The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-05-14
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
A Portland City Council work session was held on May 14, 2025, focused on budget presentations tied to the Mayor's proposed budget. Discussion covered the City Administrator's proposed enterprise-wide "core services" realignment targeting roughly 20% savings across internal service functions, with an estimated $9.5 million in cuts embedded in the coming fiscal year budget, phased implementation over the fiscal year, and separate treatment of technology investments. Presentations addressed the City Administrator's Office budget, including Portland Solutions programming, shelter site changes including the Sunderland RV site, government relations, the City Attorney's Office, sustainability functions, and communications, engagement, and equity realignment. Later sessions covered City Operations and Budget and Finance service areas, including 311, fleet and facilities, human resources, technology services, procurement, revenue collection, small donor elections funding, risk management including earthquake insurance coverage levels, and the Fire and Police Disability and Retirement system. Topics of extended discussion included the city's intergovernmental agreement with Multnomah County on homelessness services, outreach worker staffing, permitting department reductions, equity and human rights program cuts, and questions about compliance with charter language on police oversight funding. Multiple council members indicated intent to introduce budget amendments on various items; specific figures were sometimes stated inconsistently across speakers. No votes were described as occurring during this session.
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0 Keelan. It is Wednesday, may 14th at 931. I am calling a work session to order of the Portland city council. Colleagues, we have three. Really? Four, actually four groups that are before us today to this morning and to this afternoon for our budget work sessions. We'll get presentations probably about a half an hour from each group, and then have about an hour between us for questions about what we've seen in the budget, or what impacts of budget changes might be. Remember that now that we have the mayor's budget before us, we can have pretty specific discussions about what the impact of changes could be, if that's the direction you'd like to go. Depending on the length of the presentation. I'll let you know what the average amount of time per councilor would be with the time we have left, but if the presentation is 30 minutes, it will be about five minutes each. We are starting this morning hearing from our city administrator and assistant city administrator about the work within the city administrator's portfolio, which includes Portland solutions. And then the second half of the morning, we'll take a quick break, and then the second half of the morning, we will hear from our deputy city administrators, overseeing city operations and budget and finance about their service areas, which in the mayor's proposed budget are combined and have an opportunity for discussion and questions there. We'll then close this work session, and this afternoon we will hear from two more service areas. So with that, mike jordan, would you like to come up and get us started? And I don't know if he's joining you from the start. Perfect.
1 There we go. Good morning, madam president. Members of the council. For the record, my name is mike jordan. I'm city administrator for the city of Portland. As the council president mentioned, we're covering a fair amount of ground today, and we'll fly at a fairly high level. But you're going to get a lot more detail than we have at the committee level today. I am going to start off by talking a little bit about the services alignment process that is embedded in the mayor's proposed budget. You all have heard some about this already, but I want to make sure it's clear to everybody what we have assumed in the budget. And then, of course, you'll hear from andy von burg regarding the city administrator's office, sarah morrissey regarding city operations, and jonas berry regarding budget and finance. Next slide please. So to kick this off, I want to talk about some changes that we are proposing for internal service delivery at the city. This is and I'll talk a little bit about why this is a little bit different than what we would have normally done had we been looking for savings in the budget process. And it talks about some internal. We are calling them core, but I know that that can be up for debate because many people think about public safety and transportation and parks as core services for the city. But we're talking about internal service delivery here. Next slide please. You all are familiar with this. We put this out a little while back. This org chart represents at a conceptual level anyway the changes that we are embedding into the mayor's proposed budget. We've reduced the service area alignment. Vibrant communities has been moved partially into public works and partially into community and economic development. We've done some realignment between the services that are reporting directly to the chief financial officer and those reporting into city operations. I'll call your attention to the wide blue bar across the entire slide. And that really are those really are the services that we're looking at. This was printed before we had put together the whole realignment process. And security is listed in that bar on this chart. But on the next chart, we'll talk about the services that we're actually looking at. All of those there are the services and these are these are the ones that are in different, I would say levels of maturity. On a little later slide, I'm going to talk about kind of the conceptual timeline of how we want to approach this work. But these are the categories of internal service delivery that we're talking about. Next slide. In the mayor's proposed budget, you all received a communication yesterday. I think about the positions in the mayor's proposed that are being proposed for reduction. There's about 175 of those positions. 73 of them are vacant, 23 of them are non rep, 152 are rep. That's about a 6.6 ratio. That's about where we are generally across the whole city now. So the ratio is roughly proportional to where we are today. What I'm going to talk about is a second phase of reductions. And that's in conjunction with this realignment project. Next slide. The project goals are really obviously, as with everything we do to center the values of the community and the services that we supply. And obviously, secondly, and importantly, how our employees are treated within the organization and how we look at aligning their work so it can be the most productive. It can be. The big difference here is from what we would normally do in a cut budget scenario prior to transition is that we would have asked these service delivery folks to water the soup, basically get us some savings, but no big transition to do business completely differently than we're thinking about it now. In this case, that's what we're that's what we're asking. I'm asking leaders in each of these business processes not just to get us 20% savings from the business process, but also redesign it so it can work at an enterprise scale. And that redesign, I want to be clear, we've had some questions about this in the past. That redesign doesn't just include the human resource that is within the central bureau of the service delivery model. I use hr as an example. We have about 110 or 12 folks in hr proper. In the bureau. There are roughly that many folks out in bureaus doing hr related work. And so we're we will go through an assessment process of all of those positions and look at redesigning the delivery system so that it can deliver the best service possible with the resources we have. And we will look at implementing that through the coming fiscal year. I also want to be clear, we often talk about these things in terms of the human resource, the number of people involved. We're not looking at just the personal services part of those budgets. We're looking at the entire spend. So we have a lot of outside contracts in some of these service areas. We will be looking at those also. So we'll be looking at the total spend and trying to capture 20% savings for all of those. Next slide please. So here's a conceptual timeline. And I say conceptual. And it does not have dates on it because the implementation of each of these business process changes will happen over the course of the coming fiscal year. We think that the earliest of those can occur by the end of the first quarter of the fiscal year. The bulk of the changes we're targeting for the middle of the fiscal year around December 31st, we hope to do the last of them by the fourth quarter. I think that will probably be air in that hr will probably be the most necessary group as we implement the rest of the changes. And so we'll be looking at hr last. And when we get to the next slide, it will show you why or not why. But the result of those implementation phases get us only a certain way toward the 20%. During the first year, we'll get all the way in the roll up of the second year. So this really shows you we have already kicked off all of these processes. So we're in process with all of them currently. For some, finishing up an inventory and a current state assessment. So where are people today. How much of their job is toward these business processes. We are finding. And I'm sure it's not a shock to you that we have folks out in, particularly out in bureaus that are doing 20% hr and 15% administrative assistance work and 20% just coordinating work. And so we're trying to assess all of those things for all of those folks out in the out in the bureaus, we will put together a strategic plan that engages both bureau leadership and the subject matter experts. For each of these changes, we will stress test those plans and proposals with everybody once they're put together. Probably have to do some refinement before we go to implementation, because we are asking for significant reductions in expense, and because that likely will involve layoffs or at least elimination of positions, possibly vacant ones. We have to bake into that. Notifications for people. Once we identify that their positions may be reduced, those kinds of things are baked into these processes. And one of the big nuts there is the notification of employees and working with them in a potential layoff situation. Next slide please. So here kind of get you down to the nuts and bolts.
2 Mr. Jordan.
3 I'm sorry.
4 I'm sorry I just have a quick clarification on the slide. You're leaving. You said the kickoff is now so 525, but I didn't hear a timeline.
5 Well, let let's go back to the previous slide and I'll try to. This slide is conceptual because the timelines for each of the business processes is different.
6 Okay. I did hear that.
7 We look, I will say that I believe we will be ready to implement the communications realignment by the end of the first quarter, I think. And let's go to the next slide so I can talk about.
8 When you say first quarter, you mean July through September. Of course. Right. Okay.
9 Yeah. And then the next five, four, four, four groups, we expect that those will be ready to implement around the middle of the fiscal year. And human resources in the fourth quarter. And that's why there aren't dates on the timelines. Councilor. But that's the conceptual steps we will go through with all of the all of the groups. You've seen this chart before in our individual briefings for the mayor's proposed, because of the phased implementation of each of these, we expect the savings in the 2526, the coming fiscal year to be reduced because of the timing of implementation from the 20% target. And so you see there the total cut that we expect that is baked into the mayor's proposed is about $9.5 million. You also will notice that over half, well over half of those cuts we are estimating to accrue to non-general fund funds. And that's because those folks embedded in bureaus are actually working across all those funds. They're working in utilities and they're working in transportation, and they're working in permitting and development, along with all the general fund bureaus. And so you can see the balance. I want to really emphasize for everybody before I close that these are estimates, the 20% number is a target. We are redesigning the system to try and get to that target. And I can't guarantee you today that we will hit 20% right on the button. I think sometimes we might get above 20, and I think sometimes we'll be below 20. And so we are going to have to work this as we go through the year. And you can look for because of that, some ambiguity in the outcome. We will be coming back to you with budget amendment discussions through the year as we implement these. So the last thing I'll say before I'll hand it off to annie is you do not see technology on the list. We are looking at technology very closely, but the closer we look at it, and the more I think we learn from an enterprise perspective about the way we do technology at the city, is that we will shoot for the 20% savings. But I think we are going to come back to you with a significant percentage of those savings and look at reinvesting them in technology. We have such fragmented system platforms that do similar things in this city that we have to start looking at investing in technology, that at an enterprise scale, and we have to invest in a governance system that is very different than we have had in the past. So know that technology is on the list for the assessment. Know that 20% of the target. I think we were going to come back to you as we learn more about this, with some percentage of those savings asking to reinvest those into the into the platforms that we have. And with that, I'll stop. I'm plenty of time for questions, and I'm going to hand it over to annie for the city administrator's office.
10 Great. Thank you. Hello, counselors. Annie von berg, assistant city administrator. I'll be walking through the city administrator's budget for you. All. City administrator's office kind of works as the hub of running the executive branch. Next slide please. So, as you can see, our office includes a broad range of programs and revenue sources. The overall budget shows a marginal increase for next year, primarily due to the investments that we have addressing unsheltered homelessness through our Portland solutions programing. Beneath these aggregate numbers are cuts across program offices that will dig a little deeper and do some quick snapshots per program so you can see what those are. Next slide. Here we show a snapshot of all of the fte counts for all of these programs and offices. We'll go through those program by program. But at a high level this proposed budget reflects six positions being eliminated, three of those filled and three of those vacant. Next slide. So we'll start here with Portland solutions, which is the largest and most complex element of the administrator's budget. While the program took the standard 8% cut across all of those areas, the mayor's team worked really hard to replace the expiring one time funding to advance a critical initiative of the unsheltered homelessness here in Portland. This chart shows how programs nested under the Portland solutions work to provide a cohesive suite of services with alternative shelters and overnight shelter, accounting for the largest bucket of funds. You'll also notice that the enhanced service district program is moving to Portland. Solutions coming from the community and economic development service area. Next slide. Taking a closer look at the shelter services. We have those split into two buckets here illustrated on the left and right. The alternative shelter site, which represents the 24 hour pod program, and the overnight shelter program, which is illustrated on the right there. I want to call out a few things for budget programing this year. First, a substantial part of the alternative shelter program and the overnight shelter program are covered by one time funds and non city resources. There is some carryover that will be asking for about $4 million in one-time general fund will be requesting that we put in policy set aside. We anticipate some underspending this year's budget and intend to request for that carryover in this coming fall budget adjustment. Second, there are some operational changes for the alternative shelters in this budget that are different from this year's budget, including the decommissioning of the peninsula crossing site, as well as the planned decommissioning of the sunderland rv site. The sunderland site is not continued in this proposed budget. I will note that the city is working really hard on the contracting processes for all of our sites, where we're looking to trim those budgets. Given the years of experience now we have gaine. We are anticipating $9.9 million from the state and just due to timing differences with budget processes that isn't confirmed, hasn't been voted on. But we have a high level of confidence that that will come through. Finally, as a part of this package and the budget proposed just a little under $1 million for the opioid settlement funds, and that's to support 50 recovery beds at bybee lakes. Next slide please. This slide shows how all of the programs in Portland solutions, including the public environment management office or pmo, the street services coordination center, or scc, and the impact reduction program. The proposed budget for scc asks for an additional ten fte for outreach work to assist connecting our most vulnerable services to support. Particularly, this would expand our team's capacity to respond to 311 outreach requests. Work with irp to provide outreach to high impact camps, manage alternative shelter referrals, and engage around overnight shelters to minimize neighborhood impacts and really encourage shelter utilization. In pmo's budget, there is an ad package for sidewalk cleaning, both around shelters and high impact neighborhoods throughout Portland. And lastly, we the irp budget. Just a note there that it may be increasing depending on ODOT revenue, which is based on the cleaning and removal within or on ODOT property. All right. Moving on to government relations here, government relations plays an essential role working with our partners to address local challenges. They took the standard 8% cut, also eliminating one position and reducing their operating budget. The main decision making driver here was to maintain ogr programing. So the position cut within this office is primarily administrative services in nature. We will be moving those administration, those services over to a centralized team. So we will be maintaining an intact the programing teams. Next slide. Next we have the city attorney's office. As you can see here. They also took the 8% cut which translated to eliminating three attorney positions and reducing their material service budget. All of these positions are vacant or soon will be vacant. The focus here on this particular cut was to eliminate vacancies where possible and minimize the impact to support staff. Next slide. All right. Here we have the small core team that makes up the city administrator's smaller office that the city administrator and I share. We also took that 8% cut, which primarily comprised of program support, travel and miscellaneous expenses. You'll see an increase in that overall budget, and that's primarily due to the resources transferred from the budget office, which is one position that will help stand up a new performance management team the next fiscal year, and also a position from civic life that will come to the city administrator's office to help with the realignment processes, policy and program management. Next slide. The proposed budget officially transitions the city's sustainability officer and one support staff to the city administrator's office to play that citywide leadership role that was approved by city council last year. As you know, they are in the process of standing up a new sustainability and climate commission and advancing the city's vital work to address climate change. Next slide. I'm going to revisit a couple of the components that jordan mentioned in terms of our realignment processes. Next, we'll review three work areas that are a part of the realignment process, which is communications, engagement and equity. During the charter reform, we heard very clearly from community members that these are three areas that are key in delivering local government that is transparent, accountable and accessible. The final system and structure that we are working towards will look very different than our current configuration. All of these systems are being built to deliver a more unified and effective service across all of the service areas. This will not only allow us to serve better at a citywide scale, but it also allow us to be more integrated in our approach to these disciplines that are so dependent on each other. This will help us to inform, listen and meet the needs of portland's diverse communities. Next slide. Actually, I'm sorry, can we go back to that last one on the right here? Just shows a quick timeline, gets a little more specific in terms of what we're hoping communications. We are on track for an implementation of September 30th engagement equity. We are aiming for fall so soon after that. Next slide. All right here for central communications. The cuts here reflect a reduction in the operating budget for the six person central communications team. This group manages the citywide communication strategies, resources and channels such as Portland gov social media accounts and rose city connection newsletter. We prioritize retaining capacity to operate these core communication channels, which are growing in reach. As a result, communications is on track, like I said, to implement the new structure and staffing model early this fall. Next slide. Civic life for the office of community and civic life. As you can see, we met our 8% target here by reductions, primarily in three areas, which is the district coalitions offices operating budget by one, a little over 122,000, which is equivalent to 7.7% of their total budgets. We also cut the district coalition offices small grant program, along with a little under $180,000. Cut to the diversity and civic leadership program. That equates to about a quarter of their annual funding. Like communications, we try to avoid cuts to staff until we went through the citywide realignment process, which will bring additional cuts in those areas. Second, in kind of considering what these cuts could look like, this serves as a good opportunity to take a step back and reevaluate our grant programs as we create equity centered opportunities for capacity building with our community based organizations. So I'll point out, for example, with the dcl program, the diversity civic leadership program, this program has been in operation for almost two decades, and much of that time we have a fixed annual funding to the same five organizations. So while we're very much committed to the original goals of the program, we feel like it's a good time to reevaluate, reach out to a broad set of partners to ensure that we're meeting the leadership development, capacity building needs and the changing environment. This also presents us a great opportunity to better coordinate with grant making throughout the city that also, in a lot of times has the exact same goals. All right. Next slide. So last but not least, we have the office of equity and human rights which met their 8% cut target by eliminating two ongoing positions, one on ADA compliance and one at administrative services. The team is shifting those administrative support duties to other staff so we can prioritize compliance with civil rights, language access and ADA requirements. And as we work this realignment process, we'll look on how to kind of distribute and decentralize that ADA compliance work throughout the agency, not have it centralized just to one area, but really revamp our efforts across all service areas and bureaus. And with that, that's all I have open to. Happy to answer questions.
