of what we're trying to achieve as a city.
Part of that is the strategic plan that we talked about earlier, uh, that will be moving forward from the standpoint of trying to get a process together.
Yes.
In this budget year, but will be probably a multi-year process to get adopted by the City Council.
I know we will be sitting down with the mayor to kind of really outline some of the outcomes that we're trying to achieve as an organization, taking into account some of the conversation that we've received and heard from council in the priority setting conversation as well.
I think all of those help us really develop a budget that really speaks to the demands that we're hearing from the City Council, but also the outcomes and service delivery that we're hearing from the community that they want to receive.
That process is underway.
Will it all conclude by the time we're in this budget?
I'm not sure yet.
That is hopeful that we'll be able to be able to do that and be able to use the mayor's guidance to be able to help structure what those priorities are.
But that is a process as an organization we have to work through, but that takes a little bit more time to do.
Olivia Clark
Thank you.
Great.
Jamie Dunphy
Uh, I'm noticing the 3 councilors in the queue have all spoken.
I'm just seeing if any of those are legacy hands.
Olivia Clark
Councilor Smith, Murillo, or Kanal?
Loretta Smith
Legacy.
Raymond C. Lee
Okay.
Jamie Dunphy
Councilor Murillo?
Olivia Clark
Councilor Kanal?
Sameer Kanal
No, it's not a legacy.
Cool.
So I'll just briefly say, I think we— I would love some time, Council President, for us to discuss how we set— how the process of setting goals for the bureaus is done, because the goals are going to drive the performance metrics in a perfect world.
And I don't know that they're— I don't like the idea of bureau directors changing, especially at the rate that they often do in some bureaus.
And then the goals changing, especially when there's often very clear requests from community, as C.I.
Lee mentioned, for what is happening.
And I'm gonna be very specific.
When we talked about, and yeah, I'm sure you could all pick a bureau on this, but when we, there's a reason that clearance rates are not in the performance metrics of the Portland Police Bureau.
It doesn't relate to the goals that have been set, and those goals change when the chief changes.
So I want to have that conversation because I think I'm hearing from the public that not having resolution to issues that are reported and often investigated is a core function.
And now if that's something that we have to figure out why that is, and is it the DA, not the police, that's, that's all fine.
It's not about a blame game.
It's about understanding why it is that we're not getting the thing.
And we don't even measure it because right now it's not part of the goals.
And so before I think we premise the argument on what is the executive branch's goals, I think it's better if we have a conversation about should we be setting the goals?
That's our job as the legislative branch, in my opinion.
But I think we should be having that conversation.
Now, I know I have a colleague who doesn't think we should be dictating a word to the PPB, and I'm seeing the, the shake of the head over there.
So I'm sure we'll have a different conversation.
So my request is not to adjudicate that now, but to have time to discuss that issue later.
Olivia Clark
Great.
Thank you, Councilor Knoll.
Councilor Zimmerman, last word.
Eric Zimmerman
Thank you, Mr. President.
So really valuable point there, Councilor Kanal.
I just want to like think through that from a kind of a structures perspective in terms of how that goes.
So I'm, I'm of the belief that the bureaus, offices, the service areas, you know, they, they have to craft a budget in, um, in the light of the way that the executive is proposing the budget.
And so my experience in that is that they they set up their KPIs or their outcomes and outputs and all those kind of things, whatever an organization uses for their performance metrics, and that is related to what their boss has given them as the, as the, as the goals.
I do think that there's a reasonable time from which we could have a council input on that topic, maybe before that Executive budget is released.
But the risk here that I worry about when we go down this a little bit is I would like to get a budget, and I'd like to look at any old office and say, I don't like this metric, but I see how you're funding it, and make some choices about that.
Or I can say, I do support these, and I see— and I don't— or I do or don't think that you're funding it the right way.
I think that there's a role there for me once it comes out.
Once the executive budget comes out, I I don't know that I think our role should be to really be in the sausage-making of their performance metrics in the budget process, but hoping to craft it before then.
And the reason that's— this is difficult to describe, so I'm also kind of working this just in the moment as you— since you just spoke on it, which is if we start changing some of the performance metrics to assume then that the executive budget that's where I worry that that rub starts to get sideways.
So I want to offer that up just in terms of timing.
If something like that's going to happen, the timing matters.
But I do value, and I really do think it's important to understand that the executive budget has to come from the executive.
And I've been a part of many budgets where I've seen a performance metric that seems to be important to that executive that I haven't agreed with, but I do believe it is their role in the charter.
And I think it's okay to say a couple of things.
Either it's so bad we choose not to fund that, or it's we allow it to go because it's on the fringes of maybe the things that— the larger package, if you will.
We're talking $8.5 billion here, right?
So I just kind of offer that just from a how would we make that work so that we're not in the weeds at the time we should be talking about program offers instead of So the timing would matter for me on that to get fully agreeable.
But I hear some of the point.
The other part that I want to— and this kind of goes to the point I was going to make, and I've mentioned this to Jonas.
I really value— and in this case, I'm going to use the chief because you mentioned the chief.
I really value a bureau director who has some vision and leadership.
I was alarmed these last 2 budgets, and most in particular this last budget, how few bureau directors seem to have a command of their information.
Yeah.
And a foundational understanding for what they want to achieve as the directors, the senior employee of that work, of that work section, of that office, of that service area.
Because if you are not convicted in, in what you want to achieve, it's easier for us to pick it apart.
One of the reasons that I think Chief Day is so damn successful is because he can articulate a vision and talk about the culture that he wants to build within his workforce in a way that runs circles around many who sat in both his chair but also other bureau and director-type areas.
