The record · Transcript

Council session — 2026-02-12

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (17,769 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.

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There we go. Good morning everyone. I call the meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee to order. It is Thursday, February 12th at 930. Oops. I'm supposed to gavel after I say that. It's okay. Diego, will you please call the roll?

Good morning. Avalos.

Present.

Kanal. Ryan. Novick here.

Morillo here. Thank you. And, diego, will you please or claire, will you please read the statement of conduct?

Good morning, and welcome to the meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland.gov/council agenda, slash climate resilience and land use committee or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.

Thank you claire. We have two items on our agenda today. First will be considering the public infrastructure environmental code project. And then we're going to continue our discussion about the climate investment plan and the funding proposals we heard during our January committee meetings. I want to be clear for folks that are watching this, that it's just a 30 minute discussion for us to have sort of an overview and time to digest all of the proposals that were brought to us, because last time we got a lot of information and then we didn't have time for discussion. I frankly don't think that we have the votes to move any of the proposals forward out of committee. So likely, you know, it will go to council and then if it gets changed, it will happen at full council, not here, but we as councilors just need time because of quorum issues to discuss things in committee. And we can't find space to do that otherwise. So that's part of why we're doing that discussion, just in case community members were anxious that things were changing or moving forward here. And with that, diego, will you please read the next item?

Item one adopt the public infrastructure environmental code project to streamline environmental zoning regulations to accommodate needed infrastructure projects, and support ongoing natural resource management. Amend code title 33.

Thank you so much. And it looks like we have a staff presentation for about 30 minutes. And we have one person signed up for testimony afterwards. Has that been updated? Okay. Great. Thank you. So yeah, if you guys want to go ahead and start your presentation.

Good morning. Chair Morillo co-chair, Morillo Novick and council committee members. My name is patricia diefenderfer, and I'm the chief planner and the bureau of planning and sustainability. It's nice to see you today. Thank you for having us here today. This item before you is the public infrastructure environmental zone project. This project is a package of zoning code amendments that will amend sections of the code that pertain to environmental zones. The amendments will establish a more streamlined review process for the maintenance, upgrade and replacement of aging infrastructure such as pump stations, flood control, and other similar public facilities that are owned and managed by public agencies like such as the bureau of environmental services and the urban flood safety and water district water quality district. The project will also allow public agencies to improve the climate resilience of these facilities, and allow them to better manage vegetation, to reduce wildfire risks and other kinds of risks. The project proposes code changes only and does not change or include any mapping changes, so the location of where environmental zones apply will not change. As a result of this project, the majority of the proposed changes will apply to publicly owned facilities, and only a limited subset of the proposed changes apply to will apply to private property. The project's proposals are a result of extensive collaboration with our partner infrastructure bureaus. Later in the presentation, you will hear from bureau partners, including the city's fire chief, who will share more about collaboration and the benefits of these proposed changes as it relates to their work. I also wanted to mention that you may have noticed in the written testimony, a couple of requests for additional amendments. These are not new requests. Staff are aware of these requests for amendments and have been evaluating, have met with these agencies and discussed these requests. They have evaluated the requests, but ultimately determined that they would not. They would be counter to the natural resource protection goals of the environmental zones. And essentially, the proposal that you have before you is the proposal that was vetted for all of the various issues and is the recommended proposal from the planning commission. So with that, I will go ahead and turn it over to staff who will introduce themselves and provide more of the detail on the code amendments. Thank you.

Okay.

So hi, I'm jeff cogdill. I use he him pronouns and I am I manage the river environmental team at the bureau of planning sustainability. We've been responsible for this project. Go ahead daniel.

And my name is daniel sobek. I'm an environmental planner at the bureau of planning and sustainability.

Which you can control. So just as patricia mentioned. So this the recommended draft that is under consideration at this point is recommended by the planning commission. So back in August, we had completed our both a hearing and work sessions with the planning commission. And they we then incorporated amendments, some minor amendments that they made through that process and then completed the and and released and published the the recommended draft for public review. And that recommendation is to adopt the public infrastructure environmental code project the recommended draft. And in that document there are a number of chapters of title 33 that are listed here that are we proposing zoning code changes? As patricia said, we it doesn't have this project is really just it's entirely a code project. So those changes to those code chapters are the whole of the project. Go ahead daniel. So because environmental zones are a little technical and somewhat archaic for some people, we want to go through and do a little introduction, just lay the land on what environmental zones are, what the project is, what the environmental zones are, how they work to set up a set of baseline for the review of the proposals in the recommended draft, we did. We had a few a few minor potential amendments for your consideration which will review. And then we, as patricia said, we have a few invited remarks from our bureau partners next. So what is the public infrastructure environmental code project really? As we've mentioned, it's just a set of zoning code amendments in those different chapters that were listed to really focus on improvements that we could make to allow for future public infrastructure upgrades, and also to address management of vegetation and on public property, so that there's no concern over ensuring that specific things that are beneficial for the natural resources are subject to environmental zones where we think those changes are appropriate, we are changing the code to allow them go ahead. So why are they why are these amendments needed? We what the initiation of this kind of general discussion with our bureau partners was really about the upgrades that bureau of environmental services is looking are looking is looking to do in the columbia corridor, especially where a lot of our environmental zones apply. But throughout the city where they have aging infrastructure that are needed either to be renovated or to be expanded and or replaced to meet future demand. So we also recognize and through conversations with the water bureau and fire bureau, we recognize that there's a need for change related to protection of these of especially water infrastructure from the potential for wildfire and other risks that are related to climate change and the natural resources management. Part of it is that we recognize that public agencies under they take these natural resource management ongoing processes, and we needed to address that through the through the environmental zones next. So what are environmental zones really. They are specific specific chapters of the of the zoning code that establish requirements as to how development can happen in and around rivers, streams, wetlands, floodplains, forests. And the map on the right just shows the distribution of our different environmental zones. I'm just going to quickly go through them at a basic level. So the the there this on the right, the map shows there's the conservation overlay environmental conservation overlay zone that's also referred to often referred to as the c zone and the environmental protection zone or the zone. That's our most common environmental zone. And that's really the focus of most of these changes is really that chapter that applies to those. And again, you can see how extensive it is within the city and the Green and the dark Green. We also have what is called the pleasant valley overlay zone, which is very similar to the conservation and protection zone, but it has its own unique requirements because that was developed when we brought that area into the city, and it was largely agricultural and has so it has a little bit different approaches to it. The changes in the pleasant valley, the proposed change in the pleasant valley overlay zone are really more for consistency. As you see there on the slide. We aim to have as much as possible while also recognizing variation across the city. We try to have consistency in our regulations throughout the city. So the pleasant valley changes are really changing. The conservation and protection overlay zone requirements and ensuring consistency with the pleasant valley next. So state statewide planning goals require us to address the Willamette river, different from other resources within the city. And so we have a separate overlay zone that applies to the Willamette river, which is the river environmental zone. And again, these changes that are proposed for the river environmental zone are largely for consistency. And with changes that we were making into the environmental zone again, so that there is kind of generally consistent approaches throughout the city. So just as a to set the table, we've been working on natural resource management for a very long time, going back to 1989 with the first natural resource management plan that applied to the columbia corridor industrial area. And so over time on the left here shows all of the individual projects that either established or have updated our environmental zones over time. All of the environmental zones are really aimed at ensuring that we stay consistent with state and regional requirements. So on a statewide level, largely for these areas that we're talking about that are subject to the environmental zones, the conservation and the protection zone, we need to comply with goal five. So goal five includes natural resources, resources, cultural resources, but it has rather prescriptive approaches as to how you have to address goal five natural resources. And so we consistently aim with our projects, have to comply with those processes. In this case we just need to show that those the code changes that we're making are consistent with that. Again, because we're not expanding the zones subsequent to our requirements or sort of underlying or supporting our compliance with goal five metro, our regional government established title 13 in 2006. And that basically is a kind of an implementation measure for jurisdictions within the metro area. The entire for the region to comply with goal five for identified resources, for resources they have identified throughout the region. And so we comply with title 13. And as a result of applying complying with title 13, we apply. We comply with goal five. And if we want to protect areas, any other natural areas outside of the what's in title 13, we have the ability to do that. So basically now how do how do environmental zones work? A fundamental premise of the environmental zones is this concept of no net loss. You may have heard. So basically what it says is our entire zoning code, environmental zoning code is based on the idea if you impact natural resources in a certain amount, you have to mitigate or address those, offset those impacts to where at the at the end of it, you have still maintained the through after maturation of, you know, any plantings and things like that. You still maintain no, you do not lose any natural resources within the city and that's that. No net loss terminology. Additionally, for our process, in terms of determining mitigation requirements, the expectation is that the first step is the development. The proposed development avoids impacts to natural resources. For those that can't avoid it, then must do its best. The applicant must do their best to minimize the impacts. And then after those two steps are taken, then there is mitigation that must be addressed. So mitigation can either be specifically on site or off site and where available. And hopefully we look to as we I think we've talked previously here at the committee and council, we'd like to expand the use of mitigation banks as another alternative for off site mitigation, rather than having to place all of the mitigation on site, especially on challenging sites. Thanks. So this is a rather dense slide, but this we just wanted to to convey the steps that are taken by permitting and development in terms of evaluating whether an action is subject to the environmental requirement, environmental zone requirements. So the first step is is it strictly exempt? There are a lot of things, including operations, maintenance, even some even replacement. In most cases, as long as the structure doesn't expand where the zone requirement, the environmental zone requirements, do not need to be met, you basically are exempt from that. You still have to meet your other permit requirements, etc. But essentially the zone requirements, environmental requirements do not apply. If something is not exempt, we then have standards. That's clear and objective standards that basically say if you do x, y, and z and you can demonstrate that in your proposal, there's no discretion at the permitting desk. It basically says you've met those requirements. You're approved. It's a relatively quick process, and it's largely completed within the context of your other building permits. If those those standards can't be met, then we go into land use review, which we refer to as discretionary review, where there is more interpretation from permitting and development to make sure that's where the avoid, minimize, mitigate process really applies. It says have you you look at different alternatives. Are you are you choosing the least impactful alternative. And and then mitigation is determined. So that takes a longer process generally. But that's we are limited other than if there are issues that we need to get additional information from applicants, etc. That's a maximum of 120 20 day turnaround for the environmental review. So we just wanted to to sort of demonstrate all this, just to quickly go through an example site on the right here. You can see we basically in this theoretical site we have a vacant developable site. It has a stream that runs through it. There are some protection zone around on the stream and around the stream with a buffer around there in the zone, and then the c zone, which again is a much more developable zone where the zone is much more strict. And then there is an area that's outside of the zone. So when you this and this really is about how what an environmental review looks like, the first step is daniel. So you might have an original proposal that is brought to permitting and development that says, oh, we want to put the building in the back northeast corner of the lot. That would require us to place a driveway that's going to cross the stream and remove five large trees. Right. So then we go, they go to permitting development, and they have to go through the environmental review process, look at other alternatives as well. And so something like you can envision this alternative proposal that says no, we move the building as much as possible outside the environmental zone. You still get the same size building that's on the site, but it's doesn't require crossing the stream and minimizes tree removal. And you have now reduced any potential impacts, especially in the zone, to that, to the stream. So that's kind of the lay of land for how environmental zones work. And and their general kind of function. We just before we go into the specific proposals that are in the recommended draft and daniel will do that. Just wanted to talk a little bit about our outreach and engagement. So we at multiple phases of the project we had engagement with the public. So we had two open houses, one hybrid and one virtual. That's a standard approach now so that we can people can can can attend these open houses from their homes, etc. We also recorded the presentation and put it on our website so that people could also review it during that discussion. Draft phase. We outreach to neighborhood organizations and community organizations, and then also reached out to tribal governments just to make them aware of this project, among some others, and see if they had any concerns or wanted to know more about it. And the proposed draft, we had 14. And that's the proposed draft, as a reminder, goes to planning commission. We had 14 pieces of testimony, nine of those by one individual who was really looking at where these apply within parks, and so had put them on to nine different parks in terms of their their concern. So really, it's very limited testimony at the, at the planning commission phase. And then our general outreach, which we often do is just consistent website updates. You can we have a project email list where we had more than 100 people who would receive notification at different milestones, web posts and email notifications throughout the process. So with that, I'll hand it over to daniel to go over the actual proposed changes in the recommended draft.

