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.
Sameer Kanal
Good morning.
I'm going to call this meeting of the Portland City Council Committee of the Whole to order.
It is 9:30 AM on October 15th, 2026.
Rebecca, will you please call the roll?
Rebecca Dobert
Good morning.
Clark?
Olivia Clark
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Green?
Mitch Green
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Zimmerman?
Eric Zimmerman
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Smith?
Loretta Smith
Here.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Here.
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Morillo?
Angelita Morillo
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Novick?
Steve Novick
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Dunphy?
Jamie Dunphy
Here.
Rebecca Dobert
Kanal?
Sameer Kanal
Here.
Christopher, will you please read the statement of conduct?
Riley Williams
Welcome to the meeting of the Finance and Governance Committee of the Whole.
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Rebecca Dobert
If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for 3 minutes unless the Chair states otherwise.
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The Chair preserves order.
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Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually.
Your testimony should address the matter being considered.
When testifying, state your name for the record.
Riley Williams
If you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent.
Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name.
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Christopher.
So today we have a pretty packed agenda.
I just wanted to start by saying, is there, you know, there's 3 items that relate to the fall technical adjustment ordinance.
If there's no objection to it, we're gonna hear them to call them together.
And then from there, we'll, in case there are amendments, we might need to jump back and forth, but we'll still discuss them and vote on them sequentially.
Seeing no concern raised there.
So the first 3 items are those 3 fall TAO items, the actual supplemental budget, the budget calendar, and then the ordinance that would create a subfund within the general reserve fund.
After that, we'll get back into the amend business license law code item that we began last week.
And then if time remains, which it almost certainly will not, we will have the first conversation around street renaming process discussion.
So just flagging that for you, we may not even have enough time to finish the business license law code item, but we are trying to get through the fall TAO today.
All right, so first thing, I guess we have to— could you please call item 1?
Rebecca Dobert
Item 1, committee chair updates.
Sameer Kanal
All right, uh, so before I get into the part where I ask, uh, Chair Pirtle-Guiney to update us on the City Life Committee, um, just a couple quick updates on this.
Um, for October 21st, we've added one more appointment back at the request of the City Attorney's Office.
You're all going to get, um, an update on that.
In a briefing for October 29th, there's been some— we've confirmed the citywide immigrant affairs lead for a couple weeks now.
City administrator's not here, neither is the mayor, but basically we've been waiting since we had a presentation in August about chemical weapons usage and public health impacts of that.
And there was a request to have the users of chemical weapons be able to present as well.
So I've been following up with at least those that are city employees on that to try and get their presentations.
Thank you.
And be able to schedule it.
We haven't gotten that information yet despite asking since August.
So that's why there's some tentative things on October 29th.
If that doesn't work, there's a couple other items in the backlog that we'll just clear.
But that's why that hasn't been locked in yet.
As you can see, other items and other days have been.
We added a note that on November 5th, it will be a virtual meeting.
City Hall will be closed for HVAC upgrades.
So the entire meeting will be online on November 5th.
And I think everything else is just a lot of things that are going from possible to tentative.
The big reason why things are tentative and not confirmed is that they just haven't been filed yet by the administration, like those appointments on November 18th.
So that's the run of the first page.
Nothing new on the second page except the note that most of the things on that page are gonna be deferred to January.
Councilor Smith.
In the leadership requests and work groups piece, um, just wanted to ask if anyone wanted to assist on that 5th one where we're helping plan the Urban Alchemy oversight hearing planning.
I know I've been working on it with Councilors Avalos and Green, but if anyone can follow up with me if they'd like to be a part of helping plan that.
Um, we know it's been—.
Jamie Dunphy
I would love to be a part of that.
Sameer Kanal
Great, thanks.
Um, I'm not sure if anyone else, uh, would be interested in, in that, but follow up with me either now or later is fine.
And that's pretty much it from my part.
Any questions before I pass it to Councilor Pirtle-Guiney?
All right, City Life Committee Chair Alana Pirtle-Guiney, take it away.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Chair.
Colleagues, this past week we heard 2 broader presentations in the City Life Committee, both of which around topics that have received some more extensive questions from the entire council.
We had a presentation on the current status of Advance Portland, which is the city's economic development policy.
A number of you have asked over the course of the last year what that relationship is like between our council and Prosper Portland around economic development policy, and the former commission actually passed an economic development strategy which Prosper has been enacting.
That happened before 11 of us were here.
So it sometimes feels a little, a little new because of the holistic turnover that occurred.
But there is a former commission-guided document.
We got an update on what the final 2 years of that work will look like.
The state of our economy has changed since that was first put together.
And we also had the first opportunity to provide some thoughts to the Prosper director on where councilors on the City Life Committee, which oversees economic development work, think the city should be going in terms of our economic development strategy.
There will be over the next year to year and a half a lot of conversation back and forth between Prosper and council and the mayor around the next iteration of our economic development strategy.
So this was just Thank you.
We also then had a conversation about our policies around when we dispose of or privatize publicly owned land and what the current practice is and whether there are places where that practice might need to shift and adjust as we start to think about our city as a single unit that works together to look at the long-term needs of our community as it relates to City-owned land and land for city resources.
That was followed by a single item where we approved the sale of land to Habitat for Humanity for housing development.
I will note that we heard from multiple colleagues, myself included, about an interest in having a broader citywide strategy about when and how we dispose of public land.
That came both from a colleague who was interested in us looking at our needs more comprehensively, but not necessarily selling off land less, and came from colleagues who were interested in selling off land less often.
So both of those positions looking at needing us to have a more comprehensive citywide approach to this.
In the coming weeks, we are going to have a presentation about the future of the regulatory space around cable and internet in our city.
Last year, this committee brought us a proposed— a proposal from the administration on scaling down the funds that come out of our cable regulation, and we said there would be a conversation around next steps there.
We will have a presentation around how our cannabis taxes are used and then an ordinance from the administration asking us to update our cannabis code.
We will look at some of the equity and workforce provisions within our PCF CIP, and we will close out the year looking at the noise code and updates that our noise officers are proposing to that code.
We do have a few spots left on the calendar, and I know that there are a couple of you who have ordinances that may be coming to this committee.
We've room for probably 2 or 3 things left.
Thank you.
Not more than that.
So if you do have something that you are thinking of bringing to City Life, please let me know as soon as you're able.
Thanks so much, Chair.
That's all I've got.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Chair Pirtle-Guiney.
Any questions for City Life?
All right, thanks everybody.
And with that, I'll ask if we can call items, uh, 2, 3, and 4 together.
Rebecca Dobert
Item 2, adopt the FY 2026-27 fall supplemental budget and make other budget budget-related changes, document number 2026-366.
Item 3, adopt the budget calendar for FY 2027-28, document number 2026-367.
And item 4, add budget and financial procedures code to create and direct the use of a subfund within the general reserve fund specific to the city's business license tax revenue, add code chapter 5.90.
Document number 2026-368.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
So colleagues, this is— these are the 3 items for the Fall Technical Adjustment Ordinance, or TAO.
So the Supplemental Budget Ordinance, the Budget Calendar Resolution, and the BLT Reserve Ordinance.
All 3 of these were discussed at the work session that we had last week on October 7th.
So CBO's plan is to do relatively short presentations as we open the items as a reminder of their purpose and the exhibits for each item that were filed.
One note on the BLT Stabilization Reserve item, if there are any amendments to the To the TAO that would reduce the amount that is added to the BLT stabilization reserve, there would need to be a corresponding amendment to the 3rd item, the BLT stabilization reserve ordinance itself, because that ordinance sets a floor for the amount to be contributed towards the fund, which is the minimum is what's currently being put into it in the fall TAO.
So council can go higher and put more money in than the minimum in the, in the BLT stabilization reserve ordinance and add more money through the fall TAO to the fund.
But if we want to go less than that, we'd have to amend both, assuming that ordinance is adopted.
And then just a heads up, there is an amendment that I'll be moving that was brought by CBO.
It's a technical amendment to correct an error in the TAO that resulted in a negative appropriation.
Negative appropriations are not allowed under state budget law, and CBO will be explaining that as we get to it.
It has one of the adjustments that change contingency to reserve for future expenditures accidentally created a negative appropriation due to a conflict with another adjustment in the contingency accounts for the transportation fund.
So there's a miscommunication that caused the error, and so they're going to, um, give us more information on that, um, and it's going to undo the change of $25 million from contingency to the reserve, uh, reserve for future expenditures in the transportation fund, and therefore rebalance the fund's contingency.
Um, so we're going to have Jeremy Patton, uh, from PBOT Finance able to answer questions on that piece, but our presentation is from our City Budget Director Ruth Levine and our Chief Financial Officer Jonas Beery.
Ruth Levine
Great, thank you so much for being here, Chair.
Um, yeah, Ruth Levine, City Budget Director.
Thanks, uh, for having me.
I'm, um, really doing a very short presentation.
I have slides available for questions that are the same slides as last week.
So what I'm going to do first is just run through the exhibits from the ordinance really quickly.
So it's all exactly what's posted already, if I can get it up.
And then I will also speak to the technical amendment that, that Chair Knall just talked about a little bit.
So just want to walk through the exhibits because I acknowledge they're probably not as user-friendly as they could be.
So putting that on my list for future improvements.
But I just wanted to kind of explain what's going on and why they are here the way they are.
So Exhibit 1 is the actual change to the appropriations So that is the important— that is essentially like the legal document that underlines the entire budget.
And so these show all of the changes from what is currently in the budget through this ordinance, through the fall TAO.
And so this goes by bureau and then fund.
And these categories are the categories established under state budget law.
So the bureau program expenses rolls up all of the different personnel, EMS, IMS, those things.
And then the contingency is there.
Interfund cash transfers are separate, debt service, and then the total appropriation change is in the column on the right.
So that is an important exhibit because it is what actually changes the appropriation schedule.
Exhibit 2 is intended to be able to kind of explain a little bit about all of those changes.
Okay.
I know the text is quite dense, literally and figuratively, on the right there.
So, but so the slides that I presented last week are really the key to being able to unpack that, but it is all there in writing and happy to answer additional questions on any of that.
But I really highlighted all the Thank you.
So I spoke to the key changes last week.
That's included in the text there.
Exhibit 3 then goes one level deeper, which is all of the major objects.
Those are the things that roll up into things like bureau program expenses, but there's also contingency broken out here and fund balance.
And again, I spoke last week to all the changes in fund balance and why those were happening.
So this just has all of the numbers and it walks you from the adopted budget to the fall, to what the appropriation is if the ordinance is adopted.
Sameer Kanal
Before you go on, Mr. Ryan had a question.
Ruth Levine
Sure.
Dan Ryan
Ruth, I think it'd be great if we go back to the first page of Exhibit 1 and we see the large numbers in contingency.
And we all know contingencies are future events, circumstances that possibly will happen.
It seems like there's a lot more than I'm used to seeing.
Maybe they've always been this big, but they're larger than some of the actual expenses.
Could you explain that to the public?
Ruth Levine
Sure.
And you'll recall from last week, I talked a lot about this change from contingency to reserve for future expenditure.
So like in the example that's on the slide here, There's $154 million in the sewer system rate stabilization fund, which is its own fund that moves out of contingency and into reserve for future expenditure because that is what that fund is for, right?
It's a rate stabilization fund.
It's intended to ensure that rates don't increase too quickly in any given year.
And so they can draw it down in order to smooth that curve.
And so that's why—.
Candace Avalos
I'm sorry.
Ruth Levine
That's why there's that really big number there.
Dan Ryan
So the practice is to put these into reserves going forward?
Ruth Levine
That is, yes.
And that's the conversation.
For folks who didn't watch the work session, we had the executive director of the Tax Supervising Conservation Commission come and explain the sort of updated interpretation of state budget law that says that we really should be distinguishing between these 2 things, the contingency that is in our current year's budget in case We need it for some reason, something happens and we need to access it versus the things that we have a plan for and that plan is out in year 2 to whenever in the future.
And so that is the distinction that state budget law intends and that we are making changes to follow.
Dan Ryan
Short-term with quick adaptability.
And then the other one is a little bit more clarity on a long-term Exactly.
I just— repetition is the key to learning, and I think seeing it so clearly today is helpful.
Candace Avalos
Yeah, yeah.
Ruth Levine
I mean, the easy example, right, is you have a pot of money for if your car breaks down this year, and then you have another pot of money that you're saving for for when you need to replace your car in the future.
And those are 2 different things.
Dan Ryan
Thanks.
Candace Avalos
Yeah.
Ruth Levine
Okay, just— I'm going to keep going through the exhibits.
So I went through 1 to 3.
Exhibit 4 focuses just on the general fund, and it highlights highlights specific decision packages and bureaus by the type of change that is occurring.
And then Exhibit 5 contains all of the detail on all of the decision packages.
So if you scroll down, it's 300 pages.
It's great reading.
The decision package description is included for each of the changes that's included here.
So there is a way to walk from the big numbers you see down to the, The minute, I will acknowledge that it probably needs to be a little improved for clarity and use.
But that is the intention from exhibits 1 to 5 is that you can walk all the way from the appropriation change down to the description of what's changing.
And then exhibit 6 is specific to FTE changes.
We added in a column here for what happened in the July supplemental.
Thank you.
And then Exhibit 7, whoops, sorry, is specific to providing direction for '27-'28 budget development.
So as a reminder, supplemental budget only changes appropriation for the fiscal year that we are in.
So it only changes appropriation for fiscal year '26-'27.
The way that the fall ties to next budget development is through this exhibit.
Essentially, it's telling the City Budget Office to assume these changes in ongoing expenditures in the base budget for these bureaus.
And in this case, the majority of these are related to the core services realignment implementation packages that are included in the fall TAO.
Where we're sort of implementing the intention of what was adopted in '26-'27, but there was some additional changes that needed to be made to fully implement that.
This moves the funding from those different bureaus.
We move funding between bureaus in the fall TAO itself, and then this exhibit says also assume that in the base budgets as you're developing them.
It really just is a, for like efficiency.
It could be done a different way in the budget development, but this just starts from, if council approves it in the fall TAO, it allows us to start with that assumption moving into the budget so that we don't have to manually kind of enter them, is really all it does.
So that is, those are all the exhibits for the fall TAO.
I want to talk quickly, if it's okay, About the technical amendment.
Is that— is this an okay time?
Jeremy Patton
Okay.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Angelita Morillo
Thanks.
Ruth Levine
So as Chair Kanal mentioned, this was an error that we discovered this week, unfortunately, as we were reviewing again through the exhibits.
We noticed the negative appropriation in the transportation fund.
We should have noticed it before we filed, but we were We were running short on time and so we, but we, and legally we cannot have a negative appropriation.
So council can't adopt the supplemental budget without making this amendment.
