The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-12-15
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On December 15, 2025, the Portland City Council's Transportation and Infrastructure Committee met and, without objection, adopted committee minutes before turning to its main agenda item: a progress report on the transportation funding resolution passed in the summer in response to state legislative inaction. City staff, including representatives from Public Works, the Chief Financial Officer's office, and the Portland Bureau of Transportation, presented findings on General Transportation Revenue shortfalls, budget cuts, and staffing reductions over the past several years, along with a review of over twenty potential revenue mechanisms. Four options—a transportation utility fee, a street damage restoration fee, and two delivery fee variations—were identified as most viable for further exploration. Invited testimony followed from multiple panels representing advisory committees, labor unions, business associations, minority contractor groups, and transportation advocacy organizations, covering topics such as funding accountability, equity impacts, maintenance backlogs, community engagement, autonomous vehicles, and the gas tax's long-term viability. Committee members discussed potential revenue projections, low-income fee assistance options, congestion pricing, tactical urbanism, and coalition-building for future ballot measures. No votes were described as occurring in this session; if any did, outcomes would be recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting concluded with plans to continue the discussion at the next scheduled meeting on January 12.
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0 Koyama Lane. And I think that councilor Smith is on her way in person and we have. Oh, you are okay. Great. Hello. I can't see you. We have two items today. The main item is a presentation and discussion on the transportation report we're receiving. And then we also need to adopt the committee minutes. Are there any objections to the minutes. Can we approve without objection. Super. Great. So, diego, can you please read the next item?
1 Item two transportation funding resolution progress report.
2 Thank you. This is a conversation that started back in the summer. We were all watching the Oregon legislature discuss a transportation plan. And back in July, I think when we weren't getting a plan, we decided to pass a resolution to ask PBOT to review all the different options for us to take care of our own needs, knowing that the state government and the federal government were failing us, they came back with a small package, which is now most likely to be on the November ballot. Unfortunately, there's no question that everybody who lives in our community touches transportation every day. Even if you don't leave your home, you've got food being delivered or other things being delivered, and other service providers are using the road. So today we're going to hear their report from PBOT, and they're going to let us know where where we stand and what all the options are, what other communities have been doing for themselves and what we might consider. I just want to remind people that today is just the beginning of of a conversation about these revenue tools. We also have the Portland state university urban studies program is also doing a kind of a parallel effort on transportation finance as well, and we'll look forward to hearing about that. So this is not necessarily an easy conversation, but it's very it's very important because transportation touches all of us. So welcome. We have a full compliment. Welcome back to the united states, director williams, and we're happy to have you. So dca paul, would you like to kick it off?
3 Thank you chair Clark. Good morning counselors. For the record, my name is priya paul and I serve as the deputy city administrator of public works. I'd like to I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today about the transportation revenue options. And as you know, our transportation budget is under significant strain. And it's important that we seek a stable and sustainable path forward. At its core, this conversation is about maintaining the basics portlanders rely on every day safe streets, reliable access, and a transportation system that supports our economy and our neighborhoods. Our agenda today is to provide a foundation for your discussion. We're going to talk about the context of this work and provide an overview of our research around the funding options. And then we'll have invited testimony and finally committee discussion. One thing that I do want to remind is today is not about final decisions. It's about equipping council with clear, shared information to guide the choices ahead. Next slide please. The report includes a background scan of potential revenue options, a deeper dive into some short and mid-term options, and potential next steps. It is intentionally framed as an options document, not a recommendation, and it's designed to support council's policy discussion and future direction. Our goal was to be transparent about trade offs, feasibility and implementation considerations so that no. So there are no surprises as as conversations move forward. Next slide please. Before we get into the presentation, I'd like to acknowledge the project team behind this work and the project sponsors. Thank you very much to mayor wilson and councilor Clark. I also would like to acknowledge the project team behind this work. This was a significant effort supported by our cross strong cross bureau team, and this work reflects months of collaborations between public works and budget and finance, informed by detailed analysis and lessons learned from other cities facing similar challenges. And with that, we have cfo peri here, and I would like to thank him and his team for the collaboration and hand it over to cfo peri before we dive in.
4 Great. Thank you paul. Good morning, chair and committee. For the record, my name is jonas berry. I'm the city's chief financial officer. As paul said, the report before you today was a joint effort along with members of the revenue division, public finance and treasury division in the city. Economist and actively myself, we worked closely with dc donna paul and with the PBOT team on the research, analyst analysis and recommendations. This effort was a great example of the collaborative cross bureau work that's been made easier under the new city alignment and ongoing transition. As chief financial officer, I deeply understand how limited our resources are across all areas of the city and know that we have a tremendous amount of need citywide. Exploring revenue generating options is never an easy conversation. That said, it's important to acknowledge the depth of need within the transportation system and how important it is to identify resources to fund this system that every portlander relies on every day. I'm pleased to be here today to support the team and the committee and look forward to the discussion. And director williams will now provide some background about the transportation funding challenges faced by the bureau.
5 Thank you. Cfo berry. Good morning. My name is millicent williams. I'm the director of the Portland bureau of transportation, and I'm pleased to be able to be here today. Please note that I will hasten through my portion of the presentation to ensure that we leave ample time for questions and discussion. Next slide. Councilors, you are aware of the budget challenges facing portland's transportation system. We rely on the pool of unrestricted money identified in our budget to fund our maintenance and operations. This funding, known as general transportation revenue, supports the foundational work to keep the transportation system running. General transportation revenue, or gtr, has been hard hit for the last 6 to 7 years. You can see this in this chart. How we've made reductions and other balancing efforts in each fiscal year since 2019. Next slide please. This has meant a reduction of $42 million in ongoing general transportation revenue funded services, a reduction of $61 million in gtr reserves, and the elimination of 66 full time equivalent employees and additional contracted projects and services. Next slide please. This chart illustrates one of the challenges we face when trying to maintain our system. And this is not an unfamiliar slide for you. Our restricted resources, which are over 70% of pbo's total budget, include capital funding such as federal and state grants and transportation system development charges, which can only be spent on specific capital projects. It also includes revenue from permitting that goes directly back into funding that work, and interagency revenues from the bureau of environmental services for sewer maintenance. Our remaining budget is our general transportation resources, or gtr. This consists primarily of state highway funds and parking revenues. These are resources that we use to support basic maintenance and bureau operations, and they have not been keeping up with costs as our gtr funds are eroded every year, largely by cost increases and inflation, we've been cutting further and further into our services. Next slide portlanders can see the impacts of these cuts every day. These cuts have consequences for the conditions of our roads and other infrastructure. Our pavement condition continues to worsen, and when we delay preventative maintenance, it can lead to more expensive reconstruction work in the future. Next slide please. Not only can we not maintain the streets, we are also constrained in our ability to make improvements, to make our transportation system safer. Next slide please. When we can't sweep leaves, perform regularly scheduled residential street cleaning. Maintain safe right of way, access address graffiti and respond promptly to weather emergencies. It makes it harder for people to use the system to meet their daily needs. Next slide please. We will unfortunately struggle to do better to meet the public's expectations of us without more sustainable and predictable transportation funding, an increase in stable revenue would help us to be more proactive, to stabilize our workforce, to maintain consistency of basic services and address ongoing critical transportation needs. And now you'll hear from PBOT chief of staff, shoshana cohen.
6 Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you, director. For the record, I'm shoshana cohen, PBOT chief of staff in developing this report. We built on years of past work, as well as a scan of the current environment, and we used a set of criteria to narrow in on a short list of mechanisms that seem most ready for further exploration and discussion. Next slide please. We began by looking at what other cities are doing, and I'll start with just a few key takeaways. We are not alone. Cities across the nation are struggling to find enough funding to address critical transportation needs. Some cities outside of Oregon have tools that aren't available to us, such as sales tax. This may be one of the reasons that an Oregon a transportation utility fee is used by 31 cities. It's also used in some cities outside of Oregon. One of the sort of overarching takeaways is that there really isn't one main tool, or even one main set of tools. All cities have a variety of revenue mechanisms based on their unique situations. Cities are sort of scrappy in different ways, is what we see. Next slide please. So diving in a little bit more we looked at seven other comparable cities outside of Oregon. You'll see them on the slide. Again the revenue mechanisms vary, as you can see with the sort of patchwork table there. Many cities receive general fund dollars, although the amounts vary a lot. A number of cities like seattle use extensive funding from bonds and levies. We see things again, like sales taxes, parking fees, street damage, restoration fees, and things like vehicle registration fees, which we have restrictions on for cities in Oregon. Next slide please. We also looked at other cities in Oregon. Here in Oregon, all cities like Portland rely on the state gas tax and the state highway fund. Like us, a number of other cities have local gas taxes, and some use general obligation bonds for capital investments. And three of these highlighted cities, again, plus many others around the state, use transportation utility fees. Next slide please. So as we began to look more closely at different revenue potential tools, we developed a set of criteria to use as we evaluated them. You can see that. You can see the sort of summary of the criteria here. We looked at the revenue capacity of the mechanism. Could it generate significant and sustainable revenue. We evaluated how connected to the use of the system are. Particular revenue mechanism was and whether or not it was a broad based fee. We considered the potential ease of implementation. Is it a proven tool? Does Portland have the legal authority critically important to do it? And is there a way to efficiently collect the revenue? We also looked at the potential for low income discounts, and how well it could integrate with the existing tax structure. Finally, we looked at whether or not the fee was tied to fossil fuels. As you all know, one of the challenges we have with our current primary general transportation revenue sources is that when we rely on gas taxes and parking fees, we end up really needing people to use more fossil fuels so we can generate more revenue. Even though it's in conflict with the city's climate goals. Next slide please. So then we took these criteria and used them to evaluate a broad list of revenue mechanisms, which you'll see on the slide. We looked at over 20 tools. Again, some that we saw in other cities, some that we are seeing just coming up in sort of additional research that we're doing right now or other places are talking about, and we use the evaluation criteria to identify for that. Again, this is just the beginning of the conversation, but we think our most ready for further exploration and discussion with stakeholders. And while we're going to focus on these for today and my colleague will tell you more about them in a minute, we do have a bit more information in the appendix of the full report, so we're happy to answer more questions. Or you can dive in afterwards about those. And with that, I'll hand it over to mark lehrer for the next slides.