So I'll go along with things maybe that I am not always sure about if I see a leader with a vision, more so than I will with an administrator who just seems to kind of fall into the position.
And last year's budget presentation, I didn't see a lot of leaders at their level.
And I believe leadership happens at a lot of levels.
So I want to see that.
And I bring it up in this because the decision-making support for me, actually the bureau director's perspective, and if they're aligned with the executive budget and the vision that they outline, is actually a major factor for me in deciding whether or not I'm going to support a budget.
And so I just want to offer that up.
And Councilor Kanal, I welcome, you know, as we go further into this, kind of thinking how we might go through some of those performance metrics in the right timing.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
Jamie Dunphy
Councilors Ryan, Novick, and Koyama Lane all jumped in the queue, but we are at time for this.
Can you each keep it to about 90 seconds apiece?
Olivia Clark
Councilor Ryan first.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, I want to say that I really like the last 2 presentations or comments by Councilor Zimmerman and Kanal.
I did them.
And I think clearance rates are an important metric.
I've been saying that for 7 years, which is why I led the effort to get the investments out to the community to build more trust with the Office of Violence Prevention and the other contracts that go out into the community that work with police.
I do think we can't have some of those goals— I'm looking at you, Mayor— without a joint session with the county on public safety.
The county's 50%.
We're never going to get to any goals that we like without the county being on the same page as us on those goals.
And as long as the county spends 40% of its budget on public safety, whereas Clackamas spends 70% and Washington County spends 65% on public safety, it makes it difficult for us to reach these goals.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr. President.
I really appreciate what Councilor Zimmerman said, and I think I said something similar last year that I'd like to hear bureau directors unplugged saying what they'd really like to do.
And I think I heard pushback that, well, you can't have bureau directors going off without, you know, saying what they want to do when it's not necessarily consistent with the, what the city administrator or the mayor thinks.
But the closer we could get to that, to bureau directors articulating their vision, the better off I think we'd be.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Karmelainen, do you want to—.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Um, I don't think I can do it in 90 seconds.
Jamie Dunphy
Okey-doke, thank you.
Well, we've reached a, a natural pause point where we're going to give everybody a 10-minute break.
So if everybody could please be back here at 3:31.
Thank you.
And we're back.
Thank you all for the human break.
Ruth, Jonas, take us away to topic number 3.
Jonas Biery
Uh, great.
Thank you, Council President.
Uh, Thank you.
Theme 3, to jump right back in, is around community engagement.
The general feedback on this theme was that community engagement can and should occur earlier prior to decision-making.
We've talked a little bit about that already, but we'll come back to it.
We should make space for input on general service area and bureau priorities before discussing specific budget proposals.
We've talked a little bit about that already as well.
That outreach and awareness of community engagement events and the timing of budget testimony and votes could be improved, and then conversation around bringing back some version of what were previously called budget advisory committees.
Ruth Levine
Great.
So, and I'll just note that since I am not the lead or the expert on community engagement, Laura Oppenheimer is also in the audience, so she may— we may invite her up for the Q&A portion if needed.
So on Budget advisory committees.
There's been, you know, talk about this over the last few years, conversation around setting up budget advisory committees either at the service area level and/or at the citywide level.
They used to exist both at the bureau level and at a citywide level.
There's also been conversation around are they all dedicated budget advisory committees or are they more general advisory committees?
Okay.
Obviously, depending on how folks want to do that, there's questions around staffing, how they're appointed, and sort of what their charge is.
I think from the experience of prior budget advisory committees, it's going to be very important to clarify how their input, how and when their input is used in decision-making.
That was something that came up previously of, you know, whom are they advising?
And when.
Separating the mayor's engagement.
So I think the last 2 years there's been a couple of different approaches to budget engagement, and, you know, there's an option to kind of pull out the mayor's engagement from the council engagement and just have them be 2 separate things.
Probably makes sense to have the mayor's Okay.
Occur earlier in the process since the proposed happens first.
The Insight Survey, the data will come out in early 2027 from the 2026 survey.
And so this is something that, you know, could be integrated into the budget engagement events and sort of up to whoever is hosting those to figure out how to do that.
But obviously staff are available to help figure that out.
The past 2 years we've done public sort of Budget 101 sessions in roughly January.
We've also had conversations about taking those from, you know, about sort of instead of or in addition to those larger events, doing more informational meetings And Q&A sessions with individual community-based organizations, which would allow for a little bit more of a tailored approach.
Okay, that's all we've got on community engagement.
I'm sure that— I'm sure there are other ideas, and yeah, happy to open it up.
Olivia Clark
Councilor Smith, are you still in the queue for this one?
Jamie Dunphy
Okay, well, colleagues, feel free to jump into the queue.
I will jump in first.
Just to talk about something that we discussed as an engagement tool in the budget process this last time around, and collectively the council determined that probably it wasn't a budget note, but I had introduced bringing back budget mapping as a tool for community engagement.
I think in the old form of government, budget mapping, especially for East Portland, was really a helpful tool on the community.
I have heard so many times from the East Portland Action Plan Committee that they want this tool back.
And I am, you know, I heard from my colleagues, they felt that this was probably more, and also from the City Attorney, this is more appropriately set up to be a resolution.
I have that resolution drafted.
Is this something that you all would be willing to work with me on?
Is it something that is going to be, you know, in your categorization of, you know, easy, hard, medium, whatever?
Would that be something that's going to require additional resources or something, or should I just think about that for a future year?
Jonas Biery
Well, I'll start.
Thank you, Council President.
And yeah, that's a good observation.
We've certainly heard that feedback as well in the process and probably should have acknowledged it more explicitly here.