11 Thank you. Councilors. We have about an hour left for this portion of the presentation. So that is about five minutes each. And I will note that our two colleagues who aren't up here with us are online. So I'm hoping that they'll be able to participate as well. Councilor Smith, you had been in the queue, but you disappeared. Did you still want to go ahead or should we jump to councilor Kanal?
12 I hit the wrong button. I was in the queue. Thank you so much for doing this. Presentation and a couple of things. We just got your presentation at 8:00 this morning after eight. It wasn't in the queue, so we didn't have the luxury of looking through this before. And I want to know, why was that?
13 Councilor what was posted this morning was just a revision. One slide was inadvertently left out, so we added that back. It was filed within the standard time limits.
14 Was it in yesterday?
15 Yesterday?
16 Yeah okay. Again yesterday. And we have a work session today. It should be there a little bit earlier. My staff said that the presentation didn't come on board until this morning after 8:00. That being said. So I want to figure out how to level set. There are a couple of things that that are going on in this administrative budget, and I want to go back to the huge elephant in the room is, why are we currently breaking our own iga with the county and doing homeless services?
17 It's a good question. And I think the fiscal changes and the stresses on both organizations have caused us to step back from the dollars that were being exchanged in the iga. I'm I would defer to skyler when she gets here, I think I think she's playing the part of mayor at another venue, but we'll be here shortly.
18 But you are the city administrator and you should know the buck stops with you and the mayor. We are breaking the iga period. And you have built a budget around breaking the iga. And I want to know why you're doing it. The intergovernmental agreement with the joint office, the new housing department at Multnomah county, which says they do all the homeless services, and instead we have $100 million worth of homeless services in our budget. I'd say that that would make up the 20% that you're trying to cut off in fall. And why is it that you all can break rules and regulations? We can't. Our employees can't. And so you hold them, hold their feet to the fire, and I'm going to hold your feet to the fire. So don't give me a budget that breaks an iga. You either change the iga before you do the budget or you tell me why it's okay for you to do it.
19 Well, councilor, it's a proposed budget. It's not adopted. And if this council wants to change that budget to conform to the iga, you have the authority to do that.
20 No, no, I need you to give me a budget that conforms before you. That's your responsibility.
21 To conform. There is no way that we would continue the services that we're trying to continue right now, and have it conform to the letter of that iga.
22 Well, why why are we doing it then? Why do we even have an iga if we're not going to conform to it?
23 I think the question is a good one for us to sit down with the county and go through.
24 No, no, no, I don't need to sit down with the county. I want to sit down with you and the mayor because you are the one who are bringing it forward. You have done this and. No, but but I want you to say this in in public. I mean, I can't even look at this with a straight face. When you talk about 20%, why were you not more aggressive in cutting the 20% right now?
25 First of all, trying to just hack away at these systems without a thoughtful and deliberate process to go through them, to redesign them, I think is ill advised. Secondly, secondly, I think the 20% was discussed about what it is a very aggressive target, I think, to ask these systems to cut 20% of their expenses and try to maintain services to the bureaus. So we looked at what we thought was possible as an aggressive target. And the reason for the timeline is that we thought it was prudent to be more deliberate in redesigning the systems. If it was five years ago and we weren't doing redesign work, and we were just asking people to water down the current system we could have implemented on July 1st.
26 And you've been doing this for three years. So the other piece is you put forward a budget with the mayor. I'm talking about the mayor's budget to cut 63 employees from the permitting department. And as a result, if we have 63 people cut, how can we process these new 5000 permits that the mayor is suggesting that we do and to waive all system development charges when system development charges pay for the permitting, folks, how are we expected to meet that goal? Because if we fire these 63 people and if the mayor gets his wish and we put out 4000 permits, who's going to process them?
27 Well, there are a number of questions buried in there. Councilor one is that a significant number of the housing units the mayor expects over the next three years have already been permitted. Right. But waiting.
28 For those.
29 Permits to be filled. Second, system development charges do not pay for permitting staff. Period. And third, the.
30 Permits do permits pay for.
31 I'm sorry councilor. The cost of a permit is different than the expense for an sdc. Sdcs are levied against development to pay for capital improvements to systems that those developments put pressure on.
32 Like parks, like parks PBOT like. So the way I look at it, I just did a behind the napkin because you all never released any numbers relating to your suggestion. And I did 30,000 times 4000. So it's anywhere between we're losing anywhere between 80 and $130 million as a result of this initiative, which has not gone into play yet. But what I'm saying to you is you can't come before me and expect me to take your presentation seriously when you are breaking an iga, you're firing folks, you're keeping human resources on, and you're saying in public that you're going to get fired, human resources, because it's half of you all are in the, in the, in the bureaus. And I'm going to keep you on so you can so you can cut the budgets of everybody else, including yourself. And we're getting ready to get rid of you too. So that is so disingenuous. If, if I've ever seen a budget and a spirit of have no respect for employees at all, this is it. And to sit here and give us $100 million worth of new housing and homeless services, that is just out of control. You cannot expect me to amend your budget because what you brought forward is not legal, in my opinion. And, you know, it goes against some of the rules. And how can we expect that if, if, if the mayor gets his his wish and we start building like he expects and I expect us to start building to it is going to take us 2 to 3 years to rehire those folks in the permitting department to come back, and they'll go get jobs. But so you're swapping one group for another. You're saying, okay, who's more important, homeless folks or our folks? And you're pitting those two against each other, and now our folks are going to have to go on the unemployment line. Okay. And now you're saying we need you to go on the unemployment line so we can take care of these folks that we're not supposed to be taking care of? And that's done by the joint office. So that is ridiculous. And it is unacceptable what you put forward. Thank you, madam president.
33 Thank you. Councilor mike jordan. We do need to move on, but do you have any response before we do so.
34 I appreciate the councilors opinion.
35 Okay. Councilor Koyama Lane.
36 I don't really.
37 Want to go next.
38 Okay.
39 Thank you, madam president. Thank you for being here. My question is specifically around equity and human rights. I appreciate these graphs and the exact numbers and the exact fte. I believe that's helpful for us as we're getting a fuller picture. I it's my understanding that there will be cuts to the lgbtqia plus program. Can you please expand on that? I don't see that in the slide that you just shared.
40 I think jeff selby is here, and maybe he can be more specific about the impacts to the programs.
41 Hello, council. For the record, I'm jeff selby. He him pronouns. Interim director of the office of equity and human rights. Do I need to repeat that? No. Okay. All right. So the position that we are losing is a limited term position that expires at the end of this fiscal year. That was one half of the LGBTQ to us plus policy team.
42 Sorry I got a little distracted. Can you say that again?
43 Yes. The lgbtqia to plus analyst position is ending because it is a limited term position that expires at the end of this month or at the end of the fiscal year.
44 Could you please share some of the impacts that that will have, having that reduced capacity from what we currently have? I know that team is already pretty strained.
45 Yes. I mean, for a team of two people to do citywide policy work, not just policy, but also advocacy for a group of our employees that are facing a lot of oppression, increased oppression these days. It is it is very difficult to serve an entire city government with with two people, let alone just one. But we've just had to. City council graciously extended that limited term position for to end at this the end of this fiscal year. But it it certainly does have a huge impact on community and also our city staff.
46 Thank you for clarifying. And we received an email yesterday from council president's office about what our options are with some of our extra council funds and council budgets, each of our offices. Can we use some of those funds for fte? Is that.
47 You have the authority to move money around in this budget, and to pay for things that you wish to pay for, whether they're materials and services or personnel. Okay. You have that authority.
48 Thank you for clarifying. Thank you.
49 Councilor Kanal.
50 Thank you, director selby. But I do have a question about hr in a minute, so I'll start with I'll start with that one actually is the chief equity officer if and when it's hired going to be the director of oer, or are there going to be two unique positions? And sort of relatedly, I can't find these officers in the budget. Are they managers, directors? Something else? All four of them.
51 We anticipated that the officer will be the director of oer and oversee equity. That may be equity personnel that may be embedded in service areas.
52 Great.
53 And one follow up to the reason why that might not be entirely clear what you're looking at, equity officer will take over the current director's position within oer, so that is not an additional position on top that takes it. That's the same for civic life and the engagement officer position as well.
54 And then for what is the job classification of these four positions of the chief officers. Because they're not in there as a separate line in the staff listings.
55 I can most definitely get you those those descriptions. It is an expanded role because it does have leadership authority, not only just over those departments, but over that discipline across the city. But I'd be happy to give you those job descriptions. We for both of those processes, in particular equity engagement, there was a months long process with multiple stakeholders involved to create that. So I can get that to you.
56 Yeah, and I'd love to see the descriptions. I'm just curious about the classification. Are they managers? Are the directors.
57 I'm sorry director ones. Both of those.
58 Yeah okay. And then all four will be director ones then.
59 Not all four. The other two sustainability and communications. Communications. Thank you. Our manager three positions.
60 Thank you. Relatedly what is the value or sorry what is the criteria for a unit to have a deputy director? I'm looking in here and seeing, you know, three groups within the city administrator's office that have ten, 16 and 14 positions that all have a deputy director. Some of them, you know, chief sustainability officer is a manager, some we have programs like three and one that have a manager and not a director. So this also applies to director. But in terms of what's the criteria for having a deputy director at all?
61 Well, right now, specifically for those offices, all of the positions are being reevaluated. I would point to hr for exact classifications, specifications for deputy directors and their authority roles. But for all of the officers and the director areas they respectively look over, we are in the process of evaluating all of those positions. So what you see right now, I would not anticipate to necessarily be in place. Looking forward to this fall when we implement a new structure.
62 Thanks. My other two questions I have three sorry, are about communications. The first two will we see as this process continues a reduction in the ability of individual bureaus to have their own social media accounts?
63 No. What this will do, though, is streamline those accounts and create standardization across the city. There will be practitioners that maintain their ability to be very close to the services that they deliver and support within bureaus and service areas, but there will be a new standard, unified approaches to how all of those social media accounts are managed. There is likely to be a reduction in those as part of that unification effort. But no, we will still they will still the folks in those particular areas will be managing those accounts under the authority of the chief communications officer.
64 I'm disappointed in that answer and look forward to talking to you more about that. Will we see frontline staff in bureaus as specifically those that claim to be understaffed, moved to 100% doing their official job duty rather than communications? I was very happy to hear the administrator's point about those who are doing some percentage of communications, and those are not. We have a police sergeant who's doing communications, even though we have a former kgw reporter as head of communications for PPB, I think having another sergeant in the field would be very important if we are seeing, in fact, the understaffing that PPB has described.
65 Is there a question in there?
66 Well, I can share. We are right in the final stages of developing those final org charts with the functions with public safety. We have that as well. We'll be happy to share that with all of you of exactly what those roles and responsibilities are. Per service area. There is generally, across the service areas, a uniformed approach to how we're doing that. I can't speak to the sworn officer in that particular role right now, but we do have that information and will soon be ready to share that.
67 So I recognize it's a tough job. This is a big job to do. I agree with councilor Smith's broader point. I think that this would be nice to have before we're asked to vote on a budget and to have this level of detail. And I think it is the role of the staff to prepare that and give us it before we're asked to vote. The last question I have, and then I do have a comment, is what message do you think it sends during the trump administration to reduce equity?
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68 Councilor the goal here is not necessarily to reduce our work and equity. It's to make us better and stronger in delivering on our goals of equity. So this realignment and this new governance structure provides us an opportunity to take advantage of working as a city to deliver on our equity goals. The intention is not to reduce the amount of equity we're doing. It's to become more efficient in how we do it.
69 I would love to see metrics for these types of lines of business, that it's a difficult thing to do because a lot of the job of equity and engagement and fact as well, is to get other people to do things. And it's very hard to measure someone based on how often another employee listens to them. I recognize that that often leads to metrics like did you hold the meeting? Which is helpful from an input perspective, but not from an output perspective. I'd love to see some metrics developed on this and some requirements for equity engagement, in particular for the other employees to listen. Because we've seen in various parts of the city that people are receiving the input from engagement, they're receiving the advice from equity practitioners, and it's not necessarily affecting practices. Sometimes it does. I think there's a lot of good examples, too, but I'd love to see a metric that people can be held accountable to for that. So that your answer to that previous question, that there's data to back that up, because I also don't know that that's accurate. So the comment I'll make on this is I'd love to see if you're doing 20% reductions. I love the focus on contracts. I think it should be contractors first that are that are looked at, followed by managers, followed by frontline employees last in that list. And then I'll just run through a couple of things here. I'm interested in seeing from the amendment perspective. I'm interested in seeing what the enterprise services folks in public safety need to fully staff equity and engagement specifically, and depending on their needs, may look at amendments or budget notes to restore or define some of that funding in the other space. In terms of the assistant chief administrator's role, I'm interested in working with district two colleagues to restore $2 million of funding for sunderland, one time dollars to keep it open for the rest of the fiscal year. I'm interested in moving the work of engagement out from the city administrator's office to the council's responsibility. We are elected to represent unique communities and constituencies where the communication community facing parts of the city. I do not believe that voters in the charter change wanted the city administrator's office to be a filter between them and their elected officials. This would mean two new positions in council operations, in my view. One focused on broader engagement, one focused on council reporting boards and commissions, and both focused on policy around engagement as well. And it would also include a small amount of ems to do what you described on page 22 about the budget advisory committee work. I think that's really important work, and I think it's too important to not have it be in the council space, because this will be.