7 Thank you, shoshana, for providing background on our process. For the record, I'm mark lehrer, PBOT policy resources and partnerships manager. This slide before you provides a summary of the four revenue mechanisms that scored best on our evaluation matrix and seemed the most likely candidates for further consideration. They include a transportation utility fee, a street damage restoration fee, and two variations of delivery fees one focused on retail delivery and one focused on third party prepared food delivery. Next slide there are currently 31 cities in Oregon with transportation utility fees. These fees are based generally on the trips produced by property type. They are broad based and not reliant on fossil fuels. Collection costs are relatively low because the fee is included on existing city utility bills, and they can take advantage of existing low income discount programs across Oregon. Cities with transportation utility fees primarily dedicate these resources to core maintenance operations and safety services. Next slide. Just to give you a sense of what is possible, this next slide provides the single family and multifamily monthly transportation utility fee rates for jurisdictions in the metro area. It also includes bend, oregon's most recent city, to establish a transportation utility fee and the transportation utility fee that has existed since 1992. In austin, texas. The current regional average transportation utility fee is just over $12 per month for a single family dwelling. Many jurisdictions have started with a relatively small fee and ramped that fee up over time. Transportation fees for multifamily properties across all the jurisdictions are generally about 30% lower than single family properties. This is based on the average number of trips that are generated by that property. For example, a garbage truck. One garbage truck comes to a multifamily property compared to one single family dwelling. Next slide the street damage restoration fee is another one of the top scoring revenue mechanisms, street damage restoration fees, or cost recovery mechanisms that charge utilities and contractors a fee when they do trenching work. Staff estimates that over the last three years, there were over 53 miles of trenching work on Portland streets. This is equivalent to 1412 blocks of streets that had trenching activity. It's estimated that trenching work can reduce pavement life by over 60%, resulting in repaving needs every five years versus an entrenched street every 15 years. Next slide. Prepared food delivery has exploded since the pandemic, and app based delivery services such as doordash, uber eats and others now generate a significant amount of additional traffic on Portland streets. Recent estimates for Portland include as many as 10 million trips per year. These increased trips contribute to the maintenance, safety and congestion challenges on our streets. This is still a relatively new revenue mechanism for cities with only Washington, dc and boston in the early in early stage development, although we do believe that implementation of this fee in Portland would be possible by expanding PBOT existing private for hire regulatory authority. Next slide. Nationwide e-commerce sales have grown by roughly 50% over the past five years, from 2019 to 2024. These deliveries are replacing in-person shopping trips with a surge of delivery activity, which increases maintenance costs and safety concerns, particularly in dense commercial districts. Increased home delivery can also divert traffic away from small brick and mortar businesses, reducing the vibrancy of our business districts and our neighborhoods. There are currently no us cities that have implemented a local retail delivery fee, but these fees are currently being collected at the statewide level in colorado and minnesota. Next slide. Accountability is an essential part of any alternative funding proposal. Portland's fixing our street program, funded by our local gas tax, provides a model for how how the city can maintain accountability and high levels of public support. The program uses clear program direction on the use of resources and community oversight committee, and an annual reporting audit to ensure effective oversight. As the map on this slide indicates, the program allows us to effectively track and balance expenditures across city council districts. These accounting accountability processes are key to the strong support at the ballot for our local ten cent gas tax in 2020, we received 77% yes votes and in 2024 72% yes votes for the ten cent local gas tax. Last slide. Once again, the report before you today represents the first phase of our response to the alternative funding resolution. Consistent with the resolution, the report recommends a second phase of this project to engage the community in a discussion regarding transportation needs and potential funding allocations, to get feedback on the specific revenue mechanisms and accountability structure. We expect this outreach to be done with some of our standing PBOT modal committees, as well as district specific open houses. Based on your discussion and direction from today's meeting, staff are ready to develop a full engagement plan that will allow us to come back with additional information for city council consideration. Thank you.
8 Well, thank you for the overview, I appreciate it. I know we've all read it and it's probably need to hear it about three times to have it all really sink in all the details. But I want to compliment you PBOT on your excellent analysis and your excellent use of the evaluation criteria. I thought it was very, very helpful in sorting through the 20 different options. I found that very helpful. Colleagues, shall we start the panel's before we have our own discussion? Councilor Koyama Lane do I see a nod there from you? Well, please don't leave. I'm sure we're going to have questions. I'm sure. But let's start with our invited testimony. We have four different panels. The first panel we have steven mcclelland, who is the co-chair of the fixing our streets oversight committee. I'm not sure if he's here or if he's online. Then we have sarah iannarone. I think she may be online. Are they on? Oh, there they are. Okay. And then we have sam balter, who is actually here. Hello, sam, can you want to join us up at the dais there? Who's from a bike bus? He's the bike bus international entrepreneur, I must say. So why don't we start with steven?
9 Hello. Hi, everybody. My name is stefan. I am the co-chair of the fixing our streets oversight committee, and I'm going to chat about two different items today. First is the need that we have in Portland for additional transportation funding. This is a picture of a portion near inside the Multnomah village pedestrian district. This area has a vibrant food cart right next to it, and there's no sidewalks there. As you can tell, there is definitely a need for additional transportation infrastructure. The other piece, though, is from what we've learned on my fixing our streets oversight committee, that there are tools that we have in place to create accountability so that the money that gets brought in can be well spent. Our committee meets a number of times a year, and what we can do is look through the project selection phase and make sure that those funds are being well spent so that the voters that approve this measure see the value in their gas tax money. That's it. I'll wrap it up.
10 Thank you. Stefan. Sorry I mispronounced your name. Thank you very much. Sarah, are you there, ma'am?
11 Thank you. Good morning. Councilors. My name is sarah iannarone and I serve as executive director of the street trust. And I am a registered lobbyist with the city of Portland. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to this important report, which highlights what portlanders like me, who actively use our streets experience daily. Our system is strained, crumbling in places, and our outdated funding tools aren't really cutting it. What we need now is scaled problem solving. With each level of government playing to its strengths and unlocking its optimal revenue potential, this is going to require coordinated messaging, shared campaigns and serious intergovernmental collaboration. It is essential that the state of Oregon, Portland metro, Portland state university, city of Portland and so many others stay in lockstep if we hope to get anything done on the transportation funding front moving forward. One clear near-term opportunity Portland can close the $8 million gap on 82nd avenue transit prioritization asap, using available PCEF funds. It's a climate and equity corridor. It's shovel ready, and it shows Portland is serious about delivering for underserved communities today. We also need to get ahead of the next wave of tech driven traffic impacts. Autonomous vehicle operators are rapidly expanding onto our streets, and some delivery services are exploring the use of robots and bike lanes. These companies are poised to reshape how portlanders experience public space, and it's their preference to do it with limited community oversight and minimal contributions to the infrastructure they depend on. Portland urgently needs stronger, more focused transportation lobbying capacity in Salem to ensure that we shape this future before the so-called intelligent future of transportation shapes us. And lastly, I said this at a TriMet meeting Friday, and I'll say it again here don't over rely on portland's downtown business lobby to get this done. You can't make too many concessions to them early on in any negotiations about our transportation funding future. They withdrew their support for the 2020 regional transportation funding measure, and early on, other transportation utility fee when commissioner Mapps was proposing it. Meanwhile, it's the public and active transportation advocates, the bike bus moms, the transit dependent people, the safe routes to school leaders, and the advocacy groups who organize in our communities. At the grassroots, they show up and turn out the yes, vote on new taxes and fees for transportation time and time again. And they're the people who can least afford to pay Portland street users or PBOT biggest champions. And it's your people's army. Mobilize them, trust them, build your coalitions and winning campaigns around them. Their lives and livelihoods literally depend on your success, and they will show up for you if you show up for them. Thank you very much. I look forward to seeing what you all come up with in in future funding for our city.