I think the implementation of it is not necessarily particularly difficult.
Where I might have some caution, maybe I might put it in kind of the medium category is that as all the other pieces are evolving, that to optimally execute budget mapping might rely on some of those other pieces getting organized first so that we're clearly communicating a budget mapping outcome that aligns to the future state that we want.
That doesn't necessarily have to be so.
It's just that it's a flag that goes off in my brain about making sure that we're kind of phasing things correctly so that when we do the budget mapping, it aligns to—.
Right.
A little bit more of a perfected baseline.
But we're just open to your thoughts too.
Ruth Levine
Yeah, I just had a slightly more technical response, which is for things like capital projects, obviously it's pretty easy to use.
In many cases, we have the GIS data available already.
For things that are sort of one level less specific to geography, think fire stations, precincts, and the like, It's just really important to have a consistent methodology that's used in order to attach, if you want to attach dollars to a location, because, you know, it could swing wildly depending on methodology.
And then, you know, how to clearly tag things that just can't really be specified to a location.
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah, absolutely.
I recognize, like, you know, the park rangers budget.
Do we count the seconds that they are driving in District 1?
No, that's silly.
But also recognize that there's some nuance there that, you know, if you look at the total amount of dollars spent in 2024, East Portland blew the rest of the city away because we opened Mill Park.
And that doesn't—.
That's not—.
That doesn't count.
That's not fair.
That was a 10-year-in-the-process bank.
But I still think it's a valuable tool in some regard, and I'd love to work with you all over the next year.
And I totally agree, we need to get our own house in order before we can start broadcasting to the world all these other things.
Thank you.
And we'd love to work with you all on that as well.
Jonas Biery
Yeah, more than happy to work with you or any other council offices on that.
And then just one other note that this triggers is thinking ahead to our financial stabilization conversation in a couple weeks.
I think that's an element that'll be reflected in there too, but less around budget mapping and more around outcome data.
And so that may also be another more district or neighborhood-specific action that can be taken now to sort of maybe lay a little bit of groundwork to align to that future budget mapping exercise.
Jamie Dunphy
More to come.
Olivia Clark
Awesome.
Councilor Knoll.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Council President.
Um, so broadly, I like everything on slide 17, your big broad strokes kind of slide there.
Um, I support Option A. I did want to note that since June I've been planning, uh, there's conversation, a big picture conversation leading ideally to legislation on this in Committee of the Whole.
I have been on and staffed budget advisory committees.
I'm looking forward to conversation with and hopefully collaboration with you on legislation on that, um, because I do think it's important to have this be something that is citywide.
Um, I, I, and as in relatedly, I don't support, but I can live with the mayor doing Option B if that's, uh, the mayor's choice.
But I, I think it would be better for us to just collaborate more once Council Operations fills the position, um, that's been budgeted, uh, the, for engagement on this.
I, I think the challenge frankly had to do with the staffing timelines in the citywide engagement position last year.
I think Councilor Zimmerman had sort of led a creation of a plan for budget engagement sessions last year, and then it kind of changed and it never really got fully settled.
So it's been better this year.
I'm looking forward to, in terms of the collaboration and in terms of going into the next year, I would hope that Laura and eventually the, permanent person would work with hopefully our permanent person on council operations to just do it all together.
I think that's possible.
I don't think engagement is the same, is a discipline that lives exclusively executively.
I, so I'm hesitant there, but I think that we can do better than option B ideally, but I understand that it might be the least bad option.
Option C is good, no notes, the insight survey.
Option D, I think this is good and I have a lot of, similarly, because engagement's not, I think, an executive-only thing, If council's part of that same idea, I think it can work.
Otherwise, I'm not sure about it.
I have so much more on the committees if there's time for that at some point, but— and so I won't get into that now, but reserve the right.
But I did want to say I strongly, strongly support budget mapping.
I agree with everything the council president said on that.
Yeah, thanks.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Knoll.
Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos
Hey, I also agree with budget mapping, so I will third that.
As far as budget advisory committees go, I actually would not recommend trying to put in efforts into restarting those right now.
I think that there are more innovative ways to engage community, and those committees have, you know, they tend to get a little gatekeepy and are more accessible to people with more political privilege.
So if we're going to start up any kind of BACs again, I would really want to talk about what a complete redesign and rethinking about how to approach those, because as they were before, I would not want to recreate.
As for the mayor's engagement being separate, yes, he should have separate engagement, but also he should be doing it much, much sooner before his proposed budget.
So we need to have engagement starting as early as I mean, ideally in the fall or early winter in the future, but he should be having his own version of engagement that's necessary to inform his process, and then we'll have our own.
And so, yeah, and also I think that we need more public opportunities for— like, though, I liked how we did just kind of informational type of things.
I think people reacted well to the stations where people could could go talk to bureaus directly and ask them.
So I think those are some cool ideas that have been worked and, um, that, that have worked and could work better.
But also, we need to really, um, expand our council ops capacity to help the council in general with budget engagement and with things like budget research and analysis.
So, um, I, I definitely want to see, uh, I want to see where council ops is going to step up and provide a vision for how they're going to support the council during the budget process.
I think this is why Council Ops exists, and we haven't used it to our maximum potential.
Lastly, I think that the Insight Survey— so I did an East Portland budget survey this year, again, just kind of piloting it out to get a sense, but I really took a lot of the methodology and kind of foundation from the city's Insight Survey as a way to One, get some of that data too, but then also because East Portlanders have had such a harder time engaging and we have— they've been so underrepresented in a lot of ways.
And so actually, I feel like, is there a way to put more budget-type things in the insight survey?
We're already going to do that, you know, every couple years.