Thanks, jeff. Again, daniel. Bureau of environmental services environmental planner, and I'm going to talk about some of the specifics that are in the project proposals. So the recommended draft was created in consultation with a number of bureau partners. And it's really all about streamlining the approval process for public infrastructure projects. And the genesis of this project really came originally from bureau of environmental services, because they're doing a number of pump station replacements. And so we're trying to come up with a set of regulations that would allow that to happen without going through the environmental review process. So the standards that we created for that process include requirements for site enhancement. And we have a menu of flexible alternatives that can be fulfilled either through on site, off site or through the payment of a fee in lieu. And we'll talk about that more as we go through. And so our proposals come in four different categories. Those that first category of pump station and flood control, control, structure alteration and replacement. Then there's natural area management, tree removal and replacement, and a bucket of miscellaneous technical amendments that aren't easily categorized in those other groupings. And I have an asterisk here that notes that some of the amendments apply to both public property and to private development. And so as we get to those things throughout this presentation, those asterisks will pop up to to draw your attention to that fact that some of these elements are both public and private focused. So to get back to that schematic example that jeff showed, that kind of outlined the alternatives analysis that we do through environmental environmental review. There are some situations where you really can't minimize the impacts to resources. And this is a perfect example of that. This is that same site. But in this case we have a sewer line that's running right next to the stream, which is actually pretty common because historically we've typically aligned our sewer lines in low lying areas where streams tend to form. We have an existing pump station that's been there for a long time and needs to be replaced. And it's right at this junction between these two sewer lines. So ideally you would want to replace that pump station in the least impactful location, but it really can't be moved because it has to be in that spot. So when we go through this replacement process, the alternatives analysis will not lead to a minimization of impacts to resources. So we have a set of standards that allow for the replacement of that pump station. Without going through this lengthy review process, the standards allow for the alteration, potentially replacement of that pump station. There are requirements that the applicants do an on site enhancement requirement. They have to replace the trees, and the site enhancement and tree replacements can be done in a flexible way, either on site, off site, or through a fee in lieu process. So that's the pump station replacement standards. The next grouping is our natural area management standards and exemptions. So we have allowance of removal of small trees, allowance for the installation of beaver management devices, and the allowance for the installation of floating vegetated structures to enhance habitat. These are all intended to to improve habitat. And previously they would have had to go through environmental review. Now we have either standards or exemptions to allow that to happen without review. Also within this grouping we have cultural harvesting of resources, and there's some existing exemptions that the urban flood safety and water quality district use to manage vegetation on the levees and the and within water bodies within that levee controlled area for flood safety management. So we have standards and exemptions that allow those activities to happen as well. Grouping three this pertains to wildfire hazards. So we have water bureau infrastructure including water tanks, water towers, pump stations that, in the event of a major wildfire, would be expected to provide life safety purposes. They'd be for property protection and for protecting people from wildfires. We're going to expect that these structures will maintain the water pressure that we need to fight the fire. And so we have existing allowances in the code that allow for tree removal within ten feet of buildings and structures. But we feel for this critical infrastructure that we need a larger buffer safety buffer around those structures. So we have standards and exemptions that would allow for the removal of trees within 30ft, as opposed to the ten feet that's currently allowed. There is there are tree replacement requirements. So again flexible can be done on site, off site or through a fee in lieu. And this map is our adopted wildfire hazard zone map. This is part of the building code. This is something that was created by the Portland fire and rescue. They maintain this map and can amend it going forward. And so any area that's colored in on this map, those standards and exemptions would potentially apply to allow for tree removal in these wildfire hazard zones. And it's all about protecting that critical infrastructure that's providing that life safety function. Also within this tree removal and replacement grouping we have the revenge fund. This is an existing tool that exists in the environmental code. So when you do or when you're required to do site enhancement or tree replacement, you can pay a fee in lieu. Currently, however, the way that this this fee is currently defined and administered is not very effective. So what we're proposing to do is to reassign it. So currently the bureau of environmental services administers it would be reassigning it to the parks bureau. And we would be expanding the situations in which you could use this fee in lieu. We're hoping that it will generate more funds in the future, and then that will allow for a more robust revegetation program to be created using these funds. And again, this is always an option that applicants can choose, but they could also do on site or off site tree replacement if necessary. So it's not something that applicants have to do. It's just a flexible option. And then finally these miscellaneous technical amendments I'm just going to highlight two. We have four on the slide. And there's some others that aren't included in this presentation. The first one is eliminating redundant noticing requirements. We have existing noticing requirements in the zoning code that apply to all types of development throughout the whole city. But then there's a second set of noticing requirements that are largely duplicative, that only apply to the zones. So we're getting rid of those redundant, duplicative noticing requirements. But keeping the the more general noticing requirements that apply throughout the city. And then I'll also talk about the accessory dwelling unit setback. So we have an existing standard that allows, when you do development on a site that has an easement on it, you could build your building right up at the edge of the road doing zero lot line development. You can reduce your required front setback to zero, but currently, if you were to build an accessory dwelling unit in addition to your primary structure, the adu would still have to be set back. Even though the primary structure could be built at zero lot line. So we are extending that standard to adus as well too. So you could do both your primary structure and your adu at zero lot line. And the intention is to minimize impacts to natural resources when development occurs through standards. I'm going to turn it back to jeff to finish this up.

