The record · Transcript
Council session — 2026-05-19
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (65,881 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.
Good morning. Calling back to order. This meeting of the. This continued meeting of the Portland city council. Keelan. Can we please call the roll.
Kanal.
Here.
Pirtle-guiney nine Koyama Lane. Here. Aye, Morillo. Here. Novick. Here. Clerk. Here. Rain. Here. Zimmerman. Avalos.
Present.
Smith. Here. Dunphy.
Here. And can we please read the rules of decorum?
Thank you. Welcome to the Portland city council. To testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at www.Portland.gov/council/agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's web page. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over, the presiding officer preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should please address the matter being considered when testifying, please state your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, please identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifier should please unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Colleagues you received yesterday my proposal for the order of amendments. My staff spoke to every council and executive office in this building, seeking feedback on the order prior to releasing it yesterday, with the exception of councilor Zimmerman's team, who we could not find. As you've seen, the main way that this has been broken down is by councilor Top priority and by thematic block. I'm sure there will be other. There will be cause to make adjustments as we go. But having sought and not received major critique on the order yesterday, I dearly hope we can dispense with debate over process today and prioritize getting into the substance. We are now in consideration of item one. I am now going to recess this meeting of the Portland city council, and I now reconvene the from recess, the city of Portland budget committee. Keelan can you please call the roll again?
Still here?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: I'm sorry. Thanks. Pirtle-guiney.
Now here.
Ryan.
Here.
Koyama Lane. Here. Aye, Morillo. Here. Novick. Here. Here.
Green here.
Zimmerman.
I'm here. Council. President.
Amylose.
President.
Smith.
Here. Here.
Our first order of business is the amendments related to backfilling the mayor's proposed cuts to public safety. In the pre-filed amendments, there are what I'd call four big ideas for how to approach this issue. Morillo one Clark et al. One Green one and Novick two and four. There are also amendments that take smaller bites of this problem. Ryan one and canals two, three, two, four, and five. And finally, councilor Zimmerman has three amendments that fund specific safety programs that don't specify the pay for. I'd like to open this block with a discussion of the big four ideas. I'll recognize each sponsor to introduce their concept in the order I stated earlier, where multiple amendments are trying to pay for the same thing from different pots, it's appropriate for debate on one amendment to also touch on the other amendments. However, under robert's rules, only one motion to amend the underlying can be open at once. So with that, I'd like to recognize councilor Morillo to introduce Morillo one.
Thank you so much, council president, and I appreciate the time to introduce the community health and safety package, as I've titled it. This item concerns our plainclothes security, not the allied guards in the uniforms posted at the city hall, entrances or exits and throughout the building. Essentially, what the mayor's proposal does is triples the amount of security that happens for city councilors. And I don't want to pretend that we are not living in a time where elected officials aren't getting credible threats. I have certainly received credible threats. I had my bus stop posted, people talking about going there, but I think that without any constraints on the council about how we use these funds, we are basically just having a free for all to use additional security at times where it may not necessarily be beneficial. So we have to make sure that we are more judicious with how we are using it. And we can't. I don't think we can in good conscience, say that the safety of 12 councilors matters more than the safety of the rest of the city, but I also don't accept that we're putting ourselves at additional risk by rejecting a proposed tripling of council security. So what my amendment does is it gives around $200,000 for summer, free for all, and free lunch and play to ensure that all programing can continue on going. We're not going to have to address this again later. A little over $1 million to restore ceasefire and the office of violence prevention programs that prevent violence from occurring in our community. $500,000 for three full time employees in the chat program within the fire bureau, and over $650,000 for Portland street response to ensure that peer support continues seven days per week. Last year, we received a lot of security requests, but that high usage is also by choice, bringing security to hang out at different constituent coffees or escorting multiple councilors to the same events is not an objective reflection of an actual threat environment. So I think that what my amendment is trying to do is make sure that we have healthy constraints on how we are using our limited resources at this time. We don't need to permanently insulate ourselves with security fit for the president at a cost of 2.5 million per year. While we are cutting programs like cease fire violence prevention for the entire community by 1.1 million. So that is, in essence, what the amendment does. And I look forward to having any discussion with my colleagues.
And councilor. Are you moving your amendment?
Angelita Morillo: Oh, yes. I'm sorry, I am moving Morillo one for discussion.
Are you open to seconds right now or are you waiting for seconds? Council president.
I am open to seconds right now. Second thank you. I'm going to recognize I'm as I said in my opening remarks, I'm going to take these in order, but I'd like to give the four councilors who have in this first block an opportunity to introduce their amendments so we can have some conversation about it publicly. Councilor Morillo has moved her amendment, but councilor Clark, would you like to introduce your amendment?
Thank you, council president. I'm I'm happy to do that, colleagues. I'm bringing forward what has been called the Clark pirtle-guiney Novick Ryan Smith one public safety programs restoration. I brought this forward out of a very deep concern about the impact of the mayor's budget cuts on public safety. I'm concerned that it sets us back. I don't know how much detail you want us to go into at this point.
As much as you want.
Okay. Well, I'm I'm very concerned, and I think many people in Portland are that these cuts will move us backwards. It doesn't make any sense that it will increase the response times on 911, that we potentially will close precincts, that we will stop doing training that's necessary to bring our police bureau into the future and make it a progressive police bureau. And for many of us, it will reduce the protection that the fire bureau provides to the c, e I hub and forest park. And given climate change and the threat to forest park, this is of great concern to me. I'm happy to go into more detail later. My colleagues may want to also want each of the restorations. So instead of cutting programs or dipping into contingencies or reserves, I proposed a very common sense approach in this amendment that we would borrow from the community board for police accountability, the cbpa, which would leave borrow $10 million, which leaves $6 million available to them in the next year. This is budgeted at 16 million, or 5% estimated, of the operating budget, per the charter amendment. So this amendment borrows and restores the funds in the spring to. Currently, I think we all voted for that charter amendment, and currently the cfpa is run by, I believe, an acting director and has no staff. Even if that bureau were. That program were to hire 22 staff in the next year, that does not require $16 million. So I'm suggesting this one time loan to help preserve the critical fire and life, community and safety programs that we all absolutely need. I don't feel we can afford to go backwards in fire protection in 911 response times. So, colleagues, I will look forward to the debate and look forward to your support. Thank you, council president.
Thank you, councilor Clark. Councilor Green, would you like to discuss Green one?
I would thank you. Council president Green one is called Portland fire and rescue. First, it's one of several attempts to restore cuts, critical cuts to public safety, and in particular, it restores the engine at fire station 22 and half of the cuts to the advanced life support teams in the Portland fire and rescue, and it does so on an ongoing basis. It's paired with Green four, which is a budget note to describe the legislative intent and the process for how to do that. But colleagues, the way that it does. So the pay for here is that it says it recognizes that since 2019, the management ranks in the city of Portland have grown in position by by 33%, where the non-management ranks have grown by 8%. So that's a roughly 25% delta of managers relative to non managers in the city of Portland. And you see this a lot of large bureaucracies across all sectors. And so it sort of chops from the top by by 20% in the budget authority, not the I'm not picking and choosing between who is the right manager to cut. I'm simply saying council, if adopted, does not permit this level of authority for the budget to exist for the management ranks in the Green for. Describes it being applicable and only applicable to position classifications. Manager one through deputy city administrator. And so the idea is to say city administrator lee, if adopted by the fall tor, you'll come back with a proposed set of cuts that put the 20% reduction into action. It it leaves three months of funding in place for continuity, while also keeping this fire station going. And half of the cuts to the advanced life support units going. And then it's it fills that immediate funding gap with a one time draw from general fund contingency to be paid back by by the fall tor. And so this is a sustainable, ongoing replacement to trim the the, the sort of over overextension of management ranks at the top. And I hope to have your support for it.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. My two amendments are. Largely to illustrate what savings, what we could save if we cut into our bloated council office budgets, made some reductions to council security, and cut back on the additions to senior bureaucratic staff in the city administrator's office, which he has proposed. One proposal would restore peak hour fire service, so half the day from the station 22 partially restore cease fire grants we add back for public safety support specialists, one victim services staff, one senior police administrative support specialist and one parks volunteer coordinator, and that would be done by taking 200,000 each from council office budgets, holding district one harmless, cutting 994,000 out of the proposed additions to council security, which is just this year's increase. So obviously councilor Morillo goes further and cutting the chief, the city administrator, chief of staff, the 250,000 he has for strategic planning, the assistant city administrator and two manager, three of the city administrative staff. It. The. The second amendment would. Instead of restoring the engine in the st. Johns, it would restore two of the fire and rescue units. Rescue 19, which is in at 72nd and Burnside, and 11, which is around 92nd, and fosters on the border of district one and district three. It would partially restore cease fire grants to restore a cease fire coordinator. One senior police administrative support specialist, and it would pay for that by cuts to the city administrator's budget and council security. And I note that because the city administrator's budget and the council budgets are overhead, the amount you have to cut, you only get 42% of the cut in general fund. So you have to sort of apply that percentage, which is why you don't see a 1 to 1 correlation. What I would say about both these proposals is, as I said last year, our council office budgets far exceed those of those of other cities such as denver or seattle. They far exceed what Multnomah county commissioners get. They're right across the river. They represent more people than we do, and they get 992,000 and we're getting 1.45 million. I didn't propose this, but if we simply cut our budget down to theirs, that's 5.4 million, which translates to about 2.3 million in general fund. So I do not understand what we have to have these huge budgets. And I also would note spending all this money on ourselves has not made us popular. We're at 24% in the polls. I think it would make us more popular if we cut back at our council office budgets and put that into frontline services.
Thank you, councilor Novick. Okay, colleagues, we are now to discussion. Councilor aye, Morillo Morillo one has been moved and seconded and we are to discussion. But it is as I said in my opening comments, these are all vaguely related, so it's okay to reference each other. I'm asking colleagues to please limit your remarks to five minutes per per go. Robert's rules restricts an individual councilor to ten minutes per motion, so I will be enforcing that harshly. But for five minutes I'm asking for courtesy because we have to get through this section, and we are going to be reconvening this afternoon at 130, and I'm hoping
To get us out of here at 1230 for lunch. So everything we cut into that is our lunch time. So with that.
Council president, if I may.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green: I forgot to move my motion.
Loretta Smith: Only one item is being moved at a time, so we will come back to that. So thank you. So to the queue and I'm going to start with councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, mr. President. I just want to say I since you had not moved. Clerk one I am very much in support of that. It's very smart, practical way to go about paying for the restored services for our public safety system. And I'll be supporting. Clerk one.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor pirtle-guiney to the amendment.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president, I don't take this lightly, but I also don't take lightly food security and security against gun violence for community members. I think if we have the opportunity to add any funds back into the bucket we are taking from at the end of our work, it would behoove us to do so. But I think that the opportunity to ensure that children have lunch available to them in the summer, the opportunity to ensure that the critical programs at ovp and ceasefire continue. Thank you, mr. Mayor, for putting ongoing funds into those programs, but those cuts are still very difficult to figure out how to ask the community to take. I think that ensuring that we continue to move forward with our work and having a suite of responses for all of the different public safety needs in our community are also critical, and I look forward to voting yes.
Thank you. Councilor pirtle-guiney. Thank you. There we go. Councilor. Novick.
I like the funding mechanism. I approve the idea of taking 2.5 million out of council security, and this is not fall into the overhead model. So it's a real 2.5 million. My concern is about the pattern of spending. I don't dislike any of these things. But to give one example, the psr staff, these are not filled positions. These positions are vacant now. So I cannot in good conscience support something that allows layoffs to occur in other areas, like the ps three, in order to fill unfilled positions. I appreciate the. And we've got a limited. I think we're going to have limited pots of money, and I think that restoring the fire engine and the rescues is a high priority for me, rather slightly, somewhat higher priority than ceasefire. So I would vote to preserve this pot of money for what I think would be a more judicious set of spending if the if we were going if I knew we were going to pass. Clerk one, then I might be willing to go along with this because it would supplement it with cease fire, although I still have concern about layoffs versus non layoffs. But as it stands as the first thing to vote on, I can't support it.
Sure.
I just wanted to point out that the reason those positions haven't been filled within Portland street response is because there is a hiring freeze. So if we actually fund those positions, then there is no need for there to be a hiring freeze. To me, this is a priority that is based on our policy decisions, and we have to be judicious with the funds that we have based on the priorities that are established by this council. I think that I think there are lots of amendments that are going to fund the fire engine and things like that, which is why I didn't touch it with this specific pot of funds, and I intend to support other amendments that are going to uplift the fire bureau in that way. But this is a very clean cut package. It is ongoing funding. It means that it's going to be a simple transfer. It's not going to be complicated like some of the other amendments. And the reality is that this is doing the behind the scenes work that people don't normally think of. When we talk about preventing violence in the community. I've talked about this a lot of times, but when I was a snap policy advocate before becoming a city councilor, we saw kids that would get recruited to join gangs when they were waiting in the food line to at the food bank, right? Like they are trying to find community, they are trying to get resources and there are people that are offering it to them. And if we can offer it to them instead, then we are doing preventative work. If we are funding the office of violence prevention, we are preventing gun violence so that we don't have to beef up our public safety in other areas. So I just wanted to sort of address my line of thinking in that amendment, but I appreciate the feedback.
Do I have a few more minutes, mr. President, as to councilor Clark's amendment, I there is no way that this brand new organization, which does not even have a director yet, is going to ramp up to spend $16 million in the next year. We are talking about borrowing, including millions and millions of dollars in external materials and services, which the mayor's office threw into the budget just to pad it up to 16 million. The idea is to borrow against that money in order to fund critical public safety services, rather than having the money simply sit in the bank account for the next year. I think that is a thoroughly responsible way to proceed. As to councilor Greene's amendment, I worry about jumping ahead without knowing what the consequences are. It's quite possible that we should be cutting more managers than he suggested. It's also quite possible that a large number of these managers are working managers, who spend 80% of their time doing regular jobs and 20% of their time supervising. We just don't know what I would propose we do over the next a couple of months is we know there's 57 positions who manage fewer than four four people. I'd like to have a work session or a committee of the whole discussion where we focus on those and go through those and see if they're justified as a starting point. We can do those one at a time, and that'll give us a better idea whether we really have that much management bloat to cut. And again, I think that the new expensive positions in the city administrator's office, which we've gotten along without so far, and the council office bloat, are much safer things to go after.