I get that there's some level of consistency that's important in the survey so that you can measure things over time.
But I think this is a good opportunity to maybe look at that survey.
And, you know, I'd be happy to talk more about that.
But we just really like kind of blended the insight survey with some budget survey.
And I think we already have resources.
That's a great way to make that survey be more useful for budget.
I think it is a useful tool in general.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah.
Olivia Clark
And if we want it to be used for budget, let's actually be thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Council President.
Uh, you know, in District 2 last year, I thought the way we were able to do engagement with the mayor was really helpful.
We had an early session together, we had a later session with councilors and the city administrator.
If the mayor wants to do additional engagement on him, great, fine.
But I would like to be able to have that district-driven, council-driven, an engagement session before there's a proposal so that we can hear from folks not reacting to cuts, but more generally what their priorities are.
And then the engagement session between the mayor's proposed and council's deliberations to hear reactions to the mayor's proposed cuts.
But I think that those very important outreach opportunities and the BAC opportunities both still miss the mark on the breadth of community engagement that we need.
And this is where I'm going to sound a little bit like a broken record, Jonas.
I apologize.
Um, we need a tool, and the programs to develop one pretty easily where Portlanders can weigh in on the same types of trade-offs that we have to make and really understand what it is that we need to balance in this budget and propose their own ideas of how we balance the budget.
And we need that tool.
I really appreciated the first step on this last year, so credit where credit is due.
But I think we need to take it a step further.
We had a first step last year at the service area level where folks could play with some levers.
But we need this to be at the program level.
We need it to be across bureaus.
And we need it to allow folks to save their results and then have a public accounting on the website where that's located.
That shows what the trends are.
What are Portlanders most willing to cut?
What are Portlanders least willing to cut?
How many Portlanders are willing to look at additional revenue?
And if so, what types of revenue?
How many Portlanders think we should be putting more into our reserves versus not?
We need to be showing those trends so that there's clear transparency and accountability.
Councilor Smith.
And so that when we then make our decisions, it's clear to Portlanders and there's transparency and accountability for, for a Portlander to Portlanders around our decisions and whether we make different decisions where most Portlanders would have made their own decisions looking at those same trade-offs that we have to make.
I think that's an incredibly important tool for getting beyond people who can show up to an event or who have the privilege of serving on a BAC to really do broader community engagement and allow people to understand what the trade-offs are for our communities and to capture in a comprehensive way the trend in the trade-offs Portlanders would make.
So huge credit for doing the first step last year.
I would like to see us build this out year over year to have a really comprehensive tool.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, thank you, Council President.
I really like the detailed feedback on this one.
I'll just thumb through this.
Options for changes.
I think the work sessions with the advisory leaders of their boards, some kind of hybrid in the— what I found most helpful when we had those was the actual, say, DRAC had its own opinion on the budget.
They were closer to it.
I actually found it was more useful with the Parks Bureau's board, with the DRAC board for permitting, than it was to have one big overarching, because it allowed me to really listen to people who have dove into the work, and they had better insight, I felt.
So I think there's a way to do some sort of hybrid with that.
Separate mayor engagement.
I agree, ditto to everything Councilor Pirtle-Guiney said.
It was so helpful to have a session with the mayor, with CA Lee, with the way that Councilor Pirtle-Guiney and Councilor Kanal helped with the engagement with the visuals.
That was really smart.
And I just hope that all of them went as well as ours did.
And then I do think it would be helpful to have one after.
So I think a before and after.
And I think that all us being at the same table is smart because we eventually have to come to an agreement together.
Thank you.
The 3 branches of government, if you will.
And so I think revealing that is very transparent and smart.
I—.
The surveys, you know, with those, it depends on the efficacy of it.
I think, um, there's sometimes push-pull campaigning that goes on.
It's disproportionate.
And so I think I need to look at what the demographic, uh, asks are made at the beginning.
And so it's like if someone works at the city or yes.
So if you ask somebody who's a developer, gets money from the city, they're going to answer that very differently because they're chasing money than somebody that just wants services from the city that gives to the city through their taxes.
So I think I want that defined so I understand where the themes and threads are coming from, and it would be a little bit more objective then.
Options for change.
What is this one?
Expand informational meetings, engagement with community-based organizations.
As long as they can come with an objective stance.
So if it's organizations that are already getting money from the city, I wouldn't trust it as much.
So I think getting skilled objective facilitators would be very helpful.
Yeah.
So I don't know if you need to have a budget committee.
Like, I think you could utilize the efficiency of those committees that are in each bureau to take that on because they're going to anyway.
Olivia Clark
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr. President.
Uh, I liked the Bureau Budget Advisory Committees.
I understand Councilor Avalos's point that they weren't necessarily representative, but I think they were better than nothing.
What I can't remember from 10 years ago is whether the whole council heard from them or just like individual commissioners in charge heard from them.
Ruth Levine
They used to provide— I, I mean, I, I think it varied in terms of how many commissioners in charge met with them, but they did used to provide a letter typically with the requested budget for each bureau to all of council.
Steve Novick
To all council?
Yes.
Yeah, I mean, I do think that that was helpful, but I mean, might have been particularly helpful for commissioners in charge that would listen to them more.
Ideally, what I'd like to have is a budget advisory committee for the whole city along the lines of a citizen jury.
Where you go out and you find a group of 24 more or less representative people and you pay them a stipend for their time.
And I mean, it's a model that's worked well for a lot of different topics in a lot of jurisdictions.
And then, I mean, you proactively try to make it as representative as 24 people can and you engage them.
So I don't know what, I mean, that would obviously have a cost to it, But I think that that's the way that you address the problem of people self-selecting and winds up not being representative.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Knoll.