Essentially it would be, we would run afoul of state budget law.
And so this corrects that by moving about $25 million sort of, it was moved out of contingency into reserve for future expenditure.
$93 million was moved out of contingency into reserve for future expenditure in the transportation fund.
This essentially undoes a portion of that and says put it back into contingency in the amount of $25 million.
So that's what this table down here shows you.
Jeremy Patton
The—.
Ruth Levine
Again, the reason for it was sort of a miscommunication, and there were sort of not conflicting packages, but 2 moves that when you added them together caused the negative number.
And so we have to undo that negative number.
Sort of an honest mistake.
Somebody was out and we didn't catch it in time.
So we're catching it now.
And yeah, happy to answer questions on that.
Sameer Kanal
All right, so what we're going to do is do technical questions on this one, then go into the next 2 pieces sequentially and do technical questions on each.
Loretta Smith
Thank you, Director Levine.
Could you tell me what the $25 million is for in contingency?
Ruth Levine
Um, yeah, Jeremy, do you want to come up and answer that?
Jeremy Patton
Good morning.
Jeremy Patton with Public Works.
I can give you a detail of all the contingency accounts in there.
The $25 million is basically just enough money, I think, to move from the reserve back to contingency, so it nets out at more than zero in contingency.
So it's, um, there's a number of accounts that total the total contingency.
It's probably easiest if I just provide you that breakout of all the contingency accounts.
Loretta Smith
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.
Jeremy Patton
There was, um, too much was moved out of contingency into reserve for future expenditures, which made contingency go negative.
This action is just moving that back into contingency, so it's There's nothing specific in that $25 million.
It is a number of things that total the—.
Loretta Smith
That could flow.
Dan Ryan
Yeah.
Loretta Smith
But not for sure.
We don't have specific—.
Jeremy Patton
There are for sure things.
They're just not identified as specific pieces.
So there's $80 million in contingency or so, and it's just we're not specifying which of that $25 million was moving.
But I can give you the details of what it is.
Loretta Smith
So we have $80 million.
Contingency is supposed to be used within the fiscal year that it is stated for.
From a technical standpoint, you have money in contingency that's been there longer than the fiscal year?
Jeremy Patton
Correct.
Loretta Smith
So that is out of order, correct?
It should be in some sort of fund in reserve.
It shouldn't be in contingency, correct?
Jeremy Patton
That's what this action was doing, was moving those contingency funds to reserves.
It just— too much was moved at that point.
Loretta Smith
But what I'm trying to understand is, what does that $25 million make up for?
What is it?
And what is it going to be used for in this fiscal year?
That's the technical piece.
That's— that is the piece.
Jeremy Patton
It's a number of pieces.
It's a lot of capital project contingencies that are in there.
I have the entire list I can share with you.
Loretta Smith
So this— here's my concern, and I've already addressed this with CA Lee.
I need to understand the hundreds of millions of dollars that are in PBOT's Uh, reserve funds and contingency funds.
What are they for?
Who put them in there?
What year they put them in there?
And I would like to request a report given back to this committee that will tell us that, because I'm not going to wait for an audit, because this has been going on for years and years and years.
Because there's money in that reserve account that was put there from prior councils that we don't even know about, and there should be an active list, a running list of what is that money used for.
Ruth Levine
One thing, and I think, you know, this may not get to all of the depth of your question, but we did provide earlier this week, we sent council additional spreadsheets that have a lot more detail on the things in the TAO.
One of them is a list of citywide all reserves and contingency accounts down to every kind of fund, like sub-fund level, all the detailed pieces that Jeremy mentioned.
And so it does have that for people In that spreadsheet, and I'm happy to work with you and your team on kind of going through that.
But that was— that list is intended to do that, and we're planning to publish those in budget books moving forward so that it is publicly available and people can see what they're all for.
Loretta Smith
But from a technical standpoint, you can put $100 million in something and say, oh, we're going to use this for streets, but you have no intention on using it for streets.
It's been sitting there for 5, 10, 15 years.
And so to just tell me that you're going to subset it from a technical standpoint, it doesn't do a lot for me.
I need to know every penny.
When is it expected to be used?
And that's what we're not getting.
You're telling us that from a technical standpoint that we're supposed to have money in reserves, but we should have a date in which they're supposed to be used by.
And when we're expected to be used by.
I don't want you to just give me a pot of money and say, oh, this is what this is for.
Well, when is it supposed to be used?
So thank you very much.
Sameer Kanal
Can I— I think, um, just out of curiosity, you could have written this in, in sort of 2 ways, right?
Like, the, the way this is written right now is $93 million is moving from contingency to reserve in the main document, and then the amendment adds $25 million going back the other But you could have probably written that as an amendment to make it $68 million going only, right?
Because there, there is no real $25 million coming back.
The, the budget or the, um, amount that lives in the contingency after this is going to be near zero, right?
This is just truing it up to be correct.
Ruth Levine
Yes.
Sameer Kanal
So after this amendment passes, contingency will probably have like a dollar in it, somewhere in that ballpark?
Ruth Levine
A million dollars.
Noah Kone
Yeah.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, so, um, That, that's just, I think, helpful context because that paragraph up above talks about 93 going one way and 25 going—.
Ruth Levine
Right.
Yes.
Yeah, sorry.
Yes.
Sameer Kanal
You know, yeah, and either way is fine.
Um, and, you know, I, I appreciate that, um, that the CBO always finds the, the problem and comes to us with the solution as well.
I appreciate that a lot.
Uh, Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, thank you, Councilor Kanal, Chair Kanal.
Just to follow up, I think what What we're getting at, though, is we want to see the transparency of what that list would be.
So when we're told, and I believe you, that there's a reserve list for specific projects and capital needs, this council just wants to see what those are.
And especially when a councilor has been fighting really hard for infrastructure out in District 1 for sidewalks.
I didn't mean to assume what, what some of the questioning was leading towards, but that's the kind of transparency that we deserve.
Thank you.
When those decisions are made.
And it— and when we don't know, when we hear answers that are ambiguous at times, it just makes us doubt.
So that's all.
And I know you're working hard, and I know you have that list, and it's not on your fingertips.
Ruth Levine
So yeah, no, I, I, um, thank you for that.
Yeah, I just want to be clear, we did share it, so it is there.
It is available to all of the councilors.
Um, it is not in this document because it's too large and we can't attach Excel files as exhibits.
So we sent it as a supplemental document to councilors.
But it is in your inboxes and I'm happy to help and walk through it with folks.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah.
Dan Ryan
That's fair.
Thank you so much.
Sure.
Sameer Kanal
And just to clarify, that's the email we got yesterday morning at 10:09, roughly, from you?
Ruth Levine
In that email, if you scroll down, there's a link to a folder because they're too large to send by email.
And in there, there's the— that email details all of the additional follow-up.
There are multiple spreadsheets that provide additional information.
Angelita Morillo
Yeah.
Sameer Kanal
All right.
Councilor Smith, are you back in the queue?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay.
Sameer Kanal
Then let's move on and talk about the next 2 items, please.
Angelita Morillo
Great.
Ruth Levine
So I believe the next one in line is the budget calendar resolution.
So I will just pull up that exhibit.
And this has not changed since the conversation we had last week.
And I don't know, Councilor Dunphy's the co-sponsor on this, so feel free to jump in if you have anything to add here.
But this is laid out again.
I think the kind of preamble here is It's the best practice to set the budget calendar sort of in the fall going into the budget process for the subsequent fiscal year.
But it is not sort of binding.
It's a resolution.
It can change.
And we will continue to work with Council President and the Committee of the Whole on And any changes that are needed as we go through this.
Kind of a few things to highlight as reminders that I talked about last week.
The first line is earlier work sessions starting at the end of January.
Those would be the sort of what I call the base budget information, kind of what if nothing changed?
What does this bureau do?
How is that paid for?
That kind of information.
It has a CA budget report in February, and it has earlier budget priorities transmitted to the mayor as a work session in early March.
And then the spring TAO is at the same time as last year.
And then the mayor's proposed— it has the mayor's proposed coming out on Tuesday, April 20th, followed by the committee hearing on April 22nd.
I recognize there was some conversation about that April 22nd date last week.
This was filed 10 days ago.
And then it goes into budget committee work sessions after the proposed is released, followed by—.
Candace Avalos
April 23rd.
Ruth Levine
The approved hearing, which would take place on similar dates as last year, May 17th through 19th.
And whoops, sorry.
And the adopted likewise at similar dates, on similar dates as last year.
That's really all this resolution does.
Sameer Kanal
Council President Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah, thank you.
I just wanted to jump in and just reiterate that this is 90% of the budget calendar is based off of what we've already done the last 2 years and the direct feedback that I've heard from y'all about either this didn't work for us or we, you know, we need more time on these things.
Additionally, this is not a document that I personally created.
This is something that my team worked with the budget office and the administration to create.
And the last thing I will say is that this is intended very explicitly to be an iterative, changeable document, but we wanted to give some basic assurance of timeliness of what comes next to the administration and to all the staff at the budget office and to set the public's expectations of roughly what can happen.
Now, if some of these things change around a little bit, if the mayor's proposed decides to come out early, if it whatever, if the next council president decides that actually the mayor needs a couple of extra days, that is not up.
This is not set in stone, but I definitely wanted to give some basic assurance to our staff as they are starting to do the hard work Now for us to be ready to do our hard work, it's starting in January.
Sameer Kanal
So thank you.
Thank you.
I guess we'll just go to the queue.
So Councilor Green followed by Pirtle-Guiney.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Chair Kanal.
Uh, thanks again for putting this together.
Um, I just want to note again that I think, I think there's some holidays for some folks that would impact this.
I think April 22nd is probably a problem, so if we can We can shift that.
Jamie Dunphy
There are a couple of things that we've specifically looked at, and that is one in particular.
Um, I'm probably at this point going to leave that up to the next council president to figure out because I don't truly understand the nuance of a lot of those holidays, and we've got a rough outline at this point.
Mitch Green
But yeah, thanks.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks, Councilor Green.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, then myself.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Councilor Green, for raising that issue.
Um, I will be asking the next council president if there's any way we can move that all-day date.
I don't know if we have a significant number of staff who are affected by that, but I know that sometimes it's hard to come forward and say that that matters.
And so we have to do that work.
I will likely be voting no on this today just to put a marker out there that there is a change that's needed.
But I do have a question about Exhibit B. Exhibit B looks like we are readopting our committee structure in order to, I assume, adopt the times when we'll have breaks in our committee work to align with the budget work.
But I wanted to give the council president an opportunity to speak to this document and whether that is the reason it's before us or whether there is another reason that we have Exhibit B as well.
Jamie Dunphy
I believe you're exactly right, that if we are trying to give some assurance to the staff, both in the budget office, but also to the clerk's office and to council operations, we needed something to base that off of, of a rough calendar.
Now, it is absolutely the right of the next council president to upend the apple cart and rethink how we are doing our committees.
I haven't heard anything specific from anybody about real meaningful, you know, major reform to it.
But again, yeah, this is our attempt to try to give some structure and be able to fit the amount of time we need and still also have a plan for the legislative process to move forward.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So does this document reflect status quo in terms of committee schedules, in terms of recesses, and in terms of treating committee break around the budget work roughly the way that you chose to treat it in this past year?
Jamie Dunphy
Absolutely, yes.
This is a reflection of the current status quo and no new recesses, no new changes, no new committees, no times, nothing fancy, just what we're doing right now.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, thank you for that clarification.
I think it's important for folks to know what's in there.
Jamie Dunphy
Absolutely.
Sameer Kanal
I'm next in the queue, followed by Councilor Novick.
So for, uh, I had similar questions to, to, uh, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
I'll, I'll say it may make sense, and I may be interested in doing this at full council, to just note the blocks of time as opposed to the specific committees, um, that are held for committee time.
Um, but not necessarily worth getting into right this second in, in Exhibit B. I did want to just ask 2 questions about Exhibit B.
One is the Wednesday, November 10th thing is what we just did for this year, right, with relation to Veterans Day being a holiday.
And so we have to— okay, thank you for that.
And then for committees suspended, your intention is that that includes all committees, right, not just the Tuesday ones?
Jamie Dunphy
Yes.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, thanks for getting that on the record.
With relation to Exhibit A, I just wanted to note, colleagues, that next week, um, we have a workgroup report back in this committee on the council president Council leadership election process that may affect the first couple lines of this in terms of there have been some ideas proposed.
So there, just be ready for a conversation that might capture the timing of that.
But I think in terms of at least as a starting point, locking in status quo, that does make sense to do.
I wanted to say thanks for including 2 days on the adopted budget as well, which is the beginning of the—.
Jamie Dunphy
Yes.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, I think that's everything that wasn't already raised.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
I just have to mention that Councilor Pirtle-Guiney and I discussed the possibility of combining a budget discussion with the language of the Passover service, and she came up with some absolutely hilarious language that I'd suggest that anybody who knows the Passover service should ask her for.
Including in all other years we dip into only one reserve.
Why this year do we dip into 2 reserves?
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Ryan, you're next.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, thank you, Chair Kanal.
It's wonderful to follow you, Councilor Novick.
On that note, why are we just— can we just move the date to Friday the 23rd or Monday the 26th?
So we don't have this asterisk-y, like, dancing around Passover Seder.
So I know Fridays would still be a time where people are traveling, and Fridays aren't the day that most people want to be here in a— and then what about Monday the 26th?
I just don't understand why we haven't made that adjustment, because we had this conversation last time.
Dead silence.
Jamie Dunphy
I'm definitely open to it.
Dan Ryan
Okay.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, I think, um, we've got between this meeting that we're in now and the full council to do that before it passes if someone wants to come up with an amendment.
Dan Ryan
I propose that, that your office, um, comes with a proposal that changes the date to either that Friday or that Monday.
Ruth Levine
Sure, happy to work on that.
Dan Ryan
And that's a motion.
Okay.
I guess I think it's a conversation and that you could make that edit, correct?
Ruth Levine
Yes, we can, we can write it up as a, as an amendment and somebody can propose it, uh, on the 22nd, which is the next time we're here.
Dan Ryan
Thanks, appreciate it.
Steve Novick
Sure.
Dan Ryan
Thanks.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Uh, seeing no one else in the queue, we're going to move on to the 3rd item.
Uh, and Director Levine, please take it away.
Ruth Levine
Great.
Um, so, um, this item is the, the The thrust of this item is to add a policy that establishes a business license tax stabilization reserve.
That was— there was a budget note that was adopted in the current fiscal year's budget directing our office and the CFO to come forward with a proposal to create this reserve.
It was It was originally funded in the adopted budget.
It currently has some funding in it still, and some of it was moved out in the July supplemental.
So this contains that proposal.