70 Important since.
71 We're recording amendments. I was wondering if you could be a little bit more explicit. You keep saying I'm interested in and I would not consider that an amendment. If you have an amendment you're proposing, can you do that? Because we have staff in the room who are trying to record exactly what's proposed, but not what is just talked about as ideas that would be helpful if you have amendments.
72 Another point of order. Can we read amendments into the not from the dais during a work session?
73 You're not proposing amendments?
74 No, we're not voting.
75 You're not proposing amendments to be seconded. But because we have.
76 Just different.
77 We have discussion, but we have staff who's trying to keep all the amendments that have actually been quote unquote, put on the chalkboard. And so the more explicit we can all be, the staff will be able to do that. And I think your statements I was just confused. So I wanted to say maybe reread those and then any more. Be very clear. This is my first amendment, this is my second amendment, etc. Thanks.
78 And in order to make sure everybody's on the same page with councilor Ryan's question, while we're not seconding, debating and voting on amendments today, if you put amendments into the record today, staff will capture them, which means we will have them for everybody to know what's coming so that we don't duplicate efforts so that we have that list, as the rest of us are continuing our work, and so that staff know to check back in with you to make sure that they have all of the specifics.
79 So that's a very good point. Thank you for that. I'm going to be a little more explicit here. I have said what one, two I have one left to say one, two, three, four things. Three of them are things I'm still exploring the dollar amounts of. So those are two I've already said. One is the I'm getting information from it this week and so I know I have till Friday about the restoration potentially of funding to enterprise services in public safety around engagement and equity. And then the move that I was just describing of the engagement function to the council operations function. A third thing, which is the last thing that I hadn't said yet, which is restoring funding to oer in general, but also looking at its need for a deputy director position at the same time, which I imagine would be budget neutral.
80 That's great. And that would be the point where if you're still working on numbers that our budget staff in in the room can say, hey, counselor, we will help you work on the exact numbers with that so that we can you can then read it into the record, so to speak, with the exact numbers, because we're trying to really capture everything. So if they're hearing that, I would probably expect they would probably be in the front row somewhere. And, and they flagged that so that this is a great example. Thank you for letting me use it as, as we go through this for the first time. So great.
81 We're not in a budget committee right now.
82 We are not. We are in a council work session right now.
83 Just want to clarify where I was. Thanks.
84 And then the fourth and final thing I this is not a proposed amendment, but I because it is designed to be read in I, I am going to what is the what is the preferred verbiage here. I'm going to propose an amendment.
85 I'll be proposing or I'm going to propose works.
86 Okay. I will be.
87 Proposing an amendment to restore roughly just shy of 2 million. It's 1.9 and change $1 million of one time funding for the continued operations of the sunderland safe park rv site. I looked at the math on it. It said we were told 2.5 million. It looks like 650,000 for the first three months, so that adds up to 1.95 million. Not I don't know where the other 600 and $550,000 was coming from in that 2.5 million estimate, but 1.95 is the amount that I my back of envelope math is, and I reserve the right to adjust that. If with new information or inflationary increase here. But that's the one that I am comfortable saying in detail as I am going to propose. But I appreciate the information here I am, I have been.
88 I do need you to wrap up.
89 Last sentence. I'm interested in making sure that the chief officers are accomplishing a direct, immediate thing as well as promoting efficiency and operations. I have not seen the plan for that yet. The plan I want to be clear, it's not about the people in it, except for sustainability. That one makes sense. I think they're doing great and I want to congratulate them on the work they've done so far. But I'd love to see that out of the other three. And I'm excited about, in particular, the communications plan being developed. Thank you.
90 Thank you, councilor. Councilor zimmermann.
91 Thank you, madam president. And thank you, councilor Canal, for let me just clarify some stuff. I hate interrupting, but so I we had the work session at the finance committee and a couple of areas where we the statement was said by the presenters about we preserved staff. We prioritized keeping staff that happened in the central columns and also in civic life with respect to the types of cuts that have been proposed. I've made it very clear. I think that's the wrong approach. I think that this glide path is keeping a tough situation alive for an extra 12 months, that it shouldn't, since we have been organized in this fashion since July 1st of last year. So I have some similar reservations about this. With respect to I agree with councilor Canal in the answer regarding communications, I'm looking at a memo from the chief communications officer, and in that memo I just want to note it says 80 plus communications staff across two dozen bureaus and offices. It says 30 plus separate brands, 100 plus social media channels, 450 450 plus newsletters from bureaus and programs. That is what I would classify as bloat. And it is also what I would classify as an organization who remains still a year after reorganization, completely siloed. So this is this is very concerning. I, I, I agree that the maintenance of a variety of social media channels by a variety of offices and bureaus is the wrong approach. And so because communications has been identified by the city administrator as the first round of reductions that we would see by the end of first quarter, I'm not going to propose any amendments in that section, but I, I am noting the deep need for these adjustments to be made much more quickly than one more year. I want to go to the civic life slide and talking about the dco. This is the district coalition offices. When I looked at the budget, it looks about a $700,000 reduction. But what I saw on the screen was 122,000 and some change for operating costs, and then 176,000 for small grants. Where is the other 400? In terms of neighborhood coalitions? Looked like they took about a 700,000 haircut. But I'm seeing just those few cited there, and I'm just wondering if we can help me out here.
92 I'll pull up some finance folks, but I believe that might have been the total number. But let's see. Shannon fairchild.
93 Give me a second. Okay.
94 We're going to pull up those numbers for you okay.
95 And then. So I mean this is an area that the reason I'm asking is that I'm trying to understand how the neighborhood coalitions, which frankly, in this new form, have been, I think, just really great to work with. I think that this, this model of going to a district council offices and having neighborhood coalitions is has been really powerful. And for an area of our community that has gone through a lot of. There's been some electeds have really come after the neighborhoods over the years. And I think that this, this rebranding has been successful and it's been good. And so I'm just a little bit curious about some grants here. So I'll pause until we can pull up and understand where the other 700 went or the other 400.
96 So if do you want to go to slide? Oh, for the record, shannon fairchild, budget finance manager for city administrator's office.
97 Thanks for coming up.
98 Yeah. Thank you. So for slide number I'm looking at number. It's my number 24. So the 8% general fund reduction is the 477. Almost 478,000. So of those are within those three bullets is what makes up that amount. So it's the dco operating dco small grants and then diversity and civic leadership.
99 Okay.
100 So then. There is the like an offset where we're realigning and actually increasing the budget by realigning some or excuse me, we're also. And then there's an additional 232,000 that's going over to the city administrator's.
101 Office that maybe that's it if I take the diversity. So diversity and civic leadership was part of that. Yeah. It's not been separate. Okay. The assistant city administrator realignment. That's 232 on this slide. Can you describe what is that exactly.
102 Yeah. The realignment that is a position from civic life coming to the city administrator's office that will assist with this realignment processes. Also policy and project management.
103 Okay. Thanks. I think I, I think I've found the missing money then. So given that, madam president, I want to read a couple of amendments into the record. So one of the overarching concerns that I've said has been the amount of administration, the lack of a glide, a more rapid glide path. So I think that my set of amendments that I'm going to make here, they're going to accomplish a couple of things if they're supported, ultimately they are, I think, reinvesting in some really valuable programs that took some reductions, I think in order to preserve positions, instead of preserving functions and eliminating some middlemen. So my first amendment that I'd like to read into the record is reducing. Excuse me. I want to amend the assistant city administrator budget line from. Two 392,332 to 261,497. This is a reduction of 130,835. And it's the elimination of the assistant city administrator role in our city and reclassification to the equivalent of a mayor's chief of staff. The next amendment is the restoration of the neighborhood and district coalition funds for operations and neighborhood grants, for a total of 122,760 and 175,958, respectively. The next amendment is. The diversity and leadership program, restoring and adding and adding the 180,000. That was reduced from the diversity and leadership program and moving that program into the central communications team. In office of civic life. We have an immigrant and refugee program at this time in our in our history. I think that's an area we should be increasing. And so I'm proposing to increase by one fte, bringing that total to a grand total of two people, total that program for $160,000 and moving it to the office of human rights, equity and human rights. We have a youth a youth council program that we partner with, Multnomah county. I value it. I'm proposing that that program. I'm sorry. I'm reading my notes here quick. I'm a I'm proposing to move that that program out of civic life with no change in its funding. And the reason that it needs to be moved out of civic life is that I'm proposing the elimination of the administration section of the civic life bureau, a total of five fte and a budget of 1,353,895, and reallocating those funds to the previous amendments that I read. I will send this through to everybody for the exact details, but I just wanted to signal that I think that we have a situation where we have a significant middleman, high bloat, high administration bureau, that is, we've protected some people inside city hall instead of protecting the programs that are working out in the neighborhoods. And with that, I will conclude my amendments and my comments. Thank you, madam president.
104 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Novick.
105 I first of all, I'm sorry that councilor Smith left because I had some reflections on her exchange with the city administrator. So I'll summarize that just by saying that this is the mayor's budget. It's not the city administrator's budget that we're considering. So I would suggest that if any of us feel the need to yell at anybody about the budget, we should yell at our fellow elected official, the mayor. The question I have is when you say that the cuts we're making, or you're proposing, would reduce capacity to serve disabled portlanders and reduce capacity to bring the city into ADA compliance. Can you elaborate on that and say why you think that those are acceptable risks?
106 I don't think those are acceptable risks, counselor.
107 Sorry for presuming.
108 No, it's okay. All of these areas where we are looking at redesigning based on the total capacity of the enterprise, I fully expect us to do an evaluation with some of the committees that you all sit on regarding what the highest priorities are for these delivery systems. I would say that when it comes to equity and human rights, we have legal obligations that we need to make sure that they are appropriately staffed so that we can do our job and keep our risk profile appropriate for those things. So ADA monitoring and enforcement is one of those things that happens in the office of equity and human rights. I would see us as we go through this realignment, looking at all those resources and making sure that those things that we are required to do are appropriately staffed by moving positions, perhaps not the people, but realigning positions so that those things can be done. The. I'll say, the box that the initial budget guidelines put directors in to get 5 to 8% cuts in the office of equity and human rights on a very small base, and not a lot of external means. Put them in the box of having to look at people looking at positions. And I think that's what the interim director did in trying to respond to the budget guidance. I am hopeful that as we go through the realignment process, we will look very hard at those things which rightfully could present risk to the city and look at staffing those appropriately.
109 Thank you.
110 Councilor Morillo.
111 Hi everyone. Apologies again for being virtual and camera off. Still not feeling 100% today so I'm working from home. I appreciate all of you coming here and for your presentation. Sorry. Excuse me, I have some questions for the city administrator. The first one is how did you guys select or what was the methodology for selecting the 20% figure for cuts across the board? Like why was it not 25%? 15, 2218? Are we driving towards a target regardless of what we see on the ground? Meaning, if the data on the ground shows that efficiency is in a 15% cut, are we still going to push for 20%?
112 Thank you for the question, councilor. The discussion among these business processes was what was a significant stretch goal for them when they looked at redesign, the reason that they are targets, and one of the reasons that all 20% are not baked into this budget is that I'm not sure we can get there with all of them. I wanted something that would drive leadership to looking at the most efficient, effective desig, to be able to deliver those services. And so I'm not sure we can get to 20 on every one. I've been pretty clear about that, and I've worked with the budget office to make sure that we would come back to you for realignments. Even if we make 20% right on the button, we will need to do that because the savings accrue to different funds. But but it is possible that we would come in at 18 or at 22 when we go into each of these delivery systems.
113 Okay. Thank you. I guess I'm a little concerned. I mean, I I'm not trying to make anyone into villains here. We have really difficult decisions ahead of us, but it feels a little arbitrary in some ways. But my second question is, how are you going to engage with council as these numbers change? So if we end up moving away from 20% to lower or higher, does council get to discuss and share the equities that might inform those decisions? And if that's not happening in council sessions, will your team be providing regular reporting on this? I guess maybe within the span of like every two weeks or so as things are moving pretty quickly?
114 Had some discussions with council president about how to engage with committees as these designs move forward. Many of these business processes will cut across different policy areas. So while we don't have a schedule of which committees for which questions, I fully expect to engage with the council as we move through these redesigns. And I know that there will be questions at different points in that those redesigns that we would want the input of counsel on. And if I can back up very briefly to your previous question, I am very sensitive to the fact that this feels a little bit arbitrary in in trying to set a target that that, I will say, forces the leadership of these business processes to take a hard look at the efficiency of them and how we are doing our work. Councilor Zimmerman noted. In the communications realm, we have a communications structure in the city, and this is true of the others that are based in a eurocentric view of the world. We have transitioned over the last year to a more enterprise view of many of these internal systems. And so I'm really asking the leadership to take a very different view of how these systems deliver for bureaus, but always remembering that the bureaus are and I'll use them kind of symbolically. The bureaus are customers here for these internal services, and I'm asking them to redesign systems so that they hold the need of the customer in one hand and hold the standardization and efficiency and intentionality of an enterprise approach to these systems, with the other hand, and hold them together. And that's a difficult thing to do. And we have not been very good at it in this organization over time. It is a challenge. And on top of that challenge, asking them to reduce the overall expenditure in these systems is another big challenge. So I say all of that to try and explain to council that we're asking the leadership of these business processes to do something they've never done before, at a scale that none of them have ever worked at before. And that's one of the reasons that taking this year long approach to being deliberate about each of these business processes, I think, is a prudent approach.
115 Thank you for that answer. I have just a bit more. So I guess my follow up question to that is, is that target being driven by budget decisions that need funding? I'm so sorry. My goodness. Is that is the is the target being driven by budget decisions that need funding or because you feel that the city is actually inefficient, like is the reorganization a thing that's happening because it should? Or is it to fund the mayor's budget?
116 The answer is yes. I think the bureau approach to the operation of this organization for several decades is inherently inefficient, especially when it comes to internal service delivery. By way of example, I used to run a pretty big bureau. We had about a half $1 billion sloshing around in that bureau every year. I had the ability as a bureau director under the old structure, to do just about what I wanted within that bureau, and if I wanted a service, I would create it within my bureau. And I wasn't the only one. I ran a bureau a about 6 or 7 that what I used to call the big kids, and they had enough money running through their bureaus that they could do the same thing. And so what we have is we have a set of subsidiary organizations running their own service delivery in some degree of collaboration with the umbrella organization. I find that structurally to be incredibly inefficient. And so are we trying to redesign, to be more efficient and more effective? Absolutely. Do we have a budget problem? Absolutely. So the answer is yes.