Sameer Kanal
Hi, thanks.
I just wanted to get on the record.
I also agree with Councilors Pirtle-Guiney and Ryan about how District 2 went.
And Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, you couldn't see this, but Councilor Ryan and I were nodding along really emphatically as you were describing the experience that we had with those sessions.
And so, um, really do want to commend that, um, everyone involved in that.
Um, in terms of the committees, I, I think, um, ensuring that, that there's someone who's— that no one who's, uh, receiving money from the thing that they're giving feedback on the budget of is, is vital.
It's a, a bare minimum.
It's an obvious financial conflict of interest.
But I think that broader thing is, is worth discussing.
I, I also think it's, it's important to recognize that I think that the advantage of having it be broader is largely like the way that it was done before was the bureau directors generally appointed the people to it.
There's very little incentive for anyone to say this bureau budget could be cut in this way or could be streamlined in that way.
It just becomes by virtue of how the people got there.
And so I think that broader conversation that's a little bit more citywide in strategy is helpful, even if there's more granularity in what they discuss.
I think that's a good point.
And I'm looking forward to hearing more about that when we get to the Committee of the Whole conversation because there is an element of being closer to it.
And I fully acknowledge that and agree with that part.
And at the same time, there's sometimes competing ways to do the same thing within some of the service areas.
So I'm interested in that as well.
Yeah.
And the only thing about service areas that's not captured is we have some things that aren't service areas.
Areas, right?
Obviously council ourselves, but also Portland Solutions.
So there's— I think there's, uh, we need to figure out what the— how to bucket things if we're going to do buckets beyond bureaus.
Thanks.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Just, uh, one more thing I want to put out there because we're in the participatory type engagement conversation.
I feel like there's an elephant dancing around in the middle here that something might pass this November, and are we, um, doing some scenario planning for that, um, because clearly that will have a big impact on this conversation if it passes.
So I just wanted to put that out in the room, and I hope people are seeing that there's a lot of participatory opportunities without that.
Thanks.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay, on to theme number 4.
Jonas Biery
Uh, great.
Um, so fast I wasn't quite ready here.
Um, theme number 4, uh, last theme, and then just a reminder, we do want to— I think we're well good on time, but want to make some space I'll give you a chance at the end to talk about next steps and wrap up.
But theme 4 is around budget accuracy.
General comments here were that inaccuracy, lack of clarity, or late data updates in the budget books or in budget-related communications erode trust in the products and the process.
Also acknowledging that's also sometimes very hard on staff who put in the work to promote that accuracy.
So fully support that.
Thank you.
Second one is a shared desire for reliable data on potential service impacts or budget changes, again related to some of the conversation already.
And then lastly, that budget staff passionately want to avoid mistakes and would love more predictable schedules, both predictable in a single year but predictable year over year, that also includes time built in to perform adequate QA/QC before public communications and other conversations go forward.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Great.
Ruth Levine
Um, so, uh, segueing from that point, um, trying to set a budget development calendar sooner.
Obviously the last couple of years we've had some, um, structural transitions that made it challenging.
Um, but moving forward, um, I think if there could— if we could get to a point with having a budget calendar where at least the major deliverables are set well ahead of time so we can plan for it and create internal deadlines as well to ensure accuracy and review.
I think that would help.
So looking forward to this conversation helping us get to something sooner than we have.
Likewise, building in QA/QC of the— specifically around the proposed budget book where we've had issues because the timeline there is so tight.
So looking at potentially including like an embargo period where there's some internal review of the book that is fully complete.
And so that could be something that we choose to do.
It's pretty much an internal administrative thing, but just for the public and for you all to be aware that that would mean an embargo period.
Okay.
And then increased frequency of training.
Again, this is something I think that's really mostly on us, but, you know, providing more consistent training.
I think really since COVID some of our regular trainings kind of fell off, and then with charter change.
So really trying to reinstitute some required trainings for staff.
You know, I think council staff could attend if yes.
Or we could do separate ones, talk more about that.
But I think having that to ensure both the specific deliverables and that are clear and that people know what's being expected of them, and that that flows out all the way through the organization, because I think we've had some challenges with that in recent years given staff turnover and the like.
And then also just on the more technical side, making sure that everybody knows how to use the systems and the like.
So that's all.
This is a short, fairly short one, and it's probably more on us than on you.
But so we— the question is really around schedule and what do you all feel like you need to get to a more consistent schedule?
Jamie Dunphy
And to that end, colleagues, that's the printout in front of you right now is a draft again of what a 2027 budget calendar could look like.
You'll note that it starts in 2026.
While I don't need you to react to this today, and you also have a digital copy of this in your inboxes, I would love feedback over the next coming weeks.
It is my intention to have us adopt a calendar with the fall TAO.
So we set ourselves up by the fall TAO for the next year.
Obviously there are, you know, we can tweak things as we need to and will, but that is my intention.
So, uh, feel free, folks, to hop in the queue for this section.
Uh, Councilor Novick?
Legacy?
Olivia Clark
Councilor Green?
Mitch Green
Just real quick on— real quick on the, the budget calendar.
Um, to the extent possible, I understand it's difficult to solve around a lot of constraints, but if we can avoid big budget hearings on religious holidays, um, I would prefer that.
Olivia Clark
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Councilor Smith?
Loretta Smith
When is the town Uh, end of October?
Dan Ryan
Middle October?
Ruth Levine
Work session October 7th, Committee of the Whole October 15th, first reading October 22nd, second reading October 29th.
So every week in October.
Loretta Smith
Okay, perfect.