We talked a bit about it last week, and CFO Beery is here to answer questions on the substance of it.
What I also— so this is the section.
Eric Dean
Yes.
Ruth Levine
It would become Code Chapter 5.90.04, 040.
And the— so this outlines the— both the conditions on the way in which the reserve is funded, the conditions under which it can be drawn, and the direction for refilling it if it is drawn.
Um, this is situated within the larger— what has been, uh, FIN 2.03.
We got direction from the city attorney that some of the FINs will need to migrate into code, um, and, um, FIN 2.03 is one of those that needs to migrate into code.
And so the recommendation was to file this as a code provision, a new code provision 5.90, with the new section on the BLT stabilization reserve situated within it.
Um, and so that's why you see this as a code ordinance.
It picks up other than that change and some like clerical changes to ensure that the language is aligned with the current charter.
Um, the 5.90 reflects what is currently in FIN 2.03, and then it adds the BLT stabilization reserve.
So that's what you see here.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, before I open the queue, I forgot to mention one thing up top at the beginning of this meeting.
It's going to be a little awkward here.
Uh, today is the Great, uh, Oregon ShakeOut, which is going to happen in 3 minutes over the PA.
So to avoid— 2 minutes.
Uh, it's an earthquake drill.
There's like gonna be announcements and stuff.
So we're gonna take a break for that so that it's not— we don't have to do that.
We can do whatever.
There's not a drill in City Hall.
The drill's actually in Portland Building.
We did one in committee last time.
Thanks, Chair Novick.
So we're gonna take a break for 5, 6 minutes and then come back.
This is not our only break today.
I just forgot to mention it up at the top.
So we'll take a recess.
See you in a few minutes.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So I remind people what to do?
Sameer Kanal
You can go for it.
All right, well, we're gonna come back to, to order now.
I hope everybody feels prepared.
And, and I hope everyone feels prepared.
Let's, let's get back into it.
So thank you for where we left off.
Director Lavina just finished explaining the 3rd of our 3 items today on the fall TAL.
I'm going to open up the queue and ask if anyone has technical questions.
Councilor, Councilor President Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
I just wanted to do a technical clarification about 2 things.
One, thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, for pointing out that this calendar does not have the Thanksgiving break on it as well.
It's the only one that isn't there?
There was a discussion at one point about whether it was budget related at all, but then there's other things that are not really budget related.
So we're gonna put that back on.
I'm gonna introduce an amendment that will put that back.
Additionally, with regard to the Passover conversation, there was a conversation, as I specifically understand it, between my staff who are— celebrate— I don't know, celebrate the right word?
Loretta Smith
Recognize?
Rebecca Dobert
Observe.
Jamie Dunphy
Observe, thank you.
Observe Passover as well as the budget office.
About the observation of second Seder versus other.
Anyway, regardless of what it is, there was an intentional conversation, and I will be introducing an amendment to change that date to the Friday.
Is that— will that work?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Passover is a complicated holiday, so I understand how this happened.
Generally, the first 2 nights are observed, the first 2 days fully.
Some people observe, some people do the first day and the first 2 nights.
I think that as long as that works for any staff who observe the holiday, it certainly would work for me.
For folks in the public who observe the holiday and might be traveling, I think as long as we have an opportunity for people to call in to provide testimony, that could work.
So I would just say let's make sure that any staff who observe the holiday can make that work with, with their And anyone who's listening to this and might have concerns, please reach out.
Jamie Dunphy
Let me know.
I'll help find a better solution.
So thank you very much for raising the issue.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Council President.
And I'll just observe we've probably got, um, some other dates to avoid, to not move on to.
So, you know, it'll take a minute to figure it out, I'm sure.
And I appreciate that scheduling is difficult.
Um, all right, any questions on this item?
This is the, the, the 3rd item, the creation of the code.
Uh, governing the, um, the reserve fund, BLT reserve fund.
Okay, well, with that then, we do have public testimony.
Um, I— we have noted that there is a technical amendment that will be introduced today that, that was explained, um, by our, our staff, and, um, there are others that have been floated for either later today or future, uh, conversations, most likely at the full council.
Um, so if there are any other amendments to float now would be a good time before we get into the testimony.
Okay, and I think our testifiers would like— the first group would like to—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Chair, I have my hand up.
Candace Avalos
Sorry, I didn't see it.
Eric Dean
Go for it.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Uh, I floated at our last meeting but just want to remind folks because it is now filed that when we get to council deliberations, I will be moving Pirtle-Guiney-Zimmerman 1 to the first item, the TAO itself.
Uh, that's the amendment which would move funds from the COEP reserve, the Community Opportunities and Enhancement Program reserve, to COEP to disbursement in this year so that we can continue to support the programs which ensure we have a pipeline of construction workers for our city projects.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks.
And just to clarify, You're moving that after testimony today or when we get to full council?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I had planned to move it today.
Okay.
But if you prefer that we wait and do all amendments at full council, we can do that.
Sameer Kanal
I think it's good to— we're doing the technical one today either way.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, so I'll move that after testimony today.
Loretta Smith
Great, thanks.
Sameer Kanal
Uh, go for it, Rebecca.
Thank you.
Rebecca Dobert
Our testifiers for item 366 are Rana Ouzman, Noah Kone and Courtney Hamilton, you can all approach the testimony table.
And Rana, you can start, or whoever's going to go first can start when you're ready.
Courtney Hamilton
Sure.
Noah Kone
Well, good morning, Council.
My name is Noah Kone.
I'm the executive director for Constructing Hope, one of Portland's 4 legacy pre-apprenticeship training programs that are coming out in support of this amendment.
And I just wanted to start by acknowledging this is a difficult time, difficult budget years.
There's a lot happening in our country, city, and county.
And so none of that is lost on us as we come to you and ask for support.
But what I wanted to talk about was not something new, but protecting an existing investment.
Over the past decade or so, Portland has very carefully and deliberately built a system that moves people with no prior construction experience into apprenticeships and careers that allow them to earn wages that sustain their households and their families.
Oftentimes, these people are coming from very difficult situations— incarceration, houselessness, recovery.
Domestic violence, food insecurity, just to name a few.
But after completing a pre-apprenticeship, they move on to, you know, paying taxes and earning wages in our communities.
Those dollars benefit neighborhoods.
They're able to keep their families together.
They're also able to no longer depend on the system that the city has to support in order to keep them upright, you know, and those are like the crucial support services and some of the other things that come with that.
So the main thing we wanted to point out was that even on the city's own construction projects, there are some goals set that ensure that members from the community, you know, irrespective of their background, have an opportunity to work on these major infrastructure projects.
And these projects oftentimes have their goals met or exceeded in terms of apprenticeship utilization.
So it's just evidence that the system is working and that people are going from pre-apprenticeship from the community, not having that experience, getting opportunities on these jobs that the city has and moving their lives forward.
And so we just wanted to thank the council for the opportunity to engage around this.
And I particularly wanted to commend Councilor Pirtle-Guiney and Zimmerman for their staunch advocacy and support.
They really leaned in and engaged and talked with these programs and really tried to find a way to support us and support all Portlanders that want to find a way to get upward mobility through the trades.
And so we just thank you for your time and consideration.
Courtney Hamilton
Yeah, hi, Courtney Hamilton, Executive Director at Oregon Tradeswomen.
And really just to ping pong off of my, my colleague here, the work that we are doing is so important.
And we are talking about not just making sure that people are meeting their needs in their household, we're also talking about saving money in the longer run, right?
These programs are designed, like Noah was saying, to get people and individuals off of SNAP, off of housing that's paid for by the government, and make them sustainable in their lives.
But we are also additionally talking about funding that's going to help the people who do the work with us, our amazing teams who make us look really good out in the public.
And as we sit up here today, their lives are being directly impacted.
We are having layoffs.
And I brought some of my wonderful team has stayed or come in today just to help put a face of what that looks like.
They still come in, they do the work regardless of the budget cuts, regardless of the layoffs.
They give the same amount of effort every single time.
Thank you.
And so we're impacting their lives as well.
And additionally, you are talking about up here, in and of itself, almost 70 years' worth of experience in these organizations of pre-apprenticeship programs we put out.
And we pride ourselves on quality, career-ready, apprenticeship-ready individuals.
And these funds, this impacting of our funding directly impacts that when we are talking about sending out these pre-apprentices for these programs, we are wanting to make sure that we put the best forward, right?
So that as these contractors and as these organizations come back, they can say, hey, I hired from PYB, I hired from Oregon Tradeswomen, I hired from Constructing Hope, and their candidates have been fantastic and phenomenal.
And so I really am banking off of Noah, as he said, in all of the things that I support, but also adding in there that we also have teams that have lives and families that they support and come to work every day regardless of how difficult it is.
And again, echoing Noah, Councilman Zimmerman, Ms. Pearl Guiney, thank you so much for your advocacy as well, and everyone who has stepped up in this place.
So we are wanting to make our faces known.
And again, thank you for the opportunity to be here in person.
Rana Uthman
Hello, council members.
My name is Rana.
I'm the executive director of Portland Youth Builders.
Before you, you have 3 of the 4 longstanding BOLI-certified pre-apprenticeship programs.
And I think it's important for council members to know we represent collectively over 100 years of workforce development experience.
We have been doing this work for a long time.
We take pride in the work that we do, and we're good at what we do.
Since the implementation of co-op, PYB has been able to serve almost 200 people so far.
In the past 3 years, PYB has an 85% completion and placement rate for the folks in the co-op program.
As you all know, workforce development is more than just finding a job.
Steve Novick
Yes.
Rana Uthman
It's about creating opportunities, uplifting communities, building skills, and opening doors that are typically closed.
In the communities we serve, people are ready and willing to work, but they face barriers such as limited access to training, limited financial resources, lack of transportation, and minimal career opportunities.
Rather than removing funds from pre-apprenticeship programs that provide these resources, we need to further invest in them.
This investment bolsters the local economy.
It allows businesses to grow at scale, and it supports the long-term sustainability of Portland.
At PYB, we do more than train people for construction careers.
At pre-apprenticeship programs, we do more than train people for construction careers.
We invest in people, you know, who have been historically overlooked.
We strengthen our workforce.
We reduce economic inequality and create a future where more families have the opportunities to thrive.
Our communities are full of talent and potential.
What is often missing is access and opportunity.
Pre-apprenticeship programs can help bridge that gap.
Let us work together to build more than just structures.
Let us build careers, strengthen families, and create stronger communities.
One opportunity That concludes testimony.
Sameer Kanal
And just to clarify, Rebecca, does that conclude testimony on all 3 items?
Rebecca Dobert
Yes.
Sameer Kanal
Great, thank you so much.
Thanks everyone for being here.
All right, well, we'll move into the queue.
We can discuss all of these.
Eventually we'll be taking, uh, votes on whether to refer them to the full council.
Um, please feel free to, to offer amendments at this time as well.
I will do the technical one if no one's in the queue, so I'll just do the technical one first.
Um, so I'll formally move Technical Amendment 1, which is the one that, um, uh, Ruth mentioned earlier, and ask for a second.
Second.
Is there any discussion on Technical Amendment 1?
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I was in the queue for another issue.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, is there any discussion?
All right, Rebecca, will you please call the roll on Technical Amendment 1?
Rebecca Dobert
Calling the roll on Technical Amendment 1, and that is to item, uh, 2, document 2026-366.
Uh, Clark?
Olivia Clark
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Green?
Mitch Green
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Zimmerman?
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Loretta Smith
Aye.
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Novick?
Steve Novick
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Knell?
Sameer Kanal
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
And the amendment is approved with 11 aye and 1 absent vote.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, colleagues.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, would you like to introduce?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Uh, I would.
I would like to move Pirtle-Guiney-Zimmerman 1 Is there a second?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Second.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, uh, moved by Pirtle-Guiney, seconded by Koyama Lane.
Uh, and, uh, I don't know if you'd like to speak to it first.
We'd already spoken to the other one, but please feel free to go ahead.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
And colleagues, I went over this at our last meeting, but just to provide a little bit of background for folks who were not here then, the Community Opportunities and Enhancement Program, or COEP, exists so that when the city invests in public construction projects, those investments prepare local Portlanders for that construction work.
Essentially, we fund our pipeline, and we do so in a way that creates opportunities for Portlanders who have historically been left out of construction trades.
We do that through our pre-apprenticeship programs.
They help people access training, certifications, and the support that they need to enter good-paying union construction careers that they might not have otherwise had any access to or knowledge of.
They also help us build a stronger, more representative workforce that can work on construction projects across the city.
During the last budget, we transitioned Co-op back to the city administration.
It had started at the city, then we sent it to Prosper where it was contracted to another organization for implementation, and we brought it back in.
When we did that, we knew that we would need to build a more sustainable program.
And direct more resources or more stable resources toward the organizations doing this work.
We didn't have— we just don't have the massive projects that we once did, and that's changed how these programs work.
But we still need to make sure that there is a bottom-line support for them.
When we made that transition, we did not know that there was a plan to pause the program.
Within the administration.
In fact, we were told that nothing was going to change, and that's not what happened.
There was a pause.
So Councilor Zimmerman and I have been working with the administration to undo that, to make sure that these programs can continue, that there's stability, and that the pipeline that we have been investing in as a city continues to be invested in, that Portlanders continue to be invested in as they make their way Yes.
From needing some supports to working high-wage, living-wage jobs in our community.
We had asked for a $350,000 release from co-op reserves, which the mayor asked our staff to put in the TAO, but we learned that that was not quite enough, that some organizations still had some serious concerns about viability unless we increased The amendment before you today increases funding to $600,000 so that those programs are at a sustainable level moving forward.
The co-op reserves have around $2 million in them, so we're still leaving a healthy amount available as we move through the work of reforming the program to a more sustainable path in the long run.
Colleagues, we need to make sure that our public investments deliver public benefit, and that is exactly what we're doing with this program.
That's exactly what this program has done for years.
We have the opportunity today to ensure that it continues to do so.
I want to thank Councilor Zimmerman for his partnership on this, stakeholders for raising the issue at the right time so that we could address it in the TAO, the mayor for picking up on that and starting the work, and the administration for partnering with us on figuring out the final piece.
With that, I would ask for your support for Pirtle-Guiney-Zimmerman 1.
And I'm not sure if my co-sponsor has anything he'd like to add.
Eric Zimmerman
Thank you.
And just a nod to Councilor Pirtle-Guiney and her leadership on this, and an important lift and timely lift, as she mentioned.
So I appreciate that.
You know, in terms of when I think about my discussions and commitments to how do we create and keep apprenticeships within the pipeline within the Thank you.
And I think that's important when we talk about what does workforce development mean and what does it mean to build wealth within the family structure, what does it mean to have available work, and what's it mean to make sure when we're a town who values a worker, like, this is that kind of action.