Thank you, councilor Novick. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Thank you, council president. And I want to acknowledge that there's much of this amendment I like and it's really well done. So thank you for that. I'm particularly attached to seeing that chat and ceasefire ovp are funded. And the reason I'll tell a story is I attend the peace collaborative meeting in the north precinct once a month. I think I've only missed two in the past year. And the change that I've experienced in those meetings since I first started going at the beginning of 2025, is the connectivity between the people that are there doing the community work under your leadership? Stephanie howard and the police. And so what I've never enjoyed is when we try to put public safety units against one another, but we actually lift the system up. We're building a system. And I've been a part of the council that was really focused on rebuilding 911, rebuilding fire, rebuilding police to full time staffing levels. That would start to get us into a respectful place when you look at us nationally. And so a theme today will be for me is to build is not is not to backpedal. My question on this one is there hasn't been a dialog about the security adds or even the security budget. I don't recall us having that dialog during the work sessions, so I don't think it's fair for me to make a decision without hearing from the mayor or the city administrator about why that was put into the budget. I need to understand your why before I think I have the audacity to make the cut. May I hear from the mayor or city administrator? I don't know who's appropriate. Or maybe you'll call someone up.
I'll have our security team come up to address that.
And then for clarity, was there 2.5 million added in addition to this year, or was is that okay? So please explain the details. And this is what we didn't get to do in the work session. So I appreciate this moment. Thank you.
Hello. My name is manuel. I'm the security manager. So about the 2.5 million currently what we're we ran into is that last year we were funded only half of the funding for the security team. So we were given 800,000. But that only covered half. So the other amount is also included in the 2.5 million that we're asking for. In addition, as you remember, back in January, we had a situation where council was disrupted. There was a need to change current council staffing procedures and how we run council at that time. So we needed to change our council team as well. That included extra training, extra. Things that we we our current our old council team just couldn't do. And this new council team was was able to kind of address and assist the security threats that were happening with the council members. So that was an additional 500,000 that we're asking for for that team. So all in all, it's 800,000 that we had funded. So we needed an additional 800,000 plus an additional 500,000 for the next fiscal year to cover current standards with what we have now. So that's why we have the 2.5 that we're asking for.
So this is a clear representation of the actual need, correct. According to what you experienced this past fiscal year.
For today. That's correct.
Sure.
Thank you. Manny. As you know, I really appreciate what you and your team have done. And for me.
She didn't have her her hand raised.
Up, her hand raised. And I have to explain why.
She did not.
It's raised in the queue.
Not next.
True. But I, I I'm in charge of running. Who gets to be recognized.
That's what you say.
Thank you, council president. I think what we need to consider though, is so as a city councilor, and I think what many of my colleagues have experienced is that many of us didn't know that the security that we got to use, for one thing, after 5 p.m. Is over time, we were basically given a free use of this private security for most events, but it's not actually free, right? We were having unconstrained demand is what was happening. So yes, this is going to constrain us a bit, and it's going to force us to be more judicious about how and when we use it. And I think that's really important because right now people are using it for anything and everything. So when you say that you were given half with 800,000, I don't know who gets to determine what half means because that was deemed sufficient by the council and facilities decided that it needed four more agents for 800 k. So we started with four agents for $800,000. Then facilities added four more for 800,000 without our approval. And then the mayor's proposed for fy 2627 adds 2.4 million to council security to establish a ten agent based team, plus a five agent special response team for a total of 3.2 million for council security. So what I'm saying is the security that we use as elected officials needs to be incidental, not habitual. It needs to be based on increased demand at a certain heightened moment. If you're going to a specific area that is known to be a hotspot, that's different. But we shouldn't. We are not the president of the united states. We are city councilors. We need to have a constrained level of security. And so I just have to outline that.
Thank you, councilor.
So then back to my five minutes. So can you just turn on a key when there's an incident or like it's about building capacity? Like, tell me that's just.
I think that's the most difficult part about all this is, is we cannot foretell the future, but we also learn from the past. So as you know, especially you, councilor, thank you. We've had situations where we've actually had to deal with real world emergencies at that time. So we get a phone call and the team is expected to show up immediately. It is really it ebbs and flows. And I'll just tell you that the team that's not all the what the team does. So when you have an event that you reach out to us and let us know they're the ones that actually will go out and do the safety security assessment of the site, talk to the owner of the facility, to the planning of, of the actual, you know, safety plan for the group. Once they come in and go out with all these different events. So there's a lot of work that happens behind the scenes that what you only see is, you know, the folks that just show up next to you at the event and make sure that everything goes smoothly. But there's a lot of work behind the scenes that happens prior to the actual event itself. So if, if we're going to, just to speak a little bit with councilor Morillo line of questioning, I think that's the part that is really difficult is to say like, if we had four, it's not enough for the 12. So we ever had an emergency again like we've had recently, we would not be able to respond. We would have to say, I'm sorry, but we just don't have the team to do that. And I agree there is a lot of overtime, but that's what we're trying to cut to by having a conservative like amount of folks that can deal with the with the requests as of today. But of course, there's open conversations that we can have about how that looks like, what requests we go with or not go with. We're more than open to have that conversation with, with all of you.
Thank you for being at the dais and having a chance to explain what this is all about and what the needs are. Not that I was happy to be a high end user in 20 2021 and 2022, but having multiple trespasses at my home with quite considerable amount of damage to my home as well. It's really helpful when you know that you're all going to be there to show up and monitor. And I would kind of like portlanders are saying right now, which is how can our 911 response times go the opposite direction? We want to keep building that. All of us would expect that service when we're in a high end need. And so it was helpful for me to understand the mechanics behind this. And thank you for coming to the dais and giving me more context. I appreciate it, mayor. Did you want to add anything? Okay.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Councilor Smith, you've already been recognized to this motion. I'm going to come back to you.
Councilor Kanal don't I get ten minutes? You were the ask one question.
You were the first person recognized. I'll come back to you when other people who have not been recognized yet. Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you. First, I don't have any questions, but I just wanted to say thank you to manny and team. I appreciate all of you for what you do for us and for the particular needs that we may each individually have. I'll be supporting this amendment, but I want to first say I agree 100% with the councilor. Pirtle-guiney said that if there's any additional left over somewhere throughout this budget process, this is a good place to try to put a little bit back in. Running for office does involve taking some risk. Winning office involves taking some risk as well, and I think making do with what we have is something that that I also will will do going forward, depending on what our reduction is through this amendment, but ensuring that we have the funding necessary to do the things that it's trying to fund, I think to me is a very clear need. We heard yesterday in public testimony about the office of violence prevention and cease fire. We heard about its impact as well as its cost effectiveness, having it be ongoing. Funding for grants for the first time is the next step in its evolution to build a preventative for a prevention focused, holistic public safety system. And I'm very grateful for councilor Morillo and putting that forward. I'm also very grateful for the restoration of Portland street response funding, which, by the way, is for two aftercare teams, four fte, which includes where the peer support specialists are. I really appreciate the comment that was made about why they're vacant, because this is a common thing that we've seen is we obviously don't want to lay anybody off as a city. So we look at the vacant positions and in a vacuum that makes sense until you remember why they're vacant. And so we have council priority stated to go to 24 over seven for Portland street response as a resolution we passed last June. And then there's a hiring freeze placed upon things that are not 24 over seven. So it's funded the position authorities there, but it can never get to 247 if there's a hiring freeze placed upon it, because it's not 24 over seven. And so to get out of that circular logic piece, we have to talk about not only protecting what we already have, but also expanding Portland street response. As we talked about last year, obviously, several of us have talked about chat and how important it is, and I think we need to debate that. But I just wanted to make sure that we got that on the record as well. I'm excited for the conversation around this. I think there are a few other really good amendments that are going to be coming forward, one of which councilor Green talked about. I'm interested in talking more about Novick four as well, and I have three as well that I think collectively fill in a lot of the gaps that we're talking about here in the mayor's proposed budget in terms of reductions to public safety. But I think this is the right place to start. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor Morillo, you have also spoken to this motion. You made the motion, councilor. I will come back to you, councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. This is kind of an odd way to take this all up because I we seem to be only talking about one. But these are so related to the others that were moved I trying to be clear eyed about which vote moves forward and how we do it will be challenging, but. You know, I, I think the greatest way to shut down a democracy is you threaten the people you elect to do that democracy on your behalf. And we've seen that happen in these chambers. We saw a complete systemic failure by people who breached this area. And I had choice words about that in terms of what should and shouldn't take place. There are ideas about hands on, hands off. And I'll just tell you, once you break that line, it's a hands on situation. And the fact that that was a question mark in this city is a concern to me. And I've addressed that with the city administrator, the mayor and our security professionals. The idea that people will show up to one's home and cause damage, as we've seen in the past, is a deep concern for me. When I was a staffer for previous mayor, I remember one person in the infancy of this team being on staff as a as a protective agent for the mayor. When the press conference had to be barricaded, and then all members and press and staff had to be taken out of back door because of what showed up. So I do take it seriously. And I think that the team has been. I appreciate the growth, manny. I think that that that the proactiveness has done a good job compared to where we were four and five years ago. And so I'm very appreciative to that. I take very seriously the decision package that you that you put forward in terms of outlining the ability to be proactive on the threats that face elected leaders in this city. And I will say, I say that from a position of not generally knowing the behind the scenes work that your team does to be proactive. And so I'm inclined to support no changes to that movement, because I don't know that coming up to speed, when something else happens in the environment in which we exist, right? It's not the protesters who have a salient point to make with us. It's the people who glom on to them and are sick in the head and think that they can be a hero, and that they can have a movement related to that protest that is the most concerning. Those are the sometimes people say the lone wolf or it's the standout, or it's the individual who, who, you know, didn't get enough love. But those those are concerning things that we've seen across this country grow more and more. And so I take seriously this idea. It's also really easy to say, we want to give up things at our level in order to, you know, save another thing, even if another thing, if it's vacant. Et-cetera. But if this body can't work, if this body is under threat, then this, this experiment of this new form of government is under threat. And I care about that a lot, but I have certainly not used the security as a free service. I think the term was said anything and everything. And I just want to be very clear. I got a breakdown of the security usage by officers. Zimmerman, one time clerk, one time. Smith one time Green one time. Dunphy two times. Koyama Lane six times. Pirtle-guiney eight times. Avalos nine times. Kanal 36 times. Morillo 38 times. Every one of us will, at some point or another, have every one of us at some point or another, will have the need, the use. We've seen that change over the years, and.
There's an emergency.
And the point I'm trying to make here is that. You have to be proactive if you want to be successful at this mission, that reactive. And that's what your decision package talks about is not sufficient. And I'll say some of those uses, actually all of these uses, I'm 100% supportive of them, 100% supportive of them. The things that my colleagues went through are frightening, and that's why I don't want to support a change this year, because what you went through was frightening. The day that a member of this body's house was, at least initially, in the first 12 to 24 hours, we thought potentially attacked. There was a failure in that system in that within the first hour, a call by our security didn't go down to every single member of this body and say, maybe one of your members may have been targeted today. We had to wait quite a while. And so that's the difference between proactive and reactive, because what should have occurred is the minute we thought a member of this body was being targeted and attacked in real time, that at least contact should have been made with every member of the elected body and any other senior members who face a concern. So I don't want us to take this lightly. I think to councilor Ryan's point, this was well written. I understand it, but it is easy to do things like attack a council budget, attack a security posture, say that usage was anything and everything. I think many of us haven't done that, and I think that those who need to have it at certain events are right to do it. And I support you 100% in doing that. An option I would say maybe exists, is that we consider it a build back to council offices. If we think that usage is not being judicial, perhaps a build back so that there is an accountable aspect to it should be considered. But. Councilor Morillo, I think you have done a good job of writing out a bunch of different options. We just disagree on the proactive versus reactive approach. And so I won't support aye, Morillo one, but I, but I appreciate the other programs that are outlined. And I do think that. Clerk one at all gets us closer to what I think is, is adoptable. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, council president. I want to start by saying that I overwhelmingly support everything that Morillo one restores. There's a beautiful focus on community centered public safety, accountability, investing in things that are going to make portlanders safer and really meaningful, lasting ways. Manny, I want to give huge props to your team. Not every city prioritizes the safety of their electeds in this way. One of the first meetings I had with a the idea of the aclu was a push for us to. Was to say, go make sure that the city actually takes your security seriously because there are other cities around Portland that where that doesn't happen, where people have to hire their own security. And your team has been really, really incredible and do make me feel safer and help answer questions. And this does feel personal to me. You know, I've, I've had threats. My they've talked about my kids and my family. And I've been really grateful to be able to have your team meet with me and my partner and do change some things at our house, walk me out of certain events. Recently, they were at an event where I was emceeing, and there were many japanese American elders that were all around 100 years old, and someone was assaulted by right wing streamers, and I was really glad that they were there. So if for folks that haven't used that, like worked with this team much, I appreciate that they really analyze the risk and give us assessments. I actually called someone on your team to ask about this a little bit, and I was like, oh, I haven't talked to you in a while. Maybe that's kind of a nice thing, but I do appreciate that risks are kind of upgraded or downgraded. I really care deeply that we as councilors can go be out in community and can safely show up in public spaces, attend events and be accessible to the communities we serve. I appreciated some of councilor Ryan's questions. I think they answered a couple of mine. I. I do wonder if we end up. Because I remember the prior council president and I had to give a thumbs up to increase the spending and make sure that. And it was it was a choice. If we get to that point again, if we do a deeper cut, what what are our options? And I will say, I, I've heard this idea from a few folks about we can build people's council offices, but I would love us to be able to stand in solidarity with each other if there's a real abuse of it. But I think that if someone's being targeted, I. I think that should be a shared thing that I would love to see us all feel, feel like it is important for us to invest in. Because when all of us are safe, when one of us is safe, then I think that makes all of us more safe. Can we talk about what happens if we end up needing more?
I'll step in if you want to, if you need more. From that standpoint, the first thing that we have to make sure is that we have capacity within our contract to add more services to it. Then it comes into a checks and balances things for us as we look at what potentially may move around as a city to allocate those funds to be able to do it. I don't want anyone to think that, though. If there's an emergency, we're not going to respond to that emergency. From the standpoint, what it may do, though, it may put more onus on our public safety group outside of our security services if those funds are not there. And as we know, that is already a tax group as it is, that's calling them to have to step in on these situations. Pbh to be able to provide some level of support to the city in these times of need. But we will always evaluate and look at if there's a need. How do we address that need? We're not going to have any council member walk into an actual threat that we are aware of and not provide any type of support.
