The record · Transcript
Council session — 2026-05-05
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (26,561 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.
Loretta Smith: This is Loretta Smith. I am online.
Good morning, councilor Smith. We can hear you.
Thank you.
And this is rebecca. Wendy is in chambers, and she'll hear you when they unmute the room. I'll let her know you're there.
Perfect.
Good morning. Now, calling to order this work session of the Portland city council. It is 930 on Tuesday, may 5th, cinco de mayo. Good morning everybody. So, colleagues, today we're scheduled for the first of two work sessions on bureaus within the public safety service area. We'll be hearing from the bureau of emergency communications, the bureau of emergency management and Portland fire and rescue. Contrary to how these work sessions have gone so far, public safety staff will be presenting all three bureaus together and then taking joint questions. Hopefully this means no bureaus will get left behind today. We will return to hear the remainder of the public safety bureaus and programs on may 13th. I'd also like to acknowledge that we heard word this morning. The deputy city administrator, bob cozzie, will be leaving the city on may 18th. Dcai. I don't anticipate asking you any further questions about this matter in a public forum, but I. I want to thank you for your service and many years of service to this city. You do incredibly good work and I'm immensely proud and grateful to for your commitment.
Thank you.
To begin the session, the community safety committee and public safety committee chair, councilor Novick would like to make an introduction before we pass things over to the dca councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. Two things. One, I'm a bit afraid that when the message goes out that we're not cutting any sworn officers and we're not closing any fire stations, then some people might get the idea that cuts we're making to public safety aren't a big deal. And so I don't I'm sure I don't need to say this, but I think it's really important for us to be honest with the public about what the impact of cuts are. And one thing that I want to be careful of in particular is saying, well, somebody else is going to pick it up because we all know everybody's busy and there'll be some things that just aren't picked up. And others, if they are picked up, they won't be done as quickly or as well. So I really encourage you to be as frank and depressing as, as appropriate about what the impact of all these cuts are. Also, I have to say something, city administrator lee, by the way, I repeat what the council president said about how grateful we are for all bob cozzie has done for years and years. But city administrator lee, your email this morning said that you are going to take over as acting deputy city administrator for public safety. I strongly urge you to reconsider that. I frankly think that you'd be out of your mind to do that, and I don't think you have time, and there's at least one person and probably more, who all of us trust, who I think would be an obvious interim person. So I just ask you to please reconsider that. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Novick dc, please take it away.
Thank you. Good morning, council president, vice president, mayor, city administrator and council. I'm bob cozzie, deputy city administrator for the public safety service area. Next slide. We have two work sessions, as was mentioned earlier today and the next one on may 13th. Today's presentation and discussion will focus on the bureau of emergency communications, bureau of emergency management, and Portland fire and rescue. The upcoming work session will include the d. Cas office, community safety and Portland police bureau. Next slide. The proposed $611 million budget includes 2250 staff across the entirety of the service area. And next slide. Next slide. Thank you. Here's a high level org chart of the service area showing emergency communications, emergency management, fire and rescue, police and community safety. Portland street response, cease fire and the office of violence prevention are all housed within community safety. The office of violence prevention houses the safe blocks and rose city self-defense programs. Over the course of this discussion, and the one on may 13th will dive deeper into these bureaus and programs. And to get through the entire presentation, I ask that you please hold questions, if at all possible, until the end. We will have plenty of time after the presentation. Next slide. The vision of public safety service area is a safe Portland for all, and our primary focus throughout this budget process is preserving core emergency response capabilities such as 911 fire, police and emergency management, while preserving continuity of priority programs throughout the service area. These priority programs include alternative response and prevention. Next slide. As we begin this conversation, I wanted to spotlight something in my office. I have a collage of these statements, which are snippets of mission statements from the public safety service area bureaus and programs. In my opinion, these statements show the intentions of the caring and dedicated professionals who work in their respective bureaus, build a more family friendly city, create a safer community, proactive and holistic harm reduction, reduce crime and the fear of crime. All communities protected, compassionate and trauma informed readiness, response, resilience and effective and timely. These statements demonstrate a vision for our city that we see, care and connect with our neighbors, and enjoy a city with clean streets and safe places. This is all encapsulated in the public safety service area. Vision. A safe Portland for all. Next slide. This slide demonstrates the budgets over the past few years in comparison with this proposed budget, showing the service area funded at $620 million. This includes 319.5 for PPB, 216.2 for Portland fire, 39.6 for boec, 37.3 million for the office of the dca, including community safety programs and 7.6 million for pbem. The dca office is unique in that it houses community safety programs such as Portland street response, office of violence prevention and cease fire. One task that I would like to see happen in the future is that these programs be moved from the dcas office into a standalone bureau to further tie these programs into the fabric of public safety. Next slide. And now I'll hand it off to interim boec director Steve moseley to kick things off with boec.
Thank you. Good morning council. I'm Steve moseley, interim director of the bureau of emergency communications. Boec mission is straightforward. It's to work collaboratively with our community and public safety partners to ensure effective and timely 911 call answering and dispatching in the next year. Boec has $39.6 million proposed budget and 163.9 proposed staff. Next slide please. This is an overview of all changes to the bureau's budget, including additions, reductions and realignments. Specifics are described in upcoming slides, but I want to highlight the boec serves all of Multnomah county and receives cost share revenue from local jurisdictions, as well as 911 phone tax in state shared revenue. The blended cost allocation means that ongoing reductions are seen in both general fund and other funds. The other funds reduction line shows positive because it is a net of revenue increases and reductions. Next slide. Over 80% of boec staff are call taker dispatcher positions. The current service level fte includes eight limited term positions that are being extended through boec training pipeline. Next slide please. While we're facing reductions, we are intentionally preserving key workflows that support our core mission. First, we're maintaining our 911 training pipeline, which allows us to hire ahead of anticipated attrition and sustain staffing over the year. Building on that and in alignment with our recent international emergency medical dispatch accreditation, we're preserving our quality assurance and improvement program that serves as the foundation for achieving accreditation across all our disciplines. At the same time, we remain committed to equitable access to 911, particularly for community members who are limited english proficiency or those with varying abilities. Operationally, we're maintaining targeted overtime, focused specifically on our highest call volume months and surge events to ensure responsiveness when demand is greatest in support of timely service across all community, communities and partner jurisdictions in Multnomah county. We're also maintaining staffing in books, public records, and research department. And finally, we are preserving our outreach program, which continues to strengthen relationships through consistent engagement at monthly events. Next slide please. We're facing a reduction in contracted security of $325,000. As the hub of county wide emergency communications. We require secure conditions. For the past two years, boec has funded security for the campus, including boec, pbem and bts. In addition to security personnel, we do have additional security measures in place, including camera access to the entire facility, expanded exterior lighting, 24 over seven supervisors on duty with camera access and mandatory secure badge access. Next slide please. We're facing a reduction in training, travel and continuing education by $381,000. The training required to maintain certifications will continue. Supplemental learning and industry engagement keeps us informed on best practices and provides professional growth and development opportunities and advancement opportunities that support employee retention. Ensuring a focus on call answering during the summer will conduct. We will conduct required training in the fall and winter months as more of our call takers certify later this year. Next slide please. We're facing a reduction in operational overtime by $422,000. This is used to do a few things maintain minimum staffing due to absences, supplement call taking staff during critical incidents and surge spikes, and backfill staffing to ensure trainees receive regular simulation training throughout the certification process to preserve operational overtime in the peak summer months, we would reduce overtime primarily in the fall and winter. Next slide please. We're facing a reduction of two call taker dispatcher positions by $285,000, which reduces our capacity to hire academy trainees into permanent positions pending attrition. Doing so could impact call answer times, which, in concert with the training pipeline, help us stay ahead of anticipated attrition. If we reduce these two permanent positions, which account for 1.5% of our total operational fte, we will have 126 positions left. Next slide please. We're facing a reduction in one of two assistant operations manager positions by $234,000, which is one of seven non-represented positions at the bureau. This position co-leads and mentors the operations supervisor team oversees policy and procedure updates and coordinates operational changes with emergency responder agencies. Reducing this position increases workload on the existing manager. Reduces responsiveness to service delivery questions, and limits mentoring and employee relations opportunities. Next slide please. We are limiting additional reductions by partially implementing the cost allocation change by $1 million. You may recall that boec has an intergovernmental agreement with communities and public safety jurisdictions across Multnomah county. The iga was established in 1995, followed by two cost allocation changes in 2000 and 2005. In October of last year, the boec user board approved a change to the cost allocation model that shifts how jurisdictions receiving boec services contribute to boec budget, and this is accounted for in the other funds slide of the budget summary. Slide. Next slide please. A budget note in fiscal year 22 allowed to keep our underspend in a training pipeline. Subfund that allowed the bureau to overhire trainees while we work to return to full staffing. The pipeline allows for capacity to hold consistent recruitments throughout the year as we continue improving 911 call answering times, which are measured against a national standard from the national emergency number association. Nina, while we would like to this why we would like this funding to eventually be ongoing, this package continues. The one time use for this year projected underspend from fiscal year 26, the amount of 1.1 million to extend the training pipeline for one more year, reducing the need for additional general fund resources. Next slide please. Here's a snapshot of our staffing forecast that shows our progress over the last couple of years. We've increased from 9911 certified employees in July of 2023 to 113 today, with many more in training. We expect to hire two academies in this fiscal year with continued use of our training pipeline. Next slide please. This slide shows you the impacts of fully certified staffing on lowering operational overtime. Overtime is tied to staffing and leave usage, which can fluctuate over time. We've seen a positive trend with our certifications helping reduce operational overtime as we adjust to reductions over the next year, we expect to maintain our call answering performance and the reduced need for operational overtime, which is down 56% from fiscal year 23. I'll hand off to director perez.
Good morning, elizabeth perez for the record, interim director of the Portland bureau of emergency management. Pbem promotes readiness, coordinates response and builds resilience for Portland. We develop and implement strategic planning programs and policies to continually advance the city's mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery capabilities. The bureau currently has four program areas community resilience and planning, operations, administration, and regional preparedness via the regional disaster preparedness organization, or npo. Next slide please. This is an overview of all the changes to the bureau's budget, including additions, reductions and realignments. The proposed budget for the bureau is 4.9 million, which includes about 500,000 in 1 time funding. This is a total ongoing reduction of about 11.4% to the general fund. In the other funds column, you'll see the 2.7% or 2.7 million. That is a federally funded grants and partner funding to the depot. This is a separately governed organization housed in the bureau. Pbem contributes funding to the depot on behalf of the city to maintain its member status. Next slide please. This is an overview of all the changes to the bureau's position counts, including additions, reductions, and realignments. Pbem is comprised of 19 56.5 staff, the depot and 11.5 staff. The bureau. Note that about a third of the 19 staff do not work on Portland specific programs. Next slide. So what are we preserving? We're preserving our core work community resilience and planning, operations and administration as well as the depot. When I started in February, the bureau had six vacancies. We created a staffing plan to ensure the bureau mission. We could meet the bureau mission and reduce reliance on contract work. So I feel really privileged to say that we're hiring. We are currently in the process of hiring two planners, which we were given in this year's budget. So thank you. And we're also hiring an operations manager, manager, and of course, the director in resilience programing. We will strengthen our mitigation work, complete required plans and reestablish the continuity of operations capabilities and implement a crisis information management system. The neighborhood emergency teams are net and community organizations active in disasters program continue their great work. The net and we have about 1700 active net volunteers. As far as we know, this is the largest in the country. Our volunteer staff, 136 events last year, and that's about a value of 1.1 million to Portland taxpayers in 2025. We have about 350 new volunteers that graduate annually, and we have about 3600 applicants waiting to be trained. And then we have 100 community based organizations preparing their communities for disasters. So we're really proud of that work in operations. We're bolstering our emergency operations center program by upgrading the technology, implementing a citywide incident management team, and creating a better schedule for our training and exercise plans. We'll continue our duty officer program, which is 247 365 incident monitoring for the city. And we recently hired for the work alert and warning program, which is staff that ensures the city can provide timely notifications in emergencies using systems that send messages via modes like cell phone, radio, and tv. And lastly, the depot helps the Portland metro area prepare for disasters by getting cities and agencies to work together and funding shared preparedness efforts. Since 2003, the depot has channeled over $100 million in federal grants to the Portland region through the city of Portland. At least 20 million of that went directly to improving portland's own emergency preparedness. However, in federal funds, federal funding for this program is becoming less predictable, so the depot is restructuring to run leaner, making sure it can fulfill its mission even if federal money dries up. Many of you have seen the imap certification chart. That's the red, yellow Green, which indicates that Portland has many opportunities for growth. So we'll continue to strengthen our critical functions with the intention of achieving that certification. Next slide. So stepping into the role, three months ago, I did an initial review of spending. At the time, the bureau had eight vehicles. I've eliminated half of those vehicles, resulting in 51000 of ongoing savings. Ultimately, the impact here will translate into fewer funds for materials and services in the next year, which affects eoc activation and community resilience efforts. Next slide. And as I said previously, pbem had six vacancies in January with the authority to create two more. I worked with the team to review the critical positions that we need to hire to make sure we're executing on our critical functions. We then prioritize prioritize the order in which to hire. Thus far, we've hired one position and are in the process of hiring three more, which includes the director in this year's budget. Again, we were given two planners and the reinstatement of a training and exercise position. These are all positions we are going to maintain in the budget. Next slide. Pbem is reinvesting in its emergency management foundation with two connected funding items totaling $536,000. A new crisis incident management system will give the bureaus one shared real time view during emergencies. Implementation is going to take a couple years, and we've started on the procurement process with bts. We've also started a work group with emergency managers across the city to make sure it's a success. Another addition is a one year limited term employee solely focused on strengthening the training and exercise program needed to improve preparedness. This will help jump start the program and get it running smoothly. And for those who recall, that's a Green 13 is where we're trying to move the money over. Together, these investments are going to restart the city's continuity of operations program, which has been on pause since 2023. Better technology, better trained people and a more coordinated city response will help us reach our intended mission. I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today, and I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, chief johnson.