So thank you for identifying it.
Thank you, Councilor, for helping kind of use the scalpel to find the exact spot to insert here.
Sameer Kanal
And I think Thank you, Chair Kanal.
Dan Ryan
First of all, I'm very supportive of this.
I've been supportive of this for a couple decades.
It was a big part of my work at All Hands Raised.
In fact, I know all the organizations that are here 'cause we brought you into the table, if you will, when high schools in the area, in my opinion, were asleep at the wheel for a few decades.
About pathways to trades.
It was kind of like college or Walmart and the military.
Good luck.
So we kept trying to introduce that there's actually these wonderful pathways after high school where you can build some generational wealth.
And of course, the public projects, the big public projects are one of the best opportunities to do that.
And so I'm really excited about this.
I have more of an operational civics type question.
So we have reserves for this.
Sameer Kanal
Yes.
Dan Ryan
And I was part of a group that's been pushing for those reserves.
And so I think I'm just confused why we have to do this.
Is it to underscore that this must take place this year because we're letting the city administration know that we expect those reserves to be spent this year?
And then I have questions about the long term because We don't want to just do this in this year when we know darn well that we're in for a buckling up few years when it comes to construction.
And I want to make sure that we actually do have long-term stability here.
So how many more years can we tap into this reserve to make this sustainable?
And is this going to be— which in my opinion is the most concrete thing we do for equity— is this.
It operationalizes equity.
Thank you.
Money talks to allow people to actually build, become independent, and have a long-term life that's sustainable themselves.
And that's what we're about when we do equity work, in my opinion.
So that's my confusion, is this action seems necessary perhaps.
I know Sylvester's here, but I just want to hear, is this an annual thing we have to do to say this is a priority still, please expend the funds?
Ruth Levine
Yeah, so I'm gonna speak to the first part and then these folks can speak more to the specifics.
But on the budgetary piece, the reason this action is needed is that these funds, this is a good example of these funds were reserved for future expenditures in that the program had budgeted them there with the expectation that they would expend them in future years.
And they can talk more about the, financial sustainability of the program.
But budgetarily, that's where they were budgeted.
And so they— the program could not spend that unless council moves money out of those reserve—.
Loretta Smith
Those—.
Ruth Levine
That bucket of reserve for future expenditures and into the program's budget for this year.
So this is, from that perspective, this action is required to allow them to spend it in this year.
Council has to make that action, take that action.
Dan Ryan
I get that.
I'm just hope— and I'm all in again.
I just hope that this would become a part of our culture So that we wouldn't have to go snatch, but it would be like a part of what we're actually doing each year with our priorities.
Ruth Levine
So yeah, and I think that's where the—.
Dan Ryan
We don't make people who are working hard have to come down here and testify basically because it's not in our culture to do this.
Ruth Levine
Yeah, sorry.
The, um, I think the, the, the unique nature of the financing for this program is why this was needed.
And so I'm going to let Elizabeth take over on kind of how the Thank you.
Elizabeth Hilt
Elizabeth Hilt, Business Operations Division Manager.
The budget, or the reserve fund for Co-op, is balanced over a 5-year period to keep the program sustainable with revenues that are fluctuating.
That's why we need to move it out of reserves and into the budget to appropriate it.
Councilmember Herbold.
Dan Ryan
If the council wants to make this long-term, then we have to keep an eye on that reserve fund being big enough to make sure that we can do this action.
Otherwise, we'll be draining it out in the next 2 to 3 years.
Elizabeth Hilt
If we— if you decide as a council to fund the program at a higher level, that will draw on reserves and the future 4 years would change.
Dan Ryan
Okay, this is really helpful.
I hope it's been helpful to my colleagues as well.
So that we can actually have our eyes wide open so we don't have to do this trick every year.
Angelita Morillo
Yeah.
Dan Ryan
Uh, Sylvester, good to see you.
Would you like to add since you're the one that operates the program?
Unidentified speaker
Yeah, thank you.
Um, Council, Council, um, I just want to make sure it's also very clear that these are— some of these dollars are ratepayer dollars, and we also have to adhere to legal requirements as well.
So that being said, in consideration, um, I know that the conversation should be also brought up that it's a long-term sustainable model for these programs as well.
And how do we do that and go about doing that?
But other than that, I think that Elizabeth and Ruth pretty much handled the financial aspects and the requirements as well.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Councilor, Chair, may I?
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, go for it.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Councilor, I will just add that both Councilor Zimmerman and I have Told folks in the administration, Sylvester, the city administrator, the mayor, that we are happy to be part of that work to figure out what long-term sustainability can look like and to try to problem solve so that we can make sure that, that eye to the 5-year sustainability of the program is an easy checkbox and not something where we have to be hand-wringing and wondering if we're going to make it or not in the future.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
We'll go to Councilor Koyama Lane, then Councilor Avalos.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the 2 councilors that brought this forward.
This is really important.
These community opportunities and enhancement programs change people's lives.
Um, I think all the parts to it are important, but I want to hone in specifically on the workforce development piece and the pre-apprenticeship trainings.
I know a kiddo who actually— I didn't, I didn't teach this kiddo, I've known her since she was 7 and saw her bounce around to a lot of different schools and, um, eventually graduated.
That was challenging, um, but she's 18 now and she's, um, connected with one of these programs and it's, um, been wonderful.
And she's really excited to become an iron worker.
And so I've just seen really up close, you know, like this is not abstract, this changes people's lives when we talk about Thank you, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Sameer Kanal
Councilor Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Yeah, um, when, uh, you were describing the history of it, you mentioned that the program stopped, I guess.
Can you tell me more?
What do you mean?
Like, what exactly happened that this needs to take place?
Is it that the program was not funded in the new budget and this is a way to fund it because it has to restart it.
Yeah, can you just explain that more?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
When this program moved back into the community— I guess not Community and Economic Development, the Operations Service area under procurement, I had asked a question during the spring about whether there would be any changes to the program.
We were told that there would not be.
We since learned that there was a pause on the program.
The decision was made within procurement, and I can let Sylvester speak to the why, to pause the program in order to look at long-term sustainability and what changes needed to be made.
Stakeholders came forward and said if you pause this program, the pipeline that the city has worked hard to build is at risk.
Some of these organizations may not make it through a long pause.
So what we're bringing forward today is essentially that reconsideration to say we need to make sure that we continue to invest in this pipeline while we look at the long-term program sustainability rather than stopping the pipeline in order to take that look.
Candace Avalos
I'd love to hear then why it was paused.
Is it that you know, so it was moved into this other service area, and the pause, what I'm understanding, is because you were unsure about how to continue the program on existing dollars.
Is that part of what was contributing to the pause?
Unidentified speaker
That would be correct, Councilor Avalos.
Okay.
When we received it, it was at the end of a term of an IGA with Prosper, and we were assessing the financial viability of continuing on and not draining the fund completely.
But also being allowed to be able to help sustain the programs and our help with these particular programs in the community.
Loretta Smith
Okay.
Candace Avalos
And then the money— I keep hearing fund, and I just want to make sure I know which funds we're talking about.
So something about a $2 million fund.
Does Co-op have a $2 million reserve fund, and is that where this is coming from?
Ruth Levine
So yeah, the fund that this money is in is in the Citywide Obligations Reserve Fund.
Fund.
It's a subfund specifically for co-op because there are funds that pass from like the public works bureaus into it.
It's held in that central place and then it's transferred from there into procurement's budget for the actual spending of the money.
So that what we call CORF, the Obligations Reserve Fund, is just like the holding place for the funds, and that's where the reserve funds are held.
So this draws those out of RFE and then also puts them into procurement's budget so that they're available for them to spend.
Candace Avalos
And so then the remaining amount in the fund is—.
Elizabeth Hilt
Thank you.
If the money— if you pass this amendment today, the amount in the fund contingency will be $1.77 million, and that will become the beginning fund balance for next fiscal year.
Candace Avalos
Because that's the net of the $350,600, all that, right?
That's why it's $1.7 And then, um, so as far as if we take this action, and this action will mean that for what, and between now and July of next year we will continue the program, but then after that there will technically be no funding, and before end of July we need to figure out how to find more funding for the program?
Elizabeth Hilt
We have continued revenues coming from the infrastructure bureaus to continue the program.
So the beginning fund balance will be $1.7 million projected, and then we will receive revenues next year that we will bill.
And that is a projection.
If, if we fund the program around $900,000 per year, we can keep the fund or keep the program going for about 5 years.
But at that year 5 of the program, we will be going negative.
Candace Avalos
Is that the reason why there was the pause, because you saw the 5-year trajectory and saw that?
I'm just trying to understand the timing of everything.
Unidentified speaker
We were concerned about the fund being depleted and not having any contingency fund or any additional funding sources to sustain it.
Candace Avalos
But technically, because you receive funding from the infrastructure bureaus, there's funding, base funding for the program.
It's just that how you are currently operating the program at a $900,000 price tag per year is what's not sustainable based on what's coming in.
Unidentified speaker
Correct.
Candace Avalos
Okay, um, let me see if I have any other questions.
I guess as a result of this, I mean, this would be us unpausing you, right?
So what does that mean for you and the work that you were trying to do, and how leading up until the next year, what, what's going to happen?
Unidentified speaker
We will be able to sustain it for— at the, at the actual, or the current the current model or current requested model.
But we also have to have a conversation about what is the long-term sustainability and viability of the program.
We really do have to have that conversation.
Candace Avalos
I think where I'm confused, it's like there was what, $350,000 for the program, which is not the full amount of $900,000.
We're putting $600,000— rough numbers here— we're putting $600,000 in.
But I'm also hearing you say part of your pause was because at that price tag you could pay for this program for 5 more years.
So I think I'm— I don't know what the disconnect is.
Why could you not pay for it this year, but you could for 5 more years?
Unidentified speaker
We actually are overcompensating.
Sameer Kanal
We—.
Unidentified speaker
That's— the fund's not actually— let me just give you some details as to why.
Riley Williams
I might jump in here.
I'm Riley Williams.
I work with Elizabeth in business operations.
And so there was a 2-year IGA with Prosper, and each year of that IGA was about $2.6 million.
And so when that was signed, we kind of knew like, okay, in FY 26-27, we're going to be down significantly, um, our program budget.
So at that point, um, you know, we, we started talking about that, you know, having, having all of these budget issues in the future.
And so now we're here Where, you know, the Prosper IGA at $2.6 million could not be sustained based on the revenues we were getting from Public Works and some of the infrastructure bureaus.
Candace Avalos
Okay.
All right.
That's all for now.
Thanks.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks.
I'm next in the queue.
And just a heads up, when I'm done with my questions, I'm going to close the queue on this particular amendment.
Um, so if anyone wants to get in, please feel free to.
I had 3 questions.
Just to clarify, there's $300,000 that's already in here, and this is raising it to $900,000, right?
This is the— this is all new $600,000, right?
It's not—.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
There's $350,000 that was previously in here, and this raises it to $600,000, or this raises it by $600,000 to $950,000.
There we go.
And as we heard just a moment ago, in previous years it was $2.5 million.
So this is that balance point of it's a significant reduction from what it was but allows for program sustainability.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Just wanted to get that on the record.
The second question I had was that, you know, this is 2 increases of $600,000, and that's because you're adding $600,000 as an inter-fund cash transfer to one fund and then bringing it in and putting it as an expense for what it actually does, right?
Ruth Levine
That's correct.
Sameer Kanal
So this is how we have an $8.5 billion budget with $6.5 actual billions of dollars, because we're double counting the same money here.
Just wanted to take that opportunity.
How much of the deprioritization of this program has to do with the mayor's executive order?
Unidentified speaker
Can you— I'm sorry, Councilor, can you repeat that question?
Sameer Kanal
How much of the conversation around the prior to this amendment deprioritization of this program has to do with the mayor's executive order on DEI?
Unidentified speaker
As of now, that is not in consideration.
That was not a consideration.
It was part of the program bundle, but we assessed that Co-op, as it stands, is about workforce.
Candace Avalos
Right.
Unidentified speaker
Workforce itself.
And that is something completely different than the mayor's executive order.
And we focused on that piece as well.
So the considerations in terms of pausing in the budget was that we had a budget gap, a significant budget gap.
That was the consideration that our office had.
And how can we prioritize that with the monies that we have?
And that is not something that was easily identifiable because we were trying to find the how behind the what.
Sameer Kanal
Okay.
Thanks for that.
Yeah, I'm personally prepared to support this.
And I wanted to thank Noah, Courtney, and Rana for coming in and appreciate someone who's willing to say we are good at it and own that.
I appreciate that a lot.
Often we are told not to say that.
Own it.
So that's my comments.
Queue is now closed.
Councilor Ryan will be last in the queue.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Dan Ryan
I just have one quick question.
I'm unclear about Prosper Portland's role.
I think I would like to hear what they have passed through in this equation.
Unidentified speaker
They were a pass-through and they supported business technical assistance and they work with our community partners in terms of trying to create expansive support for small business and startups.
Who also was subcontractors who also supported workforce.
Jamie Dunphy
Got it.
Dan Ryan
So we subcontract, if you will, or contract with Prosper Partner, okay, with our quasi-government agency Prosper Portland, who then subcontracts with the people that are actually doing the work on the ground.
Noah Kone
Yes.
Dan Ryan
Is that what we're doing here?
Rebecca Dobert
Yes.
Courtney Hamilton
Okay.
Dan Ryan
It's always good to follow the bouncing ball, and it was a little confusing when I heard that.
I hope that we're not expending too much money with all of those bouncing balls.
Getting the money directly to the partners is always great.
Thanks.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks, Councilor Ryan.
I, I think, uh, recent news articles make, uh, make those very good questions, and I appreciate that.
Um, all right, that concludes the queue on the amendment.
Rebecca, will you please call the roll on Amendment Pirtle-Guiney-Zimmerman 1?
Rebecca Dobert
Uh, this is Amendment Pirtle-Guiney 1 to, uh, ordinance document number 2026-366, moved by Pirtle-Guiney, seconded by Koyama Lane.
Clark?
Olivia Clark
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Green?
Mitch Green
Aye.
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Koyama Lane?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Morillo?
Angelita Morillo
Thanks for bringing this forward.
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Novick?
Steve Novick
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Kanal?
Sameer Kanal
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
The amendment is approved with 12 aye votes.
Courtney Hamilton
Great.
Sameer Kanal
Well, now we'll go back to the main queue on all 3 of these items.
So please, colleagues, feel free to get into the queue on that.
Council President Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, colleagues.
I just emailed around an amendment titled Dunphy 1.
This is on behalf of our friends in Council Operations.
There's an updated version of the language.
The city attorney's caught a tiny tweak to it that is coming.