Next slide. Yeah. So before we turn it over to our invited guests, just to sort of talk about our the project and the collaboration that was involved, I wanted to some we did submit a memo with a couple of clarifications, clarifying amendments specifically to the standards for flood and waste control facilities. Essentially, since the time that the planning commission made its recommendation, we continued to coordinate with the bureau of environmental services, and we wanted to make a few changes to the standards, to be clear that the city bureaus do have the ability to replace these facilities, as long as what we have placed is the maximum expansion of an existing facility can be 3000ft■!s. But basically initially originally, the current code is really about alterations to existing development. And so we just wanted to make sure and through talking it through further, we thought that the the code changes were important just for making sure that there was consistent implementation at, at permitting and development. And then within the same standard, again, we continue to have conversations with the port of Portland, and we think it is reasonable to include the port of Portland to be able to use these standards. As patricia mentioned. So we proposed adding the port of Portland as as patricia mentioned, the other request that they have is related to an exemption that applies to the urban flood safety water quality district. And we think that that was that that exemption, which would have no environmental review, is not appropriate for the port of Portland, mainly because we developed, we developed that those exemptions for the urban flood safety, water quality district, and they manage large amounts of land that are for levees within the columbia corridor. And though the port of Portland does some of this work, it's really not their primary focus. And so we don't think it's appropriate to include them in the exemption. But we're happy to provide this option allows them to use standards in a quicker approval process as compared to the requirement to go through environmental review. And I think with that, I will invite our guests up. So we have fire chief lauren johnson, and we have elizabeth reese cadigan from the bureau of environmental services.

Okay.

I'll go ahead. Thank you, patricia, and planning staff for the presentation. And good morning, honorable chairs. Councilors. For the record, I'm lauren johnson, the fire chief. I'm happy to have just a few minutes to speak on the behalf of the fire bureau to show our support for this project. There are a number of benefits associated with the proposed changes, but my goal is to help you to understand the relationship between these code amendments and our ability as a city to protect portland's water infrastructure from wildfire. Across the country, we've been experiencing changes in wildfire intensity and spread. And in the Willamette valley, the climate is becoming hotter, drier and more windy. The wildfires that Oregon has experienced over the past few years have proven to be faster moving and harder to control. So even as though we're even now, when we're enjoying this unseasonably nice winter weather, we as a fire bureau, along with our partners in emergency management and other fire authorities across the state, are planning for a drier summer season. We rely on the city's infrastructure, both in our day to day activities as people living and working in Portland, but also for firefighting water supply. We know that our current assets need greater protection from wildfire, and that the proposed code amendments would ease the pathway towards making these necessary modifications to defensible spaces around water tanks and pumps. Clearing a larger path around these areas gives us a better chance to maintain a clean drinking water supply, as well as allow for critical firefighting operations to be sustained during a large wildfire event. The part of this project that is related to better protecting our water infrastructure was led by angie campo from the water bureau and kim cosmos from the fire bureau, along with staff from the bureau of planning and sustainability, parks and permitting and development. This kind of collaboration for the public good across bureaus is remarkable, and it's exactly the kind of work that I'm excited to do. Further, we understand it's your expectation that we work together to improve the lives of all portlanders. I hope that you will support this project, and I look forward to working with you to advance other measures to manage the significant fire and life safety risks across our city. Thank you.

Good morning. Councilors. My name is elizabeth reese cadigan. I'm the planning division manager with the bureau of environmental services. The public infrastructure code project represents a highly collaborative and successful cross bureau collaboration and effort. Bts, pnd and the infrastructure bureaus have been working across our service areas to address regulatory and operational hurdles that infrastructure bureaus face when providing critical services to our community and protecting public and environmental health as stewards of natural resources. And one of the bureaus responsible for citywide compliance related to natural systems, bts is collaborating closely with bts on environmental zoning regulations. While we are staunch proponents of effective environmental protections, bts operations, including both maintenance of natural areas and the rehabilitation of built assets are significantly impacted by these requirements. Currently, environmental reviews often add significant costs, delays, and need for additional consulting support to projects that are essential to keeping our rivers clean and protecting public health. And more often than not, these environmental reviews result in no additional mitigation or environmental benefit beyond what bts would already ensure as part of the project, bts owns or maintains almost 100 pump stations, many of which are in environmental zones or other overlay zones. Pump stations to serve their purpose must be placed at low points in our system, which often coincide with areas near water bodies or wetlands. These features are also often protected by zones. We anticipate that the number of our pump stations and zones will increase in the future, with new zoning proposed under the columbia corridor and industrial lands environmental overlay zone project, especially since more than half of our pump stations are located in the columbia slough area, a significant portion of our pump stations are old and in need of upgrade or replacement. The most common reasons for pump station expansions are to support future development and ensure safe working conditions for o&m staff in the existing code. There are no standards that apply to work on pump stations specifically, so projects in the zone have been required to go through environmental review. The new language proposed as part of this project will add a standard that will apply to replacements or alterations to pump stations only when the added disturbance area is relatively small. The hope is that this standard will allow our more minor pump station projects to proceed without lengthy and expensive reviews, while still providing mitigation for impacts. We worked closely with bts to develop code that we hope strikes a balance between protecting important natural resources while still allowing necessary public infrastructure upgrades in an efficient, cost effective manner, ultimately benefiting ratepayers. These code improvements also include amendments to explicitly allow routine natural resource stewardship activities by bts and parks to ensure healthy forests and prevent flooding. Clarifying code allowances to ensure compliance for our day to day operations, we thank staff for prioritizing this project. Appreciate you hearing it today and look forward to your approval.

Wonderful. Thank you all so much for your presentation for your time. We do have one person signed up for testimony, but before we get into that, do folks up here have a technical question to ask the panel? Keep it technical so that we can have the testimony person. Yes. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Thank you, madam chair. This is sort of a technical question. I'm curious about the port being added after this had gone through the planning commission. I'm just wondering why why that happened. That seems to me like sort of the most significant change that's proposed here to the original package. So I just wanted to get the background on it.

Yeah, I would just say we continue to have conversations with the port of Portland related sort of ongoing conversations and related to other projects. We continue to evaluate how many facilities they actually do manage that are relevant for that standard. And through those conversations, just decided that we thought it was appropriate, although like I said, because similar to the same question about the the exemption that applies to urban flood safety, water quality district, I don't know how often it comes up for them, but again, to to make sure to provide an option as long as they meet the requirements of the standards. We thought it was appropriate to to add them to the to the to the did.

I just want to make sure the planning commission didn't evaluate and reject that that request sort of request that sort of evolved after the planning commission met.

Technically, that was in their commentary, in their testimony at planning commission. And the planning commission did decide not to to take that up.

Decided not.

To largely on our recommendation. I will say from.

Staff, I mean, not I mean, did the planning commission discuss the the amendment relating to the port that you are supporting now?

Yes they did. I mean, I don't know if they discussed it. We it was in the mix of conversation that we had with the planning commission. I don't know if they ever spoke about it at the planning commission work sessions, but it was considered by some of the planning commissioners.

Councilor Novick there was one amendment that the planning commission made related to a request from the port, and that was for the floating structures, maybe. Correct. So there was there were a number of different things that the port was requesting at the at the juncture where we were at planning commission. So those were all on the table. Planning commission did ultimately, as part of the recommendation, include them in an allowance to do floating structures, but the other items were not part of the recommendation. So that is before the commission today.

And again, I guess I would say that we because we had and I don't can't speak for the commissioners, but we had said that at that time we did not recommend adding the port. But again, further conversations. We we think it's appropriate for them to be included.

So this is only partly tongue in cheek question. Do you think the members of the planning commission will be mad at us if we approve the current proposal?

I would I would say that sometimes things just come up in the intervening time. I don't believe that they will be upset about this. So but we do appreciate you considering it.

Thank you.

And I will say again, I think in terms of the approach generally for the project, it's really we want we're still making sure that environmental protection is is achieved. It's just the paths that are available to different public agencies specifically. And so I hope that it would be confident they would still have adequate offset of any impacts that are associated with these projects.

Thank you all so much. If you don't mind staying in the rooms for discussion later on, but for now, I'd like to call up the person who signed up for testimony.

We have kelly holtz signed up to testify.

Good morning. Thanks so much for being here.