Thank you, director perez, and good morning, councilors. For the record, my name is lauren johnson and I'm the fire chief at Portland fire and rescue. I appreciate the opportunity that we have here today to go over our budget for the next fiscal year. Portland fires mission is summarized first on this slide. We exist to provide fire, medical and all hazards emergency response, and to protect all of Portland with community health and fire prevention programs. We use this mission every day to focus our actions, whether in my office or out in the field, and it guided us during budget development. Next slide please. This slide is an overview of all changes to the bureau's budget, including additions, reductions and realignments. Specifics are described in upcoming slides. The other funds that are shown in this slide reflect our reimbursements of retirement costs for sworn members, fire prevention service charges and fees, and grant funding for our chat program. Next slide please. This is an overview of all changes to the bureau's position counts, including additions, reductions and realignments. Again, specifics are described in the upcoming slides. It's important to note that 90% of fire staff are sworn responders, and the fte count shown here includes 22 limited term positions that are part of the chat program. Next slide. As we get into the next slides, it's critical to keep in mind what we're committed to preserving. We are maintaining a fire engine or fire truck at every station for fire rescue and medical responses. Chat teams are staying, and we're continuing to do the work of providing an alternative to four person responses by engines and trucks, and chat will also continue. The mission associated with healthshare to provide emergency room and hospital diversion services aimed at ensuring that the people in Portland receive the right type of type of responder and care in the city. We are continuing to invest in staff that support the health and wellness of our firefighters. We are committed to continuing to provide occupational, physical and mental health oversight and guidance so that our members can receive timely care and connection to resources. These programs also include screenings for job related cancers and other illnesses that firefighters are at higher risk for. This kind of preventative work is contributing toward a healthier workforce that is better prepared to serve the city for decades to come. We are not cutting specialized responders, fire investigators, or fire inspectors. These personnel are specialists who support wildfire, marine and hazardous material responses. They perform technical rescues and guide the development and sustainment of firewise communities. These are already very small teams that are widely relied on as subject matter experts. They attend community meetings, perform public education and code enforcement, and make scene responses daily. Next slide. For a long time now, fire has not had a capital reserve fund entirely adequate for apparatus replacement. Instead, we've relied on part of our annual operational funding to provide the required amount of funding for new apparatus. The next several years will bring higher costs for a number of reasons. One of note is that we have several apparatus that will be reaching end of life. These were bought using a 2009 g.o. Bond. As this large batch ages, maintenance and repair costs increase. We see this both in terms of parts and the additional hours that are. Mechanics need to put in to keep our equipment running. The $1.2 million reduction is the equivalent of one engine that will not be purchased. That means an existing engine will need to stay on the line for longer, which increases the chances of failure, larger costs and longer downtimes. Next slide please. This reduction involves our two person medical rescues. We currently have three rescues that operate 24 hours a day. The reduction to half time 12 hours will be felt most in the areas where the rescues are assigned. Specifically, these are council districts one and three in the mount tabor and rockwood neighborhoods. Decreasing the operating times for these units will increase response times and add to the burden of surrounding stations. It's important to note that this is not a plan for layoffs. All of our concepts involve reducing the number of firefighters who are working every day and using them to fill vacancies at fire stations that are currently being covered by overtime. Next slide. The next reduction involves removing one fire engine from service, which means that the four firefighters who were assigned to that engine each day would be reassigned to fill in as staff at other stations. Again, the cost savings here is happening by way of reducing overtime. This will be done at a double company house, which has an engine that brings hoses and water to a fire, and a truck that carries the big ladders and specialized rescue equipment to fires and other emergencies. The end result will be a fire station that loses its engine and keeps its truck, and goes from eight firefighters down to four. As you know, we've made the decision for this to be engine 22 in north Portland council district two. Next slide. This cut reduces administrative to administrative support positions, one of which is vacant. One of these positions is largely clerical. It's focused on task work like ordering supplies, select monthly and annual reports. Phone tree management and other general office work that will be assigned to higher level positions. The second position is currently vacant. It's an analyst position that would have been assigned specific duties associated with the bureau's strategic plan, maintaining and updating our inventory of agreements with outside agency partners, reviewing dashboards for trends, and providing recommendations to leadership on specific focus areas. Next slide. Chat is our community health program. They provide follow up medical services to overdose patients and connect them with longer term resources, and they provide medical aftercare to clients that need extra support and access to social services. This cut reduces chat's funding by $500,000, 2,000,001 time funding is expiring and is being replaced by 1.5 million. That's coming from a congressional earmark to the city. These changes will impact our ability to use chat as an alternative over sending a four person apparatus, because the remaining funds come from grants that have specific mission requirements that we will need to continue. This will increase the burden on fire engines, fire trucks, and our county ems responder, amr. Another impact that is notable is the chance that our state partners will pull back because of a perceived change in commitment on the city side. This does result in the elimination of a sworn fire deputy chief and the program strategist. Next slide. This slide notes a change to our payout budget. This decision was based on an analysis by our financial partners in the service area, who have noted that there's a significant difference between our payout costs when there's a 27th pay period and when there is not. About 70% of our separation payouts come during a 27 pay period. Look back month, and fy 2627 does not have a 27th pay period. So we can afford to make this reduction for the upcoming year. However, the next one will be in October 2027. Next slide. This slide shows the added amount that we expect to recover by increasing fire prevention fees. This is really part of an ongoing effort to make sure that we're routinely looking at our peers and keeping in best practices when it comes to cost recovery and accounting for the dollars associated with doing this work. The last major updates to our fee schedule were done in 2016, with only a few changes since then. Next slide please. We're sharing this slide to show you how our staffing can change in big swings. The reason why this is important is because separations can happen in big chunks. And although we are hiring to counter the attrition, recruitment and training takes about one year and it's difficult to get ahead of these retirement cliffs. This forecast is something that we monitor constantly, and doing this allows us to try to keep pace and smooth out our staffing levels. Next slide. On the last slide, we noted that we plan to hire and train about 30 new firefighters next year. This slide shows the relationship between the number of non recruit firefighters and backfill overtime that we use to ensure full staffing every day. As we move through next fiscal year, and the firefighters that we've hired recently move from the training academy to the stations, we anticipate a reduction in our overtime costs. However, we know that the 27th pay period look back in October of 27 is looming, and this is another retirement cliff that will significantly impact our suppression staff levels. The notes here highlight that each new firefighter coming out of the academy to the station reduces overtime by about 2000 hours per year, and that the additional fte that were allotted to us over the past few years have reduced 33,000 overtime hours from fy 24 to now. That's a reduction of 13%. And that's the end of my section. I'm going to turn it back over to dc causey.
Thank you chief. As I mentioned earlier, we'll focus on community safety, the dc office and PPB in the upcoming budget work session on Wednesday, may 13th. And at this point, we're prepared to answer any questions. Thank you.
Thank you all so very much, colleagues. I plan on having us take a quick break. In about about half an hour or so. We've been in here for only about half an hour. So we're going to start with the folks in the queue. Vice president Clark, kick us off.
Thank you, council president. I have a couple of questions, but I want to say a few things I have to say. This is probably one of the most painful and depressing times I've been on the dais. But first I'll just say I want to thank dc a cause for your service. It's been a pleasure to work with you, and I appreciate everything that you've done in your service. So thank you. Thank you. Council. I also want to thank the firefighters that are here today for what they do every day. And for those who just responded to the mac club disaster, which could have been much worse if it weren't for, I guess, for providence. And thank you for risking your lives. The people who responded to a situation that was could have been very horrific. And I know these are the kinds of things that you are often called to respond to, and I appreciate you very much, all of you. And chief johnson, I just want to say I appreciate your service and the fact that you mentioned assets asset management, which is a high priority for me. I realize we're far behind in taking care of our equipment, our fire stations, etc. And that's a high priority for me as well. But this is really a sad day for me because if our mission is a safe Portland for all, I think we're violating our mission with these proposed cuts. I, when I first came into this office, I realized that we were already short, that due to our geography, our rivers, the conditions of our bridges, that we're already underserved. And to me, fire service, public safety is a core function of government. You know, in addition to clean water, to appropriate sewage disposal, to safe streets, public safety is at the top of the list. So I'm I'm very feeling very bad about this. I realize there are some bridges that our equipment can't even go over and makes our response time even worse. We. Response time is of great concern to me, so I have a couple questions. One is about how the proposed budget cuts will affect the cei hub and protecting the ci hub, which is in my district and has been an ongoing concern for me since I was elected to this office. I don't know who can answer that. I also would like to ask a question about the impact on response time.
I can start with the ci hub. Like I said, in this year's budget, we got to planners. We're still hiring for them. Our senior planner is actually going to be focused on ci hub, among other things. So we're actually still in building mode for pbem. So I don't see any current impact to our planning for that. We're still just getting started and we our chief resilience officer currently meets with bts on a regular basis because we're doing that in partnership. I. That's all being said. We have a lot of work to do there, and I think there is opportunity within pbem. But then also at the state and federal level to get additional funding.
There will. You may be in a planning mode, but I'm thinking about the cut that's coming to. I think it's the saint john's station with that. That station protects the c, e I hub, and I'm concerned about that. In addition, I'm glad you're planning, but I'm concerned about right now. And with the cut will mean to the ci hub.
Thank you counselor. I can jump in on that. So it's important to note that the first two apparatus that responds to the ci hub, that station was preserved, and that even the change with taking engine 22 out of the mix doesn't change the number of resources that we send to any emergency, whether it's at the ci hub or at somebody's house down the street. But at the same time, acknowledge, I acknowledge that any time we take a unit out of our system, which is a closed system, it's going to impact response times. And I know you had follow up questions about response times, so I'd be happy to address that.
Right. Can you talk about what the impact of these cuts will be on response times generally around the city? It's we're already struggling. I know, I know, we've made improvements, but we have a ways to go. I can yes.
Thank you. Sorry about that. Yeah. No, I this is top of mind for me and I, I've watched your work sessions. I understand that it's top of mind for all of you and our firefighters and everybody out in the community. So it's important to talk about it. Like I said, we're a closed system. We only have a certain number of resources. So it stands to reason that any time we're taking units out of that system, we expect our response times to increase. There are a couple of things that it's important that, you know, we are doing to hopefully counteract that or dampen that effect. One is making sure that we do have a responder from every station that's still available, so that your neighborhood responder is still coming, even if it's not that fire engine, something that city wide, we have noticed a difference in is the number of calls that are related to unsheltered or houseless folks. We know that just in general, the number of, of people who use our services are largely part of that population. And so as work continues across the city to improve that situation, we are hoping that the number of calls that we are called out to are reduced. Something else that was started before I even came, and that is really important. Work is a call allocation project that's happening just in fire. And what that's looking at primarily is ems responses. But so since, like I said before I got here, so the end of last fiscal year, we've been taking call types and working with the medical director to understand if it's a call that we need to continue to go on, or if the community is served just as well to have amr answer that call and keep our resources available for higher acuity calls and not respond to the some of those most low acuity calls. The last thing that we do every day, but will be more of a focus with engine 22 out of service, is just what we think of as dynamic resource deployment. So we have an officer that's stationed in boec. He's a fire liaison and his job is his or her job just happens to be two men. Right now. Their job is to make sure that the right responders from fire are assigned to those calls that come in to 911, but then also to basically have eyes on our map and watch units across the city so that if we do have a section of the city that's impacted by simultaneous incidents, that fire liaison and any of our on duty chiefs would make decisions to move our resources around. So we would move up apparatus to different stations across the city to try to spread our resources out until those initial responding units get freed up from their incident and get to move back to their regular station. So specific to the reduction of engine 22, that means that the focus for us and the focus for the fire liaison, for the fire chiefs that are on duty 24 over seven, is keeping a specific eye on that area to watch. If engine 22 and the station adjacent engine 26 are both tied up, then we plan to move resources into that area to help adjust our coverage.
I appreciate that response and the effort to have dynamic response deployment, as you called it. To me, it sounds like, you know, doing more with less kind of like a peanut butter, spreading things around pretty thinly. I think it's difficult because I do feel that we're understaffed, under protected and very vulnerable throughout the city. Will rest assured that I'll be looking for additional resources to restore some of these cuts as best I can, and I appreciate you all being here and explaining this to us. Thank you, and thank you all for being here.