That's helpful, and it was actually helpful to hear I, Zimmerman, councilor Zimmerman, list out those the usage because I am kind of going to look to some of those folks that have really needed it. I guess also, we don't know what's going to pop up and who would need it even more. But I'm looking to some of those folks. So I think our, our feeling okay with making some of these cuts. And to clarify, when councilor Ryan asked his question, mr. Mayor, you proposed you didn't just say like, I'm going to triple it for fun. You're matching it with what we ended up using this past year. But then there also is a bit more of an ad, and that ad amount is what councilor Novick is talking about removing. Is that just to make sure I understand?
Yeah. So that ad amount would be the change to our current council team that's in chambers. So that would change dramatically on what we're doing on that piece.
And that amount is about it's like 900 000. Councilor Novick is that right?
Steve Novick: That 994 is what I was told.
Okay.
And councilor Five and a half.
Okay. The last thing I will just say is I did have a family member point out that especially for folks that are getting threats, that it seems a bit scary to publicly say we are going to drastically cut our security in public. So I that is one thing I am thinking about, but how deeply we want to go.
Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane councilor Green.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, mr. President. So when I'm approaching this budget, I'm thinking about two things. Given scarce resources, what are our priorities? How do we sort of trade off between different priorities? And then the other thing I think about is if we're going to make adjustments to this budget, are those adjustments on a one time resource or an ongoing resource? And I think that, frankly, you know, to to councilor Novick reference to the low council approval rating, I would submit that a large part of why, why our approval rating is so low is because the public has seen city council just expand its costs without any consideration of of the long run impact to the city of Portland, its fiscal health and doing these sort of one time balancing one time cut games. And so I want to applaud councilor Morillo for identifying a cut, which I know comes at an expense. I know that there are risks, but it is a it is an ongoing cut to pay for an ongoing resource. And the. The proposition is that the things being restored are much more important to the city of Portland than the things being cut. And so it is a risk that we have to take on as councilors, and I appreciate that. And I'm going to fully support this today. I'll just note that my own. I'm standing ready to use my own office budget if I need to supplement my own security needs. And that's a decision we always get to make. I often forgo, I won't councilor Zimmerman has made this point before, but I won't buy furniture out of the catalog, so I don't want to spend $7,000 on a couch. I'd rather spend that on other things like security. So those are the choices I'm making. All of us can make the same choice, and I think it's much more important to restore things like programs that help our communities and get us closer to getting, getting the 24 over seven Portland street response service that we all have promised our communities and we deserve. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Smith, I had you next. But your hand disappear from the queue. Would you like to go next? Yes.
Thank you. Thank you, council president. I don't know why somebody keeps taking my hand down.
Going up and.
Down has power to do that. But thank you so much, councilor Zimmerman. You asked the exact questions that I wanted to ask. You know, who's using the service. And I did not know. I like the things that you're trying to put back in councilor Morillo, but I didn't know, and I think I told you this too. I didn't know that you had death threats. I didn't know that you were getting rides to work and rides home because you take the bus. And I thought that was perfectly a good way to spend our resources. And and councilor Kanal, I had no idea that you needed these kind of services for 38 times. I think it's huge. And you're putting forward cuts to basically possibly if history repeats itself is to cut yourself because you would be cutting yourself from getting services. I don't think that's right. Y'all got to understand y'all got to protect yourself because on February 18th, I don't think you were here, but a lady with a red hat jumped over this dais and she charged towards me directly. She was right here directly and had the security not been here. And I didn't know that they were not supposed to touch her. But she he pushed her back. So I don't play with my life. I should not have to work in a hostile environment. I am not going to vote to support this so that I can sit here like a sitting duck in a hostile environment where people are out of control. When I sit and listen to them, when they give testimony. So no ma'am, I want you protected when you need it. Councilor pirtle-guiney. I need you protected when you need it. It is not fair for us to take this kind of abuse and threats and go into the community knowingly and councilor Green. No sir. This is not the price we pay for being a elected official. I disagree with you. You said that this is the risk that we take being an elected official. Kanal. I'm sorry you guys got different hair. Among other things. Yes, yes, sorry about that. But that's not the price that we pay for this. This is not fair. I had a lady come to my house early one Saturday morning, and I think I had previously had a conversation with the mayor the night before, talking about the risks and the security issues that I'm experiencing as a single person. And she banged and banged on the door. Luckily, she got my son. But I don't think that this job should put us in a position because we are serving the community. And the charter said they wanted us to go out and engage with the community. And when we have community meetings, if we're feeling threats, we need to be able to call manny and say, hey, I need you at my event. I don't think that's that's out of bounds. So I support keeping this budget the way it is. I support all of my colleagues who have had to use this numerous times, but you should not put yourself at risk at this point to say, I'm willing to give up your safety to be in this job. No, ma'am. I don't want anything to happen to you. Angelita, don't do that. That's not fair.
You care about me so much.
You don't have to make that point to make that point. We need you here. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Avalos, you have not gone first. Got your first time, so please.
Okay. I appreciate that we've opened all the items, but yes, it is a little bit confusing. It would be helpful to if people could say what, which one they're speaking to before they give their points. So I can better track what argument you're making. So just for moving forward.
And just broadly, we are in discussion of Morillo one, but I you're right, I this has gotten a little bit more confusing than I meant it to be and I apologize.
So we opened.
Them all, but we're not.
We introduced them only we've only moved Morillo one only Morillo one has been moved and seconded.
So right now we can only talk about aye, Morillo one.
I'm happy to have folks talk about them in context, since they are so similar and they are going after many of the same things, but we are in debate of aye, Morillo one.
Okay, well then I will go ahead and leave my comments to that and I can speak to the other ideas later. Yeah, I, I heard a call to have people who use the security to speak up. So I will speak up. As you all know, last October I woke up to a fire and a week prior to that fire, I got an email saying, I hope your house burns down. So obviously regular brain says, somebody threatened to burn my house down. Now my house is burning down. So I obviously made that connection, right? Thankfully, it was not a deliberate attack on me. It was an accident. But that doesn't make the fear any less. So I absolutely know what that feels like. And since coming into office, even prior to coming into office, before I even got elected, I had somebody literally show up on my doorstep trying to question me, you know, berate me and said, you, you need to answer to me because you're a public official. Not on my doorstep, honey. Not on my doorstep. And I wasn't a public official at that time. So I very much feel viscerally what everyone's saying about their worry, about fear. I share it, I get threats all the time. I think what I'm hearing in the discussion as far as what we can plus up and plus down, I think that's why I'm landing on supporting this, because one, we did increase it by a lot. Yes, we had some needs last year. I hope to not have another fire. So hopefully I'm not dealing with that. Seriously. I will crash out. But you know, I think after the fire I was able to, you know, take the security down because it was like, okay, the threat has been gone, right? We're okay and haven't used the security since then. And so I think that, yes, you're right that you cannot predict the future. And therefore it's good to have some buffer. But we did increase the budget as needed. I think that there's always a place to find money for it. The city is never not going to find money to protect the electeds. You're going to make. You're going to find a way. And I think we don't need to overly inflate that budget right now. When we have all these other crises that we're needing to fund, including all of the things that aye, Morillo one funds that I absolutely want to make sure get funded. And so my perspective is that, yes, we need security. I don't think that aye, Morillo one is drastically cutting it in a way that makes me feel unsafe. And I think that we have the capacity as a body to increase that if needed. We we're always going to meet that need if necessary. I think it's a pretty small cost for a large gain cutting down security that could be fluctuating, fluctuating over the year versus funding something that we absolutely need, that the community needs is my priority. So I'm interested in supporting aye, Morillo one, I think that it when we get to it, I think Morillo one and Green one are important as a package to fund a lot of what we are all saying we want to support. So that is my logic. I appreciate everyone's comments on our safety. I share those and I think this is a this is more important. So I plan to support Morillo one. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Avalos. Okay. Councilor. Morillo.
Thank you. It's not lost on me. When we talked about who had to use security the most, that it was a lot of our councilors who are black people of color, who've faced different marginalized identities, who are being targeted. I know my office. We've gotten white supremacist hate mail. I got a white supremacist hate mail letter from florida my first week in office, which was really funny because I was like, how do you guys even know who your elected officials are in Portland, Oregon, when you're from florida? But people are keeping track, I guess. But I, I think what councilor Zimmerman set up in his argument is a little bit of a straw man, and maybe not intentionally so, but I'm not suggesting that we have no security. We are talking about prioritizing the use of our security, which means that when there are surge capacity incidents that we address, that we also have a lot of leftover office funds. And I think that when the security part is purely coming from the general fund, that makes it less judicious for us. If you had to pick from your office fund to increase capacity during a critical high point for security threats, you would be judicious about how and when you're using that, right. If it comes from a general fund, you're not tracking that as much. The time that I had to use security was because someone publicly posted my bus stop. There were a bunch of comments of people saying that they wanted to find me at my bus stop. So obviously it wasn't really safe for me to be waiting at predictable hours for coming and going to the building in those spaces, and that's what I had to use security for. And then when those threats went away, which they often do, it ebbs and flows. I stopped using security because it's not necessary. This is not supposed to be habitual. It's supposed to be incidental. And the demand that we had last year was because we had an unconstrained demand. So it was kind of being treated as a thing that can just be used exponentially rather than something that says, okay, this is very serious, it needs to be addressed, and there have to be some safeguards and constraints for how we use these funds. So I am not willing to I'm not willing to give up our safety, but we also have to protect our communities from hunger, from gun violence, from not having the chat program, from not having Portland street response employees. And we don't get to make our communities less safe, or to compare some individual coming in here and waving a piece of paper in our faces to over $1 million being taken away from a gun violence reduction program. Right? That is not a comparable situation. And these are very real, lasting harms that will happen to our community if we don't fund the office of violence prevention. I also want to point out that these things are not funded in clerk one, except for chat. Nothing else is funded in clerk one. This is a clean cut package that will create ongoing funding to stabilize these programs for the long term. When our communities are safer, we are safer. So I would really urge my colleagues to support Morillo one. I think that this is an opportunity to show the community that we are going to stand by them, and that we can continue to use our office funds. If there is a situation that ramps up your need moving forward. But I, I really urge my colleagues to fund this. I care about these programs a lot. I know that we all do. And the other amendments don't cover them in the same way. So thank you.
Thank you, councilor Morillo colleagues, we are about an hour in at this point, 45 minutes into actual discussion. So I would love to get to move forward on towards a vote on Morillo one. We can move towards clerk one clerk at all. After that, councilor Ryan and then councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Thank you.
Thank you. Council president councilor Kanal you did that thing where you took your hand down so I could go in front of you. So this better be good. Again. I like most of the programs you want to add, I really do, and. However, after this morning's dialog, your source is not very rational to me as the person on this dais who was not just threatened by political violence, I've experienced it directly multiple times, most as vandalism. Some was violence a flare tossed into your home after they broke two windows to burn down your home. That's violence. Moving out of my home for a week. Due to the high volume of trespassing and vandalism that made my home not safe for much of the fall of 2020 into 2021, this is an experience I do not take lightly, nor do my neighbors and of course, my spouse. For the record, I received colorful threats from both, from both extremes. The reality, perhaps, of being an out gay man with hiv who is rational, I don't know, but I get them from both ends. Then I heard the usage of this service from this council, and I was startled by those who were enthusiastic for this amendment. Want to pass this. That just doesn't make sense to me. For the record, thanks for reading the receipts, councilor Zimmerman. I've asked for extra security zero times. Perhaps my risk tolerance is much higher. I don't know, but clearly I will not support this amendment. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal: Yeah, the reason I dropped and put back in was just to to see if there was anyone else to add. Not seeing councilor Smith has. I'm just going to request that we limit debate to those who are currently in the queue and ask for unanimous consent to do it, but I will say one piece of it, which is I think it's notable that the people who did use it the most are the ones saying that we can do it, do with a little bit less, not to zero out anything, not to do any of that. But the, the idea that it doesn't need the addition that we're talking about. Thanks. Okay.
Councilor Smith. Final word.
Yes. Thank you. And that's a good point that you're making. Because if I had needed the service as many times as you all did, I would never make this motion. I would be asking for more. But. But the issue is about the school lunch program, u.s. Department of agriculture. They pay for that. We don't. And so we're not we're not stopping folks. I had sonya in here talking about this, and I asked them, do you use usda agriculture to pay for your summer lunch program? And she said, yes. So we are not doing something extraordinary that we already don't get paid for by another federal agency. I urge my colleagues, council councilwoman Pirtle-guiney, look at this very closely. The struggle is real for many of us and for the councilors of color. We have had probably some of the worst run of security issues of anyone up here, and I do agree with that. While I may have only used it once, it does not mean that I have not been frightened more than once, but I still think we need to have it available. And I thank the mayor for putting that in, in the budget and for listening and for understanding that our safety is important and it's critical for us to be able to have this platform and be allowed to come here free of hostility. So I will not be voting for it. I like what you're doing, but I think we have other sources to pay for some of the things that you are trying to pay for in this Morillo one, thank you for putting it forward and I will be voting no.
Thank you. Councilor Smith keelan, can we please call the roll on Morillo one?
Angelita Morillo: This is amendment aye, Morillo one moved by Morillo. Seconded by pirtle-guiney Kanal. I pirtle-guiney I Ryan no.
Koyama Lane I aye, Morillo.
No one else is funding these things besides chat.
I Novick.
Actually, my proposal restores much of the funding for cease fire.
I.
Clark no, no.
Green I.
Zimmerman no. Avalos I.
Smith no.
Dunphy I.
The amendment is approved with a vote of eight eyes and four nays.
You. Councilor Clark to your amendment.
Olivia Clark: Sure.