Good morning. Good morning. Chairs Novick Morillo and committee members. Thanks for letting me testify today. My name is kelly butler holtz. I live in a floating home at the Oregon yacht club. I also serve as president of the waterfront organizations of Oregon. That's wu to our friends. Wu represents floating home mortgages, marinas, and river dependent businesses across the state, so I appreciate the intent behind the public infrastructure environmental code project. This proposal recognizes something really important that infrastructure does not always have options. Pipes, pump stations, flood control facilities they are all physically constrained. They must go where gravity, geography and hydrology require them to go, and environmental codes need to reflect that physical reality. Streamlining the review where this makes sense, reducing unnecessary regulatory roadblocks in the essential for essential infrastructure is thoughtful city policy. You may you may know that right now, this conversation does not exist in a vacuum. Right now, in the columbia corridor, bts has developed a proposal to further expand the existing, highly regulated environmental overlay zones already in place, increasing buffers and extending even more regulatory coverage further on to waterfront lands. So, on one hand, this project acknowledges that environmental regulations must be workable and proportional for public infrastructure. But on the other hand, bts simultaneously simultaneously proposes expanding the existing regulatory framework without exemption onto privately owned, river dependent industrial lands and floating home mortgages that are just as physically tied to the river as the infrastructure elements that we're talking about. Here's an example. Diversified marine a wu member is the largest tugboat manufacturer and repair yard on the west coast. You might have seen it as you drive across the I-5 bridge going to Vancouver. It's right there on the left. Dmi employs 75 people. That's steelworkers, welders, pipe fitters, marine electricians providing family wage jobs, 75 their small yard. Who does all this work operates on about three quarters of an acre in the north Portland harbor. Can I go on? They build and repair tugboats and that work can only happen on the river. Dmae wants desperately to expand their operation and hire more tradespeople. They have more business than they can handle. They just took on a tug yesterday from san francisco to repair. These represent good family wage jobs. However, further site development is being considered in the columbia corridor would not be an option under the proposed zone expansion. When environmental overlays expand on already tightly regulated sites, the issue is not abstract environmental policy. It affects modernization, operational flexibility and generational. The generational success of real people. The core principle of this ordinance, proportionality and recognition of physical constraints should apply consistently. We are all Oregonians, and for us, environmental protection is essential.

Thank you for your testimony. Do you? How much more do you have to go?

30s left.

Okay. Why don't you go ahead and take that?

Thank you very much. So, but waterfront businesses helped to build Portland. And for those of us who live and work on it, the river is not just scenery, it is our lifeline. No one cares more about the river's health than those who live and work directly on it. With overregulation, once a site's ability to function is lost, it not, it does not come back. Mayor wilson and others speak about making development easier for businesses, and I believe that this is not helping that issue. We can both protect the river and protect the jobs and the communities that depend on it. Consistency matters and cumulative impacts matter. Thank you very much and thanks for letting me go over.

Yeah, thank you so much for being here with us today. Appreciate your time. Well thank you, committee members. Now we have time for some discussion over the proposal and the technical amendments. I see councilor Avalos has her hand raised. So we'll start with you.

Thank you. And I do have questions if the folks want to come back up. I just wanted to hear from testimony first, see if it informed some of my questions. All right. So to start, I'm wondering if you can give me some examples of climate resilience projects that have been delayed under the current code and would move faster under this ordinance. Can you give me some broader perspective on what that looks like?

I mean, I think fundamentally related to the removal of trees, especially, and this is what the conversation we had with the water bureau is that a lot of these facilities, especially you can imagine, like in forest park and other areas that are they're placed within heavily treed areas. And as daniel mentioned right now, you can remove trees, especially native trees is what we're talking about. You can remove trees within ten feet of a structure that's just allowed. But to get that additional defensible space that the fire chief was mentioning, you would have to go through an environmental review and it would be very difficult in many cases to remove native species, especially some of these very large trees. And so it could be approved, but it would take a lot more process to be able to do that. I to be honest, I'm not sure if the justification of just climate resilience currently would do the trick. And so this is the idea of trying to take best available science for wildfire management specifically to allow for again, we as a part of the the changes that we've made, we would still get tree replacement. So they would still have to plant trees, but it would much more. Again, it would go through that standards process where it would be a plan check that takes weeks to two months, as compared to that 120 day review and all of the upfront work that is associated with an environmental review.

Well, on that same vein, then, are there clear limits of what types of infrastructure projects qualify for streamlined review versus the full environmental review? I think my question is based in I'm just trying to understand what additional permissions we're giving, because of course environmental review is really critical, especially now. So that's that's the heart of my question.

Yeah. And I don't know if off the top.

Of your head, there's a detailed list of types of facilities that can avail themselves of that particular set of standards. So the subsection 185 applies to sewage pump stations, levees, flood control structures. In a detailed list of types of structures that would be associated with those like trash racks and outfalls and inlets and things like that. So it's it's very, very concentrated on those specific types of infrastructure. And then the in terms of the, the fire safety standards that jeff was talking about in terms of tree removal for fire safety, it's limited to public infrastructure that's maintained by a specific set of entities that's outlined in the code.

And I have it here. And also so again, as a reminder, it's only if you are within the wildfire hazard zone map so it doesn't apply elsewhere. And then the list that we have are reservoirs, water towers, water storage facilities, water distribution facilities. I think we also have for like electrical sort of communication infrastructure. I'm a little confused by where don't we have communication infrastructure. So there's some other things, again that are more focused on in the case of a electrical substations. This is the list. Sorry. Yeah. Water towers, reservoirs water and sewer pump stations, electrical substations and emergency communications broadcast facilities. So again you have to be one of those things and you have to be within the wildfire hazard zone in terms of where we're allowing this additional removal of trees around these facilities. And again, we were thinking in the case of an event, a fire wildfire event, what are the things that you would want to make sure are still going to be able to be available if there is wildfire, say for example, in forest park or elsewhere?

And then as it relates to infrastructure, then does this ordinance apply only to public infrastructure, or could it set precedent for future private development requests?

It does not. Currently, in terms of private infrastructure, other than things that were some some of the miscellaneous like right of way improvement modifications that are providing for a little more allowance of of development, again through standards outside of the right of way itself. It does not apply to any private infrastructure. But we have as we've said, we've worked with the port of Portland, the urban flood safety water quality district and all of our partner bureaus, infrastructure bureaus within the city to develop these proposals.

And to add on to that. So like public utilities like pge and those types of things would have to still go through standards, environmental review, they couldn't they couldn't use this, this special set of standards that we're proposing for the public city bureaus and for the agencies that we talked about the flood safety district and the port of Portland.

And again, there are some, I think, to reemphasize or to emphasize, there are some, you know, there is infrastructure that's provided to specifically, especially within the columbia corridor and along the columbia river that, you know, is a pump station that serves an individual property and that we wanted to definitely not. We're not applying those to private type individual pump stations that are not. It's really looking at system wide. Again, that's why the urban flood safety water quality district, for example, they have lots of different pump stations and flood control facilities that they manage. So they are that's the type of entity that we're really looking to address.

Great. Thank you for answering my questions, colleagues. I am inclined to support this. I think my questions are clearly just trying to ensure that we're not unintentionally setting new standards that private entities could take advantage of because, as we know, we're kind of have this larger discussion in the city about expediency versus, you know, protection. And I want to make sure that we're keeping that at the center, because ultimately, my goal is to protect, you know, our environmental assets to ensure that we cannot cut corners, especially at a time where we really need to get much more succinct in how we are protecting with our, our policies. And so but thank you for answering those questions. That gives me some clarity and some confidence to support this. And I think moving forward, just know that that is going to be a continued ask as we try to streamline our zoning and code and all of that. It's it's critical that we not bypass environmental protections while we do that. So thank you.

Thank you, councilor Avalos, and thank you all so much for answering those questions. I don't see anyone else in the queue. Does anyone have any follow up questions on the amendments or the process before we move those amendments forward? I've been told that you're supposed to wait an uncomfortable eight seconds, because that is how long it takes for people to raise their hands.

It's very specific.

Very specific. Eight seconds. Yes, I see councilor Novick moving towards raising his hand. Okay, go for it.

Okay. Eight seconds is expired. I'm sorry if the eight seconds is expired. Actually, I'm raising my hand to move. The staff proposed technical amendments to exhibit b of the ordinance, per the bureau of planning and sustainability memo dated February 4th, 2026. And I'm actually going to read out what those technical amendments are. And if folks can correct me if I'm getting it wrong, as I understand it, those additional amendments are adding to 33.43185. The following standards apply to and the addition is. In addition, replacement of city owned or managed sewer sewage pump stations is allowed, and then subsequently when it says the standards apply to facilities their owner managed by or by the port of Portland is added. And then there's an addition of disturbance area definition and restriction. The additional disturbance area for the alteration must not be greater than 3000ft■!s total, ad must be contiguous to the existing disturbance area for the flood or wastewater control facility that's being altered, and then the disturbance area for replacement pump station must not be greater than the total disturbance area for the existing pump station, plus 3000ft■!s. It must be contiguous et-cetera and then under 334 3185 c the disturbance area for the alteration or replacement. The addition is the word or words or replacement must be located outside of wetlands. Then under item d, removal of native and non-native non nuisance trees is allowed as follows. Again, trees located within the disturbance area of the proposed alteration or replacement is the addition that we're talking about. And I councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: We also do have it on slide. If you'd like us to just go through it really quickly.

Sure. Thank you. I didn't realize that. Have I gotten anything wrong?