Thank you. Vice president Clark councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you, council president. Thank you all so much for being here and presenting today. And thank you very much to the firefighters who showed up today in your shirts to show us how important this is for the city. I think that it's really critical that we respect the city employees and unions that come here to represent their interests, because the reality is that most of you live in the city of Portland, and you're our constituents, too, and you provide a vital service for the city. So thank you very much for being here. Your presence is noted and honored. And I agree with councilor Clark. This is very painful as far as I don't think a single one of these budget sessions has not been painful. There are. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't think there is any fat left to trim. I don't think there's anything extra left to cut. Every single employee, every single program is critical. And dc, thank you so much for everything that you've done. It's been such a pleasure working with you, and you have just always been so level headed, kind and generous in how you approach the work, and I just appreciate you very much. Thank you. I have a few questions about fire, and one is regarding chat, the replacement of the expiring one time grant funding with 1.5 million in federal grants. What assurance do we have that this grant funding will come in the next fiscal year? Or. And has it been awarded yet?
I'm going to phone a friend to get a timeline on that. Chief wilson, or do you have an update? We haven't heard anything.
Coming from samhsa.
Okay. So we haven't gotten an update on that and I would need to follow up. It's from samhsa, which is the federal mental health and substance abuse organization. So I'm happy to follow up on that one.
Okay.
That's good to know because I think we have to factor in, you know, how sure some of these numbers are so we can calculate the risk or lack of risk there. So that's also helpful to know and look forward to getting that information as well. Yeah. Thanks for that. Another question I had was regarding the two person rescue unit reduction. I think we've kind of touched on that a bit, but and it's okay if you don't know all of this off the top of your head. I think I'm asking very technical questions, but do you know what percentage of your calls are for medical responses?
Let me look at elizabeth. We'll pull that up. I mean, we've got a rough dashboard. I'd say, you know, 60 to 80%. Okay. And it's quite a bit.
Yeah, I was asking because I know, you know, if we're reducing the two per person rescue unit in districts one and three, I want to get sort of a mental picture of what that actually looks like for the people who are getting our services. So if someone is calling 911 and they need an advanced medical response, what does the change in that response look like with that reduced staffing?
Let me talk about that a little bit. And if we have more info, elizabeth can come up with specific specific percentages. So one thing that's important to note about this reduction and why it was at the top of our cut concepts, is because they are only two person medical units. And so we cannot provide any fire protection using those responders. Whereas from our engines and trucks, those were further down on our proposed list because they will answer medical calls and they'll also provide fire protection. So it was that was the risk assessment that got us to reducing the hours for the three person rescues, to the point about als response in those areas. I mean, it's important to note that those rescues are there because of the call volume and the demand out in those areas. That's why those units are stationed there. They have a paramedic on them and they are als responders. But so are our engines and trucks. And so the removal of those, or when those rescues are out, because it's an off peak hour, then the engine from that station will be making that als response, but it is three less units during non-peak hours that would be making that medical response.
Gotcha. So I'm assuming when you compared what you had to calculate, it's even with the whole fire engine going, it's less expensive to preserve that with the dual system rather than the alternative.
So, I mean, that was definitely one of the factors is how much cost we could recover if we close the rescues versus closing an engine. The other thing that's a really big factor for us is the amount of calls that happen in those areas and that taking them out completely would make the workload for the remaining fire stations untenable. So we would end up, you know, that would end up drawing resources from other areas to that side of town.
Gotcha. Okay. Thank you so much. That was very helpful.
Okay. 65% medical and fy 2425.
Okay, thanks. That's actually a little bit less than I was expecting. So that's good to have a concrete number on that. I have one more question. Chief johnson, you touched on a couple of response times, but a few years ago we were dealing with having zero ambulances available frequently. How are we reconciling that with the county ems and amr with these specific cuts? Or like, how did those have you been in contact with them? How have those conversations gone?
Yes. Thank you. We're in contact with amr talking about part of it is talking about the call allocation. So letting them know what we're going to take ourselves off of. And that's really in an effort to make sure that we're available for the higher acuity or those als calls. The other area that's impacted by this, that's not specific to amr is the partnership we have with Gresham at station 31, which is in district one out east. So I've been in contact with their fire chief to let them know about the reduction that's coming. And then I think councilor Novick is working on getting a presentation together from fire and amr to describe just what moving forward looks like with ems.
Awesome. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time.
Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor. Morillo. Councilor. Koyama Lane.
Thank you, council president. Thank you everyone for being here today. Thank you for the presentation. Before I get into some more specifics, I just want to clarify the the budgeting process and how the reductions are decided. So my understanding is bureau leadership is asked to identify some potential reductions. And then ultimately, the mayor makes those decisions on which ones to bring forward. Is that correct? And I'm just curious about if our union leaders included in any of that brainstorming or conversations specifically with with fire.
Yes. So I feel very fortunate to be working well with the firefighters union and appreciate so much their work and for their presence today. We have had lots of difficult conversations about where we were with our cut concepts and why we were in this position that we were in. And so although it's not the outcome that they desired, and I understand that it's something that we've been in communication about and have had. I've been really open to hearing all ideas, especially being new and wanting to make sure that there's not something that I'm missing.
And chief johnson, I want to highlight how you've hit the ground running. I was at your swearing in ceremony and saw how powerful it was to have folks handing you off here. And as a thank rank and file union member, I really value what I hear from workers. And I'm hearing from a lot of firefighters that they're genuinely impressed by the trust that you're building and momentum there. And that's something that that means a lot and that I'm hearing. Thank you. Overall, I'm really concerned about the proposed cuts to the fire bureau. Like my colleague said, these cuts aren't to excess. They're cuts to core services, including literal fire companies that our community relies on. And from conversations I've had, I've heard that the fire bureau has made really hard choices, you know, over the last five, ten years, cutting a lot of administrative capacity and protecting community facing services and work. And that that is maybe different from some of the other public service public safety bureaus in Portland, and that you're really running bare bones. And I will I will say we we've also I've also heard from different firefighters, and we've heard it from our constituents that the chat program supports this, their work a lot, that it helps firefighters respond more effectively. We had community members show up to our d three listening session, specifically sharing how the chat team has supported them. So I am I'm really thinking about that. And one of my questions too is if this is a bureau that's continued to cut, like all of the administrative pieces and they've, which I feel like has been the right thing and has have left their funding towards community facing services. Mr. Mayor, have you thought about the cuts over the last ten years and how they've looked with the fire bureau compared to other bureaus like the police bureau? What I've heard is that it's been kind of flip flopped in a in a way that there are no people really doing the administrative work in fire anymore. And so those cuts are going to feel a lot different than other bureaus that have made those cuts differently.
Chief johnson and I were just talking about that yesterday, and I can just give you some high level numbers there off the top of my mind. So take it with a grain of salt fire. Since 2005 had. 670 sworn firefighters, and today they have 710. They had 29 fire stations. Now they have 31. They did take on additional geography, three stations in the east. And so what we've seen, and you're right, administratively about the same right back office staff about the same. So thinking about technology productivity and so on, it's that's about right. So they've seen status quo, if not a little bit gain. When we look at pbb or police in 2005, they had 1057 sworn officers. Today they have 822. In 2005 they had five precincts. Today they have three. So when we think about those two public safety response systems, it is clear pbb has had a reduction of overall headcount of about 20 to 23%. Yet our city has grown significantly in that time. So just answer your question. Those are the numbers. And they're they're pretty close to that.
Thank you, mr. Mayor. I will say that it feels like we're asking the same bureau, the fire bureau, to absorb cuts. And I hear us saying a lot. There's no fat to trim, which I actually believe with this bureau, but I, I do see some areas where it seems like there is some fat or there are some extras. There's literally a line item for downtown marketing an ad for that. So that's, it's hard to see those. And I also wanted to clarify to make sure I understand what's happening with chat. So we is it correct that we have funded it with 2 million of general fund dollars, and now we're switching over to grants. And so that 500 is just is really that gap there. Okay. Yeah, I, I just, I've said this already said this before, but I want to be clear. I'm going to have a hard time supporting a budget that includes cuts to any companies, fire companies in any of the districts. I love district three, but I think all of the districts are connected and we should care about all of them. And I'm going to have a very hard time seeing us reduce our capacity in chat. Also.
Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. I wanted to just follow up a bit, chief johnson, on councilor Morillo line of questioning. And as you said, next month, I'm hoping to do a public safety committee, community and public safety committee discussion of the relationship between the city and the county on emergency medical services. But just briefly, I hear from people out in the world that, wait a minute, why is fire responding to these medical calls? And they and they amr both show up. Isn't that wasteful? And so some people, if they hear that there's rescues that specifically respond only to medical calls, they might say, well, why isn't why aren't the ambulances doing that? So I just wanted to ask you to spend a couple of minutes today talking about the relationship and why we can't just count on the ambulances to respond speedily to every call.
Thank you councilor. That's something that recently when I've been doing right outs, I noticed too, is that in many parts of the city, when I respond with our fire engines or fire trucks to a medical call, amr follows closely behind. And so it does raise a flag to me of this is not an efficient system. Why is that happening? Especially on basic calls. The lower acuity calls, certainly on a higher acuity call. We want to be the first responder there. We are happy to be the first paramedics there because that's a higher, more critical call that potentially needs more than just the two responders that are going to come on the ambulance. But it's important for you all to know that we're talking with amr about just that, that we have. I've talked to some of our responders in different parts of town that do wait for a longer amount of time, and then in many other places, we've got just a short wait before amr rolls up. We'd like to spread that out and use those resources more efficiently. Of course, they're controlled by amr amr. Does posting based on call volume, usually across the city. And so it sounds like they plan to look at our response times to parts of the city and then make adjustments to their posting sites so that we are doing that better, better. And if there's parts of the city where we are arriving very near time to them on a bls call, then we would take ourselves off those calls and we currently can do that anyways, which is important to note that if it's a basic life support call that really just needs amr to arrive. Once we make that assessment, our companies can clear up.
Thank you. I just want to ask you to make probably the obvious point that if it is a high priority medical call, like a heart attack, then it kind of to me, it kind of makes sense that both fire and amr goes out, goes out. And to see because whoever gets there first, if they get there admitted earlier, they might save a life.
But absolutely.
I wanted to ask about the apparatus budget. It obviously worries me to think that we're using old, old vehicles. And I'm curious how often. I mean, I assume, do we have any extra vehicles around if one goes down, is the one ready to step in?
Yes, we do have a few that are reserve engines and reserve trucks that we use during regular prolonged maintenance that our engines and trucks go in. We'll swap them onto a reserve. That inventory is running low.
Okay. And I mean, I assume that they're like regularly inspected to make sure that there's nothing going wrong. That's right. But at a certain point, when they're ancient vehicles, it just you can't count on them. One thing you said was that you're going to lose some administrative staff and they, their work will be filled in by higher level people. And that always raises red flags for me, like, what kind of work will be done by what higher level people, right.
I was speaking specifically about an office assistant position, that a lot of that work will still need to be done. So it's, you know, phone tree management, listening to voicemails that we get from the community and then assigning them to the appropriate recipient to make a response. It's things like customer service, it's a, it's a customer facing position that that would greet interview candidates that we would have coming for the hiring process. It's doing some reporting about fire fatalities and then annual reports that are required.
And I'm sure actually my district two colleagues will get into this in great detail. But if you eliminate, I mean, an engine from a station, then the engines are the vehicles that have water. So the idea that we'd have the truck that, you know, deals with like, you know, sort of extricating people from tall buildings, etc. But we wouldn't have any water. Seems probably counterintuitive to people. So can you explain how the absence of a vehicle with water affects that jurisdiction?
Sure. I mean, you said it. So we have two primary work assignments. When we arrive at a structure fire, and they are done by engines and trucks. And so the engines carry water. Those firefighters are assigned primarily for fire extinguishment. We know that everything gets better when we put the fire out. The firefighters that work on trucks, their primary duty is search and rescue. And so it's meant to be in concert when the engine is doing fire extinguishment, the firefighters from the truck are assigned to do search and rescue for victims in that structure, and then to ventilate to improve the environment for anybody that's inside. You know, I think it's important to say before I even, you know, get a question from district two, the choice about engine 22 is not a value statement. It's not about the neighborhood, the community, the firefighters that work there. It was simply data analysis and assessing our risk and trying to do the most good. And the smallest amount of harm that we know would that would come with this budget package that's designed to improve the city's ability to recover in the next several years. And so when we looked at the last five years of data to make this decision, one of the things we were looking at certainly was that engines call volume and making sure that as best as we could, we were picking something that wasn't already very busy. But equally important was looking at the next closest station, because we knew that that's where the burden would shift. And so when we were looking at the city, we had to make sure we were picking only from a fire station that was a double company house. And then from a lower volume engine, and then that the area adjacent could tolerate the increase in call volume. The data that we have show that engine 26, which is the next to engine, arrives about a minute to locations after engine 22. Does that mean it's not insignificant? But that is that minimizes the change to our response times across the city. And those were some of the decisions that I needed to make as we prepared to move forward in this budget. And it's important to me that you hear that throughout this fiscal year, we will continue to monitor that. I've asked both the c, a, d, c, a and the mayor for the operational flexibility for us to watch for trends and watch, watch for changes, and make a change if we need to throughout the year.
Thank you. Chief. Actually, just I wanted to follow up on that for a second. I mean, it's my understanding that most of the stations with the lowest absolute call volume are on the west side, but my guess is that the geography there is such that if you cut one of those stations or reduced based on that fact, it would take the response times would increase, would be far higher.