Thank you, council president. I don't know that I have a lot to add to what I said earlier. I'm very interested in making these restorations to keep us safe, particularly when it comes to the c. E I hub and forest park. The threat to closing precincts is very serious. There's something in this amendment for everyone, but I do want to just ask folks to think about when you're having an emergency car wreck. Your neighbor's storage shed is set on fire. Like in my neighborhood, a domestic abuse situation. Who are you going to call? And if the response time these cuts will increase, the 911 response time, which is really frightening to a lot of people across the city, not just my district. I really fear that this issue has somehow become over politicized in social media. You know, I think all of us, pretty much all of us voted for this charter change several years ago. But the program is in a startup mode, and this is not some kind of cut to the police accountability commission. It's a loan from the money that they're not going to be able to use in the next year. Just to clarify that. So with that, I'll just I know other people have a lot to say about this, so I will close at this time. Sorry. Oh, I have to move my amendment. Sorry. I like to move. Clark Novick pirtle-guiney. Ryan Smith one. Second. Second.
Counselor Clark moves Clark at all one and I believe it was counselor Smith as a second okay colleagues to the amendment counselor Smith.
Yes, I think this budget did take some really big public safety hits hits in east Portland in a way that no other district has. And I think Clark one, it solves it. It solves the problems. It keeps our east precinct open. It keeps the north precinct open. The the public side, the precincts won't close, but the public side will be closed. We will not have desk clerks. We will not have people to do admin for the sworn officers. It may take them a little more time to get out on the streets. If we don't support Clark one, and I just want our public safety, law enforcement fire 911 to know that in district one and councilor Smith's office, we support you. We want you to perform at a level that is at a high peak and that you can get to those emergencies fairly quickly. And I think that this budget item, an amendment, will be the the one that will get us there. It is, like I said before, it is very smart way of getting getting these restorations back into the budget. And if we don't, we're going to lose. East Portland is going to lose rescue units in the fire. We're going to lose folks in east Portland who who can who can help our most vulnerable communities in the entire city. So I urge my colleagues to please take a look at this and support this amendment. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you, mr. President. You know, I like I like pretty much everything that this amendment seeks to restore. I think your language in the past, councilor Pirtle-guiney, is I like what you're selling, but I don't know if I like what you're how you're buying it. But I do have some questions. I don't know if this is appropriate for jonas or for ruth, but if either of you could please approach the the dais, please. They might even need to tap in the city attorney on this. Thank you, mr. Berry. So as I read this amendment language and I've been trying to wrestle with how this is different than the original Clark one. The original Clark one was not legal by charter and code. This one
Seems to sort of create some sort of a loan, an interfund loan. Can you explain how this loan works, please?
Yeah. Councilor thank you for the question. For the record. Jonas biery the city chief financial officer so my understanding is that this would use available balance, current year available balance that's in the facilities fund, I think is what it is. So the idea is that this would sort of bridge use that balance to, to bridge to make sure that there's full funding in the to meet the charter requirement in the ocpa. And then as that underspending develops throughout the year, the anticipated underspending develops, then that underspent amount would become available in this fiscal year to replenish that reserve balance.
Okay, so it's not borrowing strictly from the appropriated funds, but it's borrowing from another fund, and it's using this as collateral. The funds. Is it fair to say this is more like collateral?
I think so, I mean, I guess it's just it's just I think, again, recognizing that there there will very, very likely be underspending. And we don't have the ability, per the charter requirement to sort of capture that today. So it allows us to capture that at a future budget adjustment, when that can be accommodated within the charter is my understanding.
Okay. So so the idea is so there's not there's no identified repayment source except for the assumption that we won't spend this. So we're we're building in an assumption from a risk prudence standpoint that the way that we repay the loan is through the underspend in ocpa.
That would be the expectation. That's my understanding of the expectation.
I am worried about this setting up an incentive structure to not fill and staff up that program over the course of the year. There's also this other risk that I or risk I worry about, which is, well, what if we do hire this director and they decide under their independent purview to go out and make expenditures that cut deeply into this $10 million to put put this, this board into practice, even using independent outside experts, that's an allowable use of those funds. And so I'm really worried that we are going to take on a $10 million unfunded liability that we have to pay back within nine months. And I wonder if we could do that by borrowing against fleet and facilities. Why couldn't we do that with any fund and use any other fund for collateral? If we expect this to result in a general general fund return at the spring toe or.
Yeah, if you're if you're asking the question councilor Me, my response would be that there are. Likely zero other general fund sources that would be anticipated to have that level of underspending. We don't have another model of a program that's in a start up phase with that charter requirement that exists today relative to the expected implementation of the of the program. So it's it's not I mean, I think sure, in theory that is correct. In actual practice, there isn't another circumstance that would present this type of an opportunity without without incorporating significant risk into the system.
Okay. But I understand that. But but we're not allowed to use these monies for other purposes. And what we're doing is we're using it. We're betting that we don't spend it. And so if we think that we're not going to spend it anyway, it will fall to balance in the general fund in the next year. Correct.
I wouldn't say we're betting.
Well, that's.
What that's what we're projecting and expecting, which is different from a bet where we where we don't have confidence in the outcome. The other. So that's that's how I answer that question. Okay.
But I guess my point, the point I'm trying to make is we could have we could have borrowed and used any other source of collateral to, to back this and hope that we repay it instead of this specific fund, unless we really think that we are going to pay this loan back with this fund, which I do think that is a little disingenuous. It's a it's a workaround on not spending these monies by saying, well, we're not going to we're not going to directly spend these monies. We're going to indirectly spend these moneys and colleagues, I think that's bad budgeting practice. And I do think that cuts against the charter. So I have some deep reservations with this approach. I would be willing to fund this package if we were to get serious about some cuts, perhaps from the top of our organization. So I'll just leave it at that.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. I want to talk about some of the things this package restores that I don't think the others do. Councilor Clark, how many police, public safety support specialists does your package restore?
Are you talking about the desk clerks?
No, no, no, the the ps three.
Threes, I would say approximately a dozen.
Okay. That's a group of people that is cut by 80%. And the mayor's proposed budget, those are the people who come out to your house when you call to report a stolen vehicle to right, the stolen vehicle report. And I've talked to the chief, what happens if we don't have them? And he says, well, god knows how long it's going to take for an armed officer to have time to come out and take that stolen vehicle report. That is a serious customer service problem. These are folks that also like help the police and like searching for a missing person, like somebody with dementia who's wandered off. They respond to non-injury vehicle accidents. They're important folks. I also don't know that there's any other package that restores the desk clerks, which is another serious customer service issue. So I think that these are really important restorations, and there just is no realistic prospect that an organization that doesn't even have a director now, and they expect to take months to fill that position, is going to not only hire up 22 people immediately and find a way to responsibly spend millions and millions of dollars of external materials and services, which is what the 16 million figure currently assumes is just not going to happen. If you're worried that this amount is too much of a risk, then think about a smaller amount that you think would be less of a risk. I also want to address, I think that there might be some people who are concerned that if we do anything that relates to a voter approved measure, the voters will rise up in anger. And that's just not true. We know from the Oregonian poll the other day that the voters want us to raid staff to pay for police and parks. I don't happen to agree with them, but that is where they are. The voters are not ballot measure language purists, and they certainly would not object to borrowing money that otherwise will just sit in a bank account in order so they have good customer service. When, for example, they call up to report a stolen vehicle.
Thank you. Councilor Novick. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: First off, I'm not making any decisions on a 300 person Oregonian. I'll throw that out there in the water. I'm not making decisions on that. Second of all, I do not understand this argument that there's no way that the cbpa could possibly spend this level of funding. How do you know that? How do you know that this board has had zero opportunity to fully stand up its operations? We're talking about operations that they have to stand up on staffing investigators, legal support, outreach, training case systems, administrative systems, public engagement, independent operational capacity that costs money. And the voters said that that is what that money is for. I think it's gross. Frankly, it is gross the way that we are approaching this conversation. We have not even given this the opportunity to build that infrastructure. And mind you, why have we not why has it been delayed? I promise you, it's not because the constituents want it delayed. It's because people around this dais, including councilor Ryan, have been spending years trying to stop it, including the police union spending years trying to stop it. Please google it. Really. Information is available. You can see very clearly the positions that councilors on this dais have taken that the police union has taken to try to slow down police accountability. Imagine telling 82% of voters you wanted police accountability. You put 5% of that money to go towards it. But no, the police union wants to take the money for police accountability to spend on more police be for real. Like this is such an unserious argument. And it's it's really makes me ill because it, it spits in the face of communities who have been begging for accountability for a bureau that has been notoriously against it. So we don't have to go that route. This is I'm going to take that route. That is the Lane I am proudly going to take, because I have been working so hard to stand up these systems, so hard to pass that measure to make sure that they are stood up. We celebrated proudly a couple of months ago that we finally got it up. And you're already trying to take 10 million away. Seriously, I think that is a slap in the face of the voters. I think it's a slap in the face to police accountability. I think it's unacceptable. And I really I don't even want to spend even more time and energy on this. I want us to put a vote to it because I'm voting. Absolutely not.
Thank you. Councilor Avalos, city administrator.
Yes, we may need to amend this as this goes forward. Just keep in mind Morillo one funds chat fully. So this would double fund it as it's currently written right now.
Thank you, city administrator councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. As this was a a voter approved thing, I do have some heartburn here. I was wondering, can we have the staff of ocpa come up and ask some answer some questions?
Point of information real quick there. There is staff that has been assigned to ocpa, but they have not actually hired the director yet. They're in that process. Okay. I just want to clarify that I believe they're good experts. I just want to clarify that for the record.
So there are no staff yet of ocpa.
Correct.
Okay, then who are you? Hi.
Hi.
Kristin thorpe. My pronouns are she her. And for the record, I am the limited term employee that's supporting the ocpa currently.
Thank you for supporting it. So I'm wondering, does ocpa have a spend plan for the 16 million in this current year or a budget for it all?
The spend plan has.
I'm happy to. I'm happy to jump in there. For the record, deputy city administrator tracy warren. There is a current spend plan for the office. Currently, there is roughly $5 million expected spend related to 20 or so projected staff. A director. Support for internal services, some facilities costing. And I believe that's it. There is roughly the rest of the money that is in ems that is available. One of the things that we've talked about with the board is that once the director is hired, they will need to come in and develop a spending plan. So those are estimates from us.
Tracy. So am I correct that there's $5 million in a rent or facility rent bucket in the ocpa plan? I'm wondering if we're renting at the ritz carlton.
That projection was based on a five year lease. Okay. I recall at the moment, which are facilities folks said would be a good number to put in for the long term lease.
Okay. So, so it's kind of piece of math. It's five over five. Okay. So you're expecting to hire up 20 people in the current year. You're expecting to spend 5 million of it and execute a $5 million lease for the next five years. I'm wondering why ocpa is treating like each of us has facility costs that we do that we spend year over year. So I get a budget. I spend that budget on my facilities. Why is ocpa so different in this situation on this topic?
So there's a couple of components. One, the ocpa has to be housed separately from public safety bureaus. Additionally, we're basically putting in placeholders because we don't know the direction of the director who will be coming, coming into the system. And we also don't know the direction they'll be taking from their board. And so we are being conservative in our estimates.
Okay. Quite conservative. Okay. And then I noticed yesterday that the mayor, you submitted a letter in support of this now, and I think that is big, right? You're supporting an amendment to your own budget. But I do appreciate that you did that. I think that, you know, where this gave me some pause, and I've discussed it with councilor Clark, was about the legality in terms of appropriateness and loans, etc. And being refunded. But I seen that letter listening to our finance folks and the idea between a loan versus a reduction. I think the public would be rightfully, greatly heartburn if if we kept a bucket of money just to sit in an account like we sometimes do with other areas of this budget, while other things went unfunded. So thanks. So I wanted to be clear. Chief of police is here, if you wouldn't mind. Chief, can you come up? I just want to understand that the precinct administration aspects of your budget are pretty hurt. This is a line item in your in this amendment that restores precinct administration. Thanks for coming up, chief. You look great in the dress uniform, by the way.
Well, I'd like to say it was for council, but I'm going to the police memorial here in 45 minutes to.
Well, thank you for letting me step right into it on that one. So I will be joining you as well. Sorry for not making it appropriate there. So the I want to understand if this if this amendment passes, it has precinct administration being restored. Actually even extended a little bit. Does that mean that east precincts, front desk capacity and north precincts front desk capacity will remain open as they are today? If this is restored.
And councilor, we're at 5.5 minutes.
Okay. Thank you.
Bob day, chief of police. Yes.
Okay. I find that compelling, given the east precinct concern. And I appreciate that. East precinct and north precinct and central would stay open if this passes. And in a year when the. It doesn't look like ocpa is going to spend any of this money anyway. I'm leaning toward full acceptance of this. Thanks, councilor Clark, for getting through the weeds on this one. This was a challenge and I appreciate you bringing it.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Yes, thank you, council president. I want. Police accountability commission to build. I have never put up any roadblocks to that end. And thank you, councilor Clark, for leaving funds to do just that. This amendment is leaving plenty of funds to stay the course and build key word build the system people asked for. You're all smart, you know that. So not sure why there's a pushback based on the facts. Most voters and taxpayers would not support a sitting on money while we cut police and fire. The two response systems that show up and handle the most complex criminal and tragic rescue efforts. Mayor, your cuts to public safety is causing portlanders who are trying to be patient with us, to doubt us, and they are losing their patience. Let's let them know this council sees them, those who pay top dollar to live here and provide some basic services. Let me tell you a couple of stories about public safety system. If you're out there actually doing ride alongs, when you go to the community meetings, when you're out of city hall and you experience the reality that portland's are experiencing, you would support this. As always, these stories come from that lived experience. Police and fire respond to response. Recently, when I was on a ride along to the top of the saint john's bridge, where once again a person's life they were threatening to to end their life. There were no other units can respond to this. It takes their expertise and they work together like hand and glove. Police and fire go together. You don't cut one and leave the other flush. So I really think I always speak to those two together with all the other support systems. Two weeks earlier, I was on a ride along with fire, and they had to go to an apartment where someone was also threatening to take their life, who was there because they were the ones that are qualified, certified to show up was police and fire. The result of that was they did save their life and they handled it with such humane, cautious mannerisms. It was just a delight to watch their experience on how professional they were to handle these really tough situations. And you could just see how important training is. Then you're at the police collaborative meetings again. You see cease fire, you see office of violence prevention and all of the partners communicating and connecting with police. It's a system. They all go together. I do think we need to consider amendment. I had my hand in the queue. Thank you, sally, for that. Since we did fully fund chat, are you going to propose a friendly amendment? Do you want me to propose a friendly amendment? Okay, what's my friendly amendment? Since chat was fully funded by the most recent amendment, I think it's an opportunity to put that money at a higher level than back to ps three. And the reason I became aware of how important ps three are is because I hear it from every officer. Every patrol officer says that the amount of time that they're actually able to spend on complex investigation, on complex services and criminality out there is now easier to find that time because we have the ps three are doing the customer service that portlanders want. I can't look the storefronts in the eye and say, we're cutting ps three in police because they're the ones that do the police reports with them. They're the ones that actually listen and have time to take in that information unarmed. They're the ones that can be in the neighborhoods working with our residents. The storefront support program means nothing if we keep cutting police and fire. That's what they're asking for. They're asking for quick response times. And colleagues, I'll just say this. We had a long discussion in early March about priorities. There was one that stuck out. It stuck out. I'm not making this up. It's on the chart. We got the report and that was response times. We all said we wanted to improve response times. So how can we sit up here and vote against that? That's what I ask you. Okay, back to the friendly amendment. Are you good with it? What is it?