117 Okay. Thank you. I guess the last note I'll leave us on is that I'm going to propose a budget note that directs regular engagement with the council on these issues. And tentatively through regular executive sessions. I think that I've just spoken with so many city employees and their work. I know that we have tough decisions ahead of us, and I also am concerned that we're going to lose a lot of. Just knowledge, like generational knowledge that has built up at the city, and people will be impacted by these decisions, both not just our city employees, but the people that receive our city services. So I want to ensure that council is taking account of every decision. But thank you for taking time to engage with me. City administrator.
118 I hope you feel better, counselor.
119 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Ryan.
120 Thank you, madam president. It's really good to see you, city administrator jordan. And I'm really happy to see that you're feeling better. It's good to see you, too, annie. I'll start off by just saying I appreciate the mayor's hustle to get outside funding for Portland solutions. It's really awesome to see a mayor do that. Back to the realignment goals. And I also enjoyed the dialog you're having with the counselor about what I've experienced over the last four and a half years, as well. Thank you for articulating that so clearly. I'm looking for what success looks like here beyond the targeted cuts, though. And so the pain that I've experienced, at least in this area, is that it takes too long to hire somebody. It takes too long for us to make an award for a contractor and procurement. So you want to know how time efficiency improves. So I would hope that I would I suggest I'd like to see is what the baseline are on the metrics and then how we're going and then measuring that over the course of next year, the next two years, next three years, to see if, in fact, these strategic cuts to improve efficiency in the system are actually paying off. So I really would be more comfortable with all of this if I knew that we had a game plan in terms of what the baselines are, and then we know what success looks like in terms of cutting down on the wait times to hire somebody at the city. And because we all know that the bureaus built those silos out of frustration at times as well, with central not providing the service that they wanted. Would you say that's fair?
121 I think it's completely fair and absolutely correct. I've been in discussions with the mayor well, since he came on board, but particularly lately in what he calls q3 and q4, actually the first quarter of the next fiscal and second quarter of the next fiscal. His intention is that we have a set of metrics for each of the service areas that we monitor on a monthly basis. I would submit that these internal service business processes have lacked metrics for a long time. It isn't that they don't exist at all, it's just that they're somewhat obscure and buried in things like kpis that we don't really pay any attention to. I think your point is absolutely right on. I think councilor Kanal point also about what are the outcome metrics we're looking at. Those aren't easy to do with internal services. Always the ones you have noted are more kind of output metrics.
122 Maybe not.
123 Outcomes, but but just as relevant. What's the cycle time from the moment of posting to the moment of that's.
124 Exactly what I'm.
125 Getting for a person. What's the cycle time between RFP and award? You know, those kinds of cycle times? I think those are absolutely appropriate. And we should.
126 Have a bureau. When we started the permitting process. And, you know, I insisted that we had those baselines when we began the task force work, and it took about six months for us to really get good granular data. So let's get on it with this as well.
127 Totally. Remember, you're absolutely right.
128 All right. Moving on to Portland solutions. As with a group of people last night in the bridgeton neighborhood, and they had no idea that that the sunderland site was closing. And I have to reflect a bit because, as you know, in 2021, 2022, I had a lot of really large attended zoom meetings with people being very upset about villages coming into their neighborhoods. Now those same people are like concerned, even furious, that we're closing sites because they don't want the conditions to go back in their neighborhood to what they were prior to them being opened. So in a meeting, I think it was just yesterday, it feels like Friday. We had a meeting in housing and homelessness and we I asked Portland solutions staff about that. And there was it's one thing that I wish it wasn't closing, but there was no plan on what to do with that site. So I also reminded them, and I'll say this to the mayor's team, it's really hard to find space to do this humanitarian work. A so even if it was going to close the end of September, though, I'd like this amendment I just heard about. I'm hoping I need to hear what the plan is for that space, and the neighbors need to know that the living conditions, which vastly improved, talked to police when you look at crime data in that area has really vastly improved. So we owe it to those neighbors to say what the plan is. We do have a plan at peninsula crossing. It's coming together. And that was also premeditated. We knew that site was we were doing infrastructure work to build the low income housing for habitat for humanity, this one, we don't have a plan right now and there's no excuses about the port or PBOT. That's all good. I've talked to them. They're fine. Port is fine with keeping that site with us, so there's no excuse there. So I need to hear what the plan is for the sunderland area. My next question would be to say when I also was in that meeting yesterday, I was pretty aghast about the county cutting outreach workers. I still don't know what to do with that thought. Not surprised. Just once again disappointed. But I don't think we've had the conversation about Portland street response being a real outreach part of that system. Like, have we ever thought of that being part of portland's solutions as instead of public safety? I can't even look at anyone's eyes right now because I'm saying something perhaps bold, but we initiated Portland solutions to be an outreach for people who are houseless, and so would it be that hard to rethink that? My point is, how long are we going to continue to hear that our partner across the river can't function doing outreach work? And while we're at it, we have to work with TriMet, who is the largest provider of shelters in our region. Just look at max and how they're fit into the system as well. And so I didn't hear enough from Portland solutions on that. I'll end with this, I'm sure, madam president saying you're getting the hook right now aligning grant making inner city please like go hard on that. We need standards that promote accountability and results. We have such inconsistent standards all over the place and it's really unacceptable. I did bring one standard last year which passed. I can't even believe this wasn't in the books. And now we can't give out money to partners unless they could provide current financial statements and audited financial statements. We didn't even have that in the record. So, you know, meyer memorial trust that's dead, fred meyer. They have way more accountability and standards than the city of Portland. And we're spending taxpayers money. So we have to get clear on that. And I might have an amendment on that, but I'm going to wait and read mine in at a different time. I had no idea that was happening at the work session this morning. Thank you.
129 Thank you, councilor. And I think what we've said throughout the process is you're welcome to read them in at any work session at any time. So feel free to hold them until the one that you want to read them in at councilor. Dunphy.
130 Thank you. I'm actually going to forego my opportunity to talk about amendments. I just I need to address what happened earlier. Councilor Smith, I found your line of questioning and the way you approached it towards the city administrator. Deeply inappropriate. I have never dressed down an employee in a public forum like that. Administrator Smith is an administrator. Jordan is doing his best based off of city policy. Pmo was passed by city policy. All of our responses outside of the iga were done by elected officials and the mayor put forth this budget. This is not the city administrator's budget. I found it.
131 Before you go on, I hear you. Yeah, I hear you.
132 So that's all.
133 But I you know, I find it very troubling that the white men on this diocese can show a pattern of practice every time the black women try to say something, they want to talk about it. Councilor Novick told the city attorney not to answer. Councilor Avalos question three times in committee. He said, don't answer her question. Don't answer her question. Don't answer her question. And the issue is, I am trying to make a point. You are. Councilor at the you are at the end. He he attacked me.
134 Your comments to your colleague.
135 No, no.
136 No I'm still I still have the floor though.
137 This this is this, this is the issue. This is another time we all can ask. Ask the questions. When you get hyped up and you ask questions about what's going on. I don't ever see anything about you. So I don't know why you feel like it's important to boss up on me asking a really, really valid question why are we allowed to break our iga?
138 I don't disagree.
139 With you. And I actually talked extensively about this at the housing and homelessness committee.
140 I'm not on that committee.
141 Also on the news.
142 I'm not on that committee.
143 Councilor Smith I'd like councilor Dunphy to get to use his time.
144 I.
145 I will simply say that there is a way to express that we are upset, but directing it at the mayor is the more appropriate target here. It was.
146 Not, in.
147 Your opinion.
148 It's the mayor. It says the.
149 Mayor's budget.
150 Diverse voices hear.
151 Smith, please let councilor Dunphy finish.
152 We can express our.
153 Councilor Smith.
154 I appreciate that.
155 I'm just saying that it it felt like it crossed a line.
156 I asked a question. He never answered it.
157 It was more than a it was a question that was in bad faith. And you knew that you were unable. It was a question he was unable to answer because it was not his budget. That's not.
158 Your his. That is not your job to answer. He needs to say that.
159 He is done.
160 By administrator.
161 I appreciate.
162 He is the city administrator. And if you're going to. Madam president.
163 Councilor dunfee's time right now.
Procedural episode · turns 164–172
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164 Okay.
165 I did not cut you off earlier, councilor Smith, but it is councilor Dunfee's time right now.
166 So I'm next.
167 Councilor Dunphy, do you have anything else? Okay. Councilor Smith, we're moving to councilor Clark because she has not had a turn yet to speak today.
168 And I just want to address what she said to me, a point of order is. Briefly.
169 If he says something about me, why do I have to wait 15 minutes to answer what I wanted to say to the city administrator? I apologize to you if I said something to you that was wrong, but I feel like what we're doing in this budget is real, and it's hurting real people's lives. And for us to do one thing and then disingenuously do something else that doesn't mix, I'm going to ask you about it.
170 Okay. Thank you. Councilor. And I did let you respond to councilor Dunphy before I asked you to stop before councilor Clark, would you like to go ahead? Since you haven't had a chance yet to speak today?
171 Yes. Thank you, madam president, to mr. Jordan, I really appreciate the presentation this morning, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing more about the restructure and standardization. Your what you're calling your enterprise view. I'm anxious for that. Wish it could happen sooner, but I totally understand that we're going through a huge culture change within the city, and it's difficult, but we're really trying to align ourselves like so many other cities are aligned. And I think this is one of the biggest benefits that came out of charter change, and that we'll see more accountability, more metrics, clear outcomes. So I really am looking forward to learning more about how this proceeds. But what I didn't see, and maybe I haven't looked hard enough, is that any detail on how city management intends to address asset management across the bureaus? You know, I'm I know you are painfully aware of our backlog, and that's a number one issue for me. So can you speak to that for us? Because I'll I'll probably be coming in with an amendment.
172 Sure. Thank you. Councilor. The asset management proposal that was actually in the previous organizational structure that the previous council adopted back in November of 23. We have moved that that service, if you will, over into city operations. And I have we are we have brought a person to come over there who has worked very closely with camg for the past couple of years to begin to build that office. I don't think it's a surprise to anybody. We're a little constrained trying to find, or I should say, trying to find positions that we can move into new offices, but we have one, and that person is going to be working with mattie souder in facilities on building the office for asset management. So we have not given up on asset management. But as with many things, we're trying to build the office in a fairly constrained environment. So look for that. When sarah comes up to talk a little bit about city operations.
173 City administrator jordan, I'm sorry, councilor Not everybody knows what camg is.
174 I apologize. The city asset management group, it is a group of asset managers from all the big bureaus that have big infrastructure components.
175 And hopefully you're you're formalizing that into a camo, into a city asset management operation. And just to ensure that this takes place, I intend to introduce an amendment if and possibly a budget note around that. But I, I appreciate the clarification that it's going to be in city operations. So thank you.
176 Appreciate your interest, councilor.
177 Councilor. Anything else?
178 No, thanks.
179 Okay. Administrator jordan, I have a question about slide four, which is the slide with the new org chart. It looks like some of the officer level positions are moving into city operations. And some of the officer level positions are staying under the assistant city administrator. Is that a temporary choice until we integrate everything into city operations, or is that an intentional policy decision that some officers will remain permanently under the city administrator? Under the proposal that the mayor has put forward, and some will not?
180 I think it's an I think it's an evolution. I think there are questions that need to be answered around our approach to equity and engagement and sustainability that might drive those offices in the future into city operations, or they may stay close to the executive. I know there's an argument for both. And so I think the question is still yet to be called council president.
181 Is that a question? And I understand that you may not be able to answer this, but the mayor is unfortunately not here today. Is that a question that you think you all on the administrative side will call over the next year as these reforms continue? Or is that a question that we should expect to still see not called by the time we're sitting here next year?
182 I would expect I would expect the mayor and the administrator to work closely with council on the answer to that question going forward, and I would expect it to be answered by the time we're sitting here a year from now. Okay.
183 I think that's an important question for us to call sooner rather than later. As we go through all of these changes, I would like portlanders to know what their government looks like. I wondering about the position move from civic life to the city administrator's office. Annie, you briefly talked about what that person does, but what is the expansion of work that will take place within the city administrator's office that the mayor is proposing occur?
184 Yeah, right. Now, that is to kind of help offset a lot of the work that happened from, from as a result of the transition. So, for example, the legislative process in pulling together, kind of being the hub for the executive branch and the administration for all of the work going through the mayor's office and the executive office. Previously, we had no one. Right now, city administrator jordan and I share one scheduler. And now potentially with this one policy person to assist with that. So right now, with the additional duties of this new form of government, we didn't really have anybody in place to take on that work. So they would be doing a lot of that work. They would be doing project management for things we see, like the realignment components and potentially some of the city administrative rulemaking components. A lot of the big things we have coming our way, with no real capacity to do that.
185 Is that work that is currently being done by somebody else within your team, or is that new? This is new. I'm trying to figure out how the office is changing.
186 I can tell you, council president and full council, quite frankly, during this fiscal year, we have been begging, borrowing and stealing people whenever we can to help with these this work. Some of that help has come from people who are paid for by transition, and that those positions are leaving on June 30th. So we literally have very little capacity in the city administrator's office to manage projects, to deal with the new things that are coming out of this form of government. And so having a little bit of staffing support in the office is would be very helpful.
187 Okay. Thank you. I'm just like I said, I'm not trying to nitpick over one position. It's just trying to understand. Switching gears to Portland solutions, these new outreach workers, I am trying to understand if this is a policy decision related to the expanding shelters, if this is a policy decision relating to backfilling the cuts in outreach workers at the county, or if there were different drivers that led to the interest in tripling the number of outreach workers that we are paying for at the city.
188 It's a good question. I think schuyler.
189 Sky is here.
190 Come to stop being mayor and starting being something else.
191 Introduce yourself.
192 Yes, councilors. Skyler parker, director of Portland solutions. So I think actually many of the drivers you mentioned were factors in the element of this proposed budget. So I mentioned yesterday at the homelessness and housing committee, the county is cutting basically a 25 person navigation outreach team that actually has worked really closely with our impact reduction program for the last few years. The city paid part of that, the county paid part of that. And with the reduction in our allocation from fb to the joint office and with the county's reduction just in some outreach services, that team is being cut. So that's one factor. Definitely that plays into this decision, as well as the mayor's expansion of shelters and his deep desire to have an alternative to police and other first responders in the field, to really work with individuals and connect them to these services. He knows we're expanding quite significantly the number of shelters that we're providing, and he wants to provide those engagement zones around those shelters. His hope is that outreach will be able to provide some of that engagement with individuals who may need navigation to different services, whether it be a day center or a storage facility, etc. So those are a couple of the factors. I think our team is also stretched pretty thin with about five outreach workers right now. They do an incredible amount of work, which is great, but we see a deep need for adding to that team. We're also really seeing different outreach needs throughout the community, so we will partner, and I'm very excited to partner with the county on their outreach, coordination and strategic effort that they're engaging in right now. They're looking to reorganize, I think how they do outreach, and we want to be a part of that and have been a part of those discussions for about six months. So we'll continue to engage in that way. I think our outreach is willing to work with police, is willing to work with Portland street response and chat and different first responders, and they're also willing to work with our impact reduction program. So I think that's definitely an element of the functionality of this team as well.