Olivia Clark
Um, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Thank you for this presentation and for also taking feedback.
I can see things that my office and I have talked to you all about being implemented and appreciate that this is iterative and there's always a desire to improve.
Can I just kind of zoom out?
And it's about this, but kind of everything.
It's council's job to be focused on policies and systems and to be giving direction to the administration.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I can see that I have colleagues that have skills to get into the weeds, to do some of the line item looking at that stuff.
I think that's your prerogative to do that, but I see our job as more giving the direction.
And then also to the mayor, to the administrative side, and then holding the executive, the mayor responsible for executing our policy directions.
And I also, we've had conversations how more oversight reporting would be great.
Right.
But I do want to share that in order for that to happen— so this is more like talking to my colleagues— we as a council, we have to be able to clearly provide some policy directions together in order to actually hold the administration accountable for it.
And that part is on us, not the administration.
Or else what I see happening is we're going without some clear policy directions, we're instead just always going to be simply responding to what's presented to us and then arguing about it afterwards.
I know there's difference of opinions in strategic priority setting.
This is an area that Councilor Ryan and I have talked a lot about.
I know that we didn't come to very clear priorities, but we were starting to talk about what some of that looks like.
And I think if there's not an agreement of at least some shared policy priorities for us as a 12, then I think that's our first job.
That's job number one for council is figure out how we're giving that direction.
Yeah, I think my greatest hope for the coming process is that council receives the information needed to truly understand Be able to read the administration's budget.
I appreciate hearing that there might be some, even some different trainings or possibilities for our staff to get trained up in how to read some of these.
And then I think the other big thing on my mind is how we're providing some clear policy direction.
And also if we're— so we're able to do that to the bureaus before they are building their budgets.
Thank you.
To.
So that can be giving them some guidance.
Um, and then the bureau proposed budgets should be measured directly by whether or not they're meeting our policy priorities and which directions we set.
All right, that for now.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Jamie Dunphy
Colleagues, there we go.
I figured there was nobody done talking yet.
Olivia Clark
Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Thank you.
Uh, so for this theme, I don't have much to add.
I agree with your assessments in, in slide 23.
I've heard much of the same, and I appreciate that.
Um, it's not directly tied to our roles, as you noted, so I'm broadly supportive.
And, and if there's things that we need to do, including, um, resource you to be able to do options ABC, and, and of course anything in this, like, I, I want, I want to be as supportive as possible on that.
And I just, for everyone, if there's anything that that you would like to do or that you know that we've asked to do but you don't have the resources to do, that's something we need to do to be aware of so that we can fix that in the budget.
Since I think this is the last part of this and I don't think we have like an overarching 5th area of comment, I'll take the opportunity to note a couple things that were not mentioned here.
Performance did get mentioned, but one thing that hasn't been discussed is just non-implementation.
We had PBEM positions added.
There was a there was a CEI hub planner position that was added in the budget last year but weren't immediately filled.
There's a pretty lengthy delay with that.
Obviously, there was a hiring freeze, but there was also obvious council direction through the budget to do this position.
An engagement position in council operations wasn't filled.
So these all matter.
The 311 hours I brought up last week with the city administrator's update item is when I mentioned it.
Thank you.
Is another thing, and I think this actually might need independent analysis because I think it might be taken differently.
I, and that may sound contradictory because I also agree, I think it was Councilor Novick who mentioned that we need to discuss contracting out in a general sense, and I agree with that, as well as span of control and management ratios.
I did want to note that I think it's the reason I was so grateful for the assessment slide is because the budget staff does a great job.
I know that this— it's come up before about neutrality.
I've always felt that CBO is neutral.
I've always felt that you are professional and able to give information here.
And I also appreciate both of you as leaders in this space.
The other thing that I wanted to get into in here, we must have transparency into both existing contracts that extend beyond the fiscal year, because that's our opportunity to end them when they have been entered into, is by not budgeting them in a continued basis.
And so if we actually have that authority to do, the only way for us to be able to exercise that authority or choose not to is to be aware of what contracts would continue and not in a sort of list sense, And similarly, what may be not yet contracted for, but that in the budget would be interpreted as authorization for a contract.
This is not just about the Portland Tennis Center, but that is the best example I can give right now.
And we've discussed it for a while.
So I want to make sure that the— that this is informed consent by the council to things.
And so having that be, you know, upfront.
I agree with the council president on pairing the calendar with the fall TAO.
I think that makes sense.
And it's also like I think making these inflection points in the budget process more obvious.
I'll take the opportunity to say that I think we need to be more careful about how we use the word technical.
There are things that are often discussed there.
I think it's just fair to call it a budget adjustment if it is.
We used to call it that.
Well, actually, we used to call it monitoring.
That's a separate issue.
I think it's okay to just call it a supplemental budget if that's what it is.
Some things actually are technical, some aren't.
Councilor Dan Ryan.
And then I agree with the point that Councilor Zimmerman raised earlier about KPI conversation timing.
I agree that it needs to be earlier, not through the actual discussion of the budget.
So I was there.
But, and relatedly, I think this actually connects with part 2, hopefully, of strategic priority setting, which I agree with Councilor Ryan's resolution from last year.
I hope that we have a chance to do that.
I don't know that it's the right time of year.
I agree.
If we do strategic priority setting in like February, it's too late, I think.
But I would like to have conversations that inform that through the process that we've created through your resolution, Councilor.
Dan Ryan
Council President, this is a work session, so I'm used to being able to do some dialogue.
Right now, am I seeing this right?
It says Wednesday, March 17th for that?
I agree with you, Councilor Knoll.
I think it should be earlier than that for sure, if that's in fact what I just looked at.