Point of.
Order.
Before first friendly amendments are not a thing.
They're not a thing.
They're not a thing. We've been doing it. We're going to offer an amendment. Thanks for that. I know before we consider amendment, it needs to be placed in writing, reviewed by the budget officer and submitted to the clerk. Cbo is available to work with your staff to get this idea moving, but when that's ready to be submitted, we can move it.
This is we're all dealing with this in real time. I'm not.
Recognizing verbal amendments.
Sponsor. How do you want to handle this? We got direction from the city administrator. We we're trying to be adaptable council president in real time because we just passed amendments. So now we have to adapt to it. That's why you put them in these blocks, right?
Absolutely. And I won't rush it to a vote, but we got we got to have it written out. I can't we're not going to have our clerk trying to.
Ryan, do you have staff that can do that?
I staff I know I can't see right now, but you're being called to duty to write up a friendly amendment.
Thank you.
I'm working on it.
Okay. And it could help. It also could come from the city ministry. We could do this in a teamwork. Right?
Right. Well, I will come back and recognize you to introduce this. We have five others in the queue. So I will I will come back to you before we move to a vote on this. Thank you. Councilor clerk.
Thank you, council president, and thank you, councilor Ryan. I really appreciate that. And I'll be your second or your third or your fourth. Sure.
It's a new rule on the dice.
No. So I just wanted I got into the queue because I just want to make a comment. I understand the passion of some of the councilors about the commission, and I think probably all of us on this dais voted for that, or maybe all of us. I'm not trying to undercut the commission. I'm not trying to stop its work. I want to be really clear about that. What I'm offering is a very common sense amendment, a very common sense approach that we can do easily. If you would vote for this. We've gotten great facts from dc, a warren and her staff about what the commission expects to spend in the next year. It's very clear there's even additional money to do that. So I just wanted to reassure people that I'm not trying to stop the commission. That's kind of silly, but I do understand the passion that some people have about it. All I'm trying to do is offer a common sense amendment to use dollars that are just sitting there to restore some things that are incredibly important to the people of Portland. Thank you.
Thank you, vice president Clark councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. I, of course, also voted to establish this accountability board and look forward to watching it work. The point I wanted to make is that this body is not going to start spending at a rate of 22 employees and millions of dollars in ems on July 1st. We know it's going to take a while to get underway, and if they spent $16 million in a fraction of the year, that would mean they'd be spending at an unsustainable rate. It if they're in the long term going to have 22 people being paid a certain amount of money. But they don't hire those people for months, then the only way to spend that salary budget would be to either hire a bunch more people that you'd have to lay off next year or wildly overpay them, and then you have to cut them. Same for ems services. If they're going to have $1 million a month for ems, and that's their expected long term need, then if they don't start spending for several months, then the only way to blow that budget, to spend that budget would be to start spending at an unsustainable rate. So the assumption that the whole $16 million would be used necessarily, is an assumption that the director of this body will start spending at an unsustainable rate as soon as they're there. And I don't think that that's reasonable.
Thank you, councilor Novick councilor Green.
Steve Novick: Thank you. I just wanted to make one final point on this, which is that there are ems contracts all over the city that encumber funds over a course of many years. And so it's entirely possible that when we hire this director, the very first thing that they want to do is sign some contracts with legal counsel, with other ems contractors to then have that capacity up here so they can spin up and get the work going that portlanders have been waiting six years for six years. And so if we're going to apply this sort of thinking to ems spending, we need to apply it everywhere in the city of Portland, everywhere we've had contractors, we've had contractors for graffiti abatement whose contracts have been held over years, over years, over years, because we've said we want that capacity to be there when we want to, you know, repaint a wall that's going to get graffitied again tomorrow. That's what we do currently. And so this idea that we can't possibly imagine a director with that independent authority to come up and hit the ground running and meet the, the challenge and frankly, meet the the moment of impatience for portlanders is it's astonishing. So, you know, I again, I like the things that are being restored in this budget. I do think we need all those things. I just wish that colleagues would have found some cuts in our in our enterprise to pay for this, rather than sort of roll the dice and gamble on this underspend idea in this one specific fund when we have underspent all over the city. So I'll just leave it there.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: I'll be quick. I want to say ditto to what I heard councilor Greene talk about. I could consider consider this voting for this if there was a different funding source, especially if it is something that is addressing possible management bloat chopping from the top.
Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane councilor Morillo.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, council president. Thank you, councilor Greene, for outlining all of the ems issues with this. But I just want to remind my colleagues that the voters passed this ballot measure with 82% of the vote, and that is really unheard of for ballot measures. Okay. People are not usually there is not that much consensus for things. So this is something that the community has been waiting for. And if we tell the oversight board that the city's only plan for paying this money is to count on their underspending, then they will be heavily incentivized by the executive side to keep that spending down. That is not what the voters asked for. They asked for robust implementation of this oversight body. Attorneys, investigators. As we have seen when we've done some of our own oversight, are very expensive. So there is a lot of work to be done, and they can use every single cent of this if we allow them to. If we actually support and uplift this board that was brought to us during a time where Portland really opened its eyes and said, we care about racial justice, we care about police accountability, we're going to push ahead with this, and it is our duty to follow through on that. So I appreciate what this is trying to fund. I don't appreciate the funding source, and because of that, I will be a no.
Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor No.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you.
Council president colleagues, you may be wondering, why do we keep reminding everyone that there were 82% of portlanders in favor of ballot measure 26 to 17? And there's a simple answer to that question. It's because some of y'all keep forgetting I do not object to many of these things. These two amendments, clerk one and clerk Novick pirtle-guiney Ryan Smith, seek to fund. I support consideration of other amendments which fund chat which we just did. Fire engine at station 22, the fire rescue vehicles and some of the reductions to police administrative support specialists. I've been working on funding for the fire admin as well. There are other amendments which fund things which this excludes in public safety, like the cease fire position, cease fire grants, ovp grants, Portland street response, as well as funds some of the same things with ongoing dollars, because this one funds it with one time dollars. This includes Morillo one, glisan one, Kanal 245, and Novick. I think it's four. What makes these amendments objectionable is where the money comes from and how it would be taken, because these amendments defund the office of community based police accountability, taking 62% of its charter mandated budget without its consent or even its consultation clerk one is a clear violation of both charter section 2-1004 and 2-1006, while clerk. I'm just going to call it clerk two to save time, engages in some clever moves of money around and calls it a loan. There is no plan to repay it if we actually ramp up the board as currently intended, which means it simply mandates a future violation of two dash 1004, and it doesn't address the two dash 1006 concern at all in the charter. The board has independent judgment on all of its duties, including its budget. It is frankly absurd that colleagues are arguing they supported the ballot measure in 2020. I don't question your account of how you voted then, but we're all about to know how you stand on police accountability now. And the reason for that is because there are other sources of money. There may not be a single fund source that has 10 million in it, but you'll notice the possibility of adding up several funds was not excluded. This amendment was designed to pit a narrow definition of public safety against police accountability. When there are other funding sources that do not defund police accountability and fund a broader definition of public safety, which includes fire things like the saint john's fire engine and the rescue units, as well as police, but also includes psr chat, ovp, ceasefire and more. With ongoing funding colleagues, you can talk about where the money is going to go, but the fact is, nobody would defund the mayor's office and eliminate the office of the mayor, including the position to fund this. Nobody would do that with the city administrator. Nobody would do that. We could put up an amendment to zero out the auditor or the council offices. Not just our budgets, but the role of councilors. And why wouldn't we do that? Because we cannot violate a voter approved ballot measure just because there's a need to fill councilor Novick made two important points. One, that it can't spend all the money, and two, that the test on ballot measures should be if the community will rise up, if we violate it. Both are incorrect. Councilor Avalos is correct. You could google it to see what all has happened. Or you could ask someone within 20ft of you who worked on this for years and helped build example budgets for how they could spend this money. It's budget. Having millions in ems is true, but that budget was developed by external staff assigned to it, not by the board itself, because it had to be submitted for this year's process before the background checks were done and the board started meeting. So you can't actually judge the board by the budget. Dca warren talked about, although what she said is accurate, they did not suggest that much money on real estate, for example. But furthermore, we have to follow charter 210. Even if nobody sees it, we have to follow charter 210 even if we could get away with it. Otherwise we have to follow charter 210 regardless of its visibility. And I'm profoundly concerned about the chilling effect on the new director that when they come in, this is what councilor Morillo just talked about. When they know that underspending is going to be perceived as necessary and the pressure they're going to get not to spend, not to scale this new system up, because otherwise they'll either be accused of breaking the budget or defunding police and fire. I'll probably have more on this to say later, but I wanted to talk about the slippery slope here, and I'm going to quote something I said a year ago when we talked about ipr being on the budget for this. What I said then was my concern with this broadly is that at some point when you start wearing down what can be considered allowable or what not, what is not allowable under the charter, we start to think about things like, could we start to say, oh, it's okay if it funds our compliance with the settlement agreement? Oh, is it okay if it funds some of the other advisory boards which are run out of a different bureau? Oh, is it okay to fund body cameras? Right. These are the sorts of things that are outside, completely outside of both the spirit and letter of the charter. In this particular case, I was talking about ipr then. It's definitely outside of the letter, end quote. I wish I hadn't been prescient on this, but I was and I was informed by things that you can see in the November 15th, 2023 council meeting in the old version of this chamber where I sat on that side and councilor Ryan sat on this side and you can see what happened, look it up. And so it's not prescient because we can see the future. It's prescient because we know the past. Thank you, council president.
Thank you. Councilor Kanal. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president colleagues, I want to start by saying, while I appreciate my colleagues efforts to beef up funding for the ps three program, and I do think there is a lot of important work that happens through that program, I would like to ask cbo to work with my staff to give us a different option, which is to put that half $1 million back into the original funding source so that we are pulling slightly less money out of the funding source. Colleagues, I feel like I was just thrown back to a debate, a debate that I think is actually a false choice between policing and police accountability, and I'm not really sure why that was done, because I don't see any purchase of highly trained folks with a badge and a gun in this amendment. Now, what this amendment does is it ensures that we can continue funding three things, three things that fall into the category of core frontline services, which are exactly what portlanders have asked us to prioritize. And I want to be clear, from what I heard at the listening sessions I was at, we don't all. When I say we, I don't mean the 12 of us. I mean portlanders defined core frontline services in the same way. But there are a few things that I think all portlanders think are core frontline services, fire safety, pretty basic core frontline service. Ensuring that our police are trained to the standards that our community holds. That's right. Portlanders have asked for a lot of additional training for our police officers so that they can be held to the standards our community holds. Victim's services. And the work that many community members have repeatedly said. We don't need or want a highly trained person with a badge and a gun doing. We want other people to be able to do, including, I might add, ensuring that portlanders who live in my district and in east Portland can actually come into our police stations and get some questions answered, which, frankly, I do not consider customer service, nor do I consider the work of wps three customer service. That makes it sound like it's a nice to have. Are we easy to work with? This isn't about whether or not we are easy to work with. It is about whether portlanders in north and northeast and east Portland have the same services that those folks who live in my colleagues district on this side of the river have. We need to fund those things, and I will be very clear I am not voting for a budget that does not return an engine to fire station 22. So we've got a couple of choices, colleagues. We can pull out a reserves. I guarantee you our budget is not going to be easier next year. We're already pulling out of reserves. We all know we need to pull some out of reserves, but we also all know we need to keep some in there. Same with contingencies. We can make cuts. There's a proposal to make cuts, but I will tell you, those are cuts that we don't actually know if we can achieve. What happened this past year when we balanced the budget on cuts that we didn't know if we could actually achieve. We had to come back and backfill not interested in doing that again, colleagues, but I am interested in making sure that my district has the fire engine it needs. My colleagues at the border of east Portland have the rescues that they need for medical life and safety issues, and making sure that folks in my district and in east Portland can walk into a police station and have their questions answered. So what we have before us is a proposal that ensures that an incredibly important part of the work we do, police accountability, is critical to a well-functioning police bureau that ensures that that work continues to staff up. We are going to be hiring a director soon. That is a huge step, and that director can then start hiring staff, and those staff are not going to be fully on board until well into the year. The money that was left is over three times what was spent last year. I am going to draft amendment proposing we put half $1 million back into it so that there is even more. But colleagues, the narrative here that we are being fed is intentionally misleading. It is intentionally misleading because it is trying to create a divisive issue where there does not have to be one, right? We have to fund these services. We know that this money will be left at the end of the day. And I want to be clear, when this money was left at the end of the day last year, what happened is it came back in the spring. I don't know if you all remember that in the spring time, we don't often talk about where the money comes from. So there was not a lot of transparency with portlanders. Portlanders, when the money came back this year, it went into spring tau. And as with everything else that went into spring tau, when there is money there, the mayor works with the administration to bring a proposal on how we spend that money. And then we all complain that the mayor decided what to do with that money, and we didn't get a say. So what's going to happen, colleagues, is not all this money is going to get spent. It's going to go back into the spring tau and come back to us as unspent funds. The mayor is going to bring us a proposal on what to do with those unspent funds that he's put together with the administration. And we are all going to complain that we didn't get to decide what to do with it. So I would prefer. I'm sorry, I will take 20 more seconds. I would prefer that we knowing that there will be money left on the table, ensure that I have a fire engine, ensure district one colleagues that you have fire rescues and I guess the the outer half of district three as well. Ensure that folks in my district and in east Portland can get their questions answered at a fire station. I think that is a basic common sense solution that still ensures that we can do the absolutely critical work that we will be able to get to this year, because we will not be able to get to all of it. In standing up a state of the art leading in the nation police accountability system. Thank you, council president, for letting me go. A few minutes over.