Yeah. We should have told you. Sorry.

Okay.

Almost done. You're basically all the way through it, but we can go and show it if you'd like.

Also, just just for the record, those were published as part of the agenda as well. And they were available to the to the public to see the amendments. But do you want to just show the a few slides there that list them out?

Yeah. And so the proposal that councilor Novick you just went through, all those in yellow, are the changes that are part of these proposed amendments. The other strike through and underline are things that are existing in the in the recommended draft.

Okay. Thank you. So I moved to approve the staff proposed technical amendments to exhibit b of the ordinance for the bureau of planning and sustainability memo dated February 4th, 2026. Second.

The motion to amend the ordinance has been moved by councilor Novick and seconded by councilor Kanal. Is there any discussion? Nope. Okay. I'm not going to wait the eight seconds. We're just going to go for it. Will the clerk please call the roll? Avalos I.

Kanal I Novick.

Maybe I should declare a conflict, which is that the port of Portland had hadn't committed clean water act violations in the late 80s and early 90s. I might not be live in Portland.

I Morillo oh.

Sorry, I got too excited.

With four eyes and one absent, the amendment is accepted.

Thank you. And now we have to send. We have to motion to send the ordinance to full council, is that correct? Okay. I would like to entertain a motion to move the ordinance document number 2026 063, as amended, to the full council with a recommendation to pass.

So moved.

Second.

The motion has been moved by councilor Novick and seconded by councilor Avalos. Is there any discussion?

Yes.

Councilor Kanal I just wanted to say one thing. I'm going to vote in favor of referring this on, but I do have a lot of interest in pursuing the conversation around what our testifier raised, and a lot of the issues that are specifically addressed that relate to my district, district two. So I just wanted to mention that and say that there may be a chance of of our conversation between now and then, including a small change. I would love to talk to the staff, as well as to our testifier and a few of the other stakeholders working waterfront coalition groups like that beforehand, but just wanted to flag that. Why I'm voting yes, but may still have comments leading into the full council.

Wonderful. Thank you councilor Kanal. And it sounds like you're willing to also connect with that person directly with your office to get any further feedback. So with that, will the clerk please call the roll?

Avalos I.

Kanal I.

Novick I.

Morillo I.

With four eyes and one absent. The motion carries and the amendment excuse me. Motion to move the ordinance document number 2026 063, as amended, to the full council with a recommendation to pass.

Thank you so much. The public infrastructure environmental code zoning code amendments will be continued to full council meeting on February 25th at 9:50 a.m. As a time certain.

Council councilor Morillo Morillo. If I might just add, you may want to make a note of the. The public comment period for this item has been closed. Now as a result of this hearing. And also, I just wanted to share that the chair of the planning commission, steph routh, was online to present the planning commission's recommendation. However, I didn't realize she was there, so she had to leave to attend a meeting. But I just wanted to let you know that she was there and she was going to communicate. The planning commission's recommendation to the committee.

Okay, I appreciate that. I did not know that she was online either, but hopefully, do you know if she's able to send us those materials?

The transmittal letter is part of your the package that you received. The recommended plan incorporates the transmittal letter. We just have a tradition of having the chair come and present that recommendation. Unfortunately, I didn't realize she was online either, but I just wanted to make sure you knew that she was and she was available to do that. She's not available any longer, unfortunately.

Okay. And for clarity, maybe from the from the clerk or the support team, if we've had this hearing here in committee, does that mean that testimony is closed on this item. If it's a time certain for council.

You know, pardon me, I think I misspoke on that. I don't believe we need to close the public testimony at this time. Please forgive me. That was I was thinking about a situation where we're already at full council, so you don't have to worry about that.

Gotcha. Okay. No worries. Thank you so much for your help. Thank you all so much for your presentation today. It was incredibly helpful. And if folks need to connect with steph roth afterwards, I'm sure they can. So thank.

You so much.

Appreciate it.

Diego, will you please read the next item?

Item two committee discussion on Portland clean energy fund climate investment plan.

Thank you everyone, for this ongoing discussion that we've been having on the climate investment plan. Councilor Novick. And I wanted to take time as a committee to talk about the proposals that we've heard and how to best allocate that 15 million that had originally been proposed to go to housing related programs. I think over the past few weeks, we've gotten a lot of presentations with a lot of information and different options, but not a lot of time to talk about it. And for reference, for my colleagues, there is a handout that was printed out that has a brief summary of all of the different proposals that we've heard, and it's also posted online for anyone who's following the discussion at home. Something that also came up is that we didn't really have a chance to hear from an invited speaker of the pcf coalition, and so I would like to invite alan ippolito up to give a presentation or just to give some testimony on this item. I want to add again, also that frankly, the committee I don't believe has the votes to pass any of these proposals forward to full council. Maybe that will change within the period of discussion, but we wanted to be better informed about our potential choices that we have here so that when it goes to full council, if there are votes for a policy, we are making it from a very informed position. And because of quorum rules, we can't have these discussions outside of committee. So we needed to carve out time for us to do that here today. Councilor Novick, do you have a question before?

I just wanted to note that this committee did send to full council the package of amendments that PCEF brought forth without the amendment moving the $15 million. So that is what's before full council. But I would expect a robust discussion at full council about the various options, including perhaps restoring the money to housing.

Thank you so much for adding that clarity. I appreciate that. And with that, if you would like to present now, we would really appreciate hearing from you.

Thank you. Amy. Buenos dias. Alan ippolito in palabras de su amigo mio espana es una bendicion estar hoy aqui con ustedes. Good morning councilors, my name is alan ippolito. In the words of your friend and mine, ray espana, it's a blessing to be here with you today. I work for suma. We use technology to fight poverty, racism and climate change. We began as a project of verde, and we spun off to an independent and tax exempt nonprofit in 2020. Our suma app is an e-commerce marketplace that almost 2500 low income portlanders use to buy essential expenses, overcoming privacy and other barriers that prevent these customers from using their phones to pay for food, transportation and utilities, including local healthy food, clean energy and clean mobility. Suma users took over 30,000 clean mobility rides in 2025 alone via the app, saving over $160,000. We are a safe transportation decarbonization grantee. First, I want to state the position of the pcf coalition, the dozens of organizations and hundreds of people who knocked on thousands of doors to pass the measure we're talking about today. Our position is that the 15 million should be reallocated from sb 13 to sb one, as recommended by the PCEF committee, and its process that began with the June 2025 evaluation subcommittee of the pcf committee appointed members through public comment from community October to November 25th, with the pcf committee recommending these cip updates to city council. December 2025. Second, we support the advocacy of path, home, ci and others about the clear benefits of this allocation and that housing versus transportation, we believe, is a false frame for this discussion, that the true frame is there was a process, it looked at the totality of the cip and its investments and made recommendations to move resources from certain strategic programs to others. Third, I would like to orient the rest of my remarks about why respecting this process is the only path forward on this and future actions that aligns with the story and values of the Portland clean energy fund. I was fortunate to help draft the initiative and to serve as the campaign manager for signature gathering and the general election. Our coalition stayed involved as pccs have hired its first staff. Sad, its first grant committee, awarded its first grants, developed the climate investment plan. And we're here right now. We're not stakeholders. We're your peers. I want to be clear. Pcef isn't your money. It's our money. We built the fund. We will never let it go. What do I mean by that? I don't mean that it belongs specifically to suma, or to verde, or to naya or ssi or the uprise collective, or any of the 242 PCEF grantees to date. And it certainly doesn't belong to frog ferry. I don't know a single climate justice person who believes that project has competitive value. Know what I mean is that this money belongs to the communities on the front lines of climate change, to sf's priority populations. Before PCEF, I want you all to know there was really no climate money for these frontline communities. None. Where was this money? It was in the city's budget trimet's budget. Well connected design and construction firms, mainstream environmental groups and other powerful institutions. Despite portland's worldwide sustainability reputation, we didn't see climate money in our households, neighborhoods or organizations, even though we lived in the places with the worst air, the poorest transportation, the fewest parks, the greatest poverty and injustice. So we built around the idea that frontline community members know best how to solve their climate justice priorities, and that community groups, whether you've heard of them or not, are best equipped and accountable to engage these community members to build climate justice solutions we envisioned. And we prioritize resources for frontline nonprofits who make a clear case that they have co-created and impactful climate justice project with community members on the front lines of climate change. This isn't just about ghg reductions or equity, about doing things for community, because anybody can talk. You talk to that. As your January 29th meeting demonstrated just fine. It's about doing things with community through processes that center their leadership, because that's the best approach to getting climate justice results. The output of sp1 versus the output of sp 13 is clear evidence of this. Pivoting to discuss other uses like keeping the 15 million in sp 13, regardless of what those uses are, means that this committee would be choosing to make decisions outside of such processes and therefore making decisions without community leadership. Substituting its ideas for community ideas, which is exactly what things were like before. Pcef decisions without community leadership weaken community power and are completely contrary to the history, values and language of the PCEF initiative. The PCEF coalition will strongly oppose such decisions. So a transportation discussion for this 15 million is simply out of bounds. To restate, our position is that the 15 million should be reallocated as already recommended. Beyond today, we welcome the chance to engage this committee and the council about the fund, its role in responding to our current budget and federal challenges and its future. We aren't stakeholders. We're your peers. We don't want to spend time convincing you that we should be at the table. We want to be spend time working together to make good things happen. Thank you.