193 Thank you. Colleagues, I want to have a few more conversations before I decide if I'd like to bring an amendment in this area, but I do just want to share my concern. I understand as we expand shelters, the need to expand the number of people we have at the city doing this work, but tripling it in part in response to the county. Reducing services is a hard sell for me. I don't want to leave portlanders without needed services, but every time we backfill a service that the county doesn't provide, we have mission creep for our work at the city and at a time when we are cutting basic parks maintenance, and when we are trying to decide how we can afford to provide the public safety that's needed. And when we don't have funding for the broken windows program that our small businesses rely on, it is very hard for me to look at backfilling county services. Thank you for the explanation.
194 Thanks.
195 Councilor is everybody else in the queue has already spoken once, and I do want to make sure that we can take a quick break before the next section. What I'm going to ask is that if you are in the queue hoping to speak again, you keep yourself to two minutes so that we can get anything else on the record that's needed today, and also move on to a break. In the second part of our morning agenda, councilor Zimmerman two minutes.
196 Thanks. I wanted to just I had a couple additional pieces. I, I mentioned some amendments in my last statement, and the amendments I read into the record do not equal the sum of what I reduced in my previous amendment. The elimination of the civic life administration. I do want to clarify, though, that the $180,000 that was in the diversity and leadership program that was noted coming out of the coalition's is that. What I guess is that. Completely eliminating the program, or is that a partial elimination?
197 It's equivalent to about a quarter of their annual funding each for all five of those areas.
198 Thanks for clarifying that. And then lastly, another amendment again, using from the money that I proposed in the cut package, the a $500,000 general fund allocation for neighborhood livability pilots, and moving that money into Portland solutions, specifically pmo, and for results resulting in up to five additional neighborhood pilots for their basic neighborhood cleaning services that we've been trying across the city. So just to note that my next amendment is $500,000 general fund to pmo within Portland. Solutions for neighborhood livability pilots to try and get up to five additional pilots. Thank you, madam president. That's the end of my question.
199 Thank you. Well done. In under two minutes, councilor Novick.
200 I apologize for taking up the council's time with this, but I need to respond to two things that councilor Smith said. First, in response to her accusation that I'm a racist, I will note that I asked the city attorney not to respond to councilor Avalos questions in public, because I think that the city attorney's legal advice should always be even in private, in order to avoid violating attorney in order to avoid exposing attorney client privilege, waiving attorney client privilege. Second, in response to councilor Smith's observation that the proposed budget forces us to choose between homeless folks and city employees, that's the kind of decision that we always have to make. We always have to decide between more money for this, less money for that. For example, when councilor Smith proposed dramatically increasing council office budgets in the context of a budget of a grim budget environment, she knew that that would mean more city employees would be laid off. That's the kind of decision we make.
201 Thank you, councilor, councilor Canal.
202 Thank you, madam president. I wanted to respond actually to your point about the outreach workers. And I really this is a fascinating conversation that I'm not really at a clear, defining point on because I agree that that backfilling a county function is problematic. I also know that when we don't have the right responder at the city, we end up with fire and police in particular, being the responder of last resort. And we've seen that fire is overburdened right now. With that, a great proportion of their calls relate to the houseless community in Portland, and that's that's draining resources that would ideally go somewhere else. And similar thing is true with police, maybe to not exactly the same degree, but we also see the disparity there where something like 50% of those who are arrested by police in Portland are houseless, and an estimated just over 1% of those in Portland are houseless. And so I think having another responder does reduce that drain, and they are cheaper. And so I'm, I'm I'm weighing that against what you said here. And because everything you said is also correct. And so I want to explore this more. And I think it's really important that we figure out how do we ensure that there is a responder that's got the capacity and ideally get the county to either do it or pay for it? I just think that's that's a thing we need to talk about. And I think the conversation around the iga earlier was really fascinating to me. And I'd love to get involved in that more too, because it's not.
203 My guest council.
204 Yeah, I know that when someone says I want to get more involved in that, it's like, hey, it's your funeral. And I get that, but.
205 Talk to your colleague over there for that.
206 Yes, I have gotten a lot of great advice on that, but I do think that that it's vital that we that we're we reopen some of those conversations. And I'm at a minute 56. So I'll stop here. Thank you, madam president.
207 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Green.
208 Thank you, madam president. And I think I might be able to do it in 45 seconds. I wasn't prepared to talk to this section. I have questions later, but I did want you raise a really interesting philosophical question. For us to think about. It is something I have struggled with, but I just wanted to tell the council where I'm at on this question right now is I'm prepared to support this element of the mayor's budget for a lot of the reasons that councilor Kanal just iterated. I think it is an investment in public safety in a way that I'm generally comfortable with. I'll also just say broadly that there going there are going to be times where we have to we do have to pick up the slack and make some pretty big swings in the city that we hope to not incur as forever costs, but that might then yield to return on investment down the road. And so, pursuant to the city administrator's observations, that it probably takes about two years to realize the efficiencies in this, and also that my district has really asked for help in this area of outreach. I do think that it will. There's a good likelihood it will pay dividends in the return on our property tax revenue down the road. So that's the lens that I'm going to be thinking through as we consider this. So thank you.
209 Thank you. Councilor. Councilors seen no one else in the queue. We do have a presentation still in this work session from our city operations budget and finance teams. I would like us to give folks a quick break. First, why don't we take ten minutes, be back here at 1123, and then we will begin the second part of our work session. All right.
210 I believe we have councilors Morillo and clerk online. So we are now at eight. So we are going to go ahead and get started. The second part of our afternoon is with our operations and budget and finance service areas, which are combined in the mayor's proposed. We'll hear again about 30 minutes of presentation and then have a little under an hour for discussion. We're scheduled to end at 1245, but we'll probably run a few minutes over. We do need to be done by about one, though, so that everybody gets a break before our 2:00 session. Mr. Berry, miss morrissey, go right ahead. Who's starting us off?
211 All right. I am starting you off this morning. So good morning. Councilors. My name is sarah morrissey. I use she her pronouns. And I'm currently serving as the interim deputy city administrator for city operations. City operations is the internal engine that propels the city of Portland from trucks to technology purchasing to professional development and community customer service. Next slide please, for this presentation, per the direction we received, the charts will show the old fy 2425 alignment to facilitate year over year comparison with what is in the mayor's proposed. Starting July 1st, we will be adding to the city operations portfolio with the new city organizational chart and will be welcoming central communications grants, special appropriations, small donor elections, fire and police, disability and retirement business operations, and the city budget office. This means that for 2526, in the new configuration, the total budget of city operations will be approximately 1.02 billion and will have 743 employees. I will also note that even though we are going through a realignment, my team will continue to work very closely with jonas berry, cfo, and his teams on all items that have a financial nexus, including grants, budget and more. We will continue to be paired, but with a shift in responsibilities. Next slide please. City operations is funded through a variety of methodologies which is shown on this pie chart. These funding sources include internal service fund rates, the city overhead model, direct general fund allocations, health insurance, operating funds, and more. The total budget resources aligned to the 2425 bucket of the programs and bureaus within the city operations service area decreased year over year by 19 million due to facilities fund capital activity, drawing on cash balances and capital asset replacement associated with the cutter garage project. For example, the cost to remodel city hall was primarily reflected in the 2425 budget. Also, per the earlier comment by councilor Clark, I do want to note that the citywide asset management work is currently run by one employee, whose position is within the office of the dca for city operations, and we are working to implement the auditor's recommendations and the council resolution to develop a citywide strategy that establishes a governance structure, decision making process, and a long term approach for meeting portland's substantial infrastructure funding and asset management capacity needs. An iterative and collaborative process to develop. That strategy has started with best practice, research and stakeholder interviews happening over the summer, with workshops slated to begin in the fall. And we are planning to update council on this work quarterly at a minimum. Next slide please. The year over year bar charts here show how funding is split among bureaus and programs. These are broken out by expense categories such as external material and services or capital. The largest bars are in human resources, driven primarily by the health fund, fleet and facilities driven by capital and technology services. City operations. Internal service funds have interagency agreements with city bureaus for the provision of services in a fiscal year, for example, that's how the bureau of technology services is funded. The bureaus are charged for services based on demand levels requested by bureaus, and rates that have been designed to recover the full cost of these services, including the replacement and major maintenance of the assets. You will also note that the increase in contingency for fleet and facilities year over year, the contingency for the funds increases in fy 2526, primarily due to the cutter garage projects bond sale and that will be taking place in fy 2526. And the project costs for fy 2627 will be put in contingency. As noted previously in the April work session related to city operations during the pandemic, as the city took on new programing, the core service team within city operations did not grow in concert. Thus, the service demand has continued to outpace current appropriation levels for these business functions, and we continue to be strained to maintain basic service levels while trying to comply with updated policies, state and federal laws, as well as evolving bureau needs. Next slide please. In developing the proposed decision packages, city operation leaders evaluated business needs and worked to ensure that critical programing could continue, while proposing reductions in areas that would have less of an impact on our overall on our overall functionality to provide services to bureaus. The majority of our reductions are within the office of city operations, so we have the reduction of the strategic projects and opportunities team due to the completion of the transition project, a fleet of reduction and technology services system reductions. The major adds are for the following one time resources. So an upgrade to the city's sap system for employee central and time and payroll. Sap, which is our enterprise resource planning software, is beginning to end. Support for human capital management hcm module. And we've started the work to transition to a new platform by 2027 and are now in phase two of the work. And then we're also recognizing the piece of grant award for the collaborating for climate action project that will be used to support capital improvements for fleet electrification in the new cutter garage, as well as system upgrades to various city facilities throughout, hvac improvements, as well as lighting improvements and a workforce development project with Portland community college. Next slide please. I apologize for the incredibly small font. It shows better when printed, but I did want to ensure that you saw all of the decision packages for city operations that were included in the mayor's proposed. These are primarily the same reductions with the addition of the enterprise efficiency reduction that kay jordan spoke about earlier, related to core services realignment that were presented to council at the work session on April 2nd. So I'm not going to go into great detail, but wanted to ensure you all had that available. Next slide. We are now going through each program within the current alignment of city operations in more detail. So 311 we did not take any cuts to the program. We do have two ads. So one is receiving $300,000 in funding from pca for two positions to provide information intake and customer service for the pca funded city program, such as cooling Portland, which aims to provide 25,000 ac units to portlanders over five years. And we are requesting an ad for $211,000 for 24 zendesk licenses and 1.25 additional 311 customer service staff to help with constituent inquiries for both council as well as the executive offices. Next slide. Fleet and facilities I spoke about this briefly, but we did complete a fleet reduction exercise where we identified over 130 city vehicles across ten bureaus that were driven less than 1000 miles a year. That's a little under 4% of the city's total fleet. This is estimated to generate 1.6 million to the general fund. And then also we are shifting the cost of operations maintenance for the sears building to Portland solutions. That's at 700 or $7500 cut. So that's going to Portland solutions, as they are now using the sears building for office space. All right. Next slide please. Human resources, we took limited cuts in human resources to ensure they could comply with legal requirements. We are taking a reduction to an administrative specialist position. We also have a series of carryover packages from the spring technical adjustment ordinance. This includes additional funding for the time and payroll project as well as class comp studies. So we're doing one for protech and cpp. We are expecting those to be completed by June. Once those are completed, we will begin a class comp study for afscme. We also have additional one time funding for the summer works program, about 750,000. That will bring the program total to a little over 1 million for this upcoming fiscal year. Next slide please. No substantial changes to the budget. We didn't ask for any cuts. We do have a series of carryovers that were in the spring technical adjustment ordinance for the three required programs I will flag. You will see a decrease in procurement year over year. That difference in the bar chart is the coep program. So that funding is accounted for in a sub fund. That's reflected here in contingency and due to fewer construction projects that fund the program, our current forecast does have the reserve balance drop down significantly in fiscal year 2627. So we need to make sure that we are doing a reevaluation of this program. We are working with the public works service area as well as prosper, to determine future programs and how we are going to make sure that program stays supported. Next slide please. Technology services. As a reminder, tts, the technology bureau is 100% cost recovery. So the cost of services must be fully recouped through interagency rates primarily charged to city bureaus. We took the total of 8% reduction in the service area through a multi-tiered cut package, and we proposed options that would reduce our total costs through various programs and efficiencies. So, for example, we contracted with a firm called wireless watchdogs to evaluate cell phone usage and adjust upwards to 1800 plans and real time for cost savings. We estimated about 1.3 million by the end of the fiscal year, but so far have already saved 1.5 million and will continue using this service. We are reducing two fte, which are both currently unfilled, and we also have a series of efficiencies which includes a license, reductions in certain subscriptions, de-duplication of tools and applications, lower negotiated contracts, and a reduction that I spoke about earlier in the printing and distribution position. Next slide please. Integrated security. So for the additions we are asking for $160,000 for the turnstiles at city hall on the fourth avenue side. Those are past their service serviceable lifespan and need to be modernized. And then again, the we spoke about this at our last session, but instead of having one off request for counsel related to security, we are asking for a ongoing package of general fund for counsel protection services for all 12 councilors and the auditor's office. And so this is going to help eliminate unpredictable costs, create fiscal stability and ensure continuous protection without the need for repeated adjustments to security spending. Next slide please independent police review to ensure compliance with the doj settlement. No cuts were taken to the program. No additions were made. They plan to continue work and coordinate with the efforts of the office of community based police accountability as the board director and service provisions come online in the next year. And next slide, please. And the office of community based police accountability. So also to ensure compliance with the doj settlement, no cuts were taken by this office and the office of community based police accountability plans to establish the board, hopefully in the next few months. Hire a director, hire staff and see service provision come online. In fiscal year 2526, I will state that the resources shown here. So we have the three buckets for the oversight system to comply with the measure of 5% of the police bureau's annual budget. So we have in general fund 2.1 million for the office of community based police accountability. We have 3.5 million for the independent police review. And then also we have 10.4 million in a subfund that basically accounts for the total of 16 million to meet that 5%. And with that, I will either turn it over to jonas or take questions. Council president.