Oh, there it landed in your inbox right now.
Functionally, this is an authorization.
It has no dollar amounts attached to it, but it authorizes the council operations team to provide merit increases to the council ops staff using their existing appropriations.
Currently, because of the odd sort of configuration of how Yes.
Council Ops exists within our operation structure.
Our Council Operations Manager Dana doesn't have authority to give any merit increases.
And so this would just authorize, in collaboration with the Council President, the ability to give merit increases.
And the language is in your inbox.
As I said, there was a minor tweak from our city attorneys.
And so the language is there.
And I would formally move this, and I would ask for a second.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Second.
Sameer Kanal
There's an amendment moved by Councilor Dunphy, seconded by Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Uh, we'll get into the queue, and I'll start with Councilor Smith, and then I'm next in the queue.
Loretta Smith
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Uh, Council President, I'd like to know a little bit more.
Why would the Council President be responsible for giving merit in council operations?
And not just Dana?
Jamie Dunphy
Yeah, in our, in our org structure, that decision has to go up to the highest level of manager at there.
And technically, the Council Operations reports to the Council President.
And so they— she doesn't have— in her current job description as a manager, she doesn't have the legal authority to give merit.
And so that has to come.
Loretta Smith
And so she would make the recommendation to you and you would approve or disapprove?
Yes, uh, the, the merit-based, even though these folks don't work for you, right?
Jamie Dunphy
Or whoever the next council president is.
Loretta Smith
So council president would make those decisions and they don't have the day-to-day with, with these folks?
Because there's a couple things that go on with this that I think it also should include councilors, because the, um, council operation folks are, uh, admins.
They report to us on a daily basis and nobody asked me about whether or not they should have a merit, because I work with them every day.
Not you, not Dana.
So I think we need to add something in there that there should be some kind of conversation done with the districts, because we're the ones who, who basically, um, watch their day-to-day.
And if you want to, if you want to make sure that we all can have a say, you might want to give us our own Admit, because I think you will probably likely to get 3 different stories.
Jamie Dunphy
And this is not just the front desk folks in each of our districts, but also our committee staff as well.
Loretta Smith
Oh, I understand.
I don't want to do anything over committees.
I'm talking about specifically the admin who they do not supervise on a daily basis.
You don't supervise them other than the ones that's right in front of you, but I supervise the one that's in front of me, and I think that we need to have some input as well.
Jamie Dunphy
Well, uh, heard, absolutely.
And I will say that ultimately Dana is their, their direct manager for each of the 4 district offices.
They do report to us and they, they do work at our—.
Loretta Smith
Excuse me, Council President, I don't mean to interrupt, but she does.
That is, that is who she is.
This is like the city administrator, he has all the bureaus under him, but the people who actually work with those people every single day should have some sort of input about merit.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
I'll go to Councilor Green next.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Chair Kanal.
Um, thank you, Council President, for bringing this forward.
I think it's appropriate.
Um, I mean, I think I, I convey feedback all the time to Dana about our staff, and I think that's every councilor's prerogative to do.
We should be communicating with the director of the council operations staff to say, hey, I'm having a good experience, this person's doing a good job, or hey, I'd like to see some of these tweaked.
And so that's our opportunity to provide general feedback, even outside of the merit question.
I think when we hire someone and say you're responsible for managing this person, we vest with them some sort of level of discretion.
Otherwise, what's the point, right?
Steve Novick
Thank you.
Mitch Green
And I'll just note that I think it's pretty common to have an approval hierarchy of merit increases.
I mean, in my prior world as a federal employee, I think, you know, to get a certain merit bump, I needed my boss's boss to say yes to that, even though I didn't work with my boss's boss on a daily basis.
So I think this is appropriate.
This is the right way to do it.
And I think it's important that we give that tool to Dana so she can, um, fairly compensate these folks who work really hard for our city.
Dan Ryan
Thanks.
Steve Novick
I'm going to support.
Sameer Kanal
And I'm next in the queue.
Uh, Council President, I guess I had a couple questions.
First, it's— it seems strange to me to amend an ordinance from a few months ago in this ordinance as opposed to just doing it through the vehicle of the TAO itself.
Can you speak to that piece?
Jamie Dunphy
Uh, yeah, I don't honestly fully appreciate the, the The reason why we're doing that, but that was just at the advice of Heidi Brown.
Okay, so I'm not totally clear.
I don't know if there's further information about what that one-two step is.
I don't know.
I see Heidi shaking her head back there.
Maybe you could help.
And also Ruth can help.
Ruth Levine
Sorry, this does amend the— this does amend the TAO.
It adds a directive to the TAO itself.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, it says in the email we got, amend Ordinance 192207.
Which is the supplemental budget we passed a couple months ago, as opposed to just adding a new directive here.
Ruth Levine
Sorry, I think that part, Ordinance 192207, should not be there.
I think it should just say amend the fall technical adjustment ordinance.
Courtney Hamilton
There you go.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay, so we will— I'm going to go ahead and withdraw the amendment for right now, just make sure we have the actual technical language fixed and tightened up, and I will reintroduce this at the full council.
Candace Avalos
Okay.
Sameer Kanal
Um, I, I guess just to put on the record what my other questions were— um, it's—.
Steve Novick
You're good.
Sameer Kanal
They're for council, council president here.
But I, I, I do think, just to, uh, put that on the record for later, I, I think there is a conversation.
I agree with, with Councilor Smith about how council operations operates.
I think the way that it's working with the folks that are in the office is different than the ones that are in our offices.
And I'm very fortunate as a D2 councilor, we're very well supported.
I can't speak to all the others.
I'm sure they are as well, but I just don't have that exposure.
And so, but I do think that there's sort of a conversation about how that team works and how it's not, how it's structurally as opposed to culturally independent from the council president.
'Cause right now it is culturally independent in the sense that I don't think there's been any issue with individual councilors, but there are council presidents directing it in any necessarily subjective way, but there's no structure that protects that.
And so I wanna make sure that that's a broader conversation and that this doesn't sort of preclude that conversation.
That's one of the big things that we haven't, I think, gotten into yet.
But I appreciate that.
So the amendment has been withdrawn.
Um, we're now back in the main queue.
Um, Councilor Smith, are you still— are you in the main queue?
Loretta Smith
I have a point of order.
Um, so can I say one last thing about this that I wanted us to be aware of?
I know it's going to the, uh, big council, but we also need to understand, remember, the mayor has put a hold on merit raises for all employees.
So our council ops will be getting something that somebody— that none of our other employees are getting at this point.
So I just want to— I know, uh, uh, Council President, that you like to be in order and you want to make sure that things are done right and transparent.
Just understand no one else is getting this ability to do this right now.
So thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Just, just to be clear, that's not technically a point of order, but you're in the queue, so it's all fine.
Jamie Dunphy
Uh, but wanted to, uh, There are some limited cases still in the city where we can give merit increases.
It is typically restricted, and you're right, the mayor has restricted merit increases for folks in the executive.
That doesn't apply to the legislative branch though.
We can give merit increases to our staff, and that is sort of part of why this structurally is a little bit different.
With Council Operations being a direct report to the council, that was the thought there.
But that is a valid point.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thanks, Chair.
Council President, you've withdrawn the amendment.
We still want to make sure that That there is an opportunity, if a raise is appropriate, for that to occur without this amendment.
What is the process?
Does that go directly to you and Dana doesn't have a say?
Jamie Dunphy
No, currently there's not an ability for merit increases for anybody in Council Ops.
I will be reintroducing a new amendment.
I will work with our friends at CBO and the city attorneys to make sure that the language is accurate.
And that we are not referencing old resolutions or ordinances.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
And I appreciate that clarification.
And the independence of the legislative branch is really helpful.
I'm in the queue, so this is me starting to do that.
I did want to raise— I'm not going to do anything amendment-wise about it today, but just wanted to flag, I raised in the work session a few specific decision packages that I had questions about.
Specifically related to a large encumbrance carryover for Portland Solutions.
And the process questions were a big part of that as to why we built a budget that required an encumbrance carryover after talking about that last year.
I also wanted to ask, and we'll follow up, I'm just saying it in the interest of time to not ask questions now because I'll raise them at the council, about decision package 28447, which talks about, um, allowing for 2 more TIF districts, um, as a, uh, like a $10 million move there, um, to allow for bonds to be issued for 2 more TIF districts.
And then I raised, I think, 4 other ones during the, um, the work sessions that I'm going to follow up on as well.
Um, I don't expect to have amendments so much as I just haven't had a You just flagged—.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Chair Knoll.
You just flagged something that caught my interest.
2 new TIF districts?
Are these in addition to the ones that were expanded, or can you elaborate?
Sameer Kanal
I don't know.
So that's the reason for the question in the first place.
Elizabeth Hilt
Yeah.
Sameer Kanal
If— I don't know if any staffers can speak to 28447.
Um, it's a decision package under fund and debt management.
Says this decision package will allow for short-term bond issuances for 2 more TIF districts and will update interest earning revenue to a more realistic expectation.
And that is the sum total of what it says.
Jonas Biery
Uh, yeah, good morning.
Uh, for the record, Jonas Piri, Chief Financial Officer.
We're double checking that.
But I— and we can certainly provide responses in writing, including any other questions that come up from Council related to TAO decision packages.
My understanding is that's not related to new TIF districts, but adjustments to the borrowing plan that requires sort of new budgetary appropriation to facilitate the debt issuance, the line of credit, or whatever the case may be so that those plans within those districts can continue in the current year.
So it's not new districts, but new allocation of that $10 million.
But we'll certainly get back with you in writing with a formal answer once we can talk to the debt manager and Prosper team.
Mitch Green
Okay, thanks.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Council Vice President Clark.
Elizabeth Hilt
Thank you, Chair.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Regarding the TIF districts, I think we maybe need a little bit more clarification.
As I understand, we may reopen older TIF districts.
If we could get a clarification on that, particularly regarding the PSU proposal, the performing arts project.
I don't know if there's anybody in the room that can address the TIF issue, or if we just need to punt to another time.
If I would just put a pin in that.
Jonas Biery
Yeah, Councilor, thank you for the question.
Um, yeah, I know there's some, um, ongoing dialogue about that.
I don't have the answers, uh, in front of me today, but we'll, uh, put this in the, in the punch list of questions in, in order to get an answer back to you.
Sameer Kanal
All right, seeing no one else in the queue, I would, uh, I guess ask I would ask for a motion to refer, um, the technical adjustment ordinance on to the full council.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So moved.
Steve Novick
Second.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, there's a motion from Councilor Pirtle-Guiney and, uh, seconded by Councilor Novick.
Courtney Hamilton
I, I—.
Sameer Kanal
Sorry, with a do pass recommendation?
Forgot to ask that part.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
With a do pass recommendation.
Sameer Kanal
Um, any further discussion on referring this item?
Seeing none, Rebecca, will you please call the roll?
Rebecca Dobert
Uh, calling the roll on document number 2026-366, and that was moved by Pirtle-Guiney, seconded by Novick.
Thank you.
Clark?
Olivia Clark
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Green?
Mitch Green
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Zimmerman?
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Sorry, that was— thank you.
Oh, uh, Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Mitch Green
Aye.
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Jeremy Patton
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Novick.
Steve Novick
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
And the motion to refer is approved with 12 aye votes.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, colleagues.
I would also ask for a motion to refer on Resolution, uh, 2026-367.
Jamie Dunphy
That's the budget calendar to the So moved with a do pass recommendation.
Sameer Kanal
Moved by Dunphy.
Is there a second?
Candace Avalos
Second.
Sameer Kanal
Seconded by Avalos.
Uh, is there any further discussion on this item?
Rebecca, will you please call the roll?
Rebecca Dobert
Calling the roll on 2026-367, moved by Dunphy, seconded by Avalos.
Olivia Clark
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Green?
Mitch Green
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Zimmerman?
Eric Zimmerman
No.
Rebecca Dobert
Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Dunphy?
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Smith?
Loretta Smith
No.
Rebecca Dobert
Councilor Guinea?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
No.
Rebecca Dobert
Ryan?
Dan Ryan
Yeah, I appreciate the adjustments we talked about to the calendar, so aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Koyama Lane?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Morillo?
Angelita Morillo
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Novick?
Steve Novick
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Kanal?
Sameer Kanal
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
And the motion to refer with a do pass recommendation is approved with 9 aye, 3 nay.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
And then last but not least, Ordinance 2026-368, adding the new code chapter 5.90, would look for a motion to refer that on to the full council.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So moved with a do pass recommendation.
Jamie Dunphy
Second.
Sameer Kanal
All right, moved by Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, seconded by Council President Dunphy.
Is there any further discussion on this item?
This is the, the creation of the— referring the ordinance that creates the business license tax stabilization reserve fund.
Steve Novick
I got—.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, words were all in the right order there.
Courtney Hamilton
Yeah.
Sameer Kanal
Yes, that is a—.
Eric Dean
Yeah.
Sameer Kanal
All right, seeing no one else in the queue, Rebecca, will you please call the roll on this one?
Rebecca Dobert
Motion to refer document number 2026-368 to full council with a do pass recommendation.
Moved by Pirtle-Guiney, seconded by Dunphy.
Clerk?
Olivia Clark
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Green?
Mitch Green
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Zimmerman?
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Dunphy?
Jamie Dunphy
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Smith?
Loretta Smith
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Aye.
Angelita Morillo
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
Aye.
Aye.
Eric Dean
Aye.
Eric Zimmerman
Aye.
Rebecca Dobert
And the motion to refer is approved with 12 aye votes.
Sameer Kanal
All right, colleagues, that completes the, uh, Committee of the Whole consideration of the fall technical adjustment.
Um, we're gonna— we have a couple things left on the agenda, but first we're going to take a break.
So if we could all please come back by 11:30 so we can actually start a couple minutes after that.
Um, we'll take a recess.
Thanks.
Thank you.
All right, thanks, colleagues.
We're going to slowly come back to order.
All right, uh, with that, I guess if, uh, Rebecca, if you could please read item 5.
Rebecca Dobert
Amend business license law code to include new compensation ratios and increase the CEO pay ratio surtax and gross receipts exemption amount.
Amend Code Section 7.02.400 and 7.02.500 Document number 2026-348.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
So colleagues, where we last left off on this, we'd heard the presentation in brief.
Um, I think some of the members, uh, the sponsors had decided to retain their sponsor comments until later to allow for testimony to be heard.
And then we heard all the testimony, um, that are all the, the oral testimony.
Um, the written record remained open.
It's still open now, I think.
And, um, we are picking up Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Councilor Mitch Green.
We are going to pick up basically where we left off right at the end of testimony.
As I mentioned, there is one other item on the agenda after this, so we may not end up getting to a vote on this item today.