Thank you alan. Really appreciate you being here today to share that with us. And I think that we have a lot of just difficult budget discussions to have ahead and a lot of competing needs that are often pitted against each other, like climate and transit and housing. And all of these issues are important to our community. So I appreciate you centering us again in the importance of the community input in this process.

Thank you so much.

Councilor Avalos. I see you have your hand raised if we want to move into discussion now.

I actually had a quick question. Alan, thank you for your testimony. From your perspective, what does the coalition think the role of councilors or elected officials should be?

Well, as I said, we're certainly happy to have that conversation moving forward. Right. You have unique responsibilities. The voters have trusted you to manage the entirety of the city, not just the fund. So you have to think about broader things than we do with regard to the fund. That's a conversation we want to have. But for this process, this ordinance, you've played your role. There was a process. It went through the channels that had been created so that this committee, this council could have input. So it's not as if we're saying this is our decision, not yours. You created a process that you could weigh in on, and now your role is to accept, we would say, the recommendations of that inclusive process and move them forward and preserve for another day collaboratively, these discussions about what else might happen in the cip, how we might address other other needs or challenges. Thank you so much.

All right. Thank you, I appreciate that. Just wanted to ask you while you were still up there, I have a couple of thoughts and a couple of questions. So as far as the climate investment plan, that review is not an informal exercise. It's a structured, intentional process that runs through the piece of committee with staff analysis, public input and deliberation built in. And that process exists for a reason. The subcommittee spent months reviewing implementation readiness and impact. They worked through trade offs. They debated options. They reached recommendations through the governance structure that voters approved. And I want to name something that I heard directly from PCEF committee last night, a committee member said, and I quote, we've been trying to be strategic as a committee about having our annual amendment processes and really being structured about how we revisit our cip. And all of a sudden, this council and mayor submitting concepts comes along and it feels not aligned with our annual review process, end quote. They also said, quote, we don't have extra money to go around right now. I'd like a little more clarity on why this process and how we are going to accommodate big ideas. End quote I think that concern is really important because when we introduce new concepts outside of the established annual review structure or make last minute changes to amendments, it can feel misaligned with the framework the committee has been intentionally building. When we do that, we risk undermining the very structure we created to guide this work. And I want to be clear about what that risks. It risks sending the message that community oversight is optional. It risks turning a deliberative process into an ad hoc one, and it risks sidelining the people closest to implementation in favor of whoever shows up last. That's not what PCEF was designed to be. This fund exists precisely because grassroots climate justice work did not have access to to decision making power or resources before. And the subcommittee is how we correct for that, not something we work around when it becomes inconvenient. Which brings me to the $15 million. And I have a couple of follow ups. So I guess I just want to understand what is the actual current status of that 15 million. So does it remain in the strategic program? 13 by default? Because we have not taken action? Does it go back to the subcommittee for further deliberation, or does this require a future cip amendment to resolve? And therefore, who is responsible for bringing a recommendation back to council? So just again, want to understand where we go from here based on the decision we made last time? And I know this is just a discussion. It's not an action to make a vote, but I want to know what our process is going forward.

Yeah. Thank you, councilor Avalos. And today the staff are having an all day work retreat. So they were not able to join us. But I believe mr. Engstrom is here and could answer some of these questions that you've laid out for us. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. Good morning. For the record, Eric engstrom, director of the bureau of planning and sustainability. And thank you, alan, for your remarks. I think they're I've been describing the the issue as, as one of timing and of process. The we are striving to have an annual process for considering amendments to the cip. And that's really an adaptive management approach. We hopefully are learning from each year of implementation. So the as alan described, the the committee went through a process this year to to create this year's set of amendments. There will be another process like that in 2026 and I believe in 2027. And then we will pivot to planning for the next five years. Cip, which is a much broader open ended call for discussion. And so I would as we I don't think it's a bad thing to be thinking of ideas for how PCEF might be spent in the future, and by all means, transportation is a key part of that. But I would put these these ideas into a couple different timeline buckets, like step one is what are you doing with the cip amendments that the committee already recommended, and that's been forwarded to the full council. So that's one bucket. The next bucket is the 2026 cip amendments, which we're going to get started in a few months with. And then there'll be the broader bucket. And it's not too early to start talking about, you know, thoughts about what should be in the next cip. We won't create a formal process for that for another year and a half or so. But the idea generation is not not wrong. And you may have seen the city administrator sent an email also the other day just to try to create a process to catch those ideas in a little more, less a la carte way, in a more orderly way, so that we can bring that back to the committee in a in a structured way. We know that each year in the budget process, council inevitably talks about the fund and its role. And so we know that will happen again this year. We're not inviting an open ended dialog about, you know, ideas during that process, but we know it will happen anyway. And so to create a process for channeling and bringing those ideas back to the committee, we we are trying to do that with the understanding that there's not new money available without allocating to existing programs. So again, I would see it in these different buckets of time of the ordinance. You already saw the next 2026 cip amendment process and then future amendments to the cip, or the future creation of the next cip.

Sure. But I guess I still am not clear what is happening with this 15 million that we did not pass out of committee. It's in this weird limbo I don't understand.

It's still in the. You essentially removed the the amendment from the cip package. And so it's if you do nothing else, it's still sitting in the original program that that it was in last year. And so.

So it's currently just in sb 13.

Correct.

And, but has no direction because the point was that we moved it so that it could be allocated to something else. So it's not allocated to anything specific.

It's allocated to sb 13. We just have we just at the staff level, sb 13 is farther behind in its development than sb one, so it's less likely to be spent in that program. But it's still in that program.

Okay. And then I guess what what do you all need? I'm I'm still not clear on like, if the rest of the bill went to council and I'm not sure when that's been scheduled. Has it been scheduled yet. Have you heard from council president at all?

I have not heard directly from the council president on that yet, and I was also hoping to get some clarity on when when this needs to move.

Yeah. So that's. Yeah. What like what needs to happen I guess for that and and yeah. Help me understand how we move from here to getting that 15 million working in some way. I guess I'm not clear.

I think you you can have a discussion at the full council when it gets there about whether you want to revisit your decision from a prior week or consider other ideas. So that's one point that you have of where you could make a decision. If that doesn't happen, then the other option is that you that we consider that question again, as we develop the 2026 cip amendments, it will probably if you did nothing, it would come up again, because we might flag that money as, as as not having not likely to be spent again. And so it could come up again through the PCEF committee just organically. But this time around, there might be a wider suite of ideas around it.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. Well then. Yeah, colleagues, I think that I'm curious what appetite we have for when it comes to full council to, like, engage the rest of the, you know, the council on a discussion about these things. Like do we think that there might be potential that we will move an amendment either way to do something with that 15 million at council? So I'll, I'll open that up for you all as you guys get in the queue to to think about that. And I'll leave it at that for now. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Avalos. And before I move to the next person in the queue, I just want to recenter all of us in the fact that I think that these proposals are all coming from a good place and may not have been as respectful of the process as they should have been. But we are also in a time of we're having very difficult. We're having a lot of difficulties meeting the urgent needs of our constituencies who are facing more housing and homelessness issues than historically has happened in the city of Portland. Transit lines are being cut. We are facing just a lot of needs from our communities, and councilors are trying to be responsive to that, and we all have the united collective goal of trying to address climate change while balancing that budget. So I think that we all have the same shared goals, and we should approach this conversation with that framework in mind. And I really appreciate that. Alan was here today to sort of remind us and recenter us and the importance of the process. But I just want us to have this discussion from a place of understanding that we all have the same mission and goal, ultimately. And with that, I will pass it over to councilor.