212 Let's get through the full presentation.
213 I think we'll have a fair amount of questions afterwards.
214 Thank you, council president and councilors. For the record, jonas bieri, deputy city administrator of budget and finance and city's chief financial officer and after July 1st, will just be chief financial officer. The budget and finance service area, which we're going to talk about in the context of budget here today, includes smart and committed business professionals providing services citywide. We're leaning into the multiple realignment efforts to get tighter and to support those efficiency efforts that were discussed earlier. I will say up front, I'm looking forward to realigning services, as d.o.j. Mentioned, with some functions, moving to the city operations service area to emphasize and support more efficient and centralized delivery models. Also, this organizational shift will allow the city's core financial support systems, accounting, public finance and treasury, which includes investments, debt and banking, revenue collection and risk, which is insurance and claims will allow those core systems to focus on financial management and citywide financial leadership. Next slide please. As mentioned, the data here is presented in the old or current fiscal year 2425 alignment. Under the new alignment, the smaller office of the cfo with those four groups I just described will have a much smaller budget, a total budget of approximately 276 million and total employees just over 200. Next slide please. Major funding sources. The pie chart here shows the primary funding sources for the service area, including debt proceeds and interagency charges. I'll note that the beginning balance includes multiple fund balances and contingency within five funds. The general fund, fpd and our fire and police disability and retirement grants fund, risk fund, and worker's comp. Also note that that very large dark blue bar is the fpd taxes collected through that system. The total budgeted resources in these this package of the budget finance service area increases in 2526 by approximately $26 million total, largely due to increased interagency revenues collected from customer bureaus and increased collection of that dedicated fpd in our property tax dedicated to funding of that system. Next slide please. These charts, as you saw in the prior section, show how the funding is split among the larger bureaus and programs. Not surprisingly, the largest bars here are in the fpd and our system, and the revenue division is those reflect the much larger buckets of funds coming in and out. We'll also note that the kind of collected group on the left side of each of these to bar charts, the cfo and finance orgs category gathers up city budget, office, business operations, grants and small donor elections, which are moving to city operations and accounting and public finance and treasury, which will stay with the cfo. As you've seen in the prior presentations today. Some of these here are a little bit unusual in the service area due to transfers coming in and out. I'll flag in particular, there's what appears to be the light blue bar under fpd appears to be a very, very large amount of ems. That is actually the payments out of that system. So the payments going out to members of the system are reflected budgetarily as ems, with the exception of inflationary increases and one very small increase to implement a new requirement established in 2024, which we'll show on a slide in a second. All of the services within this, within budget finance are either unchanged or reduced. As I've noted for this council previously, reductions to funding for financial services does limit our ability to be proactive, to be transparent, and to be responsive to requests, and increases the risk of financial inefficiencies, all of which negatively impact bureaus and services citywide. However, I'm expecting that the enterprise efficiency work will lead to future adjustments in many of these areas. And what I really hope is that that city citywide realignment process promotes the same or hopefully better financial service outcomes under a more efficient citywide cost structure. Next slide please. I'll go into each of the service areas very briefly. But just to highlight some of the key key reductions here for fiscal 2526, the direction that was provided to budget and finance managers was, I asked to see what reductions would look like without limits. So without putting a numerical number target, we knew the cut target was 8%. But I would ask, can we look at what we could feasibly reduce without breaking the system? We then used that information to have fairly robust discussions about near-term long term costs and impacts, including potential equity related impacts. To develop a final list of suggestions, all of those suggestions, or those that led to a package of suggestions that were all in the February city administrator recommended budget package. All of those carried forward into the mayor's proposed budget as well. So no changes to any of these from what we've previously presented. So what follows are that same package of reductions was also presented to you in April. Second, I'll quickly walk through and highlight some key year over year changes. One quick update on this slide the amount for small donor elections here is accurately reflected as 113,000. In the presentation earlier this week to finance committee. That was mistyped as a as a larger amount. So just wanted to flag that this is in fact the correct amount. Next slide please. So to move quickly through each of the key programs and bureaus, starting with city budget office, the primary change here is a reduction in staffing elimination of two positions, both of which are currently vacant, and the transfer of a performance management position to the office. I'll just flag here, as we're currently all experiencing, budget development is among the largest, most important and emotionally charged annual efforts that we undertake as a city, and I appreciate the support and respect that this council is showing to our budget professionals who are doing everything humanly possible to support completion of that work. Over the next five weeks, we'll also flag, while we sometimes talk about a pause from rrc, we also talk about the 18 month annual budget cycle. We will be immediately beginning conversations about how to improve that process going forward, starting as soon as we put a pin in this year's budget cycle. Given the two eliminated positions are currently vacant and the budget functions are included in the current citywide efforts around enterprise efficiency, we're hoping that we can continue to maintain current levels of service from the city budget office despite these reductions. Next slide please. Small donor elections funding for this program is spread over a two year window, so funded at about the same amount for let's say year one, year two to conform with a larger expenditures during the election cycle years, which will be next year. The proposed reduction here is essentially aligned to the 8% target. And this reduction will have two outcomes a slight additional reduction to potential match capacity for participants in the program in future election cycles, and reduced ability to use casual staff to support periods of high work activity. On the staffing side, there's potential to partially support that or offset that impact by temporarily using staff from the grants management division. But of course, that also has trade offs by impacting the work of the grants team during that window. But but something we think is manageable. Next slide please. Revenue division primary reduction here is allowing two limited term positions to expire. While this does produce ongoing budgetary savings, it also reduces the division's ability to collect revenue and to respond to customer service requests. I'll also take this moment to just provide a reminder that there's an administrative burden and cost to implementing nearly any change to revenue related legislation, and I appreciate all of you for actively engaging the revenue division as new revenue concepts are considered and developed. Next slide. Public finance and treasury. So this is the bucket that handles debt management, investment management and the city's banking relationships. And there are no substantial changes to this this small group. Next slide accounting. Similarly no substantial changes to the budget, though I will flag here that the centralized accounting division, which also relies on a support system of accounting professionals embedded within bureaus citywide. This is another area that is woefully thin on staffing and I hope will benefit from the upcoming enterprise efficiency work. Next slide fire and police disability and retirement. Again, no material changes to this budget. As I mentioned earlier, nearly all of this program is funded by the dedicated sfpd and our property tax, as shown in the light blue box. The system is also partially funded each year by a short term borrowing to address cash flow requirements between July 1st and when the system collects the November taxes. So there's a little bit of a cash flow gap there that's addressed annually through through a borrowing. We expect that to be authorized as part of the package of 2526 budget actions. Next slide please. Grants. And we're including special appropriations here. Two reductions within this bucket, an 80,000 reduction in external material and services, which is used for grants related training. And then a small reduction, a small percentage reduction in grant amounts amounts to certain grants distributed by the city. In response to this question asked at finance committee, the reduction will impact 12 total grants at a 5% reduction from the inflated base amount, which in most cases results in an actual year over year reduction of approximately 2% to those grants, so 2% lower than they were in 2425. There is one grant amount that's reduced by 25% to better align with the actual annual expenditures that are spent through that organization. Slide. Next slide please. Risk management. So insurance and claims this is the one significant cut here is a reduction to the city's excess earthquake policy, which will reduce the city's combined total earthquake coverage from 75 million total to 60 million total. So reduction of 15 million in that excess policy. For a little context, we asked the risk team to review coverages, all coverages, to identify any potential cost reductions that could be made without unreasonably altering risk to the city. This is the one policy that was identified as as a comfortable under that that guidance. Next slide please. Business operations. Lastly we identified a handful of staffing adjustments, including eliminating two vacant positions in the business operations division to tighten up while maintaining our ability to deliver current services. The impact of these reductions will limit the ability of this group to respond to new service or information requests, but again, hoping the enterprise efficiency efforts will provide some space to realign service delivery resources and expectations. And with that, I believe we're open for questions. Thank you.
215 Thank you both very much for those presentations. Colleagues. We have about an hour. That is five minutes apiece. None of us, myself included, did a great job on that last time around. But I think we can this time. Councilor Green. Why don't you kick us off?
216 Thank you, madam president, and thank you to both of you for presenting today. Can we go back to the slide in the city ops section on there was a there was an element of the sap upgrade. There was a couple million dollars there. I guess sap.
217 O on sap on the payroll and time. Yeah. Project for employee central.
218 Yes, yes.
219 So I'm going to have ron zito who our deputy director for human resources, speak.
220 To that. Thank you. Yeah.
221 Good afternoon. Councilors. For the record, ron zito, deputy director of bhr.
222 Thank you. Ron, my question is just to clarify, I know that the mayor was intending to modernize payroll systems and sort of make them all the same, more or less, across all the bureaus. There are some bureaus who have an antiquated system, such as fire and police. Does this pick up that modernization package?
223 I don't believe it does. This is really related to sap, which is our human resource information system. It's approximately 16 years old. It's going to be no longer supported by the provider in a couple of years. And so this is really focused on that system.
224 Okay. So then those other costs that the mayor's talking about must be embedded in those bureaus.
225 Yeah. And so I, I would say councilor Green, I think we've recognized the need to improve our payroll system for those bureaus. We are both in the enterprise efficiency system work in terms of realignment, identifying what gaps exist for specific functions. I would say payroll is one of those. And so we are working both to improve the system that we have in place, make sure that it's updated with all the current technology so that we can continue on our payroll cycle, and at the same time identifying those gaps. And then we will come to you with because we will likely need resource if we are going to modernize those systems themselves. And so that will come to the future. But we need to put together a project plan for that.
226 Okay. That's that's very helpful. And I just want to express support for this. I think it's not often seen, but it is really costly and potentially risky to continue with legacy software. So it's never comfortable to throw $2 million at a vendor software package, but it might be $10 million over a course of a couple of years if we if we don't do it. So expressing support for that. I do have a question about the sears building, because you mentioned that I was stationed there when I was in the army. And I think part of the reason why it was decommissioned is it was full of asbestos. Has that been abated? Do you know?
227 And I would ask if sky is still in the room, the sears building, how you all are using it?
228 I councilor. Director, Portland solutions. So the sears building is on the property where we have the Multnomah safe rest village. We use it for some case conferencing, but we don't have people who like, stay in there. And we also have signs up to make sure people aren't using the water, for example.
229 Okay, I thank you. I'm a little uncomfortable with that just because it's full of leaded pipes and asbestos. So I, I think that we need to think about if we're going to continue to use that as part of this longer term space, we need to think about whether that's appropriate and whether we need to put be prepared for a technical accounting adjustment in the next fiscal year to address that, because I don't want our clients served there, and I don't want our staff being exposed to those those issues wasn't good enough for our soldiers. So I so I wonder why, you know.
230 Yeah. Councilor, we did have I'm sorry. I think facilities might be better responding to the processes that they went through. But different folks who examined the site and because we weren't having people kind of overnight and the pipes weren't being messed with at all, they actually thought it was safe just for folks to use during the day. And the asbestos isn't being agitated in any way. So they did think that was okay. I do think longer term, that site, that building should be demolished and used for something else.
231 Okay. That's that's affirming. Thank you. Yes, I'll stand down on that issue. I have a I have a comment. Really question about procurement. And I just want to sort of be upfront that I'm not I don't want to beat up on staff, and I want to sort of recognize that everyone's trying to do their job and save the city, protect the city from risk. But it's relevant to when we talk about transformation of our enterprise. I just have an anecdote to share. For two months, I've been trying to acquire a pretty standard vendor product called implan, which is an economic impact analysis tool, and that has been difficult. And we're basically told we have to go through a third party vendor, because I think our procurement team is interpreted this to be sort of a five year potential contract. It's a one year contract. But because oftentimes software licenses are renewed multiple times, that's being sort of extrapolated to council offices. But my term is only two years. And I think we need maybe have a discussion. Maybe there's a potential budget note in here to sort of formalize this. But looking at our procurement policy to make sure that we're we're rightsizing it for the different parts of our enterprise. And I think council offices, I mean, we've got a built in safeguard, which is that, you know, the process is going to do a records request on all of our pcard transactions. And so people are going to know what we're spending our money on, and b will be held accountable on that piece. I understand sort of trying to think about the life cycle cost as a potential five year piece, but that is now raising the cost of this to my office and to the city as a whole. And so it's not a huge cost, but it is an example. And I think that there are probably other areas that we can explore. So I would just urge support on on taking a look at that. I know that if I, if I want to buy a couch, it's thousands of dollars when it could be a couple hundred dollars. And so as we're trying to find all the, the money in the couch cushions, that's something I hope we can look at.
232 1000 couch cushions.
233 Thank you. And then so that's it. On on ops. Just very quickly on budget. Jonas, there's a proposed addition for $50,000 to support resolution 37 664, which I think was passed last year, to say that if a council action is brought, we need to have an impact analysis done by cbo. In terms of new taxes or fees. Is that what that is for, 90%?
234 Correct. So yes, past by passed in 2024, which directs that any new revenue tax revenue proposal, whether it's well, if it's generated by council that it undergoes an analysis by an independent party. And so that fee would that additional cost would, would allow us to contract with an independent entity to provide that analysis. It also provides resources that if that that proposal comes externally to the city, that the city contributes an amount of resource for an optional for the sponsor of that external proposal to also do that, that analysis.
235 Do you think $50,000 is appropriate to resource that.
236 We don't know? We think that's enough to cover probably two requests, such requests a year, it might be enough for one. We'll see when those come in. I will note that it does not apply to things that are like renewals or expansions. It's for the way it's written. It's for new, you know, brand new types of things. So we will learn as we go. What we'd like to do is the appropriation does is allows us to actually get somebody under contract. So we have somebody in the queue to do that work when and if needed.
237 Okay. Thank you. I'll just note that the other side of that resolution puts the same mandate, which is unfunded, to prosper Portland, to evaluate all of our actions in terms of economic and real estate development. And so if we want to have our actions move forward in any reasonable time frame, we need to just be clear eyed about what we're asking these bureaus to do with the resources that we have to do it. So I think there's significant risk with that current resolution language. And I understand maybe the governance committee is bringing forward potential code change on that on that end. And I'll look forward to that conversation. Oh.
238 And councilor, just really quickly, on the technology procurement, I do want you to know that we are working on technology procurement, strategic improvements in partnership between bts and the procurement office, recognizing there is a challenge there. And then additionally, we are when we're doing the enterprise realignment work, for example, for procurement, we have about 44 staff in procurement. Currently, there's about the same amount in other bureaus across the enterprise. And so we do think that making sure we're identifying those and then really looking at function and form is going to help us increase capacity and hopefully be able to procure in a much quicker timeline. So thank you for that comment, though.
239 Thank you for adding that further clarity and for your service to the city. And I think that concludes my comments.
240 Councilor Kanal.
241 Thank you. I'm going to ask a few rapid fire. So if you could just try to keep it brief because I got a lot today. What impact does this budget have on 311 operating hours and which program on page 137 is 311. Where where does that fit.
242 Yeah. So 311 is not changing its operating hours. They did not take a cut. There was a proposed decision package to have three one one hours cut as part of the guidance. But based on the need in the community, we opted to not include that decision package so they will stay the same.