That's true about changing the response times just because of the geography. It also doesn't meet the mission of ensuring that every fire station got to stay open. We only have eight double company houses. The ones that are on the west side are really close into downtown, and one have a call volume that makes it too hard for the surrounding stations to absorb it. But then two are also first to to high rise fire responses that we really need to assemble a bunch of firefighters in a short amount of time to be effective at those locations.
Thank you, director mawdsley, you talked about reducing operational overtime set aside for like non-peak months. And I think you were saying that we were still having it for summer, when we tend to have the most surges. But does that mean that, you know, if there's a really bad day that's not in the summer, then we might have less coverage and it's people will be slower to respond to calls.
Thank you for the question. Yes, that is what that means. You know, we would keep an eye on that. And if we continue to have bad days, I mean, that difficult thing about all of our business and public safety is emergencies aren't planned. So we we ensure that we have that framework in place to be able to respond in the moment. It is tough when we're cutting operational overtime. I do support it because I have seen our improvements over time with brain folks in the door using our training pipeline, bring them to full certification. It is kind of a challenge, though, to balance out. You know, folks can leave employment with two weeks notice, let's say, and it takes us around two years to bring them in the door, train them to full certification, to call taking dispatch.
I also just quickly wanted to ask, you're talking about cutting an assistant operations manager. What does that person do? What won't be done if we lose that person?
That's a great question. They, boy, they're the wearer of all hats. That was a position I had several years ago for a number of years. Right now we have two. They primarily oversee the operations supervisors, and they're the ones that supervise day to day operations of call taking and dispatch work. So we have a team of 14 operations supervisors. 12 of those work in the operations floor. Two are assigned to our training department. And the the assistant operations manager primarily leads and mentors that group. They're also the single point of contact or the first point of contact, I'd say for service complaints. When we look at how we're providing service, we receive community feedback on those things and work on policy and procedure, and also work in the labor relations. On negotiations.
Thank you. Director perez, one thing I was pleased to see that you're maintaining the positions the council either deliberately saved or deliberately added. Last year. One question I had was you said that with the decline of materials and services budget that will affect eoc activation. Could you just elaborate on that?
It's more just our ems in general. So depending on how many times we have to activate next year, it does impact. And just to note, all the bureaus participate in eoc activations. So all the bureaus have to participate in the funding of it. It really is just dependent on what kind of disasters we see next year. So as of right now, I think we'll be okay. But it really depends.
Okay. And finally, I just want to join my colleagues in saluting the firefighters that are here and let you know that people who there's going to be some of us looking for additional funding to restore some of those cuts, whether we happen to represent district two or not. So thanks for being here. And I also wanted to say that when I saw you all in all, not to make light of anything, but my initial reaction was to yell fire in the house. And then I realized most of you would think that's a bad idea.
Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Kanal. Thank you, council president.
Thank you to everyone for being here for the presentation. I just want to note, I see people from all the the parts of the service area back there. And that's been a testament to the service areas work at building a collective culture and system and I appreciate that. Appreciate the ca li being here as well as the mayor. Thanks to everyone in the gallery as well. City hall is a people's house chamber is a place you come to be heard, whether you're doing it individually or through a group. For those who are going to watch on video later or now, there's a significant audience today. I appreciate when people organize to be here, whether you're wearing matching t shirts or not. First on the dc, a transition dc, a cause I'm grateful for you stepping up for the last 11 months. We will be worse off not having you here as a city. And I think we've seen the progress not only in the dc role, but also in boec. A lot of what we're talking about here is things that occurred, the positive from from what you created when you were director there. I also have confidence in the entire public safety workforce to adjust to changing circumstances and thrive. That's what you do. And I think that that goes from the rank and file all the way up to chief johnson to director perez and director mawdsley as well. I'll start with I'll just go in the order. Thanks to boec for the presentation. Can you contextualize losing two call takers in the context of also reducing three one one hours of operation, and how you think that those two things, are those going to be essentially multiplying the effect of the other? How do you see that interacting? Is that relevant?
Yeah, it's really the reduction of two call taker dispatcher positions is going to be a reduction in the number of folks we can bring in throughout the fiscal year into academies. As I mentioned during the presentation, we intend on hiring two academies this year because we are pushing our full allotted fte. This reduction will, I think this reduction will reduce our ability to bring in two folks into one of those two academies later in the year, but I do know that mandatory training will continue. We will continue bringing in those academies. They'll just have two less overall.
Okay.
And you asked about three one, one and kind of the coordination there on the balance. I really I think we will be able to we would be able to adjust to that increased call volume with reduced three, one one hours. Again, the two positions tied specifically to really two out of 126 remaining call taker dispatcher positions. Any reductions aren't great, but we understand the need and we think we can adjust to it over the year.
Thanks. Are the two business system analyst three positions being reallocated elsewhere? Are those positions just going away?
The two are being reallocated in the core services realignment to technology.
So to bts.
To bts. Yes.
Thanks. And then my pivot and I'm not sure two pbem, which I will answer it in the context of the security contract, because pbem also has space. Do you get ims payments or, you know, internal payments from other bureaus who are in that facility to help cover the cost of the security contract?
Boec does not. So a couple of years ago, I think we've had two years now of this contracted security. You know, it's a tough thing to to put up for a reduction because because of the the optics and overall security of the facility, we have security measures in place. And I'm confident that what we have will continue to maintain security of the facility. A couple of years ago, though, when we brought that contract on, we had we had a break into the facility, a vehicle stolen from inside the the warehouse bay there and some other security concerns as folks coming on the property that should not have been there after hours.
Thanks. I have some concern about that. If the contract continues, I think it might be worth having the conversation there. Not that pbem is flush with money either. I know that, and that's my pivot. I appreciate the changes you've laid out. Everything that you said made sense, director perez. I just wanted to get the opportunity to ask about some things that maybe aren't on the in the slides. Can you speak to the overall vision right now? Because I think before getting into the details, interest in my office in supporting a more robust emergency management bureau, I'm not 100% clear what you need for that. And I want to make sure that. Pbem. Councilor. Novick. And I talked about this last year. I want to make sure that you have what you need. We rely on pbem here. And I also know there's a lot of important work on the council side. I mean, there's also a lot of important work that you mentioned. I'm super excited after talking about it for a year and a half, that the continuity of operations program is being restarted in a new form of government. But can you speak to maybe the big picture, what you what do you need and how does that serve the the vision?
Yeah. So as interim, I'll talk about where I'm trying to get to, then hand the reins over to a new director. But I've been really privileged to work with a really strong team. We had a strategic planning session last week to start talking through our mission, vision values and just reestablish what is pbem and what should we be doing. I
I think overall, like I said, we have four program areas. We've lacked planners. And the first part of, you know, working towards being prepared as a city is having those plans in place. So we have certain plans that we're required to do through the federal government, but then plans that we need as a city. And so there are some plans that need more significant change and some that just need changes in terms of reflecting the new form of government. So when we're talking vision, I'm I'm really talking about foundation. It's really getting us to our planning our operations, making sure that we have a functional operation center, making sure that we are we have our plans and then we're training and exercising them. I know councilor Zimmerman has talked about this before. You know, just really making sure that we are prepared to do the work in, in a in a time where we don't know what is going to happen and really focusing on all hazards. Because if we're prepared for the big one, we're likely going to be prepared for pretty much anything. With some changes. And then making sure that our community resilience programs are intact. Our net program is phenomenal. And I think that the staff that have worked on that, you know, even through the past couple years of changes, have really persevered and made sure that even with less staff, they are still training up volunteers. And I think that is a real boon to the city. So in terms of vision, we're looking at foundations. So what is it that the city, this city, capital c is ready for? And then making sure that as we're preparing that, our community members are also prepared. So that is through the nets and then our our code, making sure that we have culturally specific work happening in the community. So those are the two elements that we're working through, and I'm really excited to hire a full time bureau director to lead the bureau and the really excellent staff.
Thanks. And it should be noted that you'll be here presenting a completely different area later on because you still have your old job as well. So I do appreciate the work. Flexing into that. One question that I want to return to the net thing for a moment, and this relates to realignment or and maybe, maybe these are two questions. And maybe I think maybe one, which positions being realigned into where and why is community programs that might relate to what you just said, but why is the personnel cost increasing there? How's that?
I believe the the one position and we're still having conversations about this, is the community resilience program. I think she's an analyst. So that's she works with the code. So the community organizations in disasters. The understanding is that she would be moved more to the service area to help not only work on the emergency management piece, but also in community resilience across public safety. We're still having conversations on that.
Okay, thanks. In terms of the net programs, and this is my my segue, I'm pretty sure, but you could tell me that saint john's is one of the largest, one of the largest net teams in the city. Is that is that accurate? Is it number one? I'm not sure.
I'm saying from my deputy director, jordan wiley, a head nod so we can come back to you and confirm that. But I think.
It may be second biggest. They're doing great.
That's my pivot into fire.
That's my neighborhood. So it's my pivot into fire.
And also to just say, I was really hoping that after last year, we wouldn't be having the conversation. That starts with the question, why are we beating up on saint john's again? So I really want to express that. I, I understand why, given what you had to do in terms of the exercise, why a process started and led to an answer that, frankly, if it was in a different district, those counselors would have hated just as much as I hate it. I totally get that, and I am not faulting that process for it. I do think that that the potential closure of station 22 in saint john's is unacceptable. And largely that's because I live right on the border. I'm kind of close to where station eight serves and where 26 serves. I was as a candidate in the 26. I lived in 26 area, and the context of station eight a few years ago, losing its double company status. And to contextualize the figures we are talking about, both in terms of councilor Koyama Lane question to the mayor, but also in terms of how we look at this call, volume has to be compared. We can't just look at raw numbers over time. But did those raw numbers change in light of call volume? And I know that staffing hasn't increased anywhere in public safety to keep up with call volume, but I'm talking about proportionally. And station eight has had among the that's this is lombard and interstate right by the fred meyer, for those who don't know, has had one of the biggest increases in call volume. At the same time, it's lost one of its two apparatus. And that's context, which means that station 26, just to the west of it in portsmouth, is assisting there quite a bit, and now would also be asked to assist to its west, which is the saint john's station station 22. Is that an accurate read of of what? What would happen if this was cut?
It is.
And and engines to for those who don't know have the significantly larger water capacity than either of the other two, you know, trucks or quits. So when we're talking about actually putting I love the phrase the put the wet thing on the hot thing that that's the, that that's the, the, the particular apparatus that's most useful for that. Right?
That's right.
Okay. So we've also established that station 22 neighbors and serves the south side of the saint john's bridge in part, and therefore is a neighboring station to linton and the cei hub area. I'll also mention that station 17 on hayden island has a large portion of the north Portland industrial waterfront and is reliant. Because the station itself is in hayden island is reliant on a bridge and traffic on that bridge on I-5 to get to that portion of their area. And if they can't, because of traffic or bridge issues, station 20 twos engine would normally be supporting that too. Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay. So with all that said, we're talking about a very large fire management area to begin with, but also being a primary support to half of north Portland pretty much, if not more. And that's very concerning to me. I also think it's a little bit there's a way to tell this story financially that I have a little question about, which is we're calling it a saving of $2.5 million because it's also saving over time, and that's because we're reducing the workload of the bureau as a whole, and therefore having less of a draw on overtime. So the actual reduction in the the apparatus and the people who work on it is less than that, is that I'm seeing a nod from kelly. So I think there's an argument to be made here that we're not actually saving as much as we should be looking to save, to achieve a 4% target, which I'm also not in love with. But that is actually the reduction itself is not creating that savings so much as that, plus the overtime reduction. Okay. Just wanted to to get that on the record here. And we can talk about this for an entire work session, but I won't, but I'm against it just to be clear on that. So switching gears to chat, first off, I am really grateful to everybody involved in getting the 1.5 million in federal funds. That's a hard thing to do right now, and I'm grateful for it. It is being used to replace 2 million in city one time dollars. We have no ongoing dollars in chat, which is why the staff are limited term. As you mentioned, I think you've gone through what the impacts of the funding decrease are. And the good news for us is we're not looking to replace $2 million. We'd be looking to replace half $1 million there. And I would love to. Last year, I put up an amendment. You can anticipate one again to get some number of ongoing dollars into this program. Everybody up here at some point has said, we think the chat should be a part of our future, and it is time to get one or more dollars into this program on an ongoing basis so that it is a locked in part of our future. Obviously, I'd love a lot more than a dollar. Are the two positions being eliminated additional to or the same as the deputy chief and program strategist in chat?
Those are the two positions. So the initial budget book, I think that you all got said three positions, which was the equivalent of three frontline chat responders. And we decided to leave those three employees in place and make the reduction to the deputy chief and the program strategist.
So I'm going to ask on the strategy side, and this is maybe not just the position, but the overall situation. My understanding is that role is part of what's working on a project to get reimbursement lined up, medicaid reimbursement, which would be a part of getting us out of this conversation every year. Is that correct?
That's correct. Yes. He is part of that position. That worker. You know, our member is part of working on those kind of agreements and maintaining relationships and looking for additional funding options.
Okay. So cutting that work would potentially limit our ability to get that reimbursement figured out as rapidly as possible. Is that okay?