12 Thank you so much, sarah. Appreciate your testimony. Sam.
13 Thank you so much for having me today. I'm sam balto, pe teacher, co-founder and executive director of bike bus world and internationally recognized safe streets for kids advocate. I'm really excited the rate of children biking is going up. Engagement with families is at an all time high, and we have a new form of government here in Portland, but unfortunately, we have not been living in reality. That's how we got to this place. Drivers have no idea the actual cost of driving. It is so much more than just the roads, the health, the climate, the social harms that cost all of us that we have to pay for. One example is how my son flinches every time he hears a car rev their engine super loud. I can see how that is adding to his anxiety, but this is a moment that we can have a serious gut check of how to move forward. We have spent tons of time and energy coming up with climate goal solutions. Most shift goal solutions that should be our north star. How do we achieve that in a fiscally responsible way? And something I will tell you about children and the families that ride and show up every day to walk and bike to school. We are not asking for perfection. We are asking to be seen. The 12 flex posts that were added on alameda and fremont to create a diverter is game changing infrastructure that cost $2,000, but we spent $8,000 on community engagement and delaying it. And I will add that that was a pilot to try something. We should not be scared to try things that will save us money in the long term and will actually build more respect with the community in an actual way that people are living, and not just hypothetically talking about what might happen. I just want to leave with one thing. I've watched city council meetings. I've attended neighborhood association meetings. Nobody has ever showed up asking for more cars on their neighborhood street. I'd like to leave you with a question of why is that? And if you have no idea what I'm talking about in terms of cheap infrastructure, this is a free resource. Online designed streets for kids global design cities initiative. There's tons of pictures. We love pictures, all right. And information about how our infrastructure impacts children and families. Thank you so much.
14 Thank you, sam, for showing up. I really appreciate that. Actually. Kind of gave me chills when you held the book up. It's very exciting.
15 I can give it to you if I'm allowed to.
16 If it's under, I think $25 resource, it's a free it's a free resource. Okay. It's in the library. Thank you so much, sam. Appreciate your testimony very much. I also really appreciate the testimony about the future of the autonomous vehicles. Having been in san francisco and phoenix. Unbelievable. They're everywhere. I couldn't believe it. Okay, next panel I think we want to invite up. Is john isaacs here or is he online? I don't see him. He's online. He's online. Oh. Thank you. And nate mccoy. Thank you so much for attending today. Appreciate your time. Let's start with john.
17 I'm here I'm here virtually councilor.
18 Thank you.
19 Okay.
20 Councilor clerk and committee members, thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today. My name is john isaacs. I'm the executive vice president of public affairs for the Portland metro chamber. Portland metro chamber is the largest business association in the region. We represent over 2600 members, 81% of which are small businesses. I am a resident of southeast Portland and I am a registered lobbyist. On behalf of the chamber, I'm here to testify, first and foremost, to express our great appreciation to you, councilor Clark, for your leadership, to director williams, and to the rest of this committee for having this important conversation. It's been avoided for far too long, and we're grateful to be a part of it. Just a couple of things before I share some direct comments on the report, which was an excellent, thorough report, which we appreciate many aspects of it, just the context for my testimony, first and foremost, for those who attended the business summit a couple of weeks ago, you heard some deeply concerning data about the economy. We will be releasing the 2026 state of the regional economy report in two months. And what we can tell you is that it will. The picture looks worse than it did last year. We are definitely in a negative, reinforcing economic cycle in which we have lost significant amount of taxable revenue, which is the direct result of the budget cuts that the city and other local governments are facing over the extended term here, not just in the short term. And that in turn is is leading to cuts in important services, which then reinforces a cycle. So this conversation is critical for getting out of that cycle long term. So thank you. A couple of comments. First and foremost, we want to express our appreciation for the way the report was conducted, especially comparing Portland to other peer markets, not just Portland cities. I think it's a very effective way to look at potential new funding tools. We agree with the report that that the transportation utility fee in all aspects, looks like the most solid primary revenue source to look at transitioning PBOT over to. We have noted throughout this conversation that we believe that should be tied to either a significant reduction or elimination in the gas tax, a phase out of a fossil fuel based tax in which revenues declining over to the tough, which is is broad based stable, will be predictable for both taxpayers and the bureau, and will allow for responsible budget decisions over the long term. I don't have any other comments on the other fees, other than to say that we are committed to continuing to be a stakeholder in the process of evaluating them. A couple of comments in terms of the of going forward and how we'll look at these things. So first and foremost, we'd ask that when we're talking about a different revenue sources, that we talk about them in, not just the total number of trips, but look at the percentages. So it can sound like a lot to say we have 10 million trips now, which I don't know if it's accurate or not. For food delivery apps, we went we participated in a regulatory process in which Portland adopted regulations and user fees for food delivery apps. Three years ago. It was a solid process in which all agreed. So looking at those trips and saying, hey, 10 million, that's a lot. It's actually a very small percentage of all trips. And we'd ask that when looking at funding sources and how they're allocated, we look at that ratio to the percentage of the types of trips we have, we have on our streets. Secondly, we noticed in the report that each fee has economic competitiveness as a criteria, which we really appreciate. It's just very unclear. Almost all of them are in that yellow category, and we don't really have any insight into how that was. Those decisions were made or those ratings were made in that category, and we just appreciate some insight into it. And then the final comment is, we'd like to see the city look harder at how it uses its its fees, its franchise fees related to the right of way. If you dig into this more, you'll find that Portland spends its right of way funds almost entirely in the general fund, and you have proposed a potential new fee around impacts to infrastructure. That's already what's happening with right of way fees. I mean, that's for our utilities who need to access the right of way. It's primarily transportation related, right of way to install things like cell poles and infrastructure. We need for our essential services. Portland is an outlier in that, in the sense that it doesn't take those fees and put them back into its right of way, which is almost entirely transportation infrastructure. The note reports that a goal was set many years ago of spending approximately 28% of those funds. I believe it's 28% or around that on transportation has never come close to meeting that. So we're not saying that that change should be made. We're saying that we believe it's worthy of consideration and it's potential revenue for PBOT and for our essential infrastructure, especially infrastructure critical to our economic competitiveness. That appears to not be going back into the portion of the economy it should be. Okay. We know there's a lot of work that has to be done on that, but that is something that was raised with the business community about three years ago when we looked at the overall ro fees, right of way fees, and that, again, we were paying some of the highest in the country, but they weren't going back into the infrastructure that they're meant to support. Okay. So that's our only request in terms of elevating that into that top four. You had the four fees. Add that as a fifth, and we're just excited to be part of the process going forward.
21 Thank you john. Lots to follow up on I appreciate that. Hi nate. The floor.
22 Thank you for having me this morning. Good morning, chair Clark. Members of the commission. My name is nate mccoy, president and ceo of the nation's largest chapter of the national association of minority contractors, representing over 250 construction and design firms owned by people of color across the state. This topic is very important today as a comprehensive alternative funding strategy for transportation and infrastructure is so vitally needed for our economic development strategy. Namak firms and others depend on steady, predictable pipelines of public projects to invest, grow and hire and compete. A sustainable funding strategy is not abstract to our members. It's directly shaping whether they can stay in business, build workforce and access future opportunities. Why Portland needs an alternative transportation funding strategy. Portland's transportation system is aging under underfunded and increasingly costly to maintain. Continued reliance on traditional revenue sources is not keeping pace with the cost of repairs, safety upgrades and capital needs. Without a new strategy. Basic improvements, safe streets, bridges, transportation corridors, bike pads, climate and resilient design will be delayed or canceled, which is unfortunate for all of our community benefits for namak firms. And let me be specific on these areas. This means fewer projects, availabilities and consistent work cycles reduced subcontractor and prime contractor opportunities, and lost momentum for diverse workforce development, creating negative impacts on women and small businesses of color on their growth. A comprehensive funding strategy helps firms and others small businesses provide consistent project pipeline. Small firms cannot survive on unpredictable stop and start capital programs. Reliable long term funding allows them to plan bidding, staffing and investments in equipment which are very important to our economy. Growing capacity with certain contractors, they will hire apprentices, secure bonding and take more complex projects on which are essential for their participation in future mega projects. Expanding economic mobility infrastructure dollars circulate through communities of color when firms can compete and win packages tied to transportation transparency and inclusive procurement, we all win, avoiding the setbacks of stalled and canceled projects. Every pause creates more cost to our taxpayers lost paychecks, a lost opportunity for local contractors and workforce, workforce development and community benefit. Portland's infrastructure dollars are one of the largest engines of training, retaining a diverse construction workforce. When investments shrink or stall, apprentices lose placement and retention opportunities. Diverse journey workers migrate out of the state, hence reducing tax dollars. And we undermine years of work built by black, indigenous, latinx, asian, and pacific islander construction and design talent. A stable funding strategy strengthens programs like right sized and balanced workforce agreements, pre-apprenticeship and targeted hiring all priorities. Namak has been leading for over a decade. Why namak Oregon supports moving this strategy forward a comprehensive alternative funding plan stabilizes the market for small firms, ensures capacity building gains and not losses. Keeps Portland competitive for federal grants, and aligns with our long term vision of equitable access for infrastructure opportunities. Portland cannot meet its climate, safety and mobility goals without a diverse contracting ecosystem. Investing in transportation infrastructure is economic development. It is community development. It is workforce development all at once. Closing. Namak Oregon urges the committee and city council to advance this work with urgency. This decision, made now will shape whether small businesses and their workers they employ can participate in the next decade of portland's infrastructure build out. We're eager to see and set the guideposts for many projects coming next year. Nomex members are leading the 82nd avenue brt, the I-5 rose quarter project. The project we're having conversations on, fix our street program, and hopefully we will also revitalize the contractor development program with the city of Portland. I thank you for the time today, and I hope you make the right decision for all of our community. Thank you.