Novick a few things about the general topic. And then I wanted to give some updates and some of the specific proposals that we heard from. One thing I just want to say is background is I was looking at the original safe measure and the ballot title and the arguments in favor of it, and it all led with clean energy projects and energy efficiency projects was after that. So I actually think that the voters were led to believe that the big biggest chunk of this money would go to things like installing solar panels and generating clean energy, and very little of it has gone to that. So if we talk about the history of pdf, I think that's an important thing in terms of the process, the council in 2024, I believe it was approved a climate investment plan that had chunks of money to various priorities, including about 20% to transportation decarbonization. Now, to me, that's absurdly low, because transportation is not only 40% of our carbon emissions, it is also a much larger cost to low income communities than home utilities are. So I have always argued that we should have more investment in transportation. But having said that, we're going to spend 20% of the money in transportation and council approved that. To me, it's a big deal for the staff and committee to propose that some of that be moved out of transportation. To me, it seems like if we'd approved a children's levy proposal where we said 60% of the money will go to kids 0 to 5, and 40% of the money will go to kids 6 to 18. Then a change to that that moved some of the money one direction or the other, I think, would be considered to be a big deal. That council should be expected to weigh in on. I know that the committee and staff don't look at this that way. They kind of think that the cip is an undifferentiated mass, and you can easily move anything from anything to another. I just don't happen to agree with that. I ran for office in part on a platform of spending more money on transportation, so I think I owe it to the 20,000 people who put me first place in their ballots to oppose efforts to reduce the amount that we are putting into transportation. And I have to say that I disagree with with mr. Hippolito with his contention that this money, the pef money, belongs to the nonprofits that are put on the ballot. His statement, this is our money. I think it belongs to all the people of Portland. The people of portland's elected representatives should have a say about it. So that's the that's the background. And I think that I mean, one could argue that we could. And I also say that I'm okay with putting this, these proposals back through the process. I mean, council could decide that there's urgent matters that, you know, we should allocate the money. Right now. My understanding is that there's no danger that it's going to be spent on the program. It's currently scheduled for now because that program hasn't gotten off the ground. So what my goal is to keep the money for transportation, and if that means the council directs PCEF to figure out how to spend that $15 million on transportation in the next annual amendment process. I'm okay with that. And I solicited some ideas from specific people and entities. I told the committee that I wanted to keep the money for transportation in December, and I haven't had anybody from the committee step forward and say, here's some transportation things that we think you should consider. So having said that, I did want to give some updates on a couple of the projects we talked about. One is TriMet has withdrawn its request for 5.5 million to keep the line 19 going for various reasons. So that is off the table. Another is that there's been a discussion between TriMet and me and vivian satterfield about the youth pass concept, and TriMet is now said that they think that to expand youth pass to david douglas and parkrose using PCEF money would cost about $1.2 million a year. They don't like the idea of having to be a one year thing, so they say they feel better. If it was like 3.6 million over, over over three years. So I should also note that PCEF staff told me that PCEF, under our current rules, can only be spent on city of Portland residents, and they think that some kids in the david douglas school district are outside the city of Portland. So that's something we might have to have to address. Another thing on the youth pass parenthetically, that was an idea that came from vivian satterfield. One reason it appealed to me is that I thought that if we helped out kids in david douglas and parkrose, that would correct a kind of an historic injustice, which was the city of Portland used to help pay for youth pass for Portland public schools, but not for these these other districts, you know, farther out east. I also wanted to note that. Pbot has provided us some additional information, which I emailed to all of you this morning on the james beard public market concept. And I also asked them, I ten years ago or 11 years ago, I was the transportation commissioner, and I developed a hatred for the streetcar because it seemed to be the purpose of the streetcar was for brad schmidt of the Oregonian, to write articles every two weeks talking about how wasteful it was. So I was really mad at the streetcar. And then I heard a presentation from streetcar staff explaining that, contrary to my assumption, the streetcar was only written by rich white people, it actually had fairly diverse ridership. So I asked PBOT for an update on that. And what they told me is that currently, the street 40% of streetcar riders earn less than $33,000 annually and 29% of riders identify as nonwhite, compared to 25% of all portlanders. So I just wanted to I just wanted to mention that.

Thank you. Councilor Novick appreciate those updates. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you. Last time we discussed this, my intention, and I'm pretty sure I stated it out loud a couple times, was that if we were to make any changes, we would be going back to the committee. I was very uncomfortable with the idea of making changes live here. That would or frankly, the full council that did not have the ability to weigh in. So I'm having a little bit of a flashback here to early last year when at the beginning of our new council, the entirety of at that time, the staff this time not not exclusively, came in and said, you're here, you're going to hear this thing and you're going to vote on it, but you actually have no agency or influence whatsoever. And and then characterize it at the end of that with, but you actually have the final decision. We just went through that again today. And it's frustrating because why are we even going through this entire exercise then? That's not to say that I want to move this money. It's not to say that I don't. It's the idea that this is entirely performative. If we're not actually asking the people's elected leaders to to weigh in on it, and we should just have it be an administrative decision in that scenario. So I'm very frustrated by that contention. And I also don't think it's true. I agree with everything in that portion of what councilor Novick said about, you know, the part about the 2024 vote on the climate investment plan. I also appreciate the updates on the request. My interest is in is in looking at ideas and seeing if they are worth asking for input on from the PCEF committee, and I think that just by going through the exercise of that last meeting, there are things that I heard about, including some things I was personally very interested in leading into this, that conversation that no longer seemed like a good use of this money. I have remained a fan of the idea that we should look at the housing transfer that was recommended by the committee, but, you know, in the event that that didn't happen, because I didn't know where my colleagues were at, as as co-chair, Morillo said, we can't talk about this except in a public meeting. And we hadn't yet. If we were going to talk about transportation, I thought it was worth it to look at some of these things. I, for one, had some very strong interest in the other two TriMet options. Not the line 19 piece, not the hydrogen fuel piece, but the two pieces with relation to the max. Those were of interest to me, and I think I learned more through the process, including that as well as some of the bicycling activation pieces of it as well. But all of that seems secondary to the to the fundamental question of the. The authority as well as the the question over whether or not the council's previous direction for percentages going to transportation and housing holds or not. And so I feel like this is maybe more important to get into from that perspective, which is admittedly more of a philosophical question than anything else. But certainly I think it's worth clarifying at this moment that the intention was never to make a decision on our own, and any assertion to the contrary is not based in fact. And so I just want to make sure that that's that's a fact check that's been given out here. But I would love to have that conversation with all of you. I do think that if we were to send this to the council, it's pretty likely that there would be a change made on the fly there, and I'm more concerned about that. If we are kicking that conversation to the full council than having it here as a committee. So I would like to to consider that possibility of of keeping that conversation here until we've resolved that those two sort of fundamental first principle questions, whose authority is it? And after that, whether or not we're talking about putting in housing or transportation, everything after after that is secondary in my view. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: I just wanted to note that I asked the co-chairs of the pcf committee. I said my original idea here was that if the committee or full council would like consideration of these transportation ideas, could we kick it back to the committee to do some evaluation, do some evaluation? And the committee said they really wouldn't want to do that outside of the context of the annual climate investment plan, they wouldn't want to create a new process in between where they looked at those over the last couple of months. So I think that if we want committee input, then what the council needs to do is sort of say we want to keep the hold this $15 million out over this next year and suggest to the PCEF staff and committee that they consider certain options for it in the next cip annual cip amendment. That, frankly, doesn't particularly bother me. I think it's more important to spend the money well than to spend it speedily, but that is the option that we are presented with. By the way, I also should say that I mentioned the discussion we had before to president Dunphy, and I said that since the committee, this committee has councilor Morillo said, I don't think is going to send a consensus decision to the council. I thought it'd be worthwhile for the council to hear a discussion of all of these various options. And one benefit I think we get out of that is that I think it's useful, as we anticipate a couple of years from now, doing a whole new cip to get the members of the council thinking about how they view PCEF, how they view people's roles and responsibilities, what they think their priorities are.

Thank you. Councilor Novick councilor Kanal. Do you have a response?

Yeah, clarification.

And then a response. Councilor Novick are you saying that I just want to make sure I understood correctly that the your conversations with members of the committee indicate that they would prefer that we either do it the way they recommended it or hold it out for a year, not make changes, even the ones that would involve their input this year. Is that accurate?

Yes, I believe that's accurate. I mean, their preference would be to do what they recommended, but they definitely did not want to have an interim short term discussion of options. And I don't know actually if as members of the committee or sam barrasso said, that the the alternative would be to just kick it till next year. And since I don't think that there's any danger this money will be spent on the original program purpose, I don't of the, you know, ev financing program. I think it still would be available next year.

So I agree with your assertion that it wouldn't be spent if we left it there because of what you have described, not only this meeting or last. I do think there's urgency on literally not not everything on here, but so many of the items on here. And that's concerning to me. So we're in a little bit of a logic problem. And if, if the, if I do have this concern that if we sent it to the full council, they would be that, that it would be more likely that we make a decision without PCEF committee input at that moment than if we did it here. And if they're not interested in doing it, unless we wait till next year, then that's a concern to me too. So based on those two factors I have, I think I'm moving towards accepting the committee's recommendation and asking that we have the broader conversations. I just mentioned that that would move the conversation, and we should do that in the work session, that that's just based on that sort of logic problem that you just laid out. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal and director engstrom, I'm looking at you because we don't have to take any action today so we can continue having this discussion. It's not urgent at this time. Correct.

As long as the larger package is before the larger council and gets action on it, that there are some things in the larger package that we would like a timely resolution of. But what's.