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah, you're right.
Olivia Clark
That is on there.
Good catch.
Dan Ryan
So catching that and then hearing you say February sounding too late, well, you know, we have a little problem here.
So we'll have to do some adjustments to the calendar on that.
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah.
Sameer Kanal
And I think broadly, I'm with you on the timing.
I hadn't noticed that being in here in March.
So agreed.
I guess my underlying point is I like the process we did.
I think we can do it at a time that it can inform it and iterate on our first attempt this year and make it better.
Obviously, I know that nothing's ever perfect the first year you do it.
So yeah, appreciate it.
Thanks, Council President.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Jamie Dunphy
I put myself in the queue, colleagues, just to sort of double down on the point that Councilor Kanal was talking about with regard to contracts.
I have found that to be one of the more confusing parts of our budget to understand and the full scope of what a bureau is going to be paying for, and whatever way we can line item contracts or make them clearer to the average idiot like me would be really helpful.
And that's all I had to say on that.
Olivia Clark
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Thank you for putting this draft calendar together.
This is under the assumption that you're going to be president.
Jamie Dunphy
No, ma'am, absolutely not.
I will not be the council president.
Loretta Smith
I think we have taken the job of, of the new president away by, by doing a, um—.
Jamie Dunphy
I do worry about that, and I wanted to talk to the council about that.
Loretta Smith
So that— I have a problem with this, um, that you designed this for next year.
So, um, just like you changed everything when you came in, maybe a new person will change the same thing and we'll go back to 8 different committees.
So when are you going to have this conversation?
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah, that, that is a, uh, a great point.
Um, I think that what I— what my hope is, is to give a— in the fall TAO to start the process of, among the different conversations in both the committee, the whole, and here, um, to get something for our budget office staff to start building their year around.
But I don't want it to be enshrined in stone.
I think that the next council president needs to have the flexibility to amend it as part of their, uh, their first duties in the month of January.
And also, you're absolutely right on the future of committees.
I have no idea what the committee structure will look like, and we just largely took what we did last year and just tried to give something to react to.
Loretta Smith
I appreciate you taking initiative, but, um, I also understand that we're going to have an election.
Dan Ryan
Absolutely.
Loretta Smith
And all of this could change, so this is not written in stone.
Not at all.
Okay, thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Not at all.
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, we—.
Loretta Smith
Again, he is saying draft.
Yeah.
Um, can I please respond to that?
And I recognize it's a draft, but I'm also recognizing that we're going to have a regime change.
Jamie Dunphy
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And anything that we would approve in terms of a calendar would be written in pencil, not in stone.
Um, I just want to give our budget staff, as was said sort of earlier, budget staff want to have the bookend.
Thank you very much.
Olivia Clark
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, thank you.
I just wanted to underscore double exclamation points about the training of council staff.
I had the— I was fortunate to have a chief of staff that worked in the budget office and was a whiz.
So I don't have that capacity anymore.
And so I think it's important that we have a training program in place.
It allows me to be more objective, I think, on this and say it's so important that we all get that kind of training.
And I understand the read-only function.
But then when you're in there, I think underscoring the same frustration of trying to really find out where the money went.
So I know that under some bureaus there's this big payout that goes to this nonprofit to do this work, but I can't find it when I'm I just want to know.
I'm always going to prioritize our employees as much as possible.
And I think it's hard for me to make that equation when I can't see where— how much money is going out to external partners.
I'm not against external partners at all.
I believe in that.
However, I think at a time where we've been doing layoffs, it's more important than ever to be crystal clear and transparent about that.
Um, and then another ditto to, um, I'm trying to say this, the council priorities starting in, in January no matter who, what regime.
Candace Avalos
Your word.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor.
Uh, Councilor— yeah, I mean, you know, I'm, I'm running a regime.
I got this.
And, and I'm, and I'm not doing it next year.
Y'all get ready.
Councilor—.
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Council President.
Just— I just want to say, as it relates to the conversation around the calendar and how much of a calendar you put together, that I think having a robust calendar that says draft all over it is really important.
Having sat in a room with Council Operations and with the budget team and tried to figure out how much I should put on paper so that the next council president potentially had a place to start from or a place to veer from, but we could all pencil in our schedules and staff could pencil in their schedules in the meantime.
I think it is so important to have something.
We don't know who the next council president will be.
We don't know what they are going to want this to look like.
But to walk into that office with very nothing is a surefire way to make sure that council Council as a whole is behind the ball and frankly to limit our power with relationship to the executive branch pretty significantly.
So I would be supportive of you doing whatever you need to, to make sure that council can continue operating smoothly even through a transition.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Yeah, and I just want to reiterate that you know, when you're already in leadership and you basically are controlling the calendar for next year and supporting to have your staff pencil in things already, that is not a fairness that I think that the rest of us has.
We don't— I'm not in leadership.
I don't have a chairmanship.
So I have not sat down with the current leadership to decide what happens next year.
So I think that— Councilor Smith, Penciling stuff in is like it's going to be there.
So I would rather you not do that, Councilor, um, Pirtle-Guiney, um, and thinking that that is the way it's going to be because you helped to create it.
And so we need to give the new person the flexibility of putting their own thing in.
And I do appreciate you putting something forward, but whoever is the, the new council president, they need the same respect that the two of you had in the prior 2 years to be able to put their own calendar together.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Olivia Clark
Thank you very much, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
Um, as one of 12 people, 13 people who were elected and have lived now through 2 regimes, uh, first was the Pirtle-Guiney regime, now is, now is the time of the Dunphy regime.
I don't know what the third regime is going to be.
But I know that Portlanders expect us to plan and to think about the future.