23 Thank you so much for that testimony. Stay tuned. We're going to continue to discuss this. Let's call up the next panel. We have paul cohn from protect 17. I think he's in person james mclaughlin from liuna. Carrie coke. Cherry. Coke. Cherry coke coke. Coke. Oops, sorry. And I don't know if rob martineau made it in. He was invited. All right. Should we start with paul?
24 Sure. Thank you. Chair Clark, vice chair Morillo and members of the committee. My name is paul cohn, and I'm a city employee. I work at bts, but I'm speaking to you today as president of the Portland chapter of protect 17. We are a city worker union that represents approximately 1000 city employees across most city bureaus. That includes cities, engineers, engineering techs, it professionals, planners, permit techs, botanical staff, public information officers. And we also represent the Portland street response mental health workers and PBOT. We represent over 200 employees who work in planning, engineering, maintenance, and property management, all while advancing the city's climate, accessibility and equity goals. We've partnered for years to support a stable funding plan for the city's transportation system. However, in light of recent developments locally and nationally, state and federal sources have failed to provide such funding, and it's become clear that we need a local solution. Perpetually strained budgets have weakened PBOT year after year. Fear of layoffs has taken a major toll on morale, and as we move into storm season that often sees our frontline staff working 12 hour shifts, actually just got out of a meeting. Johnson creek will flood again next week. Probably. This fear is especially impactful as workers wonder if they can trust their families livelihoods to the twists and turns of the bureau's budget. Unstable funding results in more expensive projects that take longer to finish. When budgets aren't predictable, management often turns to high paid consultants because of justifying. Hiring city employees requires managers to demonstrate years of funding. This significantly inflates project costs. It leaves the bureau without critical institutional knowledge when consultants depart. Additionally, the bureau has had to cut back on hiring project management staff and design engineers, creating bottlenecks in work, and ultimately slows project delivery. These delays cost money and rightfully frustrate the public. The deferred maintenance backlog is well known and clear to any portlander driving on our streets. This backlog has had a dragging effect on nearly every project, both big and small. Major projects are bogged down by the need for more dramatic rebuilds. However, deferred maintenance also puts smaller projects that could be low hanging fruit for advancing safety, climate and accessibility goals out of reach. For example, many of these projects the poor. For many of these projects, the poor condition of pavement quickly makes the project too expensive to consider. Many of these smaller projects would otherwise be extremely cost effective, but instead they're left on the shelf. Long term, sustainable funding is the only way to reduce PBOT maintenance backlog and unlock the potential to make real progress on the city's larger goals. The voters of Portland have now passed fix our streets, our local gas tax, three times in a row. The last two ballot measures passed by well over 70%. Portland portlanders are willing to pay for safe, well-maintained streets. They understand that this will help our economic recovery and give us more livable communities. If national and statewide political entities are not trusted partners, Portland must provide for ourselves. Please join us in supporting the work that we need for safety, prosperity, and stability in our communities. Thank you.
25 Thank you very much for that testimony. Paul. James.
26 Good morning council. My name is james o'loughlin. I'm a field representative with liuna 403, city worker with the city of Portland on release. Time to do that work for our union. Paul said it very eloquently. Everything I would intend to say. We represent approximately 2000 workers with the city. Around 300 of those are frontline workers in PBOT, the utility workers, the concrete finishers, the ceos, the do all the direct work in terms of maintaining, repairing, fixing our streets and sewer systems and the cycles. I mean, not really a cycle. The consistent cut in funding through these periods of inflation have been challenging for our members, particularly because the city is a very complex financial institution that does invest money in other areas, as it should. But it's challenging for our folks to understand why they see cuts, why there's fewer personnel, why there's always held vacancies when the work that they perform saves the city money. It's been touched on so many times here, but undone work leads to crisis work, which is ten times more expensive for a much worse product. So it's clear that consistent revenue streams that are reliable, that can be depended upon to maintain our staff and to really invest in a new generation, as we've been going through a generational transition with our workforce is essential. And we've had less than ideal partners at the state and federal level for that investment. So I'm very thankful that these ideas are being explored of how we as a community can focus on making that necessary investment. One thing I do want to touch on that hasn't been spoken to too much is just obviously it it saves us in terms of maintenance and there's dramatic economic impacts here where when you invest in your infrastructure, it opens up a lot of economic activity. But in my time being with PBOT and and learning this work, this investment really saves lives. And I know we seek to be a community that families are drawn to. Families are drawn to this community. We're attractive, we're interesting, we're we're fun. But there's a lot of challenges in building an environment and that retains families and draws more families in. And safety is just such a key component. I live in north Portland, the father of two native portlanders. We love it here. But, you know, it's it's scary, especially this time of year where there's just a lot of natural environmental challenges, consistent investment in transportation is consistent investment in our children and our families in this community. I think there's just so many opportunity for virtuous cycles economically, community driven, and just creating infrastructure that will last long term with a workforce that maintains it well. So thank you again for this consideration. And please reach out to us in any ways that labor's 43 can be a partner in this work.
27 Thank you, james, for that testimony and thank you for reminding us about that. Appreciate it. Is it kerry co. Online. No. No not here okay. And no there's no rob I don't see rob martineau either. Oh okay. Well we'll move on to. The the fourth panel then. Thank you so much both of you for taking the time to be here today. Thank you. Excellent testimony. All right. Panel four we have tabitha boschetti who's the co-chair of the pedestrian advisory committee, and corky collier, who's the member and past chair of the freight advisory committee. I know corky is here. And jim middaugh, who is the chair of the bicycle advisory committee. Come on up. Do we have tabitha? Oh. She's online. Great. Oh, hi. Hi. Hi. Sorry.
28 Hello.
29 Would you like to kick us off? Tabitha?
30 Let's do it. Thank you for having me. I'm tabitha boschetti, co-chair of the Portland pedestrian advisory committee. We are a body of 15 volunteer committee members. Just got some new folks starting next month. So I'm calling in on break from work. And speaking as a resident here, resident of Portland and advisory committee member, pack obviously hasn't had the opportunity to digest this document, having come out on Friday and tomorrow is our next meeting. But we're definitely looking forward to being engaged and continuing this conversation. Safe streets are top of our priority list. Every month, pack acknowledges deaths in our community of people killed by traffic violence. We already had a crisis even before our protofascist federal leadership has failed us. Even before we had shortcomings at the state level. This past legislative session, even before we kind of put ourselves further on the back foot, you know, pausing sdc fees with good intentions but no real backup plan in place. So the need is already there. And with that, I want to emphasize that I think there's a lot of opportunity to go big if we are needing to fund ourselves. That is also at least an opportunity to prioritize the things that we know have long needed priority and have long been neglected. Too often when we're looking at road deaths, we see the same streets stark, glisan, chavez powell 1/22. These are streets that I wait for the bus. I walk down people I love. And I know that's the same for for many people in this space as well. I think that this report calls up some key opportunities that that are positive investing in safety through things like leading pedestrian intervals, love, leading pedestrian intervals, and of course, our obligation to create ADA curb ramps. I'm grateful to see that. I also want us to be clear, though, that even when funding for our status quo, things that we've taken for granted for years, elements are under threat. That pedestrian safety is no less basic. Being able to walk somewhere is the most basic, basic mode that that we that we have really, you know, when we talk about pedestrian and bike infrastructure, so much of that cost is really the cost of the fact that we have these private motorized vehicles which have the capacity to kill right nearby. If we just needed a place for busses and walking, we'd need a lot less infrastructure. With that, I am disappointed in some of the things that I see in this report so far. The draft resolution doesn't seem to make any reference to safety. This really obvious need. It doesn't acknowledge our huge goal for vision zero, and I really think that that needs to be corrected as this process moves forward. Certainly, you know, the efficiencies of paving on time is is a good thing. It's it's fiscally responsible. But I don't think that that can be our moral north star as we look to how we should fund this critical part of our lives for our entire community. With that, I also think that the way that the pricing options for equitable mobility study is discussed in here is gives it short shrift. I think it contrasts the effort being efficient, sustainable, equitable, as somehow in contrast to basic. I think that anything we need to move forward with absolutely needs to be something we can sustain that is efficient, that serves our community equitably, even if we have to use fancy footwork to call that something different moving forward, we also know that we need to emphasize accountability. I think mark lehrer made a good point. On that note. You know, we need to see that we're not just willy nilly removing infrastructure that we've put in the past. So that's that's something that we also want to focus on. And of course, we also know that, you know, it's hard for people to invest in taxes and see new improvements. I think that that's going to be, you know, that's that's the real challenge that we're up against is asking people to pay more, not necessarily for more, because of how much we've been let down by higher levels of government. With that, I think it's counterintuitive. I think it's a little scary, but I think that we need to make a bigger ask, that we can actually have a path forward that is going to be showing people transformative, positive things in their community, funding it to the level where we can actually see a better future. So thank you for having us, and we'll look forward to being engaged further.