It's going to be shifted to the remaining folks that work in that group.
Thanks. And then last question on chat, the what is the impact in how does it work in terms of the org chart? If the deputy chief gets eliminated, what does that do to where chat sits in your chart?
So chat right now we're planning for that to stay under the emergency operations division. But that deputy chief was critical just in terms of getting chat responders worked into the fabric of fire stations. And he's been critical in just understanding both sides of the program, that chat, the work that chat does, and then helping our firefighters understand the value that chat brings to this vision. Our plan is to use another existing deputy chief position to fill that, to have those responsibilities.
Okay. Thanks for that. I, I think everybody said it already in terms of the rescues, I would love to not only should we be saving those, I'd love to get some in d two. I think a significant portion. I think you said 65% of calls now are on the medical side. That's right. And so, you know, the rescues also mentioned and this relates to saint john's. When I did a ride along, we responded from station eight to a fire in saint john's and getting when the grid changes as you go west, it's actually difficult to maneuver, especially if someone's parking up to the corner and shout out to people who want to daylight our intersections, but to to actually get around and a rescue is a much smaller vehicle. So and there's, there's quicker responses, more roads available as well. But I share the concern about that largely because like the other conversation we've had, it's a short term budgetary gain with a long term downside. I did want to say thank you for the prevention fee updates and the budgets for payouts. Whoever caught that in business services. Mr. Mayor, I hope we can restore the payout schedule for 2027 2028, when there are 27 pay period months anticipated so that we're not caught flat footed on that. But it's good to reduce it when we don't have that because we're in may and this is a 27 pay period month. How last year we had this conversation in the spring and in the budget about what it would mean to start an academy, not in July, which would line up with this month for when people would be out, but starting it later. How are we doing on retirements this month, and should we anticipate an overtime spike?
Which one.
Of you.
This is relevant to next?
Can you come up and fill that in? So that. Thank you.
Hello, elizabeth gallagher for the record, I'm deputy director at Portland fire and rescue. In terms of retirements for this month, we have over 20 that we've received at this point in time that are going to be participating or at least have put their interest in to be part of the retire rehire program. And what that does is it allows those folks to work potentially for another year serving as frontline firefighters. And that is something that we anticipate helping with some of the staffing over the course of the summer months. That being said, we also have a number of folks who have just indicated that they will be retiring. It's an advantageous time to do that, and we've got wonderful folks who've put in lots of great years of service. And so that number, you know, we kind of get some new information every day. Not everybody is super vocal about that. Keep it kind of close to the vest. And so we're watching that very closely because we know that that payout amount for this year is going to be very tight. And with it being the end of the year, we have minimal opportunity to adjust for that if it is more than what we had anticipated.
Yeah, I guess so. From the payout perspective, I really appreciate that. From the retirement perspective, I'm thinking also the overtime side because we're pulling in people from traveler pool, you've got a lot of different ways that you account for, all of which I imagine have a budgetary impact. Certainly the ones we talked about, what is the size of the spike? Is it on average? Are we looking at like a ten, 15% increase in retirements when there's a 27 pay period? Are we looking at doubling or tripling? What's the scale of the spike?
I'm actually also going to turn my head back to ginger, because I believe that she looked at that too. But it's I mean.
70%.
70% retire.
Yeah, yeah.
Of folks who retire, 70% opt to retire during a 27 pay period. Look back month.
And there's about one of those a year on average.
It rolls honestly, like I've tried to look for a pattern in it, but yeah, you can kind of bank on one a year. But just the way that that spread works again, like this coming fiscal year, the spread is such that we miss it in fy 27.
Okay, so if if retirements were evenly spaced over 12 months, we'd be looking at 8 or 9% of retirements occurring in a given month. And in a 27 pay period month, we're getting 70% of the retirements just to scale that here. And that's why it's so important that we prepare for this financially, not only and I really appreciate the payout look, but also on the overtime side and how we scale our trainings, which is what gets me back to this year's or sorry, the coming years budget, because everything I've been asking kind of relates to this year's, which is I would love to look at how we can get what boec has for fire. Yeah. With the over hiring authority to. Because within a fiscal year, ten months we can get. I think it's a little shorter now, right? Nine yeah, we can get somebody hired up. And I think if we have that over hiring capacity built in, we can we can build to where we're going to need to be before those months happen.
For sure. I would add as well that just the, the way that hiring happened over the course of the 90s and the early aughts, we saw larger, larger, huge classes of folks coming in. That's true for both police and fire. And just as we kind of move to a smoother hiring that happened 20 years ago, we'll see some of that phase out. The difference between d and r being the retirement plan as compared to folks now being on the pers system as of 2007. That also makes a difference. So we anticipate seeing changes. But yes, it is a huge financial calculus that we have to bring in over the next few years for sure.
Okay, thanks. And I'll also just close by saying I agree with my colleagues on the point of the two admin positions piece as well. I just wanted to flag that. Thanks, council president.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal colleagues, it is 11:00. We have seven more people in the queue and a little over an well, about an hour and a half until we are scheduled to get out of here. I'm going to give us a 15 minute bathroom break. Everybody, please be back here at 1115 and councilor Avalos will be kicking us off. And we are back. Thank you folks. We have about an hour and 15 minutes left. We have seven councilors left in the queue. That means colleagues, I'm trying to hold us to ten minutes apiece. Councilor Avalos take us away.
Candace Avalos: Sounds great. Thank you. Well, you know, I feel like a lot of my colleagues have asked many of the questions that I had, so I'll keep it a little bit high level. But I think that, you know, what I'm hearing a lot of is that we're, you know, preserving core services and a safe Portland for all. And I very much appreciate the work that goes into maintaining emergency response systems. Those are crucial. But as I'm looking closely at the budget and in the presentation, I feel like I'm seeing something different emerging, which is a pattern of maintaining the appearance of core services while reducing the underlying capacity that actually makes those services reliable. So that's fewer 911 call takers or reduced training or fewer response units reductions in things like chat. So I just kind of wanted to better understand how these decisions are being made and what they actually mean for service reliability, especially for east Portland. So high level, can you just walk me through what is the framework that you're using to determine what reductions are acceptable in the service area, but specifically, what are the performance metrics or response time thresholds or service standards that you're using to conclude that these changes are not going to materially degrade public safety?
There we go. Thank you for the question. Councilor the process early on involved guidance from the budget office that the bureaus submit reduction packages, and they were aligned with the 3% reduction and an additional 7% reduction. So those reduction packages were brought forward, and the service area basically compiled all of those into a generalized report. And that report kind of showed me as the dca, all of the potential cuts that the bureaus brought forward. And I brought those along with the other dcas all of our collective efforts from the bureaus and had a workshop with city administrator and looked at all of those potential cuts. We reviewed each one individually. And then in that collective workshop, made decisions on the overall impact and and whether or not we could afford the cuts and went through many iterations. There was that initial iteration kind of looking for kind of a target in terms of what the city needed in terms of overall reductions. And, and then we had to go through a second round and even massaging some of those reductions, for example, one concept, the original concept for police was to cut the ps3 program altogether. And in that conversation realized that we didn't want to remove the program completely because we wanted to maintain at least the framework so that it can be built back over time, and then decided collectively through that process to reduce that one by 80% so that at least the framework still in place, there's some employees, and then it can be built back at that point. Then the city administrator had recommendations that almost final list that was handed off to the mayor. And then in meeting with the mayor of a couple times, as you know, the the dcas and the mayor's office met to kind of further massage the list and, and kind of have a back and forth conversation with the bureau directors, as well as all of the d. Cas and the mayor's office in determining the final list.
Thank you for that explanation. I think part of why I'm asking it is I'm just trying to, as we're looking at the whole budget, not just this area, understand what we mean when we say we're preserving core services. If we are also chipping away at the things that make those core services. So that's what I'm trying to understand your decision making and what it means to maintain quality of service, as opposed to just a skeleton of a service just existing for the sake of existing. So this is the kind of mindset I'm trying to understand, because at the end of the day, when we have such a big deficit, we have to make hard decisions about what are things that we scale back or we cut. But when I'm hearing, you know, you all say, but we're keeping core services, we're keeping core services. I guess I don't maybe agree with what the definition of core services is, right? If you're reducing things like chat 911 responders, I would not agree that that means you're keeping a core service. So I think that's what I'm trying to get at. And I wonder as it relates to nine one, one in particular, you know, given that the data you all provided shows that increased staffing has reduced over time, it has improved performance. So what is the rationale then for reducing 911 call takers? I mean, I heard you answer some of those questions, but I want to ask more pointedly because of what your data showed. What is the rationale for reducing that should. And also, were there alternative reductions that were considered, particularly in other admin or non-frontline functions before reducing call taking capacity? How were those trade offs assessed?
Yeah.
Great question. What we were looking to do is really align any reductions that I brought forward with our core mission, which in boec, most of our fte are operations focused. They're frontline focused on effective and timely 901 call answering and dispatching. So any reductions may impact call answering down the road. What I was trying to do is really minimize what those reductions are across the bureau and maintain our departments as they are today, or maintain the departments. We sometimes have departments of really 1 to 3 people outside call taking dispatch operations. So places to reduce are very minimal. So then we looked at things like training, security, you know, reductions that weren't taken involve a couple administrative personnel. And so it was really trying to look at maintaining frontline services of call taking, dispatching and quality assurance, and also balancing out and maintaining internal support systems for our training department, our public records and research, and the folks that in quality assurance that support our frontline folks that make up most of our fte.
Thank you. You know, I think it speaks to something that I heard councilor Koyama Lane say just around, how are we deciding where, as we're balancing our budget, not every cut is felt equally across each bureau, right? We all know and understand that, but that seems to be the broader approach to this budget. And that's where I think you're hearing a lot of councilor's concerns, right? If we're saying that we're keeping core services, but we're hollowing out essential functions of those core services, and there I think there's a lot of line items across the city that I'm like, well, why are we keeping that if we're going to be cutting 911 call takers? Right? So if we look at the budget as simply take 10% from each bureau, that's the kind of budgeting we're getting. And I don't agree that that's the way to best deliver quality services to portlanders. Right. Can you tell me a little bit? I heard a little exchange around like, you know, you all, as the bureaus and the experts in your field are putting forward what you recommend as cuts. Obviously, again, we all have to do some kind of cut at the end of the day, but then those decisions ultimately get made by the mayor. Can you talk about where what goes on in that in-between part? Like, how are you assessing what the bureau staff are telling you are the best places? How are you making those final calls for where to cut?
I think that's a great question. I think that's a framing. We start at the umbrella level and clean streets and safe places, and every meeting began with that. We looked at the fatality rate in 23 and 24. We lost 800 portlanders on the street homeless. So that's that overall framing part of it. Our goal this year is to reduce that by over 70% less people dying in Portland. Our public safety system is at the cornerstone of making that happen, dc casey said. At the very beginning, it's a holistic system we have to focus on, and it's a very complex system, of which it's only one part. When we go down the line and we look at Steve and what steve's doing at boec, we see a 5% reduction in overall call volume. Pressure on his system is being addressed. When I set up this budget focuses to reduce unsheltered homelessness ended, which will reduce the burden on our public safety system, which is the folks we have right here, which will help us revitalize our economy and improve livability. Steve's workload and his department is doing well. Overtime is mitigated. It is always Green. He is leading the best bureau we have right now as far as overtime and management. And call volume is falling. And yet we have a fiscal crisis. So we have to take the wins we have. That department is outperforming like we haven't seen in five years. When we go to chief johnson, we look at her call volume, 9% of all her calls are homelessness. When we reduce unsheltered homelessness, we ostensibly reduce the burden on her. Now, when we look at the budget writ large, chief johnson and I were in some very difficult meetings up until the budget was proposed to you, because I had noted we are not going to close a fire station. And she had put forward drastic cuts to fire because that was the goal, not just doing a 10% cut across the whole. The goal was making sure that her team was as intact as we could to respond. When a portlander calls. And so we carved from other areas and funded her at the last moment to make sure she didn't close any fire stations, because to meet that 10%, she was going to have to do drastic cuts, and it wasn't going to meet the core value of what our budget writing was. She ended up with a 4% police because our goal was we didn't want to see a single sworn officer, which takes years to become fully operational. We wanted to keep every patrol officer and every investigator on staff. And to do that, we only took a 6% cut, and then we saw higher cuts in parks and in sheltering. Even though we want to make sure we have at least one empty shelter bed every night for somebody who's ready to come in off of the street. So it was not a cut across the system. It was not a standard cut that everybody took. It was very judicious. It was very difficult. It was having these individuals at my table over the course of many, many months. And in the end, Friday night, chief johnson heading out to do a camping trip. We needed her and she answered the call. And fire is the least cut bureau that we have.
Okay, I will leave it at that. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. Councilor Avalos. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney.
Thank you, council president. I have a couple of smaller questions to start and then some deeper things. I want to go into on. There were two areas where funding sources were identified as replacement dollar amounts, and I want to understand whether they are already secured, maybe not in the bank, but we know they are coming or not. The first my colleague councilor Morillo, asked about is the chat grant funding. I know we're not sure on the timing for that funding, but has it been allocated on the federal level, or is it something that we are hoping will be allocated?
We've been awarded the grant. Yes, we've been awarded the grant.