It may continue this on to another agenda, but I just wanted to flag that before we get started and allow colleagues to either remove themselves from the queue if those are legacy hands or get into the queue if they are not.
All right, Councilor Green followed by Councilor Novick.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Chair Kanal.
Um, thank you, colleagues, uh, for the discussion here.
I just want to bring us back to where we were last week.
We heard the testimony.
Um, over the course of that time, we've received, uh, oh geez, what is the number now, 251 pieces of written testimony, and 81% of that testimony is in support of this ordinance.
Um, that tracks pretty closely with, uh, polling.
On this type of tax proposal, where 89— 87% of Democrats support, you know, tax on large corporations who pay their CEO too much.
Even over 77% of Republicans also support that as well.
So this is a sort of broadly popular proposal because there is a shared recognition that over the last several decades, we have watched the largest corporations in America take more and more and more of the net income of society and pay workers less and less and less and leave cities out in the lurch.
And so I just want to say just broadly, everyone deserves economic security.
And yet we've heard from thousands of Portlanders over the last 2 years and hundreds just over the last week that people are struggling to afford daily life.
And so in the context of the fact that we're in our own financial crisis and in the context of recognizing that we need to think not just for the next budget but 2 or 3 budgets down the road, we have to make a change in our revenue structure, and this is an opportunity to move in that direction.
So I'm happy to take any sort of technical questions anyone have, and I'll just, I'll just leave you with this.
I think it's important to put into context the scale of the Trump tax cuts.
The Trump tax cuts starting in 2017, and then what most recently with the big beautiful bill.
Together, that's $1.4 trillion in tax cuts over a 10-year period.
And so if every city with a population greater than 500,000 in the United States, that's 39 cities, if every single one of those cities did something like this, raise similar amount of revenue, it would only result in a 2.4% Okay, that'd be like a normal-sized guy standing next to the Portland Building in terms of scale.
So, um, I'll stop yammering on about it.
We'll get into a nice little discussion on it.
And, uh, and by the way, again, if anyone wants to co-sponsor this, um, you're more than welcome to at this time.
We'd be happy to work with you guys on this.
Noah Kone
Thanks.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Next in the queue is Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I apologize in advance for having a bunch of stuff to say, but I think I have a fair amount of directly relevant personal experience.
I obviously like the idea of taxing corporations that have vastly overpaid CEOs, but when I introduced this concept in 2016, it was not really to raise a lot of money.
It was to make a point and inspire imitators.
What I was hoping is we'd see a bunch of other local and state and ultimately the federal government adopt this idea, and that would actually affect corporate behavior.
Unfortunately, that hasn't happened.
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have introduced some legislation, but it hasn't passed.
The only jurisdiction that's actually adopted a similar thing is San Francisco.
This— and because we weren't raising a lot of money, it would— the stakes were kind of low for the business folks.
The chamber opposed the measure, but there was no real danger they were going to, like, try to refer it to the ballot because it just didn't cost them that much money, although it's nice to have a few million a year.
This is different.
I asked Peter Holzman last week if there are any companies that would wind up paying more than $1 million a year in extra taxes because of this, and he said, yeah, there's more than a dozen.
Don't know which they are, but we know they exist.
So there's companies that it might be worth their while to gather the signatures to refer to a ballot if they thought they could win.
And there's a reason they might think they could win, which is that San Francisco tried to turbocharge its CEO pay ratio tax surcharge earlier this year.
And it lost at the ballot despite the fact that there was a significant campaign which, based on donors, seems to have been led by various arms of SEIU that raised $3 million to try to pass it.
So the corporate folks might be encouraged by that and try to refer to the ballot.
So I think that if we vote on this, we shouldn't be thinking just about a vote but about a potential campaign.
I have some experience in big tax-related campaigns.
In the year 2000, there was a measure on the ballot that would have given a huge tax break to rich people by making all federal taxes deductible on state income tax forms.
And I did early media and organizing and research on that.
And one of the things we were able to do— I was paid for by labor— but one of the reasons we were able to beat that is that we were able to get big— the big corporations to agree that this would have such a devastating effect on the state budget that they should oppose it.
And we wound up beating that measure.
10 years later, I was part of a campaign.
I was a researcher and again, one of the spokespeople for the campaign for Measures 66 and 67, which raised taxes on rich people and had a small tax on corporations in 2010.
And that was a straight-up fight between OEA, SEIU, and AFSCME, and then a few random, you know, nice rich people and the corporations.
And our side won.
We outspent the other side, I think about 3 to 2.
We also— the legislature sent in the ballot, they wrote the ballot title, and the ballot title explained exactly what cuts would happen to the state budget if it didn't pass.
So those were 2 things in our favor.
6 years later, and I wasn't part of this campaign but observed it closely, there was a measure on the ballot, Measure 97, to have a big gross receipts tax on big corporations.
And I think that started off polling well, and we got outspent like 2 or 3 to 1, I think, and that lost.
But a couple of years later, um, business and the legislature agreed to a smaller, uh, gross receipts tax because they finally agreed that the schools needed more money.
So I draw 2 lessons from those experiences.
One is that sometimes you can get the corporations on your side in a revenue issue.
Noah Kone
Issue.
Steve Novick
I do not think it's impossible that we might be able to have a revenue package that, like, the Portland Chamber of Commerce can live with.
There's some fairly serious people having behind-the-scenes conversations right now about revenue options, and I'm not at liberty to say what they are, but at some point I think that those conversations will surface, and at some point the people having those conversations will probably talk to the folks at the Chamber, And we know what the Chamber wants.
They want more money for police.
And I think that after they lick their wounds over the demise of the PSF ballot measure, they might be ready to deal.
And so I wouldn't rule that out.
The second lesson I draw is that if you're going to go to war with big corporations, you want powerful allies on your side.
And by powerful allies, I mean the big unions.
I mean the big green machine and the purple people eaters.
So before voting for something like this, I want to know the answer to 2 questions.
One, have we done everything that we can to see if we can achieve our objectives without going to war?
And 2, if we've done that and we still think we need to go to war, do we have the powerful allies with us?
And at this point, I think the answer to both of those questions is no.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Uh, we'll go to Council President Dunphy, followed by Councilor Green.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Um, you know, colleagues, as Councilor Green had pointed out, you know, we are dealing with a massive federal math problem.
Uh, the mega corporations are walking away with trillions of dollars in tax windfalls while our local communities are left holding the bag.
It's bad enough that we don't have a federal partner to actually help us with the challenges of our times.
We have a federal government that's actively making our jobs harder.
And at the same time, in my 2 years as a city councilor, I've only I've only met one local small business in East Portland that has described themselves as thriving, and it's a 2-woman trash hauling team who has a contract with RID.
I really believe that we need to do something.
I think that this is— the fair share tax ordinance is our opportunity to actually influence that equation in Portland in some meaningful way by delivering tax cuts to the smallest of small businesses.
They're truly the only people who are actually investing in our community.
Thank you.
Right now.
There are very few cranes in the sky, but every day we hear that there are new people showing up to permitting and development to try and open a small business.
And 90% of the employers in our community are employing 10 or fewer people, and they earn less than half a million dollars a year.
We balance our ledger not by hurting the local economic engines that are actually keeping our neighborhoods alive, but by asking the roughly 400 multimillion-dollar publicly traded corporations to contribute a modest fraction of their localized net profits back into the city that generated their wealth.
It's a common-sense, overwhelmingly popular rebalancing that keeps wealth on our main streets, protects our small business owners from shifting city costs, and is going to help us fund the critical parks and public safety services that Portlanders rely on.
60-Plus community— you know, Councilor Novick, as you're saying, you're right, we do need a large coalition coalition.
And, uh, we need to have overwhelming, uh, support from the outside that shows that we are— that this is the right direction to go.
And I have been really impressed by the 60-plus different community and business organizations and the 50-plus small business owners that have actively endorsed the fair share.
But you're right, we need a much larger coalition to really meaningfully demonstrate that this is not a one-off, but this is a new path forward.
I, I really encourage my colleagues to find a path to support this, even if it's not today.
If this needs more work or to find a way to actually deliver that relief to the actual people who are making Portland special, I really encourage it because every day I'm hearing those same sad stories about the pinch happening at the bottom and watching millions of dollars getting pulled out of our community with nothing to show for it.
So I'm a big fan of where we're trying to go, and colleagues, I hope we can find a path forward.
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Dunphy.
Go to Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, followed by Councilor Smith.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Chair, colleagues.
I've got a little bit to say here and then some questions that I'll ask.
You know, we are in a funding crisis.
We are in a funding crisis across all levels of government.
At the local, state, and federal level, we are seeing massive massive cuts to critical programs, and it is not by accident.
Federal policies recently have exacerbated budget holes, yes, but longstanding policies—tax cuts for top income earners, tax credits for empty building units, the ease with which the very wealthy can use offshore accounts, among others—have devastated our ability to provide services people need and have frankly led to wealth inequalities that make those services necessary.
Necessary in the first place when they shouldn't be.
And meanwhile, the working class, the middle class, even the upper middle class are being pit against each other as we all try to figure out how to pay to make up for those choices.
So yes, at some point redistributive policies are going to be necessary to right the economic ship.
There's no way to do so without them.
But we need to make sure those policies are right, that they'll work as intended, that we're not peddling false promises to Portlanders who rely on our city programs or to small businesses who are being promised a significant tax cut here.
I have some questions today about how this proposal was crafted and what pre-work has been done, as well as what work still needs to be done, because I'm concerned about those details.
I'm concerned about getting it right.
And I'm going to name the obvious.
A resolution sponsored by 6 councilors I'm saying that not as a criticism, but because I want the public to understand why it may sound like I'm scrutinizing the policy on the dais.
This is my first opportunity to ask questions, to find out about that pre-work, to find out what different options were considered, if any, before settling on this one, and whether the work was done to make sure that this sticks if we pass it.
Councilor Smith, I made a promise to constituents that I would craft lasting progressive policy and do it responsibly.
And so when I consider a revenue measure, I want to make sure it's lasting.
As someone who worked on the corporate activities tax to fund education, who helped to pass Measures 66 and 67 to fund core services at the state level, and who has been part of multiple other conversations about state and local revenue, I have some experience with what it takes to get measures like this across the finish line, and it takes carefully considered policy that can win votes not only at the dais but withstand lawsuits, referendums, votes of the public when significant campaigns are launched against them, even once it passes here.
So while I'm committed to a tax system rooted in progressive structure where no one is left carrying more than they can afford, I know these systems often take months of public process to get right, and this measure before us is, um, is new.
It is new, and we are being asked to take a vote without those months of public process.
Getting it right doesn't mean something sounds nice on paper, looks the best, is introduced at the right time.
It means it's undergone the scrutiny that's needed to minimize negative impacts on Portlanders.
So I have a handful of questions about what work was done to get here.
The first is, in this proposal, taxes go up not only on corporations who are already paying the, um, the CEO tax, but we include new corporations, those who pay in the 50:1 to 100:1 ratio range.
Do we have a sense of who those businesses are, and is there anything that, um, I don't see our Is there anything that our revenue folks— and okay, perfect, in the corner.
Is there anything that our revenue division folks can help me understand without divulging information you can't share about who that group of businesses are, how many of them there are, what they do in our economy?
We know that the micro businesses, the very small businesses, receive a cut here.
We know that the mega corporations pay more.
I can't speak to that.
But who is this other group?
Mitch Green
And just before you guys answer, I just want to note that it's still, it's still just firms with $100, at least $100 million in revenue that are publicly traded.
So it's not a privately held firm, um, under $100 million.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So do we know how many new businesses are brought into this tax that weren't a part of it before, as we think about who the opposition might be?
Jonas Biery
Yeah, thank you for the question.
For the record, Jonas Beery, Chief Financial Officer.
We also have, I believe, Revenue Division staff available online.
To your question, Councilor, on kind of the new folks at that new tier, we don't yet have that data because they're folks that we have not previously collected on and we haven't done sort of a prospective look.
We would still need to go back and collect that data on what those numbers would be at that new threshold.
Courtney Hamilton
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So in terms of thinking about where is the support, where is the opposition, what does the fight look like on this, we don't have a sense of how many new corporations are being brought under the tax.
Mitch Green
We can get you a more firm answer.
I believe, again, since this— our revenue division folks basically had a sample to see like SEC data, that sort of thing.
And sample which firms would.
So we have rough numbers in terms of like total.
When it gets into what industries and more specifics, it gets a lot fuzzier.
And so I don't think we can probably give you like specifics there.
But in terms of like an estimate of, you know, a rough estimate of the total number of new firms that would be added, we could probably put something together.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, but we don't know today You can find out and let me know.
Okay.
Um, to my colleagues, have you had conversations with the legal team about how the impact of this ordinance getting added to the lawsuit that has already been filed against the city about our ability to change taxes from the dais would affect our ability to fight that lawsuit, and whether Adding this, the business community adding this to their lawsuit against us would risk expanding a potential ruling there in a way that could dramatically jeopardize our ability to raise revenue in the future.
Have we had those conversations with the legal team?
Mitch Green
We had Ken McGare work on this legislation throughout.
I think we had started this process as early as February.
The lawsuit on the arts tax is relatively new.
I think we did receive a legal memo from Robert Taylor, and we could ask— we could call him up here to ask some questions that would be appropriate in this setting.
But the thing that's different between the arts tax and the business license tax is the arts tax was something that we referred to voters to ask them to say yes or no to it.
The business license tax has been on the books since 1854, and it's well established.
Thank you.
So we would need to tease that out with the attorneys.
I'm not an attorney, but the initial work on this didn't contemplate that interaction between the arts tax lawsuit, which I would argue is frivolous, and then what would come later, which would probably also be frivolous.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
I also think the arts tax lawsuit is going to be frivolous, but I do think we need to understand whether these 2 things being brought to the court system together could expand our risk and whether it also could expand what a ruling could look like and what effect that would have on our ability to raise revenue in the future.
Angelita Morillo
May I add something, Chair?
Sameer Kanal
Yeah.
Angelita Morillo
I would also say that this is a little bit different than the— sorry, I'm very tired today.
Than the arts tax, because the charter has broad explicit authority for us to work with the business license tax.
So I'll read a direct quote.
The city has power and authority to grant licenses with the object of raising revenue or of regulation or both for any and all lawful acts, things, or purposes, and to fix by ordinance the amount to be paid therefore, and to provide for the revoking of the same.
And I want to be clear, I really do welcome these questions.
I think it's great that we're having this discussion.
We are still at committee.
It feels like we're at council, but we are having the public process right now.
So I'm fine with all of this.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Councilor.
And like I said, I think that either or both lawsuits would be frivolous, but I also think we need to understand the combined risk.
Has there been any local polling to help us understand where Portlanders are on the specifics here?