31 Thank you tabitha. And when the pac has an opportunity to discuss this, you said maybe tomorrow, please submit more comments. I appreciate that after you have a chance to discuss it. We really appreciate your taking the time off your work to be here with us today. So thank you so much. Corky. There you are.
32 Good morning, chair clerk members of the committee. My name is corky collier, executive director of the columbia corridor association and former chair of the Portland freight committee. You know, the other day, I was watching a news piece about the ODOT funding referral, and there were some conservative legislators stressing the need to focus on maintenance. And I found myself thinking, what are they really trying to say? Are they opposing new construction in Portland? What are they trying to block? And now I'm here this morning asking you to focus on maintenance. And I'm thinking, whoops, my message could easily be misconstrued as being anti this, anti that. But that's the opposite of the point I want to make. Pbot needs to prioritize our maintenance backlog in order to free up money for future capital projects. Every dollar of deferred maintenance becomes $10 or even $12 cost down the road. When we increase our maintenance backlog, we steal from future city councils. We reduce funding for future projects. Portland city council has addressed this problem in 1988, in 1995, in 2008 and 2013, every time the funding dries up or is shifted to capital projects, city auditor griffin blade in 2013 warned that the public will be skeptical of future city councils if we don't get a handle on our maintenance backlog. Congressman blumenauer issued critical statements in 2015. That was when the backlog was $1 billion. Now it's somewhere around $6 billion. Maintenance is not about potholes. It's about fiscal responsibility. Yes, we need additional funding, but more importantly, we need a way to get a handle on our maintenance backlog so that we can then use that money saved for new projects, better management of our maintenance backlog will result in ten times less cost in the future. These are funds for capital projects. The fund stuff. In addition, your best strategy for getting public support for future funding streams is to show the public that you can maintain what we have. The report before you is good work that honestly approaches the problem. Pages five and six point to the need to save money by improving maintenance, but there's still a lack of commitment. Just as in so many times in the past, it's true that maintenance and capital funding are different buckets of money. Yes, but we can take steps to better balance those buckets and make maintenance the priority so that we have more money for the capital improvement projects. We can request a change to sdc fees restrictions. We can create sinking funds for new capital projects. I suggest that we have a short, focused discussion driven by jonas beery and millicent williams. Leave the planners out of the room. Leave out anyone who is looking for money for their pet projects like me. Focus on how to spend money in a way that reduces long term costs or generates long term revenue. Don't listen to me about this. Listen to auditor griffin. Listen to congressman blumenauer, who sat in your chair in 1988 voting on new transportation funds that, once and for all would resolve this problem. Thanks.
33 Thank you. And thank you for the history lesson. Appreciate that very much, jim. Welcome.
34 Thank you. Councilor Clark, chair Clark, and members of the committee. Thank you for having me today. My name is jim mira, and I am here on behalf of the bicycle advisory committee, where I get to be the volunteer chair. So it's really fun to be here today. I want to start with a thank you to the PBOT staff. They just do an incredible job supporting cycling in this community and supporting the committee. I think one of the greatest talents that I've seen them implement is the ability to speak reality to a group of very passionate activists around cycling. So I want to congratulate them for their great work in helping us figure out how to make this a better community. The bicycle advisory committee, like the pedestrian committee, hasn't had a chance to discuss this report. However, we have had a lot of conversations about how vital sustainable revenue for PBOT is and how important maintenance is for cycling. I also want to share that in my day job, I have the privilege of operating a critical infrastructure for multiple cities here in the greater Portland region. And we've just recently, with corky's help and others, completed a job of getting some additional revenue identified and supported through the political process. So I know it's hard, but it's really possible. So I'm going to take a slightly different tack today and ask that I want to challenge you to get us up to the level we're capable of. You, us, all of us together. I want to challenge us to work a little bit harder at finding a solution. And I don't mean you aren't working hard. I see you working hard, but I want to remind you that that challenge is really important. And I think it's important for us to challenge ourselves, to strive for greatness instead of the mediocre, the good enough, the what's possible, the maybe later. It's a little hard. Right now. We're waiting for the legislature. We're waiting for the parks levy. We're waiting for godot. I don't know, right? It's never going to be easy. So we need to get started. So I want to talk to you about future you. And I'm here to say that future you and future us are not going to be satisfied with the mediocre. We're not going to be content with just getting by. Future you is counting on you to do the work. So it's time to do the work. Future you is counting on you to set some big, gnarly, audacious goals that push us out of our comfort zone. So we're forced to grow. We're forced to change. We're forced to get better. And future you is counting on you to take action today. Real action, which means advancing this resolution and getting out onto the streets. It's going to be the day and the day out. The conversations in the early morning and the late evening at lunch, over coffee, at the chamber, at the neighborhood association, at the advisory committees. You're going to need to grind it out. And future you is asking you to embrace the grind. It's going to be challenging. People are going to be angry with you. People will disagree. Editorials will oppose your work. John isaacs will send you angry emails. And that's why, more than ever, we need to have faith in ourselves. And john will be right about many of the things he says in his emails. But we need to have faith in our ability, our potential, and our future greatness as a community and a city. And we need to know that without a doubt, we can achieve anything we set our minds to. We've done it before. We can do it again. And there's a secret that makes it all possible. And the secret is you have to fully commit and decide to do it. And I think you're close to making that commitment. I think you're committed and you now just have to go through the process. So lucky you. So embrace the suck of this hard political work that you need to do, fully commit and decide to do it. It's time for an upgrade for our transportation system. It's time to believe in ourselves, and it's time to get a little bit uncomfortable. Because comfort in this situation is the death of future you and the death of future Portland. We need to take this on, and when we do, we're going to accomplish things we never dreamed were possible. In this day, we're going to reach heights so far beyond our imagination. It's going to feel like living in a dream. The old Portland that we used to know. We're going to have competitive businesses. We're going to stomp all over Vancouver and san francisco and seattle. We're going to have more family wage jobs. We're going to have safer streets and cleaner air. We're going to have strong property values. We're going to have a future city that sets the bar for cities around the world. And we're going to have a city that meets its bicycling mode, share goals, which is going to be really exciting. So we're counting on you to do the work. We're counting on you to do the hard work. And the bicycle advisory committee really looks forward to helping you out and helping you sort the details. Thank you.
35 Well, thank you, jim, and I'll have that conversation with my future me later. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I've got a note that carrie is going to submit written testimony. She was on the panel number three. And we do have rob martineau who's here. I'm probably guilty of giving him the wrong time to be here, but please join us and tell us what you think.
36 Thank you. My name is rob martineau. I am the president of afscme local 189 and first vice president on the northwest Oregon labor council. Thank you for having me here today. I have heard a lot of history about our systems and things earlier, and that is one of the things that I also wanted to highlight is the problems that we're facing, that this council, this new council and these committees are tasked with repairing are these very funding issues, these challenges that have gone on and on forever. A previous PBOT commissioner would have started out each budget year as a as a14 vote and needed to advocate. What we will have now is 12 people who all want safe, reliable transportation systems. This is a council that wants to have safe, consistent, well-paying jobs. This is something that the city is equipped to do. The people that I represent often come from the same industries that on large projects, the city contracts from, and they're also people. As the city has improved its equity in hiring, there are people that have come straight out of high school and trade schools to begin doing this type of work. We have one of the best trained and experienced workforces. This workforce should not be subject to the cyclical nature of the economy. There's no cyclical component to when we want safe streets, when we want to maintain our streets, when we want to get the best value for portlanders dollars. Because that is at the end of the day, where this all comes from. My message to portlanders is that this is what it's going to look like to have to to fix the problem of the last 100 years form of government. We now have 12 councilors pulling in the same direction on city infrastructure and things that are truly important to what we do. I don't have a real preference in representing my membership on on the funding mechanisms here. I have members that would say, do all of these things, and I have members that will say, do none of these things. So clearly this is something that will need that public input that you should be taking out to portlanders in every district and here in this room to to make sure that portlanders are weighing in on what is possible and, and see what is possible beyond the four items that have been listed here today. Again, I applaud council for taking this on. The funding challenges that we are seeing here in PBOT also exist in other bureaus. Portland permitting and development is one that I would highlight that the cyclical nature of construction ends up where we we lose really good talent when when building slows. And that's also something that would benefit from a consistent mechanism over time. So I really support your efforts to to find something that will work and let us as, as portlanders and transportation users, look forward to what it means to just be able to drive on our streets. Not it shouldn't look like a like a car commercial that talks about how well something handles. So we have made numerous improvements. I know that the bureaus are doing the best they can. We continue to find ways to improve safety around multimodal transportation, and I really want to be able to support all those efforts. But at the at the beginning of the day, we always need to keep that maintenance happening, that base budget, that base funding, the gt-r that was spoken of is very, very critical to how we continue to build the system that we all want and deserve. Thank you.