The due date?

There's no hard and fast due date, but getting the larger package under our belt so that we can move to the next year's consideration is one of the considerations. There were also a lot of wording changes for clarity in the larger amendments that we would appreciate being in place, and I do appreciate the conundrum you have here. The I think two things are true. It's it's absolutely true that council has the prerogative to make a final decision, and you can overrule the PCEF committee if you choose. But there's also the fact that when you do that, there's some there's going to be some feelings. And so I think that's both true and that's that's inherent in this situation.

Thank you. Director engstrom, I have a few comments as well. And I see councilor Novick has his hand up again. I guess I just want to say the reason we're even having this very difficult discussion is because the state legislature failed to fund basic infrastructure for public transit and for some core things that our constituencies need. And then we had or at least I did, and I think a few few of my colleagues had a lot of contact from our constituents that were asking, what can we do anything about this? Because the state legislature didn't fund this. This is absolutely critical to my life. I can't get to work. I can't go downtown. I can't do all the things that I need to do. So I think that's part of what, you know, created all of these proposals was a responsiveness to those needs from community. But there's also this community board that was created in order to inform us about the possibilities. So I just want to name that tension there. And I also feel it would I would be remiss if I didn't point out the fact that we are having a discussion as a committee, about $15 million within the pcf fund, while a proposal to spend quite a lot more of that is going is being had in the public eye about the moda center and the revitalization there, so that discussion, frankly, makes this look a insignificant because of how much money is being asked to be taken from PCEF to do that remodel. So I just have to name those things, and with that, I'll pass it off to councilor. Novick.

I just wanted to note that we already sent this issue to full council, so I don't really know that there's any procedural way that we as a committee can weigh in further on it. We didn't schedule today as like an opportunity to offer further amendments. And having actually I'm not sure if procedurally having sent it to full council, if we can.

Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: I'm going to just spitball here for a second procedurally and say, I'm pretty sure we can. If you're saying that the the issue is the the procedure in terms of where in a presentation discussion item, not a legislative item, I'm fairly certain we can suspend the rules and change that in terms of whether or not we can forward it on a defer to director engstrom on that or or anyone else. But I'm fairly certain that when we discussed this last time, it wasn't precluding the idea of sending on a second recommendation to the full council. I don't think that was necessarily the intention. I don't think it closed the door. That's my recollection.

Can anyone check the robert's rules king over here? I don't think so. I guess I will just name two where I'm at on this discussion. I, I have a lot of strong feelings about all of the different proposals. I wish we could fund all of the things. And after having sat with this for a few weeks, I think where I've landed is that I would take the committee proposal, as is all of the things that were funded in it I had no issues with. I thought they were very good from the start, and I think that there was a need to respond to the moment based on what our constituents were asking us, and some proposals were thrown out as people were just discussing it with their constituents. But I personally feel that we should just keep it as is, and then if there is going to be a sort of larger discussion about what the role of council is, that needs to be very methodical and not done more haphazardly, because that leads to too much tension with the groups that we're all trying to work with and serve. So that's where where I stand at this time and again, I genuinely believe that all of these things are coming from a very good place of us trying to serve our communities in the best way that we can. So I hope that we can approach each other with that intention in mind, councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: Yeah, I think I just want to elevate the things that I heard at PCEF committee last night. I was actually pretty disturbed to hear that they felt in the dark about things. They felt like they haven't been included on multiple things. And as we continue to discuss the importance of community engagement and respecting committees and the advocacy, we're having those discussions on different fronts. At the council, I see the opposite happening. So that's very frustrating for me. I think ultimately it's important that when it does come to council, I'd like to request that all these stakeholders be present. Specifically, the pcf committee chairs. Again, it seems like it's a little bit unclear how that's going to shake out at the actual council. But wherever we can request from council president that we have some of those voices, that council, especially because when it comes there, it's going to be the rest of our colleagues who haven't been in this debate with us over the last few weeks. So there's a lot of context, and I want to make sure that those voices that have been coming to committee don't get lost when it gets to council, and we have to make the ultimate decision.

Thank you, councilor Avalos. And we got an update that says that because this item is listed as a presentation item, we're not able to suspend the rules to introduce any new amendments. So we'll have to be a discussion at full council. And I will work with the council president as well to, I think, include those voices that you mentioned, so that the full council gets to hear that and we will figure out the quorum rules to try to make sure our colleagues are up to date on on this discussion before it gets to full council. Councilor Kanal. Oh, did you have your hand up?

I did, I think I just want to once again reiterate that we should have a conversation outside of the scope of this $15 million and any other money that's being proposed by the mayor about this process. Because, again, I feel like if the purpose of if, if any questioning or any conversation around, maybe we should have a conversation around the recommendations of the committee on an annual basis is going to be considered a violation of the spirit of this, then we should just change the rules and have them make the decision and make it not something that comes to council at all. And I'm fine with that. I actually really am. I know that that sounds like I'm being hyperbolic. I'm not. I'm fine with that conversation happening, but I think it's it's if we're having to create this tension regularly between the idea that council has budgetary authority and we also need to be deferential to the committees, which I do agree with. As someone who's staffed committee several times, then we have to have a understanding of where that how that tension is resolved. And right now I feel like there are there is no common approach to that question. So I just want to make sure that we're asking for that in the context of the a future work session or something like that at council. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal. And maybe if we have committee of the whole that can be a discussion that happens there too. Councilor Avalos.

Candace Avalos: I think what's missing from that, though, is that there are like we have to be the final budget authority. Like we had this discussion during tiff, right? Like ultimately the council, like we can't just completely delegate final budget authority to community members. The council ultimately has to be. So we can talk with the lawyers. I just say that as somebody who had this discussion at length around tiff decisions, so there are actual legal bounds to that, which is why it's so important that if we are making this agreement that we are going to have, you know, community members have this kind of autonomy and authority that even though it comes to us for a final vote, if we're going to have this relationship, well, if because we ultimately have the final say, then I guess we can change it, then that really is not adhering to the social contract contract that comes with us delegating that authority up to the point that the law allows us to.

Thank you, councilor Avalos. And I think what councilor Kanal was saying was that, well, actually, I don't have to speak for you, but I think what I'm interpreting from what you're saying, and that I kind of agree with, is that if we are being given proposals and where the final budget authority. But if we want to question or push back on the proposals that are given to us, then we don't really have authority to make those changes or we have symbolic authority, but we're being told that everything must be kept exactly as is. And if that's the case, that's fine. But I think it just needs to be more clearly stated out loud. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Yeah, and I think it's worth I probably should have said this earlier, but I think it's worth really appreciating not only yourself, councilor Avalos, but but everybody who's trying to ensure that we're sticking not only to the, the concept and the original agreement of what the money should be spent for, but also the, the, the clear ownership of the process. And I don't mean in the sense of ownership of the dollars, but in the sense of grounding the power in frontline communities. I appreciate that immensely. I'm trying to understand how we are communicating to the public where decisions are made, and if the idea is that we're a rubber stamp, then people should not be watching us. They should be going and watching the committee more, and we should be clearly communicating that, because I want to make sure that the public has the ability to weigh in at the right time, to have their the maximum level of their influence. And so that's, that's, I think, a conversation we need to have. And I personally do not think it is problematic to say, hey, thank you for the recommendation. We want you to come back and revisit this because we have some feedback you may or may not have considered. I don't think that's disrespectful in the slightest. I also think that we need to ensure that there's a systemic way of approaching that, because if if the if the act of doing so would delay the spending by a year, I don't like that. I understand that that might be what it is, and I appreciate that. But I think if you look at this list, many of these things would have pretty significant negative impacts if they were not started for a year in the housing or the transportation spaces. So at this moment, if the if I was asked in either committee or the full council to accept the proposal, I would say we should accept it because of the logistical element alone. I think there are other reasons as well. But that to me is the thing that we can't get past is the idea that that would that would change. And I don't like that. I don't think that that's the best way of doing it. But. I would love to have that conversation. I would also appreciate what council Morillo said about ensuring that this is not just about this 15 million, but that we should be talking about the process for all the requests, in particular that that motor request at the and the best way of of having the the conversation include the public there too. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal appreciate that. Do we have any any further discussion on this item? I don't see any hands raised. Thank you all for being part of a sort of difficult and important discussion today. I think we're all trying to serve our constituents in the best way that we can, and it's just a very difficult environment to do. So with federal money not coming down to us state legislature money not coming down to critical services. And with that, our next meeting is going to be on February 26th. At that meeting, we'll consider appointments to the community involvement committee and will be talking with our planning commission and sustainability commission to hear about upcoming projects and priorities in 2026. I would also encourage my colleagues in the meantime that I think if folks have any questions for the PCEF committee, the chairs alan here, who came and testified today that we reach out and make sure that we have those discussions and that we're involving everybody in, in this moment. So with that, I will adjourn the meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee at 11:16 a.m.