Thank you. Council pirtle-guiney councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you. I just want to note that the budget that we adopted last year described vague efficiency savings. It did not identify where we would cut it, did not identify how we'd go about doing it. The mayor proposed a budget. We accepted a budget that says we're just going to realize efficiency savings. And then they just didn't. And then they did the same thing in the fall tor. And guess what? They didn't. And so the amendment that I'm proposing, Green one, identifies precisely where those cuts come from. And if the budget committee, the city of Portland, cannot provide budget guidance to the administration says you shall cut 20% from these ranks, then I don't know what we're doing up here. Surely the city administrator can execute that by making some trade offs if we were to adopt that budget. So I think it's it's it's a bit dismissive to say that, you know, we would try to cut without a plan or any sort of suggestion of how we might get there. I have a lot of faith in our city administrator. We did an excellent national search. Okay, so it's time to get serious here and quit kicking the can down the road. With our fiscal situation in the city of Portland, I agree we need to fund these things. And there are other proposals in this book that fund a fire station in saint john's.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you. I just want to say ditto, ditto, ditto to councilor Elana. Pirtle-guiney. This this new second Clark amendment will immensely help east Portland. And I, we have to make some trade offs. And we can say we like people or whatever. But the city administrator and the mayor put together a budget, and we can identify some other sources of where to get this money from. But we have to put some of those services back into our community, because we have underserved communities who have not had the investments that other parts of our city have had, and to argue about where they come, if they're going to come back, that is a useless argument. The argument should be, will east Portland and north Portland lose a public precinct? Will they lose the fire rescue? Will they lose the office clerks who have been working for our city for a long time? We're getting caught up in where it comes from. We're not trying to take away from the money that was set aside that that the voters said that they wanted because that money is going to be taken care of. We're making some drastic choices right now, and if we don't figure out that being as drastic as we are is going to hurt our community in the end and not voting for something because you won't move off your circle, you won't move off your circle for a second to understand what it's going to mean to east Portland. You want to sit there and say, no, no, no, you won't do that. You can't do that. But while out in east Portland, we're losing services. I mean, flat out we're losing services and nobody cares about that. So support this amendment. If you've got another place where we can take the money from, make an amendment, make an amendment. I don't hear you make one.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: We do have an amendment. It's called Green one, and I'm looking forward to being done with this conversation so that we can move forward and do that. I think it's important to note that this budget that we're responding to is a budget that the mayor proposes, and he proposed cutting things that clearly all 12 of us don't want to cut. So what does that say? What does that say? Because we are being put in this position to try to fight for debt, for necessary emergency services. We were being told to do this. The mayor didn't have to cut these things. The mayor could have found all kinds of other money, could have made all kinds of other decisions. But this is what's in front of us. And I think, you know, this concept that the people making this divisive know, you know, who's making this divisive, people who think that taking police accountability money for more policing, you think that's not divisive? Seriously. So let's just be done with this. I'm not voting for this. Let's go. And also, lastly, I'm going to say it now because I know I'm going to hear it all throughout the next two days. Do not just explain me. I can speak for my own constituents. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor Avalos councilor Kanal.
Candace Avalos: Thank you, council president. I'm going to first ask to limit debate to the people currently in the queue and ask for unanimous consent on that. But I want to talk about two things now contempt and audacity. Nobody used the word contempt here. They did use audacity, but you can feel it. This amendment holds the voters in contempt. I voted no on some things up here in the past, but just because I voted no, if it passes, I still think that we should have to implement it. Right? Just because I oppose something doesn't mean it's not the law. Colleagues are also saying we shouldn't put this in contrast to public safety and their right, but that's what the sponsors did when they did not have to. They did not have to try to defund the ocpa to do it, because there is an amendment that does that, and it is called Green one. There is also significant contempt for your intelligence. Portland, because we're hearing arguments that we shouldn't make cuts. We have to backfill. And if this board makes even 38% of its budget spent this year, we'll have to backfill them in the spring. And we're hearing arguments that we shouldn't make budget cuts and necessity in next year's budget. But every penny that goes from the underspending into repaying police and fires debt to fleet and facilities, if this amendment passes, will have to be repaid in next year's budget instead of used on some need in the spring, or more likely put into ending fund balance and then rolled into beginning fund balance next year. So we'll need to find up to 10 million additional ongoing dollars to make the budget balance next year. And worst of all, at least one councilor has argued that the ballot measure doesn't really count because people didn't really read it before they voted for it. And so I asked my colleagues not only to reject the amendment, but the contempt that comes with it that we would be holding portlanders in if we adopted it. The other point on the Morillo one amendment, councilor Ryan said, quote, I need to understand your why before I think I have the audacity to make the cut, end quote. And I think this is a fair point to raise. Do we have enough information before we have audacity? Did we get information from the community board for police accountability from the police accountability commission, from the various advocates that came up on this, that worked on it for years from the staff who worked on it? No. So I don't have the audacity. And so I will not be voting for an amendment to defund the community board for police accountability, approved by 82% of voters for an amendment that breaks the charter, 2001 two 1004, which requires the budget allocation in the mayor's proposed budget. And thank you, mister mayor, for that. Not $10 million less. I'll not be voting for an amendment that breaks charter two 1006, which guarantees the independent judgment of the board and specifically says that council will not interfere with its legally guaranteed authority, will not be voting for an amendment that breaks the spirit of charter two 1006. Further, by not even consulting with the cbpa prior to its proposal, with no further meetings scheduled as a possible time to consult with before we approve the budget or an amendment that is based on the false premise that the board cannot spend all of its budget offered by people who haven't spent a fraction of the time learning about this, that even volunteers spend working on this monthly, and who, with a simple request for information, could receive example budgets or an amendment that is based on the false premise that the board will never be able to send its full budget offered without doing any homework on it, and who are trying to relitigate parts of the ballot, measure an amendment that is disrespecting voters intelligence, an amendment that calls it a loan. When some of the co-sponsors say they cannot repay the loan and don't think they should have to because it would be unspent, an amendment that puts public safety and accountability against each other, both because those colleagues who are more respectful of the will of the voters, have put up amendments to fund critical public safety programs without defunding the ocpa and because accountability is a core aspect of public safety and specific to policing, accountable policing is effective policing. I will not be voting for an amendment that rewards those who delayed the measure's implementation by taking the money away, saying it can't be spent this year when that may not be true, and even if 100% can't be spent more than the remaining 37% almost certainly will. But most of all, we cannot vote for an amendment. I cannot vote for this amendment because I took an oath to the charter. I looked voters in the eye and said I would never vote to violate a ballot measure. I would never say my preference is outweigh your vote, and I would never undermine democracy at a time that it is under profound attack from the national level down to the local level. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Kanal colleagues, we have I have received notification that there are two amendments that are live. I will look to councilor Clark for the last debate, and then I will look to councilors pirtle-guiney and Ryan if they're going to introduce amendment councilor Clark, vice president Clark.
Thank you, council president. I can't match the passion and the hyperbole that we've heard here. But I can clarify that I'm not interested in defunding this program. I'm not zeroing it out. I'm not violating the charter. I am pure in my motivation. I have nothing against the commission. I support the commission. I'm operating in the here and now. I'm not operating in the past. I'm operating in the here and now, and I'm trying to restore what the people of Portland need and want in public safety without hurting the accountability commission. It's not a defund. It's not a zeroing out. It's not breaking the charter. Let's be clear. Thank you for your consideration.
Thank you, councilor Clark. So, councilor Ryan, I just want to check with you about your amendment. First. I just want to.
Make sure it hasn't been delivered because we are not going to do it. I'm going to lean into the one from councilor Pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you. So recognizing councilor Pirtle-guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I'm going to speak really, really slowly because my team is bringing printed copies for all of us right now, and I want him to be able to get here. I apologize that you don't have it in front of you. Is it posted.
The the budget office would appreciate a moment to review it.
Okay. The budget office sent it to me, but if they'd like a moment, we can.
Take that.
Thank you.
Council president. Let me go ahead and take a ten minute recess.
Can I ask a quick question? Yes. Is the q limited right now?
The q is limited right now.
Okay.
Thanks.
Thank you.
We'll take ten minutes. Everybody please be back here at 1142. Thanks.
You said.
You're bringing.
Give me 10s.
I know.
All right. I'm calling us back to order. Thank you, everybody, for letting us take a quick break. Thanks, folks. In the chambers. Councilor pirtle-guiney. I'm recognizing you.
Thank you, council president. I wish the rest of our colleagues were here. Colleagues, my original hope when we crafted this amendment was that we would only have to dip into half of this fund in order to get everything that's in there. We had to dip a little farther. And if the opportunity exists, to put a half $1 million back into the original funding source, I think that that is the responsible path forward. You have an amendment before you that addresses the fact that we just passed an amendment to the budget, which already covers the necessary funding for the chat program, so we do not need to allocate those funds back into the main budget through this budget amendment. Therefore, that portion is removed from clerk pirtle-guiney Novick Ryan Smith one and returned to the original funding source. That is the bulk of what this does. I will just note while I have the floor, and this is before us, that at 1.1 of the folks who has testified and followed along with our budget work said that they thought that between aye, Morillo one and Novick pirtle-guiney Ryan Smith one, we would restore somewhere between a quarter and a third of the front line service positions that were cut in the mayor's budget. It would be incredible if we could start out our work amending the budget, doing just that.
Councilor pirtle-guiney are you is that a formal move?
Yes. I'm sorry. I move epg1, which is an amendment to clerk pirtle-guiney Novick Ryan Smith one the amendment to the budget.
Second councilor Pirtle-guiney moves epg1 and counselor clerk seconds. Colleagues, is there debate of this amendment? Counselor Ryan, are you okay? Counselor Avalos to the amendment.
This amendment changes nothing. Let's just move to a vote.
Thank you, counselor Avalos. Any further debate, counselor Ryan?
Thank you. Council president, I just want to add thank you, counselor pirtle-guiney. Once you explained it, I understood and it was easy to take mine down. And I just want to ditto the comments from councilor Clerk earlier. I, I am totally in support of building the police accountability like 82% of portlanders. I also think a large share of portlanders. It could be up to 82%. Do not want us to sit on money. My response times backpedal after three years of building a much better system, can we please serve based on reality? I look forward to supporting this.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Keelan, can we please call the roll on epg1?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: This is the pirtle-guiney amendment to clerk pirtle-guiney Novick Ryan Smith one moved by pirtle-guiney and seconded by clerk Kanal no.
Pirtle-guiney I.
Ryan I. Koyama Lane no.
Sorry, just a second. Having some technical. Morillo.
No.
Novick I.
Clerk I Green.
No.
Zimmerman I. Avalos no.
I Dunphy no.
I six.
The amendment fails with a vote of six ayes and six noes.
Okay. Colleagues to the. Clerk et al. We're going to call it clerk two for now. Can we please call the roll on the underlying amendment?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Okay. This is the underlying pirtle-guiney clerk. Novick Ryan Smith one yes. Kanal.
No.
Pirtle-guiney council president, thank you for giving us the opportunity to start with two votes that would restore almost a third of front line services I.
Ryan I. Koyama Lane no.
Morillo. No Novick. I clerk.
I.
Green no. Zimmerman I.
Avalos absolutely not.
No.
I Dunphy no. The amendment fails with a vote of six eyes and six noes.
Thank you, counselor Green.
I have a point of order.
Counselor Ryan.
Yeah. I know that the mayor can break ties on the budget, but can he? So why wouldn't we have the mayor consider weighing in on amendments to the budget?
Our current chamber interpretation? Yeah. Yeah. But our current legal interpretation is that the mayor has the authority to break ties on final votes, but not on interim decisions. Is that correct?
That's correct. And that's what your council rules also reflect.
It's not what the charter says.
Yeah, I agree, of course with counselor Smith. So I continue to be a bit bitter about that, especially when we're facing the annual budget.
Said council president.
Just a point of order. If if we were to I think you're going to break soon. If we could break now, the number of us could make it to the police memorial in time at the start, and I'm wondering if that would be a substantive change to your plan. But if we could break now, we could make that memorial.
Okay.
I would request that courtesy memorial. 12:00 I believe. In fact, I think our uniformed personnel have already left.
Okay.
Down at the waterfront.
Then I would be happy to let this be our lunch break. Right now, I'm going to take one hour for lunch, and I would like I would ask folks to please be back at 1:00, ready to dive into all of our amendments. If we were to adopt this budget amendment, we would restore a fire engine at station 22. We would keep our neighbors in linton feeling safe. They don't feel safe, by the way. They'll just feel at least as safe as they do now. We got to deal with the cia hub, but. But it also provides an opportunity for the city administrator to go through the org chart. I think three months is sufficient to say, where can we make some consolidations? Where do we have really narrow spans of control and then make a fiscally sustainable, fiscally responsible series of cuts at the top to keep this whole? And so the budget note describes how that happens for the continuity to have seamless funding for both sides of the balance sheet, so to speak. We pull it from general general fund contingency that is then paid back by the fall tor with with these with these cuts that are identified by the city administrator. So at that point, I'll pause for questions and I would ask you for your support.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Green has moved. Green one councilor Seconded. So colleagues, we are in queue to the amendment. Councilor Smith. Thank you, councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. Councilor Green, first of all, I want to say that I think it's quite possible that you're not cutting enough. I just don't know. And like I said, I'd like to have a discussion fairly soon. Of the 57 people who supervise under four people and sort of start with that. And I feel bad that I've been looking at this management issue over the past year. We should look at it in the course of the year, not just at budget time, but the goal here is to generate general fund. And you said you're exempting the rate bureaus, but you're also exempting the public safety bureaus. Well, that largely leaves parks. And I actually asked parks a few weeks ago to tell me what growth, if any, they've had in management since 2019. And they came back and said that the proportion of people on our staff and all supervisor and manager classifications together increased 2% from 12 to 14% of the total. However, the proportion of our staff is solely management and higher classifications remain stable at just under 4% of the total. So I'm wondering how your numbers align with that, and how much savings do you think you're going to get out of parks specifically?