37 Thank you so much for showing up and your great testimony. It's a good reminder, and thank you for reminding us that 12 people can pull in the same direction, at least on infrastructure. Definitely. I think we're all united on that. This has been a terrific morning, great testimony. I really appreciate everybody showing up. And now I think we've got time. Excuse me to have a conversation amongst ourselves and ask questions of the folks in the room from PBOT and elsewhere. So I see first two hands up. I'm sorry. Councilor Koyama Lane. I didn't see your hand earlier. I would have called on you, I apologize, so why don't you go ahead and speak now?
38 Oh no worries, chair Clark. I was waiting for this. This portion. Can everyone hear me? Okay. Yes. First, thank you so much, chair Clark. And to your team, the mayor and his staff. Pbot service area staff for this very informative report for these great panels and for collaborating together, I first want to highlight the need for new funding as infrastructure, disrepair and limited funding make achieving vision zero outcomes very difficult as safety improvements are not completed. And this is an area that I know. The people that I just listed chair Clark, the mayor, director williams, dc, donna paul all really care a lot about vision zero and it is something that we need to make sure has adequate funding. We can see that PBOT really delivers high quality infrastructure for safer streets. You can just look at southwest fourth avenue and those protected bike lanes right in front of city hall. If my children had that as they were biking to school each morning, I would feel way safer. They are very well done. As noted in some of the invited testimony, community oversight and accountability are incredibly important. Important for us to be able to pass something, but also to have the real community support that we need to get something across the finish line. And so I would love to hear from anyone who worked on the report, some more specifics around how we can make sure that community oversight and accountability is baked into the decisions that we end up making.
39 Why don't we invite the PBOT panelists to come up and address? I'm sure there's more questions. Thank you. Who wants to take on the question of accountability?
40 Thank you so much, councilor Clark. Thank you for the question. Councilor Koyama Lane. We really do appreciate the opportunity to speak to how we'll prioritize ensuring that there is community voice and oversight to the work that is proposed through whatever funding we receive. As has been mentioned regarding the fixing our streets oversight committee, they have the opportunity to, on a quarterly basis, engage with PBOT staff about the projects and the funding mechanisms that are in place to support the work of the bureau. We can do a similar type of committee and oversight committee for the funding that comes in through a potential alternative funding source. That, frankly, is something that is at the discretion of or direction of the executive and this council to ensure that there is the oversight that's expected from a community engagement perspective. As and as a note, I'd like to acknowledge that our expectation and our practice internally is to provide a great deal of rigor regarding how we manage the funding sources that we have. So there are any number of different funding sources that come into the bureau, and each of those are used appropriately to fund the work that they are there to support. I use fixing our streets as an example, but there are many, many others. There is safe routes to schools funding, there is vision zero funding, and those funds are only used for the projects that are associated with that work. What I will share is that as a value, PBOT has safety as one of its primary goals. It's something that is baked into every one of the projects that we work to deliver on, and it's also baked into the way that we engage with staff who are doing the work. We're wanting to make sure that we're creating a safe environment in the right of way, but we're also wanting to ensure that we're creating a safe environment for our employees. And so, as has been mentioned, especially by our labor partners, one of the things that is important for us to ensure that we have in place is a safe environment for people to work. And some of that safety is built around one's expectation that they'll have a job to come to, to be able to support the work of the safety in the right of way. That is important. So it's all intertwined. There is an opportunity for us to have a very comprehensive tool in place to ensure that funding that comes in is appropriately allocated, and we look forward to providing that opportunity to provide dashboarding or oversight opportunities in any way that folks see deem appropriate.
41 Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane, did you have a follow up?
42 Yes, if that's okay. I would love to hear from the project sponsors or anyone from the team a bit more about thoughts around how we bring together. I mean, I'm very impressed with the group that you've brought together today and the collaboration that's already happened, that's already happening and is in the works. And I'm wondering about how we how we what the possibilities are about continuing these connections with stakeholders and building a sort of coalition. So whatever package we end up with or mechanism, we decide that we have a winning coalition that's rooted in community and can help us really make sure that the public is on board and we can do this. Have there been any specific conversations around that coalition work, and how we can almost make some of our decisions around what we think we can win with community by our side?
43 Do you want me to answer that?
44 Yes, please.
45 I think we're at the early stages of that. Councilor we've already discussed having more citizen engagement by district, but we may want to consider the especially the comments of sarah earlier in today's meeting about pulling that group together. I think that's an excellent idea is to pull a group together like that. But I think we're just we're just beginning that conversation now. So I appreciate that input.
46 May I ask one more question?
47 Absolutely.
48 My other question is I in the report, it was helpful to read about which options would be available to include programs of assistance for eligible families and individuals who need support paying their bills, and was wondering if anyone could talk a little bit more, a little bit more about that and which options we can do that with. I was seeing that with the retail option that we wouldn't be able to have a program, but you could with the food delivery one. If anyone's able to speak a little bit more to anything that stood out in that area, I would love to hear more.
49 Just just to start off and we'll turn it over to to PBOT staff. But we do have a model already in the water bureau that we've discussed. So there may be some transferability there with some of these options. But let's have either mark or.
50 Before you dig in, I did want to acknowledge, yes, councilor Clark and councilor Koyama Lane, we have begun conversations with our partners across the service area about how they facilitate ensuring that low income, low income households have the opportunity to have some type of relief. And so that is something that has been built into the conversations early on. And we're looking at the mechanism by which we can perhaps replicate some of that work.
51 Yeah. I'll just simply add sorry. Sure. With as director williams said, with the with something like a transportation utility fee, there's it's easy to plug in to existing mechanisms. You mentioned the retail delivery fee or the third party prepared food delivery fee. Those are both newer mechanisms. We do think that it is a little bit. It is. There are more possibilities with the food delivery fee than with the third party app. That said, those ones really are ones that are going to take a fair amount more development. And we we certainly know across all of these that that would be a high priority to try to figure something out, but there's definitely going to be work to do on those on both of those areas.
52 I'm thinking about our transportation wallet and bike share for all and some of the ways that we use some of the other tools in our toolbox to ensure that there's the opportunity of access for all users of all types in all communities. So, as shoshanna has mentioned, we'll need to explore that more deeply. But know that that has been a top line consideration as we have sought to ensure that we are able to have full support from community. Understanding that community is represented in many different ways.
53 That's terrific. I forgot that we have multiple mechanisms to deal with that. Thank you for bringing that up. Councilor Koyama Lane do you have any other questions?
54 That's it. Thank you so much.
55 Of course, councilor Green.
56 Thank you, madam chair. I and thank you for again tying it back to the work that we did in the resolution in the summer, anticipating the need for this, especially more now that we've seen our efforts at the state scuttled in multifaceted ways. I really appreciated that. The panel that you invited today really did hit all the major constituency groups that have a vested interest in this, and that's important to hear from, which kind of gets me in a little bit of some responses around this kind of engagement and a little bit of anxiety I'm having around timeline. I think one of the things I'm worried about is we have to strike the right balance with, like spending a lot of time in the community versus just moving quickly and getting done at this dais. What we're allowed to get done at this dais, which we can raise a tough by an ordinance with a seven vote of this council. Now, some of us may not get reelected for it, but I if I don't get reelected because I filled some potholes, that's fine as far as I'm concerned. And I think, you know, I hear testimony from folks who are worried about their kids feeling safe on their streets. And what I want to make sure we don't do is spend another year thinking about how to get this done. Because even if we're to pass this in the next few months, we wouldn't realize any revenues from it for probably, what, six months to a year lag? I see some nodding up there and we have very urgent work. I do want to highlight and uplift some of the comments that sam raised because I follow his social media. Very good curated feed there, sir. And he put out a story or a video not too long ago that was talking about the fiscal responsibility lens, just from the expense side, and how we can probably do a lot more with less if we think about how to be nimble with that and talking about the diverters like strategically placed diverters rather than like sort of like the kind of speed humps all along the way as being a really maybe a more efficient way to approach this stuff. And so when we think about that in terms of that lens and the $10 billion of deferred capital projects, we're going to have to have to approach this work from that lens, even if we vote yes on a tough and expect revenues to proceed, we'll have to start executing in a very nimble way. Now, I do think that I'm actually very interested in understanding how much revenue each of these top four proposals would bring in the way that I the report, by the way, is fantastic. I just want to say that that's excellent work, folks, and I really understood it, anticipated a lot of the questions I would have had. So good job there. But I as I was scanning it, I was seeing that there's probably different, different impacts economically for each of those. Like the tough is going to be like a probably regressive fee structure, maybe less. So if you've got the the wallet in there and the sort of low income discount stuff, you're kind of user fee or kind of cost causation on the margin stuff, maybe it's regressive, maybe it's flat, I don't know. The point being is altogether, it might have a very interesting effect on distribution that we might find desirable, or we may find that we need to tweak. What I liked about the for the top four ideas is one. They're implementable on a short timeline, but two, they satisfy for me, which is always what we needed to be thinking about, which is revenue structure. That is in two parts one a very stable, a very flat, and a very sort of unresponsive revenue structure relative to how people make decisions on the margin. And then you also need that part too, though, because you do want to signal some change in behavior. So I'm interested in maybe having a discussion on like what what we could expect from revenue. If we say, say we passed all four of these that are recommended, do we have any sort of guesses or sort of envelope math right now on what we think that might bring in? And here he comes.