Okay. We are 100% sure, as much as we can be with this federal administration, that that money is coming. Yes. Okay. And then on the. Cost allocation with the county that I believe is within boec. Yes. Have we notified the county of that change? And are they including their increased costs in their budget, or is there a possibility that this will end up being a budget hole through the year, because they are not currently planning to include the increased allocation in their budget?
The county is a member of boec user board and has been involved in conversations for a number of years. I think since dca became director at boec, those conversations started about updating the iga and again with the cost allocation last updated in 2005, the county has been at the table for those discussions. So in October of last year, the user board did take the vote to approve the new model. County was present. Multnomah county has two seats on the on the board for Multnomah county emergency medical system, our emergency medical services and Multnomah county sheriff both voted no on that vote. But the vote did pass by quorum. So we are working right now with c. A's office and administration to move official notice to the county so they can include whatever allocation changes they need to make for the upcoming year.
So again, they will budget how they budget. We can't control that, but they know this is coming. It was part of the vote. And we have every reason to believe that we will get that full amount of money from them.
Yeah, I am you know, I put it in percentages 80% confident only because we built a glide path for them. Their bill is actually much higher based on the funding model for for boec. And in order to help them through this transition, the decision to charge them $1 million over what they're currently paying to help offset the ems costs, that that boec basically absorbs for amr. That's really what this is all pertaining to. So we're building them a glide path so that they only pay $1 million above their current bill and then begin to build that out in, in following years.
Okay. And if the 20% chance happens, are we going to see you at fall town, or is there some sort of plan b that is built into other funding within the bureau or the service area?
I'll jump in and Steve can jump in if he has additional information. A couple things the bureau will have to absorb that amount, which certainly will impact the bureau. On the bright side of that, overtime is going down. The costs do seem to be stable at boec right now. So the bureau is going to be taking a close look at that. They bill every month to all of the partner agencies troutdale, fairview, wood village, Gresham, as well as Multnomah county, and we'll have a really clear picture early on.
Thank you.
Thank you. And dca. I should have started by saying thank you for your service to the city, not only over this past year in your dca position, but starting many of the changes that have helped us to decrease the costs. At boec that you're talking about now and your many years of service there before, we appreciate everything you've done for the city. And I will say at least from from the seat, I sit in, the service area feels much more stable and like there's some clear integrated direction than it did a year ago today. And I appreciate your leadership in helping to make that happen.
Thank you.
One more question while I'm on boec in terms of implementation and what we should expect as impact from the cut of two full time positions, does that mean that there will be more overtime? Does that mean that there will be two fewer positions on the rotation of people answering calls? Should we expect that? That means that wait times could increase slightly. Is this covered by those trainees or is this in line with maintaining current call answer times given the decrease in call volume, what is the impact on the ground?
Great questions councilor. You've hit a number of things that keep me up at night. Increased call volume and wait times, workload on staff and burnout, those sorts of things. So with the reduction of our two call taker dispatcher positions from our permanent staffing, we have an offset of the eight limited term positions in the 1.1 million training pipeline. So the change will be minimal. It is an impact to our permanent positions, which we would need to wait for attrition throughout the year to bring in two. I guess we'd be bringing in two less folks into one of our academies, one of the two, in the next 12 months. So generally it would be like a fall and a spring academy. And if we intend to bring in eight at that time, because that's the number of positions we have available, or ten, then we would bring in two less at that time.
So what I'm hearing is we should not expect to hear from portlanders that there's been a significant change in wait time for calls to be answered. We should expect to see two fewer people coming out of training, which could be an overtime issue in the coming years. If we don't make up for that in future years.
I don't expect a call. I don't expect our performance to change drastically. You know, one of the things we don't control is call volume. And, you know, we want to ensure that we have folks in the seats ready to answer those calls. And also at the times of the year, that makes sense for that based on historical performance and call volume 2022 2023 were were kind of odd years in the way that I think in 2022 was our highest call volume ever. And it happened to be the same year where we were at lowest certified staffing. Ever since then, we've been building back. I intend to do that over the next year or couple of years, at least those two positions back in addition to, you know, as far as we can get down the road, regaining those eight limited term positions and converting what we can to permanent positions, because that is our way forward. That is our way out.
Thank you. On the fire side, and I'll start not at station 22. We'll get to that. Chief johnson, with the reduction to 12 hours for the rescue units. I'd like to understand what we might be able to expect there. Do we have other rescue units that are already operating at just 12 hours a day, or are. These are only three rescue units.
They're the only three rescue units.
So we don't have something to compare it to, to say, here's what happens in other rescue units within our city, right?
We would be able to take roughly the amount of call volume that they respond to annually and cut that in half. Although the plan is to have them doing the work when the majority of the calls come in so that they cover most of the peak hours, the only condition that's really affecting that is our ability to staff largely depends on when we start that work shift. So it's going to be closer to when the firefighters get off from regular shifts at the station and start a shift on the rescue. Right now, we're thinking 8 a.m. To 8 p.m. Which will encompass most of the busiest hours of the rescues.
Okay. And you said something about having some flexibility in some of these changes. Will you have the flexibility if we retain this cut to shift around timing and staffing to find where the. Where the most effective hours are to have these rigs available?
That's absolutely the plan that, like I said, the hinge, I think, is making sure that we can still have staff to work those shifts. But that's absolutely what our intention is, is to cover the busiest hours with those units. That's why they're there.
Great. Thank you. A question on chat. At one point, I read something in the mayor's documents about the chat cut, removing the follow up care units. But I'm also seeing that the chat cut is these two positions, one of which is a management position. Will we still have follow up care teams at chat, or are those eliminated?
Yet not eliminated? That's not changing.
So in terms of vehicles on the ground in community, providing direct service, are there reductions with these chat cuts.
Right now? No, no no ma'am.
Okay. You mentioned that you had some concern that the state might see this as the city not being committed anymore, because we don't have general fund in the program any longer. So that would be a potential reduction in health care dollars available. Is that what you are concerned about?
That's the risk that I've been told. I haven't been involved in those conversations up until now. Just coming on in this fiscal year, we do have the mayor's office is involved with an upcoming meeting to talk about the changes with healthshare.
Okay. And when is the healthshare contract up? Do we need to worry about a renewal this budget cycle, or is that something that we could signal differently next year?
Current contract is up June 30th of this year.
Okay.
Current contract is up June 30th of this year.
So when this budget goes into effect, we're negotiating that contract right now. Okay. And I think I remember that we're also negotiating our contract with our employees there.
That's right. They're currently in bargaining.
Do we need to worry that if we don't have city dollars in in the pot here, that that could affect our contract negotiations that we are currently in the middle of as well?
Yes. Let me turn around and look to see with those that are involved in the negotiations, if that's.
I don't want to get too deep into that here at the dais, but I just I want to understand if there's an implication that we should ask more about in executive session at some point there.
I think that's a fair assessment. Fair statement. Okay. Yes, I would agree that what you said is correct and that it's something we need to be concerned about moving forward in that contract.
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that you found a way to take reductions in that program that doesn't affect frontline service for portlanders. That's something that many of us have talked about hoping to see as we deal with some very difficult budget cuts. I'm a little bit concerned about what this means as we're in the middle of negotiating two contracts, one for funding coming in and one for supporting our staff on the ground. I'll ask more questions about that in the appropriate venues. Thank you. Last question before I turn to station 22, do any of the cuts in fire slow down training or hiring?
No, that is what we've preserved.
Okay. So station 22, and I will note, chief, that we've had a lot of bureau directors up here over the last few weeks, and nobody likes the cuts that they put forward. But there was a sense of, I don't know, maybe defeat that I felt in your tone when you were talking about this. And I don't know how real that is, but I can tell that you don't take these proposals lightly. Should residents of saint john's. If we cut an engine from station 22, expect that they will have the same level of service that the rest of the city has for fire safety.
I think the answer is we don't know. Okay. We have data, right? And trends. I think what's so hard about this is that there are models for understanding where we should make cuts based on population changes, but not on budget requirements. And so what's important to note is the major cause of fires, along with the major cause of medical emergencies and rescue emergencies are people. And it's very hard for us to predict changes in the population or in certain pockets of the city, with enough speed to adjust the location of our resources. We're also limited just by the structures that we have in terms of what additional units we can fit in closer fire stations. So we're dealing with some fixed asset problems. And to answer your question even more directly about what could change for those neighborhoods, is that it's our estimation that a fire engine coming to that neighborhood is going to take one minute longer. And then I really want to follow that up with the reassurance that that's the area that we are watching, that we prioritize moving resources up to, just like we do today. If companies are on are tied up during simultaneous incidents.
So a couple of other questions here just to understand the impact of this proposal, right. I think this is one of the stations that has some of our wildfire or wildland fire resources, and they provide backup both in the natural areas along the columbia, slough to the north, and also to the station that covers forest park. Is that accurate?
It is.
So if we are reduced to one vehicle, one rig at this station and there is a wildland fire that requires backup in the slough area or in forest park, what will happen to response times in the station 22 area?
I think those will still, when it's requiring an engine, will be about that minute out. The other operational changes that we would be able to make is we send firefighters from other stations to station 22 to pick up those resources and still use them so that those assets that exist there for wildland or for the terminal can still get brought to the scene.
Okay. And I believe this is one of about 5 or 6 stations that has their jurisdiction split by a bridge. There aren't very many in our city, and this is one of them. Does the idea that we could get stuck with a single rig on one side of the bridge and need support on the other side, give you pause?
It does, it does. And unfortunately, it's not unique to that area. I think what's so hard about this conversation is that we know, like you've said, regardless of which district this cut was impacting, we have high value target hazards spread out across the city. That's why fire stations are in the locations that they are. And so it's so unfortunate, but we would be having this conversation regardless of which of those eight stations. We decided to remove an engine from. And it was those eight stations so that we could maintain an open fire station in every neighborhood.
I hear that and I appreciate that. And I think what gives me concern here, and I want to be clear, I'm not proposing that we cut anybody else's fire engine instead. But what gives me pause about this fire station specifically is that I, I understand that from a call volume perspective, this may have been the best station to look at from an emergency preparedness perspective. I'm very worried because we know that saint john's has some particular impacts when it comes to emergency preparedness as a peninsula, a peninsula with bridges that are not all quite sound, an area with many bridges that are not up to the structural integrity to hold a quint. And an area that serves linton and backs up c e hub and forest park across the river. It seems to me that this station, again, from a call volume perspective, might have made sense, but from an emergency situation perspective, it's one of the hardest areas to see reduced resource in the city. Also, as a peninsula, we can't easily get vehicles in on the other side quite as quickly as as somewhere else. So I will be looking to figure out what we can do here. This isn't something that I can easily stomach for that community. I appreciate your honesty in answering the direct question about what folks in the region should expect. Council president. I think that's more than my ten minutes, so I'll pause there.
Thank you councilor.
Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Great. My conversation is going to be entirely with the fire bureau and the leadership. So if you've got your budget folks around, why don't you bring them on up? So I want to talk a little bit about. Just just some mechanisms. So can we first talk about, chief, how many current vacancies does the bureau have with respect to firefighters. Firefighters or any level of I'll say captain and below. Sure.
Ginger was right there. Do you have that?
Good morning.
Good morning. Ginger public safety budget manager. There's 11 vacant firefighters as of today with an academy anticipated to start this month, but also all of the retirements that were mentioned. We may have already had a couple of those. So okay. Yeah.
Thanks for that. So in terms of, you know, looking through these budget documents, one thing that is hard to suss out here is does the fire bureau have a separate line item budget for overtime purely.
Yes. There's there's definitely a separate line item for overtime. And they're a little bit unique where it's not necessarily offset with vacancy savings, particularly because this year we added ten fte in the fy 26 budget that did not have funding, with the assumption that as they staffed up, they would offset overtime. So those positions weren't funded. They're already sort of baked in, if that makes sense of they they are going to be funded by once they're deployed to to offset overtime. But the total overtime budgets around $22 million and 90.
Is that a separate line item budget or is that partially vacancy savings is what I'm trying to get to.
Yeah. Not for not for the fire bureau. It's not vacancy savings.
It is not vacancy savings. Okay. So 22 million. Got it. Okay.
And but let me just let me clarify one thing though, because I think that something that got mentioned is there is a dynamic between staffing and overtime. And so if we have more separations in may, sort of what we're assuming to be staffed next year, we may have more overtime and then would have some vacancy savings because there's it takes time to hire people.
I get.
That, right.
What I'm trying to understand right now is if the bureau's financial practice is take a look at a given month and say, golly, look at that. I had 11 vacancies that otherwise would have been straight time. But since those employees were not filled, if the bureau is using those funds, that bucket, so to speak, the unexpended funds as its first tranche of money, then to fill shifts in overtime status. That's what I'm trying to figure out here. Or if that's not the case, and in fact, actually, to fill shifts that we are tapping into overtime fund, which is now has been established as is a line item, while the vacancy one does not get filled. That's what I'm trying to understand from a financials practice purpose.
Yeah. And so the way it works is there is an overtime line item. And really what we are doing is staffing 171 on duty responders each day. So whether we're doing that with straight time or overtime, that is how many we're staffing. So we have a staffing plan that says we're going to have x number of responders next year, and they're going to do 80% of their hours will be working, and then we need a certain number of overtime hours to, to offset the rest of it. And so there's this, there's this different than how the police bureau, for example, operates, where there are vacancy savings that are accounting for it. Having said all that, I anticipate next year we may have some vacancy savings that will fund what could be additional overtime if we have higher turnover in may.