Good question councilor. We were careful not to ascribe where and which bureaus that these cuts would be. Effectuated if we pass this amendment, the city the city administrator could choose to zero out the dc a's entirely if he wants and then absorb most of it. That way he could choose to focus on the 24 manager threes, which are executive positions in the city of Portland. Those are spread around the org. And so we're not we're agnostic on where these cuts happen. I will note, though, that when I talk to the liuna labor union 43, who represents parks workers, their primary grievance budget after budget has been that they are seeing their members being laid off while new supervisory positions are being created. And in this budget proposal itself, there's an addition of two manager threes. There's two manager fives across the org, and there's three manager ones and one dca. And so I appreciate your line of reasoning, but I would, I would I would kick that over to the city administrator to figure that out.
But you're asking the city administrator, by the way, was that leona's request that I asked parks this question and I forwarded the answer. I got to them. But you're asking the city administrator to figure that out. But what if what he figures mean, what if he what he figures out is that there are extra managers in the rate bureaus, but not in the general fund bureaus, so it doesn't generate 3.32 million for fire.
Well, counselor, we we had this scored by the cbo, and we had determined that it actually started with a total cut of $8.4 million. And then net of general fund overhead. That was a much lower number. And then I took the total cut and actually reduced it by 25% to leave that first three months of runway there. And so the $3.325 million is general fund.
Okay. But we as a city are the city is a bureau by bureau thing. And I'm afraid that what you're doing is too abstract. I mean, I would rather frankly see something saying, we think we can get rid of this many managers and parks, this many managers, and what other general fund bureaus, I mean, be at planning and sustainability. And I'd rather do that bureau by bureau than have this sort of blunt instrument approach. And again, I think that the work should be done. But I don't think that we know the consequences if you do it in this blunt way.
Thank you.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor. No.
Thank you. I'm going to be supporting this. I really appreciate the questions that have been asked. I think one of the challenges that we have is I think it's fair to say that you'd prefer a longer process. I would too. I think the challenge is that this is the inflection point where something has to get cut and where it is right now in the cuts that are currently proposed. That's primarily rank and file workers. And so in order to do a process, we have to first let those rank and file worker positions be eliminated. And many of those are filled. Some are vacant, but many of those are filled. And so the time for the process ideally would have been over the last several months, because otherwise what we're doing is we're losing people and then saying, well, we can bring them back if or we can hire new people if. But it's still disrupts our rank and file represented workers job. So I wanted to just talk about that because I think it's really important. And it's, it's a process that I think ideally we would have a better budget process that is more integrated with council discussion throughout. I know that's something that our our colleagues to the right of us here to also believe in, but just hasn't gotten there yet. And that's fair. But I also know that we have to be making a decision today, because it's not as though we're making this decision in a vacuum. We're making this decision against a backdrop of whether or not we're going to let several of our rank and file employees go several is an understatement. Yeah.
Thank you. Councilor. First, I'd like to just very quickly correct myself. I said Green one, but Green one and Green four were both moved and seconded at the same time. Just for those tracking at home, mayor wilson has reached out and asked if he could say something briefly. Mayor wilson.
Council president, thank you for this opportunity. This courtesy, I want to first start with the obvious. I think we all want to restore engine 22. There's no doubt about it. It's my neighborhood station, so I certainly grew up around that station. It's personal to me. The rescue units for district one. District three are important to me as well. They do, you know, hard and important work. But I want to address is the the framing, the chop from the top, the team we have here are the dozens of people that are in this room right now. The dozens of our staff that are watching this right now in the war rooms that are here to support you in these decision making processes, reducing painful cuts to disrespectful slogans does a disservice to the city employees who spent their careers dedicated to their community, dedicated to you. In this process that we're at right now. These are difficult times, and we cannot, nor should we go through them and dehumanize our staff. To our staff and to the dozens who are here. I appreciate you. I've shown up every day since I've been elected, and for the most part, you've been there with us the entire way. And I really appreciate the way you've shown up for the city in these difficult times. We had $130 million deficit last year. Those decisions were hard and we struggled in this chamber. We have $160 million deficit this year, and this will force us to do even more difficult decisions and outcomes here today. This approach disrupts our efforts to make government work better. Green one will only add more delay and difficulties in the job that we have to do, and the staff that we have to do them with will be diminished, only reducing our ability to operationalize these cuts, because those are the cuts essentially will be making this from the administration is working hard to get government costs under control and make difficult decisions with sensitivity. And in the interest of the public, ca lee is five months on the job. We are making incremental changes to turn this ship around. It takes time, allowing us three months to make difficult decisions with a staff that ostensibly would be getting cut on their own. Decisions that they're making isn't practicable. It is not enough time to do this and do this well without harming the entire community. Blind cuts like this upend these efforts and will result in more expensive, less effective government. So thank you, council president, I appreciate it.
Thank you, mr. Mayor, councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president. I think we all know what this is. This is an attempt to take down city government. Chopping at the top is not realistic. Working with each other. And the administration is important. And it's critical. We have to think about these cuts in a way that's going to think about the folks who actually have to deliver the services. I will not be supporting Green one and four. I still believe that Clark two was the way to go, and I think we need to figure out other ways. And you talk about public safety. And let's let's, for example, just talk about police who haven't restored anything for police. They took a 6% cut. We're talking about community safety in the public safety area. But if you truly want to keep our community safe, put those true public safety dollars back in. I am concerned right now about east precinct and about securing the right security for fire to make sure that our folks, if there is a rescue that's needed in east Portland, that we have folks to do it. And about north Portland, I care about the entire city of Portland, including the fire engine. This is reckless, and we better be careful about how we govern, because it does not look good to the community. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor.
Thanks. Thank you, councilor Greene, for putting this together. Thank you, chief johnson, for being here and for all of your the time you're putting into this. Thank you to president isaac mclellan. What I've heard very clearly from Portland firefighters is that the focus is not so much on where the funding source is, but making sure that we really were these huge cuts to fire. As a card carrying union member, I think this amendment should be understood for what it is. It's pro-worker. It's pro-union. It's one that centers the voices of people who literally keep our city running every day. Union members across the city have consistently raised concerns about management bloat and growing imbalance between frontline workers and administrative expansion. Whatever you want to call it, this amendment directly responds to those concerns. So as councilors, we will continue to sit in the many executive sessions when we have hr, labor management coming and asking us to weigh in on contract negotiations and labor issues. We have a lot of contracts. How many do we have, ron, throughout the city.
Currently 15.
A lot. So we're going to have more of those meetings. And I want to be frank with all of you. If we're not willing to pass this amendment, it's going to put us in a difficult and contradictory position. If we are trying to publicly say we value our workers and we support labor and we respect collective bargaining and and, you know, we're bargaining in good faith, but we're literally refusing to acknowledge legitimate concerns being raised by our workforce itself. Supporting this amendment. Amendment demonstrates that we are listening to our workers who are asking for just a more balanced approach to staffing and budgeting priorities. This is not anti management. This is about accountability and priorities. And honestly, if there's anyone up here who is uncomfortable with the language chop from the top, I mean I'm a unionist. I like I dare you go ahead and say that here on the dais and let's see how the unions feel about that, because those are not dirty words. Resources. When they become increasingly concentrated at the top frontline services and workers delivering them always are the first ones to feel the strain. The people asking us to address these issues are not outsiders. They are our firefighters, our public employees, union members who understand firsthand how these decisions affect service delivery, morale, retention, public safety. This amendment aligns with our policy decisions and with the values that many up here claim to hold. Supporting our workers, supporting unions, ensuring that city resources are directed towards employees who provide our essential services to our residents every single day. And I want to urge you, you know, like councilor Novick, if you're wondering if this is not enough, then please consider this as just a starting point and a way to show our city workers and our constituents that we truly are a pro-labor labor council. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Koyama. Councilor.
Thank you, council president, we seem to have a tendency to use the budget to accomplish policy goals, but because we're focused on the numbers during the budget process, we don't always spend as much time making sure what we're driving toward is good policy. Councilor Green, I agree that the charts that you showed up are concerning. We have a a period of time there, and I note that the last few years of those charts are a little bit better, but there's a period of time there where there was some really bad decision making. And that's why I am already in conversations about a thoughtful approach to review managers, especially councilor Novick. I love it when you say exactly what I'm already talking about in other rooms, and we haven't already coordinated those folks who are managing fewer than four staff. And to look at the average span of control, these should be conversations about efficient, effective, service driven, service delivery driven government. But when we do this as a budget exercise that drives toward a number, regardless of the organizational need, we know where we end up because we ended up there this past year. If the goal is to generate funds in the general fund, we know that there are really only a few places to look at. We know that there's not other places to cut within fire, otherwise we'd just be cutting those places to fund these frontline workers and fire. So we're looking at management and police, and we're looking at management in parks. And yes, I am concerned that we have duplicative management and folks who are are working managers, but should be classified not as managers, folks who are managing just a few people. And I want us to take the time to actually, mr. City administrator, ask you to review all of those and to do it over the course of the next year so that we know before next budget what that looks like. Please expect that ask to be coming. But if we do this as a budget exercise, we're cutting to a number and not to a program need. And I am not comfortable wishing and hoping that we can fund fire engine by cutting enough managers in police and parks to get us there. Because if we don't get there, I'm not sure what we do. So thanks for bringing this forward, councilor, so we can have the conversation about what our city should look like, what our management to frontline worker ratio should look like. But I think we need to get there as a policy exercise, not in order to close a budget hole. Thank you, council president.
Olivia Clark: Thank you, councilor Pellegrini. Councilor grenier, next in the queue. But you've already spoken. So I'm going to go to vice president Clark and I'll come back to you.
Thank you. Council president. I don't think anybody would doubt my commitment to fire station 22. It was in my amendment to restore that truck because it protects the c, e I hub and forest park, which someday, you know, might go up in flames. So I appreciate supporting that. But I feel like this amendment is actually rather insulting. It's blind. It's even disingenuous. I agree with councilor Perlini that we need to take a different kind of approach and not take a hatchet to this. We don't have to do this. We could have used funds. I offered a much cleaner, common sense approach to funding this engine, as well as fire and rescue units that would have restored represented employees. So I'm not in favor of this amendment. I think it's a dangerous. And I'm really tired of all the hyperbole. Thank you.
Thank you, vice president Clark. Councilor murillo.
Thank you so much, council president. The hypocrisy here is frankly astounding. Last year we voted for the mayor's core realignment with what can only be referred to as a trust me, bro exercise, because there was no real reasoning given for the 20% cut. And the executive said that 25% simply felt too high. We were not given a reason for why 20% was chosen. Core realignment and the way that it's been done when we've been talking with city employees who are not supposed to talk to us, by the way, because god forbid, we actually speak to the front line staff who are telling us directly what they need is the local level of doge. That's what it is. They are laying off around 200 people with more disguised language. We can talk about language if we want to talk about what's proper or improper. But saying realignment is a very soft and delicate way of saying, we are laying off 200 frontline staff that do the work of the city every day, and we are doing that in a process that did not involve those frontline staff at all. That is disrespectful, that is dehumanizing. And I find it frankly absurd as well, coming from an executive that told people to not show up in matching t shirts to testify. Clearly, a pointed comment about union staff at the city of Portland, many of whom are portlanders themselves. Since the vast majority of our employees live in the city as if, though they don't get a say in how the budget happens, as if they don't have expertise to inform where the cuts are going to impact core services. Since 2019, there has been a 33% management growth. Since 2019, there has only been 8% growth for frontline staff. There is clearly something wrong with how the executive and management has grown in the past few years, and those people are not doing frontline staff work at the city of Portland. I am sure that they are important and critical. I think every employee left is valuable, but if we have to make decisions about the choices in front of us, the core realignment guts a lot of city employees with little to no analysis for why it's being done. So to act like this isn't doing that is wild to me. And I'm going to say this as well. I have been in meetings with the executive branch where they have literally said they are not sure how the cuts are going to impact us long term, that we might have to set aside money to rehire some of the people that we fire, because we might be losing some key expertise for some of these core services later on. Well, guess what? You're not going to rehire those people. Those people are going to get jobs somewhere else. Those people are going to be bitter and rightfully so. They're not going to come back to the city. We're going to lose those employees who have 20 years of expertise, right? So the comparison here that we should protect management growth of 33% over frontline staff of 8%, and that one is somehow a terrible option versus another, I think is very disingenuous. And in fact, that is hyperbolic, my friends. This is an amendment that is going to save fire engine in station 22, and we should be doing that. So there are only tough decisions before us today, but we at least have an actual number for this amendment. At least we know there's 33% growth for management. We have no idea why 20% was chosen, and most of the employees that have been forbidden to talk to us, or who can only talk to us secretly in the hallways so that they don't get in trouble by the d, c, a, s, or whoever else is preventing them from speaking to us. That's what they're saying. So I'm happy to listen to the front line employees and I will be supporting Green one.
Thank you, councilor Maria councilor Canale.