57 Thank you for coming up. I think we have maybe some ideas, but they're not really fully fleshed yet. And I would think that we can come back in January and dig in a little deeper on each of those. But jonas, you have some comments.
58 Yeah, that's exactly correct. Councilor that that is one of the next questions. Right? These are the mechanisms the revenue generated is, I'll say, somewhat scalable, right? Based upon where both the levers of, of of the amounts fall. I mean, two ways to approach it. One is how much do we want to generate and where would we need to set those levers to produce that amount. The other angle is what sort of the right balance of impact to payers relative to the tool, and what does that produce. So that is part of the next conversation. And as you signaled councilor Green, there will be many different ways to slice that.
59 Great. I look forward to that follow on conversation. I just think it's really alarming that we have cut the budget for PBOT for five years in a row, and I think, what was it, corky, who raised the the very salient point, which was like, that's not without a cost to. So when we disinvest in the short run, it creates long run costs. And that's not lost on me. And so I'm really excited to move forward in this. Finally, we are in a bit of an economic challenge right now. I believe, john, when he says that the next state of the economy update is going to be a little worse than the last, but that is also an opportunity because you get higher fiscal multiplier from a dollar spent from public investment. When you're in a period of maybe recession than you do when you're in a period expansion. So if we pass a tough, that can help be a bulwark for our local regional economy against recessionary impacts, because then you've got dollars flowing out into the community and you keep people employed and you're doing some good contracting work. So I think I'm veering into maybe professor mode, so I'll just stop there. But yeah, let's this is good stuff, so I'll just lower my hand.
60 Thank you. You can be a professor here any time. Councilor Green councilor Morillo.
61 Don't encourage him, chair. First, I just want to say thank you so much for this report. It was a really great report. And thank you, councilor Clark, for getting us started on this conversation by requesting the report in the first place. I think this is a conversation that's been needed to have for a long time. So I'm glad that we're diving into it. And actually, councilor Green asked a lot of the questions that I was going to ask. I'm very curious about what the different, you know, funding will get based on all the different options. I think that will help inform my decision on where I think we're headed. I'm also really curious about and I don't need an answer right now, but maybe in January when we discuss it, the impacts for some of these proposals on disabled folks in our community, like if we have food delivery increases, I know some friends who can't go to the grocery store. They have their groceries delivered. How does that impact them? That sort of thing. So I know that there will be benefits and drawbacks to each and every option. And I'm just curious about some of those things. I was also thinking about some of the things that were said in sam balto's testimony as well, where he said that we spent more money doing the outreach for some of the safety measures that were taken, rather than just doing some of the safety measures. And I think that the the discussion of having perfect, perfect be the enemy of the good when we're trying to get a lot of things done, we don't have a lot of time to save our streets. They are really crumbling in real time. And I had so much anxiety during the legislative session watching that transportation package pass. And as a bus rider and everything, just seeing what's going to come in the next year is very daunting. So I do think that we have to act with urgency, and I think the community is expecting that of us. I do think it's going to be a hard sell to say that we're going to get funding similar to the parks levy, you know, to maintain some of the things that we have, but we might not get anything new. But I think that that is the reality of governance. And we all, as a council, need to be prepared to take whatever political hits are necessary in order to save our infrastructure long term. And I think there are many of us that are prepared to do that at whatever cost. It is because our predecessors did not do that, and that is why we are in this position today. Infrastructure has been underfunded for about 30 years or more, so we need to do our part and do that now. But I I'm also really curious, as someone said this in their testimony, it's not in your report, but as you all know, I hate ai. I hate autonomous vehicles. I hate how they're taking work from workers. So I'm just putting my stake into the ground that if anyone wants to have a discussion about a fee on autonomous vehicles with me, I'm your girl. Definitely talk to me about that and definitely look forward to more information in January about our different options. Thank you so much for this. This was very helpful.
62 Thank you. Councilor Morillo chair.
63 Clark I'm sorry, it's millicent. May I address something that both councilor Morillo and councilor Green mentioned as it relates to community engagement? And it does reference what you just said. Councilor Morillo about the previous form of government. I'm not necessarily blaming the previous form of government or the people who were in the seats for the challenges around the lack of funding, as much as the need to have community buy in was born out of the direction coming from one person to the bureau to engage around a project and having that community change, often wherever it was, was not something that was key in central to every commissioner's prioritization list and so need. The bureau then bore the responsibility of making sure that we engaged had, we had, and we've had plenty of political backing by those who were in charge of the bureau. But had we had wide scale, broad based support, as has been the case demonstrated since each of you have been elected to serve, and we could not be more delighted about that. That does help us to have the political cover, frankly, to go out and do the really hard things. If there is a singular voice or, you know, a couple of voices of of support or dissent that can help us to advance our goals and our mission, that is incredibly helpful. Would we let me speak for myself? Would I like for us to be able to cut down on the amount of time that we spend on community engagement? Absolutely. Sometimes we are engaging so much that it delays projects by a year, which then causes projects to become more expensive. We have a certain window of time within which we can do work, and so if we are continuing to engage, reengage, tweak, try to make perfect something that is, I hate to say good enough, but something that is good and that is quality. In an effort to add all the bells and whistles, we miss opportunities and we miss seasons and we miss years. That has happened on even some of the the simplest of projects. I was just talking with alex, our chief engineer, about a ramp project that has taken far too long, and he looked at the problem, and we've been able to identify and communicate back with the community member that even though it's rainy season, it's concrete work. We can get it done during this season within a couple of months. Things don't have to take forever, but we have been burdened with the challenge and the obligation to ensure that we were engaging fully. So if we have a full complement of people who are saying this is important, this is what we're going to do, we lay out the plan and the strategy. Then we're able to go ahead and do the work. If we know that the funding is in place, we can program against what needs to be done. We have plans on the shelf. We know where the problem areas are. We can go out and immediately begin to deliver. And I think that's what portlanders would expect.
64 Thank you, director williams. I think councilmember wants to follow up here.
65 Thank you so much. I think you said that perfectly. And I think there is such a delicate balance to strike, because you're right. If we don't get community buy in, then the backlash lasts. For years. I've talked about this often, but I am still haunted by the division diverters that were very necessary to save lives, and I was doing constituent services at the time, and there was immense backlash for it. But it was also necessary to save portlanders lives. So it was work that needed to be done. And I'm still very happy that it happened to this day. You know, someone also talked about that we could the doing more pilot projects so that the community can see the buy in or can see what the change will actually do for them. While we are planning that out is really significant. So yeah, it's a very delicate balance. I think you guys have done everything within your power to address all of the various needs of our communities. And yeah, thank you so much for all that.
66 Thank thank you, councilor. I would just say I think that director williams, you have a much greater partnership now, I believe, with this committee and with the 12.
67 It feels like it. We know that. We acknowledge that every day. And so we're excited about what we'll be able to do based on the broad base of support and insight and partnership that we felt terrific.
68 Councilor Koyama Lane did you have your hand up again? Would you like to make another comment?
69 If there is time for that chair?
70 Yes, we have time.
71 All right. I have some questions for someone. Anyone on the panel? Maybe director williams, about cost savings, that cost saving opportunities that I hear from community members. I hear from community partners that we should be exploring tactical urbanism. So grassroots approaches to some low cost interventions for things like bike infrastructure, pedestrian infrastructure. And I'm wondering if what you have to say about that, if there's any plan to do some listening and learning about cost saving approaches that are tactical urbanism that have been tried in places like atlanta and nashville.
72 Can I just ask councilor Koyama Lane are you talking about vigilante potholes or what?
73 I think vigilante pothole ism is maybe what happens when it's not formalized, but there are cities that have actually worked with community to work on some solutions together. I think in order to avoid folks just going out and doing work on their own, which we we don't want.
74 Thank you very much. Councilor Koyama Lane. Yes, we are happy to have ongoing conversations. We've already begun to have conversations with some community organizations, organizations that are interested in engaging in that tactical urbanism. That's something that councilor Green has also mentioned as being something that he sees as a way for us to work in partnership with community to create safer environments. One of the challenges that we have is that from time to time, because of often out of frustration or fear, community members will engage in supporting safety by implementing or placing things in the right of way in places that they think are most appropriate or are most needed. And what we find is that sometimes that treatment is not appropriate for that location. And so then we have to go back and undo and redo the treatment, or remove it all together and have the conversation about why something was important. Sometimes the tactical urbanism, which again, is a great idea, has some unintended consequences. And so if in fact, we are having to take things out because of misplacement and wendy or jody, would wendy corley, our city traffic engineer, or jody yates, our maintenance operations group director, would be better suited to speak to this? We find that we are doing what happens with trench cutting, where we're degrading the asset to remove something that was misplaced with well-intended, well, good intent. But sometimes we have some challenges with it. So we're excited about being able to partner with community, and we recognize that there are some things that can be done cheaply. But I think one of the things that is important for us to ensure that we do as a city is that we do whatever it is. Well, we we can put a. A plastic wand out pretty easily and quickly and cheaply, and within weeks it doesn't look like it should. And the esthetic brings down the quality and the appreciation for the intended safety. And so those are things that we continue to grapple with and have conversations around. How can we best ensure that we're using the full complement of tools and resources and equipment to do the work, and that we're engaging community to help to support that. But we're fully supportive of having those conversations, and we've already begun those.