243 Great. Does the money show up as an interagency into fire and or police and then an expenditure there? Or is this money completely separate from the fire and police budgets?
244 Yeah. Good question. It's completely contained within the fpd in our system.
245 So it does not show up anywhere in the budgets for fire and.
246 Police, not to my knowledge.
247 Thank you. Did you reduce the earthquake insurance policy for budget reasons only or were there other reasons? And if so, we can talk about what they were offline. I just want to know if they exist.
248 I would say it's predominantly for budget reasons.
249 Got it.
250 How much of the $113,000 cut to small donor elections was matching funds, and how much was it?
251 I don't have an answer to that question. We can follow up follow up with you offline about that.
252 Great.
253 All right. Getting into slightly more philosophical, I have three left philosophically, do you think that the transition is over? I understand that the question was about having spot go away, but my personal thought is that the transition effectively ends next year after we have a full budget cycle. That isn't us reacting to the old mayor and commission's budget guidance. Can you speak to that and why that makes sense?
254 I would say the work that was the focal point of the transition team has ended with the onboarding of this council, and that the work has shifted in terms of scale. So I don't for that body of work and that scope. I do think that work was completed when you all took office.
255 Okay.
256 Second to last question, cbo has 18 total fte has a director and deputy director has 101 fte. A director and a deputy director has three director positions. Fleet and facilities has one, even though it has 150 employees, fpd has 18 fte, a director one and a and deputy director one. My question is why does fleet and facilities, a bureau with 150 staff, only have a director, while smaller offices like fpd are pdr and cbo, which have less than 20 staff, have both a director and deputy director.
257 Sorry, I think that's a great observation. Fleet and facilities became a bureau last year, so we are still working to basically restructure and look at the fund, basically look at how that is structured. Overall. Maddie suitor is currently director. We are working with her team and bhr on looking at what that needs to look like in the future to ensure it is successful. They are also getting substantial funding through PCEF and the electrification of fleet, so we will likely be changing changes in that organizational structure. But I will say part of that is because they became a bureau last year, and so we didn't simultaneously change the structure, but we will be doing that in the next year or so.
258 Will you also be looking at getting rid of deputy director positions in the bureaus that have ten staff?
259 I think that's part of the conversation with span of control. And I will say for the functions that the core service realignment is looking at, that is part of the conversation.
260 Thanks. Okay. Last question.
261 Question charter section 2-1004 says, quote, funding for the board shall be proportional to no less than 5% of the police bureau's annual operational budget. That's referring to the community police oversight board. I emphasize the words the board, not the general idea of police oversight. That is, the full text code defines the community board and the office of community based police accountability as a staff surrounding it. That's what shows up in the budget. You budgeted 2.1 million for that, which is fine. You budgeted a remainder as part of a set aside. Philosophically, that approach makes sense. My concern is with the $3.5 million you put in for ipr under the board budget, unless ipr is going to be a sub agency under the board, which I would argue requires consent from the board's membership, this appears to be patently against the charter's text, and I'm frustrated that in a budget that has gone through so many steps already that we're still here and we might need to amend this, I don't believe we should have to amend this. I believe that the budget proposals that come to us should have to comply with the law before they come to us. Do you have a response to that? I guess is my question. I'm I'm frustrated with this.
262 And I hear you councilor. And so we received the legal guidance for that structure, and heidi can speak to that.
263 Good afternoon, council president. Council. Good to see you all today. Heidi brown chief deputy city attorney and city attorney's office. In looking this over, as we were looking at the budget for ipr, looked at the language in the in the charter, which talks about the mission, which is to independently investigate Portland police bureau sworn employees and supervisors thereof. And then it goes on. But that part of that investigation is the same work that independent police review currently does. And the intent is for that work to transition from the independent police review to the oversight system. In the settlement agreement with the department of justice, the u.s. Department of justice, we agreed that the independent police review would complete its work. So as they complete their work, the oversight system will then take on the new cases. But the same allegations of misconduct. So based on that, the reading, was that the language I read this to be that the language would allow, given the purpose of ipr, is the same purpose as the oversight system.
264 So I'll just note that that you pulled that piece out from charter section 2-1001, but it follows two imposed discipline as if determined appropriate by the board, which is outside the scope of ipr's powers, and follows after that to make recommendations regarding police practices, policies and directives to the PPB and with a primary focus on community concerns, which it later clarifies that those recommendations would be voted on by council should the police bureau not accept them, which is also outside of ipr frame. So of the three things that notes as the mission of the board, two of them are not ipr within ipr powers. So I think it's a little bit narrowly focused to just look at the first of those three things. This this is money that should have been found somewhere else and not under the charter defined text of the 5%. And of course, councilor Kanal that is that is in council's prerogative. I do read this as saying that part of the job of the oversight system and part of what the ocpa will do, the office of community based police accountability, which is within the oversight system, is to do the investigations. Then once those investigations are done, those go on to the board for consideration. The ocp is part of the oversight system and assumed part of the funding.
265 So that part makes sense.
266 And that's where I felt like that. It made sense to say that because the ipr is also doing independent investigations, and the ocpa will do independent investigations. While that transition is happening, it made sense that it would fall under this language in the charter. So of course.
267 I'm not I'm not contesting the conceptual or your legal guidance. You know, I think very highly of you and, and your office on this. I do think from a budget perspective, this should not be something that the council has to do. We should not have to amend a budget that was proposed to us in order to comply with a very obvious, plain text reading of the charter. And in conclusion, madam president, I'll just reread that funding for the board shall be proportional to no less than 5% of the police bureau's annual operational budget. Thank you.
268 Thank you, councilor, councilor, councilor Smith.
269 Thank you, madam president. Good afternoon. Heidi, you may have to stay up here for a second.
270 Oh, I'm sorry, councilor Smith. My apologies.
271 A couple of things under the grants, I'm not clear exactly how much money was allocated to the general fund. Was that 804 804 million? For 25, 24, 2526.
272 Councilor Smith. We'll see if we can get someone in the room who has that answer for you. I'll keep looking as well.
273 You're not sure?
274 Not off the top of my head, but we'll.
275 Okay. I know you gave us some slides earlier, but I didn't it they weren't added up. They were in a circle. Other question. Last month we found out that someone had taken $6.7 million out of our fraudulently. Basically saying that they were one of our contractors. Are you familiar with what I'm talking about?
276 Yes, ma'am.
277 That's it was 6.7, correct?
278 Correct.
279 So have we put that 6.7 back into this budget? 2526. Does it reflect because the article said that we got the money back, but did we actually get the money back yet?
280 I will refrain from providing any details based upon the advice of the city attorney and ongoing legal action related to that, I will answer that this budget does accommodate our expectations around those dollars.
281 So you're saying it's there and we can. What I'm trying to figure out is if there's another 6.7 million that's that's lying around that is not reflected or baked into this particular budget. That's an opportunity for us to appropriate those funds.
282 To answer that question. There is not an additional 6.7 million that will that will be available.
283 Okay. And I don't know if skyler left. Good afternoon counselor. How are you doing. So where is the $31 million that we give to the joint office.
284 That is in fb's budget? I like to.
285 Have you introduce yourself.
286 Oh, sorry. Skyler barker, director of Portland solutions. Counselor, that it's actually it's going to be a little less than 31 million, but fb is going to present on that this afternoon at your work session.
287 They're going to present. Okay. Thank you.
288 And I'll be here for questions then too. Absolutely.
289 And the reason why I called heidi back, because there was some concern this morning that I had in regards to how we can legally budget for something that's opposite of what we put into an intergovernmental agreement and the intergovernmental agreement with the joint office says that they do the homeless services. And I want to find out, can we legally. Can we legally do homeless services at the city if we have an iga that we agreed to? That is totally opposite.
290 For the record, robert taylor, city attorney, the. We believe giving that money to the county under the iga is contemplated by that agreement. The bigger issue. I think that that we're having this philosophical conversation about is shouldn't the county be the one that shoulders the responsibility for providing homeless services, period.
291 Right.
292 And should the city even be in that line of business, given all the other pressing needs of the city?
293 Exactly.
294 The previous council's have decided it was in the city's interest to be in this iga, and to try to work cooperatively with the county to solve the homelessness situation in our community. There have been a lot of ongoing conversations by the previous council, and now this current council about does that relationship make sense? I think from the city's perspective, historically, the challenge for us has been that I think philosophically, we believe the county should be the provider of those services.
295 Exactly.
296 The challenge, though, for the city is historically, we have owned a lot of the political risk because when folks complain about that, you know, it comes to the city. The city also owns some legal risk associated with it. And so we have seen that on the lawsuit that was brought by folks under the, the ADA asking us to keep sidewalks clean. So the city's own that political risk, some of that legal risk. And that's why we've put some money behind trying to solve that problem. But I do think this sort of existential, philosophical question about what the county should be doing and what the city should be doing is one that we're going to have to grapple with.
297 Let me be clear on what I'm talking about. So the $31 million, I have no problem with, we have a agreement. And that's what we we're a little under 31 million. I have no problem with that at all. But the problem is we're up to $100 million in new homeless services that we started with ARPA funds. And those ARPA funds should have never been put into what we were going to go forward with in terms of an ongoing program. And so now we have this $100 million gap because we're trying to do homeless shelter, safe rest villages and all the stuff that goes along with it. And so I guess what I'm saying, it's not about the 31, it's about the fact that we continually add homeless services in that's adding to the budget, that is adding to our gap that we have every year. And we're going to have a bigger gap next year because we don't have a way to right now meet that gap. We're going to have to cut something other than what we're cutting in Portland. Solutions and the 63, you know, permitted folks. I mean, it's going to take more than that. So I guess what I'm asking, I asked this question earlier. Can we put together a budget that totally goes against our iga because we are saying we're, we're we're we're all in for $100 million. Can we write these things or does the iga do they mean anything? I mean, what's the use of having an iga if we're not going to follow it and they're not going to follow it? Why did we even write one?
298 I think I mean, it's a great question about, you know, if what what is the use of an agreement if the parties aren't going to follow it? I think that's a reasonable question to ask.
299 And my question to you is, is there a legal is there a legal ramifications that we have behind this?
300 Well, I mean, one option that was discussed by the previous council and would be an option for this new government is terminating that iga and ending that relationship. So that that is certainly a possibility. And then I think your other comments really highlight the budget question in front of this council is if we've committed to $31 million under the iga, shouldn't should that be the limit? Should that be the limit? Or should we do all of these other things? And then the more that we do to solve this problem, we're just taking on a responsibility we think is owned by a different government.
301 And I think that's where I'm at to if we continue every year. And so obviously, this conversation was not had in a way that was meaningful in the last three councils, because we have consistently, from the city standpoint, added additional homeless services. And so the reason why I'm talking about it right now, and that I have not stopped talking about it, is because I know 26, 27 is going to be here sooner than we think, and we're going to be back here again, not only cutting 20% in the fall, we're going to be trying to figure out how do we pay for all these homeless services? Do we cut more of our employees, send more of our employees home so that we can pay for homeless services that we're not supposed to be paying for? I just have a hard time with that. It's tough for me to have to be within the lines, but yet we're crossing the lines every fiscal year and we're adding stuff that we shouldn't be. I mean, I understand that we get the bulk of the conversation behind, you know, why aren't you doing anything about the streets? And that is, you know, squarely put onto the mayor's docket and people are asking, what are you going to do about the streets? So he's trying to respond to it, but it is actually it is hurting our other book of business, which is infrastructure. We don't have enough for our city streets. We don't have enough. We have a big $2 billion project at bull run. The meter is running right now. And so I'm just trying to figure out how do we as policymakers put some guardrails into where do we stop, when do we stop. So that was my question. It sounds like we don't have any legal authority or statutory authority as it relates to the iga, that we can still do whatever we want to outside of it.
302 Council can go over and above, above that if they want to, to provide additional services.
303 Okay. That's what I needed to hear. Thank you. Thank you heidi.
304 Thank you.
305 Thank you councilor, councilor Avalos.
306 Hello. I have some questions about the.
307 Small donor elections program. So the cuts that I'm seeing here. Hold on. I'm pulling that slide back up one second. Here we go. All right, so it says 8% reduction for 113,000. Right now I'm understanding that there is a specific amount that we can raise in the budget of sd. That's I guess code approved. Or do you know what I'm talking about. Like there's like a we can only increase it by 0.5% each year. Do you know what I'm talking about.
308 No I don't no I don't. It's possible that that is the case.
309 What I, I was chatting with ruth about this and she was saying that there because my concern and it's an amendment that I'm proposing. But is that what I'm trying to understand about this number is. If I'm restoring dollars to sd, if I just restore the 113, is that still putting them at a deficit of what they actually need to run and therefore whatever amount I need to put above the 113 is apparently ruled by some number that we're allowed to raise sd from the general fund. That's like a percentage.
310 Yeah. Understood. Thank you for that clarification. So I'm not totally sure about the 5%, but I appreciate if you have conversations with ruth. That could be the case. My understanding is that per the Portland election commission, the target amount that they've identified for funding is 2.2 million is sort of their that that body's recommendation about the full level of funding. I believe there was a memo produced earlier this year, a few weeks ago, produced by the commission that identified that that is the level that would be anticipated for full funding or or adequate funding, optimal funding under that commission's guidance.
311 So then help me understand looking at this graph here. So it says from 2005 it was 3.7 million. The proposed is 1.3. The slide set. The slide says that the reduction is 113,000.
312 Correct.
313 You see where those.
314 Numbers are. Yeah. Understood. So to explain that. So because city elections are on a two year cycle and we don't want variability in the budget where we don't we fund $0 one year or very small amount one year and a non-election year, and then fund up again the next year that the funding model sort of translates two year funding to meet that one year increase. So the amount you see here for fiscal 2425, which is not labeled, but is it is labeled sorry, that beginning fund balance is sort of what was carried over from the lesser year, the kind of the off cycle year, off election cycle year that then funded in 2425 the election cycle at one point with 1.4 million additional going in from the general fund into that that bucket, there's now 113,000 reduction. So that roughly from 1.4 to 1.3 is reflective of that reduction. Some of that balance will carry over into next fiscal year when there's an election cycle, along with the 26, 27, $1.3 million. Does that does that.
315 So if I if my goal is to ensure that by the time we have in the 26 election, that all of the candidates have the amount that they need so that they can get the full max, right. And it is a little funky, right? Because it's like, as you say, it's in these two years. But I guess what I was understanding as far as this like limit apparently, that we have for how much we can increase the budget every year. I want to I don't want us to wait until what I guess that would have been like. I don't want us to wait until next budget cycle to approve something that would then go in effect, because the election is November. Right. And budget cycles. So that's what I'm trying to fix right now. But it also sounds like what the sd office is saying is that in order for them to feel fully operational and funded, in order to maximize the amounts that candidates can get, they need 2.2 million is what I heard you say. Yes.