Okay. It matters here in terms of the number we're talking about, and I don't know what your per funded fte round number would be. Let's just round number it at 118, which is similar to the police bureau, but 11 people times 118 each month. That's kind of where I'm going. And I say that that seems like complicated acrobatic math. But when we're trying to understand a $2.5 million cut, acrobatic math gets you to budget, budget, dust and budget dust gets you to an engine. So when I look at $2.5 million for an engine consideration, and that's essentially $300 an hour in a 24 hour period to keep that thing alive, right? If it's a four person engine, 72 an hour, $300 an hour overall to keep that thing functioning is kind of the math. If I, if I deduce it out of what the cut to an engine truly means. So. We have established the concern around station 22. I want to I want to just make sure that I understand one piece that that came up that, you know, we're all learning about different types of apparatus here, engines versus trucks versus somebody, said a quint. I don't know what that is, but that sounds like a bigger thing. But it's not. It's chief. What's a quint?
Yeah. So it's something that is does a little bit of what an engine does because it carries water in a small amount of hose, but then it is a big, heavy unit that has the same big ladder on top. So that it's for us and our system, when we've had to use them, they act like trucks, but they do have an available tank of water to use based on the incident.
I just want to ask some layperson questions, right? I think about Portland neighborhoods and we talk about the presence of water. There are fire hydrants. So in terms of the initial attack, does initial attack on a fire happen with water that you bring with you? And then we're looking for where can we hook up that might be half a block away to supplement that supply? Is that kind of what we're talking about?
Yes. And so we have more engines that respond to a structure fire, because they do use hoses to connect to the fire hydrant and bring that water to the scene.
Okay. And then in forest park, for instance, or in that area, we're talking, we bring the water that we have to fight with. And that's kind of about it. Unless we have a specialty, unless we have, we happen to be close to an infrastructure that actually has a hydrant, right?
We do have some wildland units that are more adept and able to get into certain parts of forest park. There's also a sort of a sprinkler system that is set up in that area, that neighborhood teams can activate. Okay.
All right. That's helpful. So. Traditionally, how has the how have vacancy savings then been used by the fire bureau? I want to make sure I'm understanding just kind of the the mechanisms here in years past, if the fire business ops, if you came to the end of like the first quarter and you had a certain number of vacancies, what then were those funds expended for?
I can speak to that a little bit. I think that fire is unique relative to some of the other bureaus, in that we don't typically carry many vacancies or certainly not operational vacancies. Oftentimes, if you were to pull a report out of sap or have that provided to you, it will potentially show a vacancy on paper. What it doesn't necessarily note is that perhaps in a different position, we've double double filled to operationally get the capacity that we need working to staff the 171. And so it is not historically, not often where there have been a material amount of vacancies that the bureau is carrying, that would have been something, again, different from different from police, for example, where you can look at a larger group and kind of apply that what otherwise would have been budgeted for those positions towards something else. So fires just, yeah, historically not had that same volume of money to, to get super creative with.
So where does the, if I look back at the multiple years, where did the ending fund balances come from? Right over the last several years, ending fund balance in the fire bureau looks to be around hovering around a quarter million dollars, either direction of 7 million.
That's the capital reserve fund.
That's just capital reserves, correct.
That is only the capital reserve fund. And those are the like the residual funds from the 2009 g.o. Bond.
Got it. Okay. Thank you for that. In terms of operational funds, does the fire bureau generally turn anything back in at the end of the year?
We have I mean, in the was it just last year that there was some. I know that previously there was about $900,000 that we had turned back in. It was part of the public safety policy set aside monies that I believe was that just last year, what is time? That was.
I had to run two years ago.
Okay.
We didn't turn anything. Yeah.
Okay. No. Last year. Yeah. Last year. That's right. Last year we we squeaked through by the skin of our teeth. But prior to that, yes, we have given back funds.
Okay.
I mean, and I do want to kind of clarify because I'm, I think I'm tracking with where you're going, the vacancies. I mean, if there are vacant positions, fires very set on the minimum staffing level. And so if we're vacant positions, we're going to hire overtime to fill those. And so then effectively it is getting used for overtime. I think there's a little bit of a different dynamic where the workweek was shortened. And so the hours worked increased. Also that was needed. And the original we added 33 positions in the last three years. The first 13 didn't have funding. So they're supposed to offset overtime. And then the last ten this year didn't have funding. And so I think the dynamic is not quite as clean as maybe.
Yeah. I think actually not having the dynamic be quite as clean as is actually problematic. Right. So an unfunded position, we think, I think we need to wrap our heads around what the hell that actually means. And so that's the challenge here. And. So what I'm, what I'm trying to get at is, and we've had this conversation with other bureaus too, is, is the way a person who fills a shift on an overtime status is paid, right? That person's paycheck should not know what the back end accounting was. It's just that x number of hours were in overtime status. Great. That's that's what should occur. What I'm trying to trying to understand is if we are placing funds into an overtime bucket at the expense of placing them in an operational bucket, because our practice is to tap an overtime bucket anytime, anytime somebody moves into an overtime status versus if we had the operational bucket filled and therefore the overtime budget could come down as well. That's that's what I'm struggling with and having the different variations of how overtime is expended, statuses like approved but not filled or excuse me, approved but not funded. These these are the challenges that make when we're talking about a, such a small number as $2.5 million that make it very challenging to know what the right math is. So my next question is, is the overtime budget for the fire bureau and on time or, excuse me, an ongoing line item of general fund dollars? Or is it every year we put in a number that is one time only knowing full well that you have to have an overtime budget. I'm just trying to get for what is the practice here.
The funding. So there's I think there's kind of two answers. One is there has not been adequate ongoing funding to afford all of the overtime needed. So there's been one time dollars given to the fire bureau the last couple of years. This year it is $5.3 million of one time funding. And the fy 26 next year, there is $2 million of one time funding in the overtime.
You mean next. Oh, this one we're talking about right now.
Yeah.
And where? Where in the budget can I find such information?
We noted it in the decision package narrative.
Yeah. I'm looking for like spreadsheets and numbers because I sure got a whole lot of narratives, but I sure don't have a lot of numbers. And I am finding decision making to be incredibly difficult.
Ruth. I see ruth come on up. Ruth.
I mean, I'll just, I want to do a little bit of commentary, just even the way that the presentations are going is challenging because it is full of narrative and void of real numbers and year over year comparisons. And, and I really appreciated elizabeth with pbem. She said, we're getting rid of four and put in parentheses of eight vehicles. That's the kind of context that we need to make decisions. And very few presentations thus far have have had that context. So I just that's an editorial note there. Ruth, you stepped up.
Sure. Ruth levine, budget director. I stepped up to speak to the question about the one time versus ongoing. I think I believe it's in the tables in the bureau. Summary of the proposed budget book. There's also I would direct people, again to the city budget office dashboard for the proposed budget, which can link links from.
Different than open book.
It is. Yes. There's a tableau dashboard that just you can actually download data from there and has a little bit more. It's more dynamic than open book, which is static, obviously. So those are probably the first places I would recommend people go. I believe we can if we haven't already. We can also post some raw data of the prior to fiscal years and the budget in excel on our website so that people can play with that themselves. But so there are a couple of different places to answer that question.
So if I'm looking at and I am right now looking at Portland fire and rescue budget revenues by major object expenses by major object, I've basically got some big fat buckets, one of which is personnel 171, 172 million and. That doesn't tell me much. Right. And and that's where I'm not loving the idea that I have to have a decoder ring that goes outside of the budget documents to go find the information, because that that is going to be challenging for the rest of the season. And it's, again, a challenge from that we noted last year in terms of what makes up 171 million, if it is not all actually straight personnel. And so I'm challenged by that. The. I think in terms of I'd like to get a sense, and as I close this out, I'd like to just get a sense of. Kind of how the last part was. And I really appreciated whomever it was. Somebody was talking about making decisions against risk factors. Right. And I think that's an incredibly important and sometimes nuanced and lost aspect. But I was hoping, chief, that you could articulate a little bit about what risk factors, right? As anybody who's evaluated risk, we put more. It's a weighted total, right? We put weight on certain items. Can you talk about relative to the double company stations, what types of risk factors you were giving more weight to versus other risk factors in that decision making process? Because I think it is quite helpful to understand that.
Yeah.
No, I appreciate that question. And it's important to speak to all of you about that. So as I mentioned, there are eight double company stations in the city. In district one, there's station two and station seven. District station two is a double company house that we use as our training environment. And so that was not an option to close because it would impact the pipeline for recruits and trainees that come out to the field and ultimately fill those vacancies that we've been talking about. Station seven is our hazmat station. That's a county resource. It's also called on by the state. And so that team needs to stay together and stay intact to provide hazmat protection for the city of Portland. Let me talk about district four, which has three stations station three, station four and station one. Those are all closest into the downtown city core. And so in terms of risk analysis, there, one call volume is high for all of those stations. Additionally, the call volume for the stations that would move up and fill in to those locations are also already high. And so they wouldn't be available to come in and take that workload. And then we also have the hazards that are downtown. So I mentioned a core group of high rise buildings that require us to assemble a larger number of firefighters before we can ever engage a fire that's taking place in one of those buildings. District three has station 25. It was also probably the other place that would have been considered for a closure, except that it is east and it is going to be heavily impacted by the closure, the part time closures of the three rescues. So it's going to shift the run volume from stations 1911 and 31. It's going to be pushed over to the two apparatus that are at station 25. 13 is in district two. That is the other double company house that is just outside of the downtown core and responds in. But their call volume is high enough that a surrounding station could not move up and absorb that and and be available. We would be calling units from further out to come to 13. That really leaves us at station 22. No good decision was to be made there. But just to be clear about how much thought went into making that choice.
Okay. Thank you for walking us through that. I think that is helpful. And it's kind of the sense I've been feeling is no good decisions here. I share the concerns with the factors of the slew, the peninsula. Having lived in saint john's myself and knowing what that what that situation is like and given the like, I share that, I understand it. And that's why when we talk about. 2.5 million to keep an engine on shift, I think it's it's worthy to dig into the budget dust. And I'll end with council president. I'll end with, from a dca perspective, I think that there is. And I have some interest in certain. Vacancy savings across the service area not being assumed to stay within various bureaus or offices by default, and that there's a decision making at a dca level, perhaps for how we operationalize. Our day in and our day out front line services through the through the vacancy situation across the organization, and not just single bureaus. So I just say that for future development. But thanks, mr. President.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Colleagues, we have about 12 minutes, 22 minutes left, and there are four colleagues in the queue who have not spoken yet, and two who are hoping to get to a second round. I don't know that's going to happen. So councilor Smith, followed by Green and Ryan, I'll just go ahead and take myself out of the queue.
Thank you, council president. First, I'd like to say to dca, thank you for your over 30 years worth of service for the city of Portland. It has been exemplary, exemplary, you know, experience and what you've done with the 911 system prior to coming to dca. I always told you that you should offer a master class on how to do that. You really manage the the vacancies and improve the efficiencies there. And that was what I was able to see. So thank you so much for all of your service. But let me tell you a little bit about my concern about the public safety department. My concern is that this budget says we're preserving core services emergency response, but the reductions before us touch every part of the emergency response chain. 911 call taking emergency preparedness, fire apparatus, rescue units, on duty firefighters and alternative medical response. I want to understand whether these alternative of efficiencies are they truly efficiencies, or whether we're accepting slower response times, greater overtime risks and reduced service in communities that already experience the greatest disparities, like district one. So my first question for you is Portland fire and rescue proposes eliminating two administrative support positions, which will shift duties to higher level staff and executives. How much executive or sworn staff time will be redirected to administrative tasks, and could that create a hidden operational cost in overtime for these very. These are higher paid folks.
I. I can speak to that. Councilor just to help answer the question. It's it's my plan that the administrative tasks are either done within the regular 40 hour weeks or they're shifted to our executive staff that are salaried employees and don't incur overtime costs.
So they're not going to. So how do they actually get that work done? If the the redirected administrative tasks are going to the executives, how do they get the work done that they need to get done? Who does that work?
I appreciate the point. It is a lot of hours that over, you know, year over year, these cuts, like you guys have mentioned, have impacted mostly the office staff so that we could maintain frontline firefighters. And there are a small but mighty group that are taking on additional duties. And then I think faced with these changes, we will have a roster that we plan to discuss with the d, c, a and c, a and the mayor about what's not going to get done, potentially.
Thank you. The mayor's proposed public safety materials. Note that pf2 person rescue units and chat units that serve east Portland and communities where racial income and educational health literacy and access disparities are the highest. Given that. How did the administration evaluate the equity impact of reducing rescue units available and the capacity of chat? And either one of you all can answer that question, because I think there needs to be an equity lens put over the entire budget. And that equity lens need to look at those, those things that I, I discussed around education, health literacy, access to, to fresh foods, high crash corridors, all those things. That's district one. You cannot name a disparity that's that's had in this city. That district one is not leading. And so as we look at the budget, I see district one being pounced on.