And has that polling included using negative messages to understand how a campaign would withstand, or how this measure would withstand a well-funded campaign against it?
Mitch Green
We have not commissioned any polling on this specifically, no.
But I'll note that the public testimony written is Is in line and indicative of national polling on the question.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah, I think there's broad support conceptually.
I want to make sure we understand how that support changes in a campaign environment.
I've worked, like I said, on a few revenue-raising measures in the past.
I know my colleague Councilor Novick talked about some that he's worked on.
In my experience, you have to assume that folks who don't want to pay a measure will fight it, and there has to be a plan for that.
Was this developed in conjunction with any individuals or organizations who can help us educate Portlanders on the specifics of the proposal, um, and, and push back if there were an effort to overturn it at the ballot?
And I'm thinking, for example, with the parks levy that we referred— slightly different, we referred that intentionally— we had worked with groups connected to local parks to ensure that they were ready to be an instrumental partner in helping us educate Portlanders about the specifics of the measure?
Have we talked to partners who could be part of a defensive campaign to help us educate Portlanders about the importance of the measure before us?
Who are our allies here, essentially?
Mitch Green
I can list some of them.
Oh, did you want to go—.
Jamie Dunphy
Did you want to list them?
Angelita Morillo
Yeah, I think that they are publicly listed, but we had over 460 small businesses, Latino Network, Apano, um, Protect 17, CPPW, Next Up, NEA.
Uh, there's a pretty extensive list of supporters, um, for this.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
And have you had conversations with them about their willingness and ability to put resources toward that education campaign that would be needed?
Mitch Green
You're assuming that this just gets immediately referred to referendum?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Well, I'm hoping that there, you know, that this is crafted in a way where it wouldn't be appealed by lawsuit or referred.
But I think in my experience, when you look at revenue measures, you always have to be prepared for that.
Mitch Green
And so what I'm wondering is what type of preparation has occurred, hoping that it never needs to be used, but knowing that it needs I mean, I did not specifically ask these groups if they're ready to knock doors for me when it gets sent to the ballot in a referendum.
I'll note though that I think the approach that we were taking is to say that if you sort of ask permission from the people you're trying to tax to craft a policy that they won't oppose, you end up basically with a sales tax.
I think the question is, is the support And that's what you see when you look at the Prosperity Council's work.
That's what you see when you see the Tax Advisory Group's work.
That's what you see when you— that's what you hear when you talk to folks who don't like income taxes.
They say, let's move to a broad-based tax, which is a gross receipts tax or a sales tax.
And so there's a reason why those coalitions want that instead of a profits tax.
Angelita Morillo
And may I add something?
I think that with, you know, we have pretty extensive and broad support.
This was just announced 2 weeks ago, and we're going to continue to do outreach.
So we understand there's limited time at this committee today.
Okay, this is the first discussion.
We're open to questions.
That's fine.
So I think that we can continue working with our partners to make sure that they are prepared in that eventuality.
I will also say that the Financial Stabilization and Recovery Workgroup at the City of Portland was they proposed something pretty similar to this when they worked for months.
How long did you guys work together?
6 months, longer than that?
And that was a variety of perspectives.
It was folks who are progressive to more business-minded, all that, and they had a similar proposal.
So I think there is broad support for something like this, especially in a time where it is really difficult with our budget.
So, yeah, I think that's something we can keep pushing on.
But I will say, I do want to emphasize again, this policy has been under development since February, so it's been pretty long.
And I cannot emphasize enough how this is barely scratching the surface of what the tax relief that these mega corporations have already received under the Trump administration.
Thank you.
Is extensive.
So they're not exactly going to war.
They're actually having a very relaxing time in Cabo while the rest of us are suffering.
So you know what I mean?
Like, this isn't— they're gonna be fine.
I understand they will oppose it and we need to prepare for that potentially, but this is not hurting them in any way.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Yeah, Councilor, I have not asked about whether it hurts them or about whether you You've worked to neutralize opponents.
Um, I've asked just about who the supporters are and what the work has been to make sure that what was crafted could withstand a challenge, assuming that one would come, whether or not folks had the ability to pay.
I am wondering, you know, there's a group that announced Councilor Smith.
Councilor Herbold, I think the same week that this measure became public, and I hear you that you've been working on it since February, but we haven't had public conversations for most of that time.
The same week that this became public, there was a group that announced that they were working on a revenue measure to put on the ballot in 2028 around a statewide revenue idea.
Have you had conversations with anybody in that group about whether, if this were appealed to the same ballot, the 2 measures would help or hurt each other and, and what that could look like for both the city and the state.
Mitch Green
Um, I've had conversations with some of those, some of the groups involved with that about this policy proposal, and at no time did that group tell me that they were bringing forward a wealth tax, that they were going to They were working on some other thing that I don't think I'm at liberty to talk about.
But no, I— and again, I don't think the conversation was ever around, oh, this is going to immediately get referred to a referendum here in Portland, and so how do we coordinate 2 different things?
Because it was never disclosed to me that a wealth tax was even being floated and considered for 2020.
I'll also note but that's also the same year that I think the SHS tax is going to come up and potentially a housing bond is going to come up.
So I would ask them if they've also talked to Metro on that too.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Certainly, and I think probably we need to make sure we're talking to Metro about anything like this also at the same time.
We've talked at the dais about the need for a comprehensive approach to our city's deferred maintenance problem.
This is This is actually related, I think, to that SHS point that you just brought up.
Has there been conversation about how this measure would interact with our ability to refer a bond or another revenue-raising measure to the ballot to address our deferred maintenance across the city?
Mitch Green
I can tell you what I have contemplated in this.
Dan Ryan
Yes.
Mitch Green
Is if we don't adopt something like this to have a means to collect sort of windfall funds, I mean, because we had Peter Holzman, we had the CFO look at sort of let's risk adjust this.
You know, it's not $72 million per year every year, even if that's what the revenue department calculated for us.
It's probably something much lower, but there are surely years where it's much higher than $33 million net of the exemptions that we're creating.
Paired with the financial reserve stabilization policy that we just voted to advance and paired with the broader discussion in the Financial Stabilization Recovery Workgroup, the ability to collect sort of windfall revenues and use them for truly one-time resources, pay down debt, make transformational investments in our city.
I think those are things that are preconditions, frankly, before we go to voters and ask them to borrow from them for long-term asset costs.
If we can't sort of show them right now that we're willing to spend the political capital to claw back some of the Trump tax cuts to pay for some of these things rather than ask them to pay it first, I think we're gonna have a really hard time.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So that's— Our chair is telling me that I'm at time, so I am going to save the rest of my questions for when we next have a discussion on this.
But colleagues, these are the types of things that I would need to have assurances about before I would be able to say to folks in my district, let's move this forward.
I don't want to move forward a false promise either about the services we can provide or tax cuts for small businesses if I don't feel like we can follow through on that promise.
So I'll save the rest of my questions.
Thank you, um, Chair, and thank you, Councilor, for your answers today.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
And, and just to be clear, trying to do about 10 minutes but unlimited number of times in the queue.
Just, we don't have a rule on that the way that the full council does.
Um, so I'll go to Councilor Smith followed by Councilor Thank you, Mr.
Loretta Smith
Chairman.
Thank you, Councilor Green, for bringing this forward.
Could CFO Berry come up and Peter?
The first thing I thought about when I was— when I first learned about the fair share, um, ordinance was, wow, that's going to save 18,000 folks from not paying.
And when I went deeper and learned that folks who bring in sales under $500,000, they will not have to pay anymore.
And as a consultant, I was just under that $500,000.
I could afford to pay the $891.
In fact, I like paying that $800 or whatever the case may be because I feel like I'm putting in To investing into our city.
And so to say that people who make under $500,000 a year, just under that, they— that they have no tax liability, none, I think that that is an issue.
And the second thing that I thought about was, did you— when you actually did these numbers, CFO Berry, did you think about the job loss and the capital flight of these surtaxes of the major employers, that they may relocate their headquarters and operational hubs, which would reduce the amount of money that we would bring in for the general operating fund?
Did you look at those kinds of things?
Jonas Biery
Councilor, thank you for the question.
Um, we did not.
We were asked to run some math based upon a scenario that was presented, and we have not yet been asked to do that type of assessment, but would be happy to do so.
Loretta Smith
I, I wish you really would do that, because to say that these folks are not— we have 18,000 people who are not going to have to pay taxes, and they can very well pay taxes.
It's, it's a small tax to pay.
The other piece is, I think they'll go to the, um, the LeBron James and Elon Musk model, where there are opportunities for CEOs to reduce their salaries to $100,000, like Elon Musk did, defer the compensation, or do like LeBron James did, get a loan, which are not taxed, and wait until the deferred taxes come on that, and they're, they're out of the queue.
So all these folks who have endless resources, they will find ways to reduce their tax burden or their salary so they would not have to, um, be a part of this.
And I'm concerned that if you take these 18,000 people out of the tax, out of the tax queue before we actually find out how much money is going to come through, that then we have to go retax these folks who were paying little of nothing.
Um, Councilor Green said it was like maybe, what, $800 or $900 that we're actually saving these folks?
And to go back and tax them, that's another thing that we would have to do.
So I'm I'm concerned that we're, we're looking at this in a vacuum.
Certainly I want billionaires to pay their fair share.
Certainly I want people who are like me, who are consultants, who are making money under that $500,000 threshold, that we need to pay taxes.
They're not overburdened at that point.
And so to think that we are going to be able to keep up this level of tax and base our general operating funds based on those 18,000 people and the new people who you're going to tax, those people at the top, they have accountants, they have lawyers, they're going to figure out how to reduce the amount of money that they bring in on an annual basis.
And so those figures are the figures that we need to look at before we actually say, oh, we have an opportunity to do this.
Now, I thought it was pretty clever what Councilor Zimmerman did this last year when he did the tax where the people go from $75,000 to $100,000 that, you know, you don't have to pay the tax.
Ruth Levine
That is—.
Loretta Smith
You can see that all day long.
But when you're talking about you're getting ready to take people who have $500,000 in sales that they can't pay $800, that they can't pay their tax or they're struggling to pay that tax, What they need is access to capital.
They need access to technical assistance.
They need access to consultants and lawyers, and they need opportunities to have QuickBooks and those kinds of things to make sure that their budgets are tight.
They need bookkeepers.
They need accountants.
That's what they need.
And that $891 is not going to pay for either of those things.
Thank you.
And so for me to, to look at this on face value, oh yeah, we can do this, you know, apples to— apples to oranges.
But it is, it is so many ways in which we cannot be right on this in terms of the numbers.
And I know you do your due diligence, but I really want you to take a look at this because those folks, like Councilor Pirtle-Guiney said, they've been down this road before.
They know how to manipulate the system.
And I want those people who are making the most in our communities, which we don't have a lot of billionaires here, but those companies and those CEOs who are making the most, I do want them to pay their fair share.
But I don't want us to look at fool's gold to thinking that this is the option.
Now, if we just had a piece where we're going to tax them more without saying Oh, we're going to take 18,000 businesses out of the tax roll.
That's not right.
It's not fair at all, period.
So I want you to look at everything, not just what the thought of it is.
That was a reasonable tax that Councilor Zimmerman said, from $75,000 to $100,000.
$500,000 In sales, that's a good salary for someone, particularly a loan consultant.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, you've been a consultant.
You understand.
Me and you and probably President Dunphy are probably the only ones that have paid a BOT up here.
And so you know what that is.
It's not a whole lot of money.
So for me, I want you to look at all these things and don't look at the fool's gold and look like, okay, we got an opportunity to bring all this in because those folks, you better believe they are going to figure out how to get around this and figure out the loops So I need you to have an answer for the loophole and put that into this ordinance as well.
I'm not totally convinced, like, uh, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney said, but I do want you to look at those kinds of things before you present this to us as something that we'll, we'll probably get, and it's not a guarantee.
Jonas Biery
Councilor, if I can respond here, thank you for that comment.
Um, I agree, I want to be explicitly clear that we have not done that.
Any of that analysis.
We haven't been asked to do that analysis.
I'm more than happy and support time and opportunity to do that analysis.
Performing that kind of analysis is consistent with the recommendations from the financial stabilization conversation that we've been having.
And so I just wanted to be clear that the proposal has not undergone that review by my office, by the Revenue Division, by the city economist.
Thank you.
And, and we'd be happy to perform that.
Loretta Smith
I would really love it if you could do that because that would give us an opportunity to really look at this with a, a, a microscope and say we've looked at everything and this is a sure deal.
Because I, you know, it's— I've heard some of my colleagues talk about this in the last week and they're saying we're going to tax the billionaires.
This is not about the billionaires.
This is about folks who have sales over $500,000 and CEOs who are making these exorbitant, you know, salaries, and they're going to figure out how to reduce it.
So you got to put those in the equation when you're talking about it.
I appreciate you coming up.
And well, the last question is, um, and I know I always say this, you know what our book of business is, right?
Eric Dean
Yes.
Loretta Smith
And I think while you're looking at this I think we need to figure out an economic outlook that fills hotel rooms, builds local commerce, recruits convention business to our city, not just a short-sighted penalty tax that scares employers away.
And so I— my bigger issue is that we're trying to recruit business to come to Portland, that something like this— this is just one more thing that's piling on that has a that Portland is not pro-business, that they are trying to tax and spend and pay for all these social programs.
But I just— we can't do our job on one side having spending money on marketing Portland as a place to come.
I was just in D.C. last month speaking to 300 meeting planners, asking them to come to Portland.
So they can fill up these, these hotel rooms with Travel Portland.
Travel Portland does an annual event.
I spoke there.
Janelle Bynum spoke there talking about come to Portland.
It is not what you have seen in the news.
We are open for business.
But then when we have these kinds of policies put out there, it just gives them the bad taste in their mouth.
Now there's a couple folks I'm gonna have to call about this particular tax.
And I've talked to some businesses.
They said they're just going to move.
And so I, I, I caution my colleagues to, um, to do the pretty thing, the, the low-hanging fruit thing, because it's going to have a bigger impact on our city than you think.
And it's, it's not as simple as you think.
So thank you.
Thank you.
And please put those things in your, uh, analysis as you're looking at this.
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
And that's very good timing, um, on there.
Um, I think, uh, Councilor Murillo is next in the queue, followed by Councilor Ryan.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you, colleagues.
Um, if one of my staffers in the office is watching, I would really appreciate it if you could print out 12 FAQs for this City Council because, um, a lot of the things that were addressed up here are, uh, misrepresentations of the policy that are addressed in the FAQ.
And we work extensively to clarify our policies and make them as comprehensible as possible.
Um, so, uh, if someone could do that, that would be fantastic, and bring those up here, please.
Um, I, I want to say a few things.