316 That's my understanding.
317 So then if I am trying to restore them, then essentially I would need to fill the gap from 1.3 to 2.2. Yes. Is that correct?
318 My understanding.
319 And this 113 gap is I mean, pretty minuscule as far as the operations, because that it doesn't even begin to fill that larger gap that they say they need. Am I understanding those numbers?
320 Right. That's I think that's all fair. Yeah, the numbers are correct.
321 Okay. I think that's all for now. Thank you.
322 Councilor Novick.
323 Thank you, madam president, on the earthquake insurance, I think you said that we're reducing our coverage from 75 million to 60 million.
324 Yes. Councilor. That's correct.
325 What do we expect our losses to be in a major earthquake?
326 That's a wonderful question. I would anticipate it's probably more than 60 million.
327 I'm just kind of wondering. I mean, if we anticipate it's going to be 70 billion, then maybe there's no point in having the insurance for a tiny fraction of that at all.
328 Yeah, I think it would, if you're interested, perhaps be valuable to connect you with the risk manager, to talk in more detail about the coverages and how those work. The city has multiple sort of layers and flavors of coverage for multiple reasons. But but I mean, you're absolutely correct that in a cascadia type earthquake, 60 million is a decimal dust.
329 My other question is not immediate at all, but I just want to ask it when it's on my mind and you're here. The tax of 229 million a year. I never hear that raised. When people complain about Portland being overtaxed, but it's a pretty darn big tax, which my understanding is that the typical retiree retiring today makes between 121,000 and 154,000 a year. I'm curious if there might be no point to doing this, but if you ever looked at if everybody in fpdc had been in pers all along, how much lower could our tax burden be? And how would that factor into how our tax burden compares to other cities?
330 Yeah, thank you for that question I love it. It is a great example of how I think sometimes those those entity over entity comparators are difficult. The other because that's a very unique tax right. We often pointed the sales tax is something that makes that analysis different for Oregon compared to other comparator states or regions. On the census question, I don't I'm not aware that that analysis has been performed. The sort of what if analysis. What I will say, however, is that as those members are now shifting off of tier one pers, or have shifted off tier one pers and are starting to move into the refined pers programs over the over the last couple of decades, that property tax levy is projected over time to significantly decrease as those tier one members move off of the system. And it aligns to the current current retiree benefit system so that that levy is on a path towards, over time, eventually being reduced. I think it kind of is a little bit level, maybe slight increases over the next few years before then entering a period of annual declines in the levy rate.
331 Thank you.
332 Thank you, councilor, councilor, councilor Dunphy.
333 Thank you, madam president. Jonas. A lot of our a number of our internal services are based on a fee for service model. Is that structure that we have currently based on best practices? Is this how we've always run a lot of these things? Candidly, I have been had a little bit of sticker shock a couple of times. For example, you know, I, I don't doubt that the calculations were correct based on whatever formula. But, you know, we were quoted $20,000 to rearrange our office. We got a quote of finishing out an unfinished office space of over $1 million, and we could just go buy a, you know, three story building for that. What does that model based on? And is that best practices?
334 It's a great question. I think the best practices are all over the map to a large degree. What I would flag is two, two things. And I don't know if dc morris you have more to add, but one is just acknowledging that often those costs are fundamentally driven by policy requirements or other kind of overlays that the city has put on, which may be for good, good reason, but but often that's some of the drivers of those costs. I just want to be transparent about that. The other thing to note, which has come up, I believe earlier in the work session today, is we are actively looking through city offices, managing along with budget and finance teams, comprehensive review of internal service funds, including looking at comparable peers to, I would say, fundamentally redesign the way that we calculate and allocate and communicate those costs. And so, I don't know, sarah, if you want to add more about that.
335 Yeah, I would just say so. We currently have a project team working on this, and they will be basically proceeding through the summer looking to wrap up that work in August. The project really has three goals one, to simplify the methodology and process of setting and allocating internal service fund costs. Two, to improve transparency and alignment of allocation of costs to service delivery, and then three to provide more clarity around expectations, decision making and governance of service delivery. We are as kind of the first step. We've done outreach to about, I think, 7 or 8 jurisdictions across the us that are comparable in size and have gotten. But like jonah said, it's really all over the map and really driven by policy that's been passed, but would be happy to provide a presentation to the finance committee or anyone in the future. Once that report is complete.
336 That'd be great. I really I'm very interested to hear the report. I would really like the city to move towards a model where fiscal responsibility is a guiding principle. And as part of that work, I'm very interested to know if there are specific policies that we need to either undo or provide additional flexibility. I understand that we have maybe goodwilled ourselves into a corner, right? It makes sense when we want to do all of these things, but when they pile up, there's, you know, the market cannot respond in a meaningful way, and we end up with a $4,000 ugly couch. So if there are policies that are needed in order to either expedite that process or to undo some of the work that has been done, that doesn't also conflict with some of our guiding values. You know, smaller things that do mean things. I would be very interested in that conversation and happy to have a further conversation with you all.
337 So thank you.
338 Thank you, councilor, councilor Ryan.
339 Thank you.
340 Madam president. And I haven't talked through one of these in a while, but if you haven't heard, there's like an epidemic going on here in city hall, so I thought I'd be cautious and careful. I want to make one overall statement, and that is that even when you talk about cuts, because you are doing some cuts, there's still an increase in most of our budgets because fixed costs are going up quite dramatically. What is the average fixed cost increase in labor? I don't think we've daylighted this enough. So some of the public gets confused when they hear there's a cut, and then they see there's actually an increase. So could you explain that in case anyone's listening in?
341 I I'll explain generally. And I think there's a if there's a ask to drill into more detail, we're happy to provide that. So on the labor side and whether we're talking non-represented or represented staff, there's increases typically in merit or cola. We know there's some adjustments in the non-represented side, and health care is the other component. And as we've experienced both of the city and folks who work outside the city, health care costs are increasing significantly. We're we're not.
342 Quite dramatically.
343 Increasing quite dramatically. Very dramatically. And then the other key element for public employees is pers costs, pers related costs. So the public employee retirement system, which can sometimes and is currently be inflationary above the sort of typical rate of inflation. So labor costs I think it's been said before this at this table, labor whether represented or not, the humans who do the work are the most valuable resource we have at the city. It's also very expensive. And so that is appreciate the opportunity to daylight it. That is a very significant cost driver and one that all local governments face in maintaining and keeping up with those costs in the face of revenues that aren't increasing at the same pace as as those factors I mentioned.
344 I appreciate you stating that. I think that narrative is missing in some of our presentations. And so it's confusing, I think, to portlanders when they see that we're making cuts, but they see the increases. Even though we are cutting fte because our fixed costs are increasing quite rapidly, at a much higher rate than our revenue is, that's really where we are today. I would like more clarity on the grants. How much of the grants are actually just from general fund, because you mentioned that some were obviously special appropriations.
345 Yes. So the grants that are that were mentioned today in this bucket are all general fund funded grants. There's obviously other grants and programs that exist at the city outside of this bucket. So the bucket of grants that's within this portfolio, shall we say, are sort of the grants that don't have a maybe a natural home. So they're they're collected in special appropriations and the grants program.
346 Okay. Revenue. I was in a recent meeting that showed data related to the revenue team. And what we really saw was the very popular arts tax. The collections are way, way down. And it looked like it was connected causation, because we took on services for metro. Correct. On we took on services for the county on pre-k for all. And it looks like that lift, that load didn't allow that team to do the same type of service and collections on the art tax. That's not acceptable. So I'm hoping that I wanted to daylight that a and I'd like to hear more about how we won't let that happen again.
347 It's a great observation. I think it's true that as taking on that additional body of collection work, although it did come with additional resources to support that work, particularly during the ramp up years of those new taxes and collection of those new taxes required some shifting of priorities. And I think what you're referencing, at least anecdotally, is shifting away from the arts tax resources towards the arts tax, I hope and I don't know, thomas lannom might be online. I'm not sure if he is still or not, but as we continue to evolve our collection practices around the county and metro taxes, including additional online resources that we've talked about at this body before, that that maybe gives some wind back to that arts tax of the of the ledger. And thomas, I do see your online. If you have anything else you'd like to add.
348 Veteran arts activists like myself are used to the arts always being the first to be marginalized. And we don't like it. All right. I was going to talk about the earthquake policy as well, but there's been some great questions. And councilor Novick, you kind of threw the mic down on that. I'm actually scratching my head on the whole thing now. Moving on. I just want to make a comment about the iga, because it does come up quite a bit. And I think now that you're here, we're all going to see the complexity of that relationship. It is a relationship we will always have on multiple issues. We have shared responsibilities. One that we don't pay enough attention to, of course, is public safety, and I have no idea why. But for the past two years, some of us have been clear that we need to move on from the iga games and focus on the results we can manage in our own budget. This getting along goal is not really the issue. The issue is getting it right. Role clarity to actually improve the system is what we're asked to do. We need to. We have to stop tossing money back and forth with no accountability. And if you've been watching dating back to the beginning, we at the city have been on the short end of this iga game with the county since the beginning, so I hope that we're all on the same page that we need to improve the contract, because it's not working on this side. Thanks.
349 Councilors. We have a couple of folks in the queue for a second time. Is there anybody else who hasn't had an opportunity to speak yet who would like to enter the queue? First, I see councilor Zimmerman nodding. Go right ahead.
350 Jonas and sarah, I was wondering if you might comment. You know, we've we've had some discussion about the centralized services. I have cited multiple times, 113 members of the air bureau and 113 air professionals in the bureaus. But there's one group where I do have some pretty significant concern that the budget analyst, the financial analyst that exists in the bureaus have taken a front seat, while our central budget office has taken a very, very backseat. Do you anticipate in the transformation that cbo will grow in its size as we pull back some financial and budget analysts from the bureaus in order to bolster the central office? And then the second half of that is, if it would be possible for you to provide us , an amendment package for additional budget analysts. Classified, as you will, into the central budget office. But I offer that last part only as a the reason I'm not bringing it up myself right now is that I feel like there should be some other budget analysts who should come from bureaus and then fill out the central office. I'm just kind of curious on that time frame of what you think about it.
351 Yeah. Thank you, councilor, for the question. So I'll answer the first question I'll answer is will the cbo the central cbo get bigger? And the answer is, I don't know. I think that's part of the effort that's afoot, is to really make sure that we're diligently and intentionally identifying what are the services that are being delivered centrally in that broad, broadest possible bucket function definition versus what's being delivered within the bureaus, as you identified? I think there's an imbalance there. Part of that may be getting tighter. Are we doing things that are duplicative, either process or conflicting efforts? I think we will identify some of those efficiencies. The second outcome, I think, is identifying what is the best alignment. Is it pulling more people into that central function? Is it keeping the central function as is, but having a little different relational? Relationship and reporting? It's very indicative, I think, of the enterprise efficiency work that city administrator jordan had also mentioned earlier, where built over many, many decades dna of doing things within and sometimes doing them centrally as well. And so from a budget perspective, I think there is a need for additional service output. I am not certain yet until we have the opportunity to do this work, if that requires more new humans to do the work, or just a better alignment to make sure that we're doing the right work most efficiently.
352 Thanks. I want to emphasize it and underline it, because it's an area of our work that is particularly important during this season and what we're dealing with on the dais up here. But this is my first professional experience where I have seen such a gap in in the standardization of budgets that come out of our bureaus and such a deep idea that the bureaus wag the dog. And I think that that era must change. And this is the last budget that gets submitted the way bureaus want it submitted. And it is the last budget where the budget office is not in the driver's seat. And I think that there may be some bureaus who have larger budget apparatus than our actual city budget office. So I'm saying that to indicate deep support for bringing this under one ten. And. I have high expectations for next year's budget when it comes to a program offer model, when it comes to documents that are more clear in terms of what is general fund provided, what is levy provided, what is interagency provided? And we have some bureaus who have refused, refused to build documents to provide that information in a manner that I think is transparent. And I, I think that is a tactic. I think it is a tactic to kneecap the city's budget office. And I think it's been a tactic to protect and say, well, you can't adjust this because it's funded this way and that way, and you have to have a decoder ring in order to get into my document. And so I want to signal support for that change happening as quickly as possible, and also signal to the bureau directors that there are a few of us in this world who've worked in cities that are not just the city of Portland. And I assure you that a centralized budget model does work, can work, and will help you be better at your jobs as well. And I hope my colleagues can hear this. A lot of our work is about the thing that hits the ground, but I think that we are all going to have a more difficult season this budget season because of the expiring model. So I look forward to being able to support bolstering, growing or giving authority to the city budget office and reducing it at the bureau level. Thank you.
353 Thank you councilor.
354 We are scheduled until 1245 today. I just want to make a note to my colleagues. We've had a couple of questions about the earthquake policy limits and a suggestion that perhaps we don't need that policy at all. And I just want to suggest that we think about that policy, not in terms of what will our losses be that we need to replace, but if we assume that we will have basically zero revenue after a cascadia event, and what do we need to do? The basic operations of government the year following that? And think about an earthquake policy that would give us whatever we need to do the basic operations of government, rather than aligning it to what our losses might be. Of course, just a suggestion to throw out. We are almost at time. We have a few folks left in the queue. Why don't you each take one minute? If you have additional amendments that you need to put out there? Councilor Kanal okay, councilor Green.
355 Yes, I just need to respond to the fp, fd, pdr. I always mix it up the police and fire pension pay as you go element. We received a briefing during a work session earlier. I can't find it exactly, but if you go to the website for the board analysis and I'll email the link to everyone and also the council clerk for those watching along, the property tax input impact is expected to grow well into the decades, not in the years. Our own city economist has about ten years of growth. I think there's a percentile case that continues to grow through 2040 and 2050, but we wouldn't get back to today's level until the mid 2050s. In terms of the actual cost to the taxpayer. And so I think next year there's a good chance it's 40% of the property tax bill. And so I think that we should maybe put a budget note in to just reaffirm the resources for the tax and fee capability that the city needs to kind of reopen a discussion on how do we pay for that, not cut the pension obligation, but how do we approach funding that in a different way? Because, again, the cost is measured in the decades. I'll leave it there.
356 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor canal decided that you do want to be in the queue. Is that correct?
357 Yeah. I just wanted to say for the record, I want 100% cosign everything councilor Green just said on fp and 100% everything councilor Zimmerman said on the way our budget is structured and I know you have interest in that too, so I'm excited and to get there. Thanks.
358 Councilor Novick.
359 I just in response to councilor Ryan's comment on revenue offices, collection of the arts tax. The arts tax requires far more resources per dollar collected to collect than any tax that the city collects, or indeed any tax in the history of the human race.
360 Thank you, councilor Jonas. Sarah, I think that is it for everybody in the queue. Thank you so much for your time today. Councilors. We have a second budget work session this afternoon from 2 to 6:00. It is two hours to talk about our community and economic development service area. We'll take a short break and then have a little under two hours to talk about prosper Portland. With that, I will close this morning's work session.