So I think, I think it'd be wildly irresponsible to not put forward a calendar now.
Of course, the future council can change at any time.
There's no council action that can ever bind a future council.
But that's— you just gotta, you just gotta put forward a plan.
And we were up here saying that we want earlier engagement.
We want to start planning earlier.
That's not consistent with waiting until January 1st to take up a new calendar.
So I support this.
Olivia Clark
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
And just for clarity's sake, when I came into office in January, we had already approved a budget calendar by resolution.
So I came in with a calendar approved for me and we tweaked it.
So regardless, thank you all, colleagues.
Anybody else in the queue for further conversation on this?
No one else in the queue?
Please, let's take us home.
Ruth Levine
Great.
Jonas Biery
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, and maybe— sorry, Ruth, before you go, if I just— I just want to add, just on the, on the calendar, which we're going to talk about, um, a little bit as well, um, just acknowledge that Council President, appreciate getting an early start.
Um, it is really important, as I mentioned in the beginning, for staff to have some clarity about what the process is, not not just for staff, but that will help with things that we've all identified that we care about: accuracy, time to have robust communication.
I just want to acknowledge we haven't— we've kind of seen a precursory look.
And so I just want to also acknowledge we had some questions that we're going to work with Council President's office.
So I mentioned that in the context of I wouldn't lean too heavily into the dates right now because we still need to have that dialogue to make sure it's consistent with what we technically execute.
Thank you.
And certainly work with Council President, current or future, to continue to make sure that what's proposed is actually implementable within the budget system.
So I wanted to just tee that up before we talk about some of those dates from our perspective.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Great.
Ruth Levine
And yeah, we already had much of this conversation, but just gonna show a few slides.
This should look familiar.
So these are the sort of required pieces of the calendar that do need to be written.
More or less in stone.
So just that, that's been shown before, but just want to make sure that's clear.
And then the slides we've provided have 2 example calendars.
Council President's differs and also is much more detailed than these 2.
The point of these slides was just to begin— again, Council President's office has done this as well— but to show kind of how will this the 2 pieces that— the pieces I've sort of highlighted as essentially variables are the budget work sessions.
And, you know, in all likelihood, there will be multiple sets of budget work sessions.
These yellow ones are referring to the kind of more informational, not kind of decision-making work sessions, if that makes sense.
So I know we can't make decisions in a work session, but but, you know, not like here is what's in the proposed, the ones that come before that.
That is what's in yellow here, as well as the CA report.
I did want to highlight something about earlier work sessions in addition to, you know, having some more clarity around timing.
It will be helpful, you know, obviously a if you do something in January, the holidays immediately precede that.
So all the more reason that we need to have advanced warning of that coming so we can plan around that.
And B, it will be very helpful, I think, to be able to clearly articulate and plan, and we can go back and forth with folks on council about this, you know, exactly what information will be included in those work sessions.
So that we, since those would be sort of a relatively new thing, that we're, you know, clear about what information you're getting with those.
So I just wanted to highlight that about the sort of earlier pre-proposed work sessions.
This version sort of swaps things around a little bit just for, again, just for to try something else out.
So it has work sessions in February, and it has earlier community engagement events in December, which was one of the things that got talked about a little bit today.
And it doesn't have the CA report.
I think from a staff perspective, the one thing I want to hammer home is, you know, our office is definitely strapped.
There's a citywide— like, there are a limited number of people who do the budget work.
Yeah.
And I would say we can parallel track like at most 2 things at a time.
And there's also the supplemental budgets to be— to throw into that too, which Council President's calendar includes.
So just flagging that as you're talking about calendars, you know, I'm trying to make sure that there's not any one month that has like 4 things going on because we just won't honestly be able to deliver that at that point.
So that is all I have.
Olivia Clark
Thank you.
Jonas, you want to take us away?
Jonas Biery
Um, yeah, so thank you.
And yeah, I just wanted to take a minute as we wrap up to just appreciate the conversation.
I mean, this is really, really valuable, um, both the conversations we've had leading into this, uh, and then the conversation today.
Obviously, you know, we're here to support you and to support your decision-making and ultimately to support Portlanders in, in getting the right decisions around the budget so we can get the right services delivered into the community.
I know, we all know, because we've experienced the first 2 years were really, really difficult.
It won't be easy, but I'm optimistic that it'll be a lot less difficult than we've had as we've sort of navigated 2 years of really fundamental change around how we think about budgets and how we manage that process.
So look forward to that.
Thank you.
Lastly, I'll just sort of be real that, A, you know, as we look through the options we presented, nothing was listed as impossible.
There were some things that were listed as challenging.
Nothing was listed as impossible.
But largely the body of everything we've described is really kind of the holy grail, the right mix and balance of strategic direction, of public engagement, of transparency, and ultimately of efficiency.
So that's the dream.
I'm really, really glad that we can talk about that and start to put some framework around how we start to implement that.
It will take multiple years.
We're here for it and appreciate that we have chance to have the dialogue so we can help collectively form that future so we can achieve that.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Colleagues, I want to thank you all for the conversation we've had today.
Jonas, Ruth, thank you for your willingness to continue to iterate and improve.
Uh, we've made your jobs hard over the last 2 years.
Our jobs have been hard as well.
Uh, I'm wildly optimistic that it will be incrementally less hard this year.
Um, we're not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
We're going to find places that we can improve these things.
We will make mistakes.
We will find things.
We will try things that will not work, and we will continue to iterate towards the process of a transparent, accountable public process that also doesn't drive everybody crazy.
Colleagues, thank you for your time today.
We are adjourned.
Loretta Smith
Adjourned.