75 Just a quick comment before I turn this over to councilor Green, is that I think back to sam baldo's comment that even though those wands may fall over or something may happen, we do have the opportunity to to take some risks, to do something quick, to do an experiment, which I'm I'm all for. We have plenty of them in district four where we'd like to see more experiments. And we do have the small project fund, I believe, to to help with that, but appreciate the context, councilor Green. And then I'm going to call on myself.
76 Yeah, I'll try to be brief here. I, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about some of the strategies that that are not as part of the the sort of four top line short mid-term in particular, very interested in the congestion pricing approach as well as, you know, I got to be honest, I hate studded snow tires. I think they're ridiculous. I think it's sad. Just like get get a non studded snow tire. Please don't drive them year round. It destroys our street. So I'd be interested to know even if we can't like I understand like the the challenge in effectively acquiring that. It's like it's a very different difficult jurisdictional problem in getting the fees for the tires. But like I just wonder if we can just ban them, you know what I mean? So. So anyway, I'm curious if you guys could take a couple minutes to is it state level?
77 I believe that that we've been preempted to some degree by state legislation where there are laws about when you're supposed to take them off. There's a there's a higher fee that goes into, I think the ODOT.
78 We might see some guerrilla action around that if we don't put it in our. Oh just kidding. My wife's listening. She hates them more than I do. But but let's talk about congestion pricing okay.
79 Well right. Tires already rules and sort of not that much money in all those things. But we could talk about it a little bit more congestion pricing. Someone mentioned during the testimony a previous project called the pricing options for equitable mobility, which was a pretty it was a whole separate report that was a pretty big look at sort of traditional congestion pricing as well as, you know, we sort of considered many different types of pricing for what people sometimes think is congestion pricing, like a cordon around downtown. You know, we're sort of just not really ready right now. In general during that work, which was excellent work with lots of great community feedback and lots of lessons that should be applied to this work as well. Congestion pricing. In a lot of the pricing tools, we were sort of the first thing we were looking at was sort of the policy implications. Can we use pricing to impact demand, to impact climate impact equity, all of those things, which of course there's super a ton of overlap with things that generate revenue does generate revenue. But it was a little bit of a different conversation than can we stabilize revenue and fill the potholes or do basic safety. And so again, congestion pricing as a tool, sort of if we sort of primarily want to approach it to manage demand, manage the system, I think downtown, we're not seeing as much congestion as when we first had this conversation. The state is continuing to talk about iraq. Is the future road user charge or vehicle miles traveled, which is another type of pricing that then we could, you know, do a local vmt here after the state does it sort of like a local gas tax. So there's still a ton of sort of opportunity in that space. It's because of the policy implications. It's it's a little bit more complicated than just like get some revenue, do the things that we have to do maintain the system.
80 Yeah, I appreciate that. And I do want to recognize that, you know, we're not manhattan. And so a downtown sort of congestion pricing zone is just not really we don't have that same problem. In fact, we have got a problem with people coming downtown. But. I I'll have my sort of like antenna tuned up to any kind of conversations around thinking about how we can manage congestion through through pricing. Maybe it's like different neighborhoods, maybe it's different sort of other approaches, but very, very interested in it. And I'm curious to know more about how the state conversation with vmt.
81 Thank you, councilor Green. Or should I say professor Green? I have a couple of questions, and I think you did a fabulous job. And I think to some of the comments from councilor Green that you you selected the the perfect evaluation criteria for at this point in time, we'll have other evaluation criteria in the future. But just for for what we're confronting right now, I think you did a great job. I wanted to just bring up the fact that councilor Sameer canal in district two also had a resolution around, I believe, the delivery fee. I'm not sure which component, or maybe it was a local retail or the food. I'm not sure which, but I'm and I'm glad that you included those in this list. It's not clear to me that there's you're coming up with another response to his resolution at some point, which I hope we can feed into this process. And I have mentioned that to him. I'm going to need a little more information in the future. Not today necessarily, about that third party food delivery fee and what can we actually do? And then I think the other fee, the retail fee is more of maybe a state issue. I'm not sure what all is entailed, but maybe we can dig into that a little bit more later, particularly when you get to your the number crunching will be important to know. Just want to flag that put that out there, that councilor Canal did have a resolution on the delivery fee. On the autonomous vehicles. I know some of us are very nervous. Suspect. I was shocked when I saw so many of them in san francisco, and so many of them in phoenix zooming by. And I know that they have a lobbyist now in in Oregon, and they'll be working on, I imagine, state legislation. So I think that that's a future issue for us to think about, not necessarily in this report, but we'll want to flag that for the future. Another question I have is I think that we've been preempted by the state on having a vehicle registration fee. That's at the county level. Right. And presumably we're getting a share of that. Okay. So maybe on our legislative agenda in the future. Well, obviously, we'll want to keep working on a transportation package that would include that. And it would be if we're sharing the revenue with the county, I'm sure we've worked out some sort of equitable formula. Let's see if I had other questions. I guess I had a question about the gas tax generally. I know we've got multiple policies that intersect around the gas tax. And we've all we all talk about the fact that it's a diminishing resource. I think I'd like to see more information about that. Just how diminishing is it? And I know that I believe our, our local $0.10 does that just sunset at some point. And we would have to go back to the voters to continue it.
82 We would have to go back to the voters for in the next election cycle to continue it. And one of.
83 Them maybe, is that a 2027.
84 28.
85 2028.
86 We want to go back to the voters before that, presumably, or or we go in 2028.
87 Going 2028.
88 Okay, great. I'd just like to see a little more information about what what's really happening with the gas tax. Is it really diminishing the way we we say it is just in comparison? Because I know there will be some interest. I think we heard that today in either letting that sunset or maybe going back for a reduced amount or something like that, in conjunction with whatever this committee decides to put forward. I think those are my questions for now. Did you colleagues have any further questions or comments?
89 I do not know.
90 Councilor Green.
91 I'll let Tiffany or councilor. Oh, sorry.
92 Sorry, I didn't see that.
93 No. It's fine. The thing that I wanted to bring up, this is our final transportation and infrastructure committee of 2025, and I just wanted to highlight the leadership of chair Clark and vice chair Morillo over this year. This is a committee that I enjoy going to. I feel like I genuinely have learned from both of your leadership, the way that you collaborate with each other and bring in many community members and different stakeholders. The way that you send us information and check in with us and make sure that we're prepared. I've taken some of those things and applied them into my own committee. So thank you for your leadership. It's been a great year getting to do this with you all.
94 Well, thank you for being a great member of the committee. And it is our last meeting of the year. It has been a great year for us. I think we've accomplished a lot. We've set the stage for more accomplishments in the future, so I'm very pleased about that and I'm sure that we'll have you all back. We've given you some additional work. We're going to work on the money aspect to all for at least four of the your recommendations in the report. But again, thank you so much for all the work that's gone into this. I think it's fantastic. We're we're all very pleased with it. And we'll, we'll probably bring this back. I'm not sure if it'll be the first meeting in January or the second. And I know you want to expedite and we'll we'll work on it in, in the, in the meantime. But thank you all so much for being here today and your presentation and giving us context. And thanks to all the people who came from the community, from different groups on the panels, who provided excellent testimony. I hope we get some of it in writing, because there were so many important points made here today that we'll want to follow up on. And I'm curious about as well. So with that, our next meeting is sorry.
95 Yes. I'm sorry.
96 Yeah. I just wanted to comment on the gas tax real quick. I think it's important for us to think about the future of that. At the same time, we're talking about these alternative strategies. I, I've gone back and forth on this personally over the years, and where I've landed is that I think it's an important price signal for people who have the ability to switch mode. But for people who don't, it's a pretty regressive tax. And so if we were to pair a reasonably scaled transportation utility fee with a expectation that we let the gas, the local option gas tax roll off, that would that would make that fee structure less regressive and maybe get towards flat, which I think I would prefer. I think most of my coalition supporters would also prefer as long as we we, but we would have to pare those resources with investments in like shoring up TriMet and making sure that we've got alternative modes of conveyance so people can switch. So I just wanted to communicate to the public and to you guys what I'm thinking about in relation to those two things.
97 Great, great.
98 Thank you. Then if there's any council president candidates listening, I, I expect to be put back on this committee next year. And my vote, my vote will depend upon your willingness to do so. So thanks.
99 Terrific I appreciate that. I'm sure she's listening or somebody listening.
100 So thank you for that. We'll need more information on the gas tax. Both. It's what's really happening to it. It's regressivity is there is phasing it out the right thing to do or reducing it whatever. We have lots of options. So our next meeting is on January the 12th. We're going to spend some time on street renaming at that meeting, but maybe we can carve out some time to continue this conversation on the 12th as well with new new information. More information. Great. So with that, I will adjourn the meeting of the transportation infrastructure committee for 2025.