I can start with acknowledging the equity impact. And that was something a lens that we used as we developed our entire budget and just want to acknowledge and validate that. You're right, those units are there for a reason, and it's because that community has a higher demand. And just in general, I think I may have mentioned it earlier in the meeting, but we know that the majority of people who need to use 911 services do come from underserved or underprivileged communities. So from my standpoint, when I had to make the decision about cuts to achieve the amount of savings that we've got to do for the fire bureau, the reason why and the only reason why those rescues were on that list is because we can't also use them for fire protection.
Okay, I'm going to have to process that for a second. Next question, page 25 says the budget eliminates for vehicles assigned to pbem and leaves the bureau with a limited materials and services budget. How does pbem maintain city wide emergency response readiness if its mobility and field deployment capacity are reduced?
I think eight vehicles was probably too many for the bureau. We are maintaining four vehicles that all have different uses, so we have one that is an electric vehicle, which is good for, you know, moving around. And then we have three that help us transport supplies as well as one that will do be employed when there is a disaster. So rugged terrain, in my opinion, the four other vehicles were not necessary.
And I, I can appreciate that that. And we probably could have addressed that last year too. If that was the case, we could have really done some things last year, but I want I have very limited time. I thank you for that, elizabeth. The presentation states that public safety service area has 2250 proposed staff and a 611 million proposed budget on page three, but the financial overview chart on page seven appears to show the fiscal year 2627 proposed budget at approximately 620,000,000.4. So can somebody clarify to me what is the actual budget? Is it 611 or 620 million?
I think I would need ruth or ginger to come up. Thank you.
I see 620. So the 600 11th may be a typo. There's also some charts that are showing program expenses specifically. And so then contingency general fund overhead and debt doesn't show up. So sometimes there's discrepancies that have to do with what is classified as program expenses.
Yeah. It just said that it was the proposed budget. It was 611 million. But what you're saying is it's 620.4 million. Is that what you're saying? That's the real number. The 620. Yeah. Thank you. And I think this goes back to what councilman Zimmerman said. We have narratives, and I've been saying this for two years. And through each tile that we've had since I've been here, we don't have spreadsheets. And that's a problem because all these stories that you all are telling so brilliantly in the budget, they're having different numbers. And this is not the first time that I caught this. Last week. There was another issue because you guys are putting these numbers in narratives. If I have an excel spreadsheet, it is there, I can see, I can I can look at it, but I can't do that in this kind of format. It's really tough. But one of the things that I learned early on was to read and to, to add longhand. My grandkids don't know how to add longhand. They don't know how to do that, but I do. So the other piece is boec is proposing to eliminate two 911 call taking positions, and the presentation states that this could impact call answer times. What is the expected impact on 911 answer times, especially during high call periods, major incidents, heated events, wildfire smoke emergencies. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera. How do you plan to. To make that work? Because when I was running for city council before, the big thing was response time. And now we're going to increase response times. So that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Director dc causey, you, you worked so hard to get that done, but now it's we're getting ready to lose some of those things.
I'll tell you, counselor. Thanks for the question. The reduction of the two call taking dispatcher positions is not great news. Any reduction to our operational workforce, albeit it is 1.5% of our operational fte. It's still not great news. But you know, what we intend on doing is hosting our two academies over the next year and bringing in two less people than we would anyway. So impacting call answer times. You said specifically during, I think, high volume times we would intend on targeting the, you know, summer call load, our highest call volume times and reserving operational overtime, for example, throughout the year, postponing training, I said, reserving operational overtime for surge events throughout the year is what I meant to say. In addition, postponing training until the fall when our call volume starts to drop. As we've historically seen, as I mentioned earlier, one thing we don't control, but we talked to the mayor about recently, is the last two fiscal years, we have seen a 5% decrease in overall 911 call volume. That's promising. I hope that's the new normal, although I can say over the last several years, we've said new normal way too many times. And, you know, to be surprised by some things, I.
Hope it sticks.
Sorry.
I hope it sticks.
Me too. Well. I hope it's more than 5%. We could use less 911 calls for sure.
And so I'll leave. I'll leave some time for folks. But I have one last question. Boec proposes eliminating 325 000 in contracted security personnel for boec, pbem and bts, and the presentation says this reduces visible deterrence and on site response to threats or concerns. What specific security risks does this create for emergency communications and emergency management staff?
Yeah, so the security does allow a visible presence both inside the facility and out. They do patrol parking lot and the perimeter of the building many times during the hours that they're that they're present. You know, we have expanded lighting in the parking lot, really worked on that the last year or so. And existing security protocol, badge access, lock facility, gated access and all of that. So those, those procedures, those items will continue. You know what I can see this impacting is the visible presence where you won't see someone in a, in a neon vest, walking around the parking lot and providing that extra patrol.
Thank you. And again, I thank you for your for your service. And just one last request. I think we need to work on the policy of us as a city when we get grants. If we're going to backfill every grant that we have, that's going to put us in a in a pickle. And so when we do those extra and expanded kinds of services, we just need to look at those and say, that's what they were. We got funded for them. We don't have the money anymore because we can't backfill everything that we get a grant for. And there were like $600 million in grants department. And I'm like, okay, if we tried to backfill all of that, if we didn't get those grants again, we couldn't do it. So we have to identify as a council what our book of business is. And if we get something extra and we can do it, yes, that's fine, but what we're doing is putting everybody else who've been at the city for a long time at risk. When we start new programs that are paid for with outside sources, and then those sources leave, and then we have to figure out how to how to put these things in, you know, ongoing money should be for ongoing money if we want to keep some of those things and we got to take something out, we can't just keep adding to the budget because we think we need to do those things. And I'm just and I'm looking at you all because you all are doing a great job. I know you have cease fire and all those programs that were paid with ARPA money. And I'm just I'm concerned that our need is bigger than what our revenue is. But I also know that we have to have a policy decision that says when we don't. And fortunately, with the samhsa grant, chief johnson, we're going to be able to keep some of those folks with chat. But when we don't have that money, we got to be we got to have a hard line on that. But but thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Colleagues, we're going to get to councilors greene and Ryan, and then we're going to adjourn for the day. Councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you, mr. President. I'm going to be very brief because I know our time is short. I just want to thank you for your service to this city. I think we were better. Better for the city was better for your service to the city. So thank you. I'm going to echo everyone what everyone has already said about station 22. I don't need to repeat that. The critical energy infrastructure hub is in my district. That's the first thing I thought about when I saw the presentation. I know, chief, you didn't make the recommendation lightly. I'm sure you lost a little sleep. And so I, you know, recognize that too. I do want to recognize, though, that this budget as a whole is a is a statement of priorities. And there's a number of places throughout the entire budget where we've promoted a manager from 1 to 2 or from 2 to 3, and colleagues a manager three is an executive level role. Okay. So when you add all that up, that's a fire engine. When you look at all these things and like just the other day, we were talking about the investments we need to make in the city's office. And I agree this needs some investments, but that is a dc a role in this budget proposal. That's a $411,000 salary. I question whether or not we need to be making that investment while we're cutting trucks, and we're cutting, frankly, services that that are core life saving services to the city of Portland. There is an interplay between sheltering our homelessness and the cost to our public safety bureaus. I'll note that we have not reduced the number of unsheltered homeless people in the city of Portland. And so if we're going to cut into chat and we're going to cut into our sort of vehicles that can deploy while we're not making any headway on the homelessness problem, I think that just sets us back. The last thing I want to say is earlier in the week, maybe last week, I got a report on the status of Green 13, which was intended to provide $2.2 million to the public safety as a whole to improve capability and capacity. I note that we left we let $160,000 of that go back to the general fund in the spring. Tor. And I wonder if where that money went once it went into the general fund, and whether or not $160,000 could have could have helped keep our capacity in line for chat for one more year while we figure out, I mean, that's a third of the chat cut. So these are the sorts of things that I'm going to be looking at as we get into the budget as a whole. I know there's money in this budget to make whole some of these into the bone cuts that we have made in public safety. So I'll leave it there. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Yes, thank you, council president and I will skip all the niceties, but it's great to see everybody. Thanks for being here. Bob will get back to you later. I want to focus on the overtime strategy that we have. I've been here since 2022 when we implemented that strategy. Bob, you were the architect of that, as I recall. And we've seen how that's benefited boec, because we played it out long enough to see that we implemented it in fire and police, but we're doing that thing. Mr. Mayor, that's challenging. When you've been around a while now, coming up to six years in September, and that is we have these really smart strategies so that we get to a place where the service delivery is, where it should be, and then we experience these fits and starts. And so I think when we're doing budgets, there has to be a vision about a long term results. And when we make certain cuts to those strategies, we don't get to experience the results that portlanders desire. So I took about five paragraphs on that and tried to be more succinct, but I'm concerned that we're not allowing that to play out. And so that would go to basically fire for sure in this conversation. I really appreciate the ride alongs and sing alongs I've experienced with all of you of late. It's definitely the best way for me to have insight and my respect for the first responders. So I wanted to make sure I acknowledge that. I think it would be remiss, especially the three of us in district two were had our budget listening session. And what was remarkable about the testimony that came on station 22, no offense, but it wasn't just people that were there because they work for the bureau, wasn't there because the political sector told them to be there. It was neighbors that just showed up unsolicited to say, please don't cut this. So in my experience as a public servant, when you experience that type of testimony, it goes to your heart a bit more. And I think my two colleagues have expressed similar thoughts on this, so I'll try not to repeat theirs. And I'll just add one more that I didn't hear. Maybe they were allowing this Oregonian to talk about this. We we are experiencing the lowest snow melt in the history and snowpack. Sorry, we're experiencing the lowest snow melt because we don't have snowpack. Snowpack is a big deal. It's about it's our energy infrastructure, it's our irrigation and it's our safety infrastructure. Because wildfires peak in those years where we have low snowpack, we all know this. We're experiencing conditions already that are more like early July in its early may. So where it's located and this has been mentioned, we have jurisdictions that come up to our borders all the way up to scappoose. And so I need to know if there were conversations, mr. Mayor and chief, with those jurisdictions that we share space with, where there's all those forests between here and the borders of Multnomah county. And so, you know, it says that area, the peninsula, is a gateway to nature for a reason, because it is. And so I think the conditions this summer might make the current data that we use to make decisions, missing some of those nuances about what the conditions are for the summer that we're projecting for the summer of 2026. Was that part of the conversation with this decision?
So I'll answer first. I haven't talked to the chief at scappoose about these changes yet.
And I know you've been busy, so I'm not trying to say that you did anything wrong. I just think that when we make decisions with our borders, we have such a responsibility because wildfires spread rather quickly.
I agree.
And I haven't. Experienced too many August or September, where there isn't a fire on the bluff that you all respond to. Thank you for that. So I do think when I hear about the lack of water with this change, I. It just makes everybody feel unsafe and in north Portland. But it spreads beyond north Portland, across the bridge like everyone has mentioned. So I think what you're hearing is a united front that we have to figure out how to restore that service. And I think we'll be all very dogged about that. And so I needed to use my time to express that. I think that was different than what the two of you said. So it was additive chats really close to my heart. I've been a part of the stewardship of trying to bring in the local grant with health share. And I think where we've maybe I think where we failed is we haven't shown up where we have received that partnership with our commitment. And it's hard to steward a grant if we're not putting our skin in the game, if you will. And so I'm pausing right now to say I'm here to be helpful, but I think it's a moment in time where the emergency, the er unit that's on the ground is chat. I can't be the only one that's had er nurses tell me this would be devastating. Cut to this. The health care ecosystem of this area, the appreciation that er units have for chad is immense because that was a missing link. And they say that those who show up in ers has is different than it was four years ago because of chat getting stronger and having more of an impact in our community. So I also think there's a united front about how this council wants to work with the mayor to figure out how to reinstate the investment for chat. So I wanted to make sure I said that I care a lot about all the other units that were here today. The other public safety systems that were here today. But I'm the last one. I'm keeping everybody from lunch, so I'll try to keep it brief. So there you go. Thank you for being here. And I look forward to more conversations. And mr. Mayor and kelly, I just have to say that I think we're at a moment where I know we didn't do across the board, but I do think that there are certain bureaus that you can't touch. There's a contract with portlanders that say, I pay high dollar to live in Portland, Oregon, and I expect quick response times to emergencies. And so I think that a lot of us might look at public safety differently. Understatement of the year. But we all can agree because we agreed on one thing. One thing was at the top of our list in that meeting we had about our priorities. That was to improve response times. This body of 12 very different points of view agreed that that was at the top of our list, based on what I was seeing from that day and some of the reports, we're making decisions. If we approve this budget, that would, would, would backslide that I don't think that's acceptable to anybody. But most importantly, it's not acceptable to portlanders that want public safety to be at the top of our list. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Thank you all so much for being here today. I took myself out of the queue, didn't get to ask my question. So I'm going to email my questions and follow up to you all. Hope you can get some answers. I have one last statement to say that while I agree with the concerns that I heard about the cuts to station 22, if the cut. My understanding is that if the cuts to station 22 are taken, call response times will still be faster than in the centennial neighborhood on the east side. So that is worth noting, colleagues, a couple of programing notes. We have work sessions. The next three days in a row, I will be implementing a public facing timer. We went pretty long today, and so I'm going to try and be holding us to ten minutes of talking going forward through these work sessions. With that, we are adjourned. Thank you all so much.