Thank you, council president. I wanted to start by noting there's been, I think, a lot of focus on canal one or sorry, on Green one, but there's Green four as well. These are together. Green four has the budget note with some of the legislative intent. And I want to note that on page 19 of the file the. This affects only the manager one through three deputy director one through three, director one through three, and deputy city administrator. By that definition alone, there are no cuts to police here because they don't have those classifications, only the deputy director. There's one deputy director in fire. And if you go scroll a little lower, it explicitly exempts police, fire, water bes. Ocpa ehr. So that's that's not actually what this amendment would do. And I think that's really important to point out. I again, I feel like I'm making a similar point to what I said earlier to councilor Novick's point in response to councilor Delaney's point, which is that we should be doing this through a process. We should ask the city administrator to to do that. We did last year. Last year, there was an amendment to do almost the same thing, narrowly focused to deputy directors as this, as this does. It was canal one, it failed it. But then we did pass canal eight. It was a budget note asking for exploring changes. Specifically the deputy director and director classifications. And what happened after that is it became a way to justify administration's existing desire to fully study all city staff classifications, which made it a multi month to multi-year process. And so that's why we haven't heard anything back on that yet. We did actually try that and it didn't work. And I know that that I don't put the blame on. On city administrator lee. He came in long after that. I want to be clear about that, but I do want to say that, again. We'd be talking about probably at least a year before there'd be any process on that. And in the meantime, what happens to the couple hundred folks that are being laid off? And I think that's where we go back to what councilor Murillo was talking about. I, I want to be clear. I think that the the way in which this would be done would be largely up to the city administrator. If three months is insufficient. I think that's a conversation that I think is worth having of what is a amount of time that is sufficient, and how do we go about it. But that's not what we're hearing at the moment. We're hearing, just don't do it. And I'd like to get more information on that. But I also wanted to know what of the arguments we've heard about the the blind cut aspect of this being a negative thing do not also apply to the core services realignment. What is how do all of those arguments, how do they hit differently? Because they sound like they're 100% the same thing. And I, I oppose the core services realignment. A few of us did. It didn't go that way. That's what we're doing. It was disappointing to have to be told that, yes, it's absolutely going to happen. It's absolutely going to hit these numbers. And then in the spring time I'll be told, no, it actually didn't. So I understand that we should learn from that experience and I fully grasp that concept. But the concept of doing it without numbers is not the issue here, because the numbers have been not only found, but put onto a comically large sandwich board of chart, but also the broader arguments about blind cuts seem to apply equally to that. And we're doing one, but we're not doing the other. It doesn't add up. So I just wanted to get that on the record. I do think that the challenge is when you take away all the scalpels that we're trying to do, and that we did through the budget last year, and it's not just this budget. Note, by the way, there's several others that were kind of taken in a very different direction. I'm still waiting, for example, on the package delivery fee note, which got rolled into some other thing at PBOT that was used to justify the tough and then buried. Still haven't gotten any details on that one. So this is what has happened. And I we have to find a way to not do this because it creates unnecessary confrontation that doesn't need to exist. But also we don't have the choice now. We don't have the time to go back and do this in the best possible way. We have a decision before us on whether or not to continue with the current plan to lay folks off, or to change it to this other way of of examining our management. I think we owe it to our represented rank and file employees to consider that strongly. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Avalos, it's.
Put me in the queue. He's put me in the queue.
Thank you. First, let me respond to the concept of the budget is not a place to make policy decisions respectfully. The budget is one of the primary ways that this council makes policy decisions, because budgets are values, documents, their governance documents, they determine organizational priorities and staffing priorities, operational, operational priorities. And overall, I'm hearing people say, well, we need to leave these conversations entirely to the administration. But colleagues, we tried that, we tried that, and we were presented with a proposed budget that cut hundreds of frontline positions and direct service impacts, while management and administrative structures remained extraordinarily high. So if the administration had already fully solved this problem, then we wouldn't even be here debating this amendment. Part of our responsibility, as the legislative budget authority is evaluating whether the structure of the organization actually reflects community priorities. So that includes asking difficult questions about management growth and administrative layering span of control, whether frontline services are being disproportionately sacrificed. So I, I think that it is entirely appropriate for council to say we want fewer cuts to frontline operations, and we want more scrutiny of administrative growth. I don't think that's disrespectful to staff. I think that's literally the work of governance. And to be clear, this amendment does not cut any of the police managers. I know that's something people here care about. It's not cutting those. And also, I just want to push back on this characterization that we are just being hyperbolic or too emotional, because it's clearly going to be another thing that's going to keep being brought up. But for many of our communities, these are not abstract line items on a spreadsheet. These are culturally specific programs. These are frontline community infrastructure, youth programs, housing stabilization. That's not just a budget line item. There is a real passion that people feel when they see that their that what is for them is constantly on the chopping block first. And so I don't think that passion disqualifies these concerns. I think it frankly reflects the real world impact that these decisions are having on the communities that we are here to represent and have historically had such a hard time just fighting to be seen, much less heard in this body. So I think that communities deserve elected leaders who are willing to fight for the services and the institutions that they care about. That's exactly what we're doing. I think we one is a responsible way for us to address the fact that what we asked for was not met, and now we have to make this corrective action. And that is ultimately our say. So I'm supporting it.
Thank you, councilor Avalos. Excuse me, councilor Smith, I will come back to you as you were spoken. This one first round counselor Novick.
Thank you, mr. President. Councilor Green, as I look at the list of exempted offices, I see you exempt the Portland police bureau. But I don't see that you exempt the office of violence prevention. Portland street response, cease fire, or pbm. Is that correct?
Thank you for asking that question. In the spreadsheet that we had on do the math on, we said we want to exempt all public safety bureaus or the entire sort of service area. So the office of public safety is exempted from this as well. So anything that nests under any of the public safety hierarchy is, is not considered for this cut.
But the but the your Green for is very specific. It says the following are exempt and exempt specific bureaus.
Well, then that's a scrivener's error. It should include all public safety. Service area bureaus.
Okay.
Appreciate the question.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Thank you, council president. Sorry I was late coming back from the police memorial service and I didn't miss the I did miss the presentation of your charts. I did get up and try to. And look at them. And I saw the point you were trying to make. Of course I want to restore station 22, cutting services to a station at the northern border that expands along the terminals and the far north that allow us to be a global trading partner to the ci hub, across the bridge along forest park from linton, all the way out to scappoose to the columbia county border. You know, that was a mistake. And it looks like somehow that will be restored today. And I'm grateful for that. Of course, I wanted it to happen in the amendment that you just voted down. And it's really a mistake. As we look to the very dry a very hot, dry summer after records have been broken on low mountain snowpack. So we are expecting wildfire challenges like never before. And we really have to make sure that we're ready for those to be responsive. In general, there's a theme from councilors, some of the partizan councilors, to undermine the complicated work of quarry alignment. I don't know how many of you ever been in the executive role of having to do quarry alignment work with with everyone. It's hard. Alignment was something that many voted yes for the charter because they knew we were a siloed city where taxpayers and voters and portlanders were always so confused on how to get a question answered, because we allowed ourselves to be so siloed in our bureaus that we would say, you should call that bureau. Let me blame it on someone else. In other words. And so this work councilor Avalos might recall when she was the chair of the charter commission, I said, why aren't we starting with this? This is the dysfunction we have in our city. We have 27 bureaus and offices where people are bumping up against each other, and this is during COVID. So many were at home in their pjs during that early time, and we were trying to figure out how to respond to a crisis of city was in. And it was really complicated and people were really furious about what they were experiencing in terms of service delivery from our city. If anyone's ever been in organizational development work, the case study of looking at the city of portland's org chart is quite an opportunity. I'm sure there's graduate students that are looking at that, and they, too, would have a good time trying to figure out how to do core realignment work. The professionals at the city that have been involved in this work, including not just those at the top, but you've been including workforce in those conversations. As I recall, in all of our conversations, it's something that involves the entire system. This is just phase one. This is just phase one of this project. I've been upset that it's taken so darn long for us to even get to this phase, because at the meantime, we're chopping away at core services that people in the city expect. Like when you call 911, someone shows up as we try to do all we can to prevent the inevitable, which is to do this work. And so I know this is uncomfortable, colleagues. These are called trade offs. When you run for this office, you make really hard decisions that aren't going to make all your friends happy. And this is one of those moments you can't win on this one. This is just an acceptance of something that's really hard to do. And I haven't been convinced that the process that that has been led by the administrators, that has included others from the city, including workforce, are doing anything in bad faith. And so I look forward to see a lee continuing to go forward with this very difficult process. You knew when you said yes to this position, this was high on your list of duties. And so here we are. We're at phase one, and we're backing away from it because of pressure all over the place. I got the same calls. So I'll be voting no because I find it to be very disrespectful to undermine the many hours that have gone into this process to get us where we are today. And there's a theme with many of these amendments that we'll do that. And so thank you for listening to me express some of my opinions on that. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Colleagues in the queue have already spoken once. I'm going to extend a courtesy to city administrator lee.
Thank you, council president. I'd first like to start out with, you know, with the council, there's no issue with staff having any conversations with the city council. I believe that happens now. And it's not when it comes to directing work of staff, that's where the rub will come. But there is no issue with conversations because those conversations are happening now. As we speak. The city should always look at how do we have a structure that can help support the services that our community wants to see us provide, and that's constantly and consistently evaluating the resources we need to do that. That's frontline staff, and that is also managers within our organization. That's essential that we do that, and not just once a year or something that we do when it's hard times within our organization, but continuously looking at how do we get better as an organization, core service realignment in itself was a process to try to take the first stab at that. That included some frontline members, and that also included management within what would be realigned and centralizing some of the services that we provide as an organization. But I just want to caution, council, when you look at this type of evaluation, this takes time to do to to look at this level of management and really understand the levels of impact. When you're looking at making reductions to it and what happens with the work in these bureaus and some of these programs, you know, that takes time to go and do that to make sure that we're not crippling the system that portlanders are expecting services to be provided through. There's a lot of transformation work to be done in this organization. And a lot of times what I have seen, we are building a plane and flying the plane at the same time in this organization, and that requires resources to be able to do that. And I just want to make sure as we go through this type of process or having this type of conversation, that we truly be thoughtful about the resources needed to make this work. And at the end of the day, we want to provide quality services to everyone in our community. And that's my main priority in how we do that as a government structure. But as administrators, as leaders within this community to help shape that. And I would say this, without adequate resource, it's almost impossible to do this work. And I just want to make sure we're just setting ourselves up for success. But this type of analysis has to be done in some shape, form, or fashion. I would just caution you from being in a targeted approach from it. We first need to understand what our outcomes are and then let our outcomes drive us in these type of decisions. Thank you, council president.
Thank you, city administrator. Okay, colleagues, everybody who is in the queue has spoken once. And near as I can tell, councilors who have wanted to speak have spoken at least once. I would like to note that it is 145 and this is our third amendment for the day. Luckily, these are some of the beefiest amendments, so maybe the rest of the next two days will go better. But I hope that we can get towards a vote. Councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you. Before I get too far into the substantive points I want to make to my amendment, I. I want to push back on this theme that keeps surfacing up, that there's excessive hyperbole or too much passion. In our speeches. We're dealing with some very big issues here. And the budget that has been proposed by the mayor introduces unacceptable risks to some of our communities. That was that was a decision you made to introduce. And so our reaction to this comes from a place where we've sat in our communities, we've listened to their fears, we've talked about what their expectations are. And that passion does come through us sometimes. And I think that's okay. I will also note that I don't think it's dehumanizing to describe an organization that has grown in cost in the management levels, at the expense of the non-management levels. I'll tell you what is dehumanizing, though. It's dehumanizing to reduce a classification for an analyst from an analyst to say, this is out of the budget. By the way, there's an analyst, one that's now in the budget. You can you can apply for that when you lose your job. That's dehumanizing. That's dehumanizing at the micro level. Those voices don't always come up though, in this room, but they're out there for sure. I'll also note that if you think that this is a. Some sort of an out of pocket kind of wild idea, it might feel that way in this room with a bunch of people who are paid salaries north of $200,000 a year, but to the average portlander who's looking at how we make decisions with our budget, we need to we need to go back and tell them that it's more important to preserve 24 manager threes at an average cost of $305,000 per year, $305,000 per year, 24 of them 49 manager two is at $267,000 per year. That's more important. That's a bigger. We don't want to risk changing that up in three months, three months. But we are willing to risk playing a game of political football with a fire engine. This is the only proposed cut. This is the only proposed amendment that provides ongoing resources. So we don't have to have this same fight next year. And it's the only amendment that doesn't try to try to float a loan. In a year where we've declared from this dais, our chief financial officer said, colleagues, we are in a financial crisis. We are in a financial crisis because we we were up short in the fall to. And then before we even get to spring towel, we're up short, you know, a five digit figure as well. And so this idea that it's reckless and irresponsible to say, here's your budget authority, it is reduced. I know it's uncomfortable. I know it's not your preferred practice, but you're going to have to live within your means, within this, these ranks. So that way we can pay for the thing that we want to pay for rather than float a bond, float a loan, borrow from peter to pay paul, and then put off into the indefinite future. This conversation about this growth and management that is reckless, that's fiscally irresponsible, frankly. And the people that put us in this office who give us a favorability rating of 24%, they take that into consideration. I'll also note that the commission form of government had an approval rating of 12%. So pretty low bar. But perhaps because we're willing to have these messy conversations and be impassioned and maybe play in a little hyperbole, maybe they maybe they enjoy that a little bit. So you'll make the decisions that you'll make. But councilor Ryan, I'm glad that you did say and remind us that we're up here to make trade offs. We're elected in this office to make difficult choices. This is a terribly difficult choice to make. I know that there's good people in these ranks that do good work. I know that and I've experienced that. But we need to think about the balance sheet of the institution and what the money that we are collecting in taxpayer revenue, what revenues, where that is going for. For my money, I want to keep a fire station in play so that when I have my next meeting with the fire wise group in forest park in linton, that I can look them straight in the eyes and say, I fought for you. I did it through a hard route. I knew it would be difficult to convince my colleagues, but I wanted to fight for you in a way that got you the money you deserve every year. So, colleagues, I hope that you can place your faith in the city administrator like I have to have the skills to execute these cuts with rationality and and grace. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president. Councilor greene, you were my vice chair on the labor and workforce committee, and I appreciated your insight. One of the agenda items that we had, I asked the city operations to come forward because literally, they have all the data. I appreciate you in your in your table, but I also understand that having all the information is very important and critical. And we had an agenda item where I asked tracy warren to come in and tell us how many people are at retirement age. She said. At full retirement age, there were between 400, 400 and 450 people. I think that's what ron zito had put up, 400 and 450 employees have 30 years or more at this city of Portland. I did not see you speak to any of those things because you said in that committee and you heard that I want us to go back to city life. Unfortunately, I'm not on that committee anymore. But you are. And go back and get the numbers from city operations, not just your billboard that you put forward. And mind you, you go back to 2019. We all started in 2025. The mayor in this city, administrator in the previous city administrator is still trying to make up for what the prior administrations have done. You are putting this on us as if this is our issue that we did. We're trying to unpack all of this, right? So you have to admit where that where this where this problem came from. It didn't start with mayor wilson or city administrator raymond lee. And I didn't see any of these kinds of cuts last year when we had our previous city administrator, I was pushing to get those things done. He said he was going to make those cuts by September of 2026. 2025. It did not happen. It did not happen. You did not hold him accountable. You did not call him in in your role as the vice chair, to explain himself on why he did or did not do things, because we were supposed to do this in sections. So to come back now and put all this at the feet of this mayor