Uh, firstly, we are not rushing to push a ballot initiative to ask Portlanders what their opinion is on the Moda deal.
So I understand that this might be challenged, but the impression I think is— I don't know.
This is not a policy that is for businesses that are headquartered in the city of Portland.
So the tax flight idea that they can just move and leave is not accurate.
They can't do that.
Because it's about publicly traded corporations that sell their products in the city of Portland.
So if they wanted to avoid this tax, they would either have to pay their CEOs a little bit less— they'll still be extremely wealthy, but they'll just pay a little bit less so that their median-paid employee doesn't make such a severe amount less than them— or they can take their product entirely out of the market.
I would presume that a company that They're not going to take Coca-Cola out of Portland because it's too big of a market.
They're not going to, you know, they're not going to lose massive amounts of profit to avoid a very marginal surcharge increase.
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
So I just want to start there.
And there is no loophole.
This is an established tax method.
We have not seen tax loopholes in the past.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Yes.
Angelita Morillo
And we've looked at all of these things since February.
We've also had— this is not a personal income tax.
I think there was confusion on that.
So small businesses, this is not increasing it for them.
This is not increasing it for regular working-class people.
The very purpose of this is that it's not going to fall on regular people, because I know a lot of us had to make tough choices up here increasing fees and other charges, and it didn't make any sense.
So I also want to ask Eric Dean, I see you're up here, would you please come up to the dais?
Eric Dean is Councilor Green's economist.
He has a PhD in economics as well.
Thank you for being here.
And he did a lot of the analysis on this.
We also brought in, I'll remind you, Sarah Anderson, who originally worked Councilor Novick to create this policy back in 2016, um, and who has decades of experience in this policy area.
You might remember she testified last week, uh, and we have a trained economist here now.
So, um, Eric, if you're able to, uh, I would love to just give you a moment to share some of the things that you think were misrepresented.
Eric Dean
Yeah, uh, good morning, councilors.
Uh, Eric Eric Dean, for the record, uh, Councilor Green's policy advisor.
Uh, I'll probably miss some of these, but probably the most important one here is that this is a tax on doing business in Portland.
Um, so if you're thinking Columbia Sportswear might pull out, they— that they would have to pull out of selling their wares to Portland.
Um, Dutch Brothers still pays this tax.
Because, uh, despite having relocated recently, because they still sell Dutch—.
Eric Zimmerman
There's—.
Eric Dean
You can still get Dutch Brothers in Portland.
Angelita Morillo
Can you speak into the mic more?
Eric Dean
I'm sorry, um, I was worried I'd speak too loudly into the microphone.
Um, so yeah, there's very little risk of this driving businesses, the larger businesses that do pay those surtax.
And remember, these are businesses who make hundreds of millions of dollars, if not many of them hundreds of billions of dollars.
There's very little risk of driving them out of Portland.
Honestly, there's very little risk of them noticing this tax.
It's so small relative to their, their actual income.
Angelita Morillo
And would, for example, would a company like Pendleton Woolen Mills pay, or any private company?
Eric Dean
No, Pendleton's not publicly traded, right?
Yeah, so they're, they're not, uh, they, they don't pay the, uh, surtax.
The surtax is only on the publicly traded corporations that report, uh, this information to the SEC.
Angelita Morillo
And for us laypeople, can you explain what a publicly traded company is?
Eric Dean
Uh, if you can buy a company's stock on, on, you know, on a stock market, it's publicly traded, essentially.
Angelita Morillo
These are the, the big corporations that you know the And can you outline a bit more clearly what the tax break that we're talking about is for the 18,000 small businesses that make under $500,000 a year?
Eric Dean
What it is in terms of how it works or how much money it is?
Angelita Morillo
How it works, how much it is, because I think there was an assertion that we are saying this will magically waive all taxes, which I wish we could do that.
For our small businesses, but alas, uh, probably not realistic.
Eric Dean
No, this is just the business license tax that, uh, the City of Portland, uh, charges these businesses.
So it's currently $75,000 in sales or below.
It's going to move up to $100,000 next year.
This would move it up to, to $500,000.
So, uh, they're still paying plenty of other taxes.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you, Eric.
Um, and just to be clear, I think that this council frequently gets into the logic that if something doesn't solve everything, then it's not worth doing.
But like the pinball fee waiver for small businesses, right?
It's a small but important part of chipping away at all of the things that make it hard to do business in the city of Portland for small businesses.
So that's why I supported that.
I think that's a good idea.
I think anywhere the sandwich board fee, that's another good idea.
Anything that we can do, these little things to chip away at what makes it difficult to run a business in Portland, I think matters.
And so that's part of why we wanted to address the BLT for small businesses.
So thanks for that.
And maybe just stay up here because there will probably be more questions.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Morillo.
Councilor Ryan is next, followed by Councilor Green.
Dan Ryan
Thank you, Chair.
And I wanted to start off by thanking everyone for the testimony last And I was going to mention it was odd there were only 1 or 2 people here, and then you all just showed up.
So welcome.
I also want to acknowledge you, Councilor Novick, and Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, for giving that context about how this plays out.
Your history and lived experiences were really helpful for me to listen to in this dialogue, and I'm glad we're finally here, that we get to have a conversation.
And I also want to acknowledge my Thank you.
I want to thank my colleagues who really have been spending a lot more time talking to small businesses.
I think you all know I take great joy in that.
I try to spend all of my free time out of City Hall walking around District 2 listening to the storefront owners.
And I really appreciate that.
I think the level of awareness of what they're going through has heightened during this dialogue, and I think that's really important for our council.
This wasn't the item that came up the most when I listened to small businesses.
It was other issues that we've addressed in the Storefront Program.
I'll just say that the relief part is pretty easy for me to support.
Like, if these are decoupled, I can have that conversation.
But I couldn't get people to testify.
Again, my small business network, which is pretty vast, I kept hearing this quote.
The amount— coming down there for maybe 4 hours would nullify the $900 I might save.
So the small businesses that I talked to just couldn't get here to testify, and they were mostly trying to understand what this was.
But it wasn't— I wanted to listen to them to ask, would this be helpful?
And again, they told me, Councilor Ryan, you know it would be helpful, and it's a different list.
Eric Dean
But I can—.
Dan Ryan
So I could support it if it was decoupled, but that's not the conversation today.
I want to get to the source.
That's, I think, the confusion that we're having is the source.
And I do want to acknowledge that finally we're having dialogue.
Some of you all have been working on this since February.
6 Of us are now leaning into understanding what this is, and we're trying to get to the bottom of what those sources are.
When I first heard it, I was real clear it's going to impact CEOs that I'll never know.
Ruth Levine
Yeah.
Dan Ryan
That live in places like Minneapolis.
That's where Target's located.
It would be CEOs that live in Cincinnati.
That's where Kroger's located.
And, you know, New York, Seattle, you get the picture.
And so I then paused and thought about the good people in District 2.
So the neighborhoods, specifically Hayden Island, I'll start there.
Hayden Island is out there, our north waterfront.
I hope people start paying more attention to it, and they're suffering.
We've had a lot of closures out there.
The good people near Delta Park, Bridgeton, East Columbia— Walmart closed, and one of their sites was the extra taxes, and the CEO that lives far away couldn't justify explaining why, with property crime so high and with so much of their revenues stolen, literally, they just couldn't justify making bank here any longer.
I'm not a Walmart fan.
Um, I, I— but I'll say a lot of people in working-class neighborhoods would like access to fresh groceries, and that was taken away from them.
So their only supplier that gives fresh groceries in those neighborhoods— I never think of this as a grocery store, but it's Target.
So I think about what will happen if we pass this.
What's the consequences that are maybe just 2 years out.
Like, I get the short-term gain for 1 year.
I've always been trying to figure out how to bring in more revenue, so there's that.
But what will happen?
What are the consequences for those residents in North Portland if this passes?
Well, I looked up some of this, and Target is going to be taxed at 15%.
So with that said, CEO— I don't know their name— They probably don't have a lot of time focusing on one store on Hayden Island, Portland, Oregon very often.
They'll be like, well, now I'm going to look at it because I just got this big increase.
And maybe they'll notice that things aren't penciling out very well.
And they're not living there, so they're not listening to my constituents about their concerns about being in a food desert.
And then next thing you know, Target's closed.
I think that's a good point.
How will this council feel about that?
How will we feel about adding another food desert in Portland, Oregon by our direct action?
I ask that question.
And why would people from Vancouver come over?
That's their habit.
The Vancouverites have been going to Hayden Island, Jantzen Beach for decades because of their sales tax.
Well, if we're taxing 15%, chances are first they're going to do that to my working-class constituents in Hayden Island.
And then before you know it, those prices will go up.
And then before you know it, those prices will go up.
And again, it's not going to work out well for the working-class residents of Hayden Island.
This is how I understand it based on what I've heard, because you've told me it's publicly traded companies that aren't in Portland.
So I think I'm identifying one for all of you with the signs that you'll have to address that question.
And then there's also the fact that Kroger exists and they own the Safeways, the Fred Meyers, the QFC.
And right now in, in North Peninsula area, St. Johns going all the way over, we have a Fred Meyer and a Safeway in St. Johns.
I doubt in 2 years if they're going to keep one of those open.
I doubt if they're going to keep the Fred Meyer in Arbor Lodge meets Kenton open.
This is a real risk, colleagues, that we will in fact implement another tax that would close down big box retail that provide fresh food.
And so I ask you to consider that as we make thoughtful decisions about what the intended— the unintended consequences perhaps you all haven't discussed.
Angelita Morillo
Yeah, can I address the grocery store part?
Yeah, just before you continue, the grocery store question is addressed in the FAQ because, uh, we were really concerned about the food deserts as well.
But these businesses are a little bit different than other businesses because they operate on really thin margins, around 2%.
So the tax would be very small.
Even at the second to highest surtax bracket, that would be equivalent to a tax of 18 cents on every $100 in sales.
Dan Ryan
I look forward to that Q&A because based on what the knowledge that I had from all of you, it was clear that these were CEOs far away, they'd be taxed at this amount, and that's where those percentages come from.
But I look forward to reading the— that's why we're having a meeting, so we could have this kind of conversation.
If I could finish.
So my point is, I'm concerned about the long-term consequences.
We need to be fair to our working-class families.
So that's what I'm advocating for.
They need affordability as well, and they need access to these stores.
Thank you.
Unless we want to have the conversation that you're okay with that because you want grocery stores to all be government-run.
That's a fair question.
We need to have that conversation.
If that's the agenda that this is producing, please say it.
My point is we need to be competitive in the marketplace.
We keep making decisions that make us an isolated island within the United States of America.
As Councilor Novick, who knows more about this than I do, and I think the rest of us, You mentioned San Francisco is one of the only ones, and then you gave a really good assessment of what they've experienced in that city with a lot more money than ours.
And so I just ask you to make sure that we're conscientious of affordability for working-class Portlanders and we don't take what on the surface sounds like a really quick, easy win from a national platform issue, insert it into our city, Portland, Oregon.
Sometimes national platform issues don't fit neatly into the local, the local, the local actual real issues that we're facing in Portland, Oregon.
So I hope that you sense that I'm actually really concerned about how this can actually be fair.
And right now, I'm not there.
I haven't been convinced to come to the yes side.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Colleagues, we're at 12:29.
Councilor Green, you're next in the queue, followed by me.
Okay, go for it.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
I, I know we're running thin on time, but I just want to briefly respond, uh, to a number of questions that Councilor Ryan raised.
So a tax on profits is not passed on the way a tax on sales is, a gross receipts tax, a tariff.
A tax on profits is generally passed on To executives and shareholders.
And so this is— this would be absorbed at the level, like if we're going to pursue the Target example or the Kroger example, I think people are worried about that.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, that's 9%, Kroger.
Mitch Green
You're talking about a firm that already has thin margins, okay?
Generally speaking, grocery stores have 2% margins.
And so if your margins are So if you're, you know, $2 on every $100 that you make in revenue, then you're paying that percentage tax of that $2.
Okay?
And so there's no way for this tax to make a company unprofitable.
There's only— this tax can only make a company less profitable.
And so if Target is making a business decision, and again, I think the idea is if If the CEOs are paid so much because they are masters of capital, they— no one can do what they do better than they can, then surely they would understand that it was— it would not be in the interest of the firm to take a company that's profitable and take it out of the market because it's slightly less profitable now, because that's the presumption that's being made.
The other thing is a tax on profits here even if it's 9% or 15% with the surtax, is still far less than a sales tax in equivalent terms.
And the reason why Hayden Island has those big box stores there is because they're right next to Washington State.
Dan Ryan
I know that.
Mitch Green
I know, I know you know that, but I am talking to the public now and trying to connect the, the actual economic logic of the situation.
And so if the CEO and Cincinnati or wherever they are wants to shut down one of these firms because the city of Portland is now collecting back a little bit of what they have lost over the last decade, um, then they would lose a bunch of market and sales and profit to Washington State retailers.
And that would be a really poor business decision to make.
Um, so I, I, I have very little concern that there's any actual risk that an increase in the business license surcharge surtax on this BLT would have a net impact on Hayden Island retailers.
And also, at the end of the day, the people in that part of your district are having a hard time because they're paid low wages.
Loretta Smith
Okay.
Eric Zimmerman
Yeah.
Mitch Green
The City of Portland would have a lot better economic development outcomes And so if there's a— if Kroger or Target or Boot Barn or whatever the company is, Ross Dress for Less, if they all decide to leave, that creates a great opportunity for local retailers to fill that void and provide that service and pay a better wage.
And then everyone is better off.
And so this isn't a national platform that's not going to work here.
I think that's a great point.
Portland has very acute issues related to low wages, inequality, and the inability for us to pay for our municipal services without nickel and diming everyday working-class people because we are afraid to tax large corporations.
That's the root of our problems in the city of Portland.
I'm probably out of time.
We can continue this discussion later, but I'll just say, Please read the FAQ that is attached to this item before we get to the next discussion.
Um, a lot of the, uh, misrepresentations that have been made today are addressed in that FAQ.
So thank you, Chair Knoll.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks, Councilor Green.
Um, so I'll just— quick programming note, and then we will adjourn because we're past time here.
Um, so I, I am noting that Councilor Novick and I are in the queue, uh, for the next time we pick this up.
This item is going to be, uh, continued on.
Um, I don't know till when off the top of my head, but you'll get agendas coming out on Friday morning, so check there, and I'll try to get that as soon as we can.
Similarly, the, uh, presentation item on, um, street renaming code and the process around Code 17.93 is also being continued on, uh, to a later meeting, um, TBD as well.
Uh, so with that, I'm going to adjourn this meeting of the Committee of the Whole at 12:33 PM.
Thanks everybody, see you back for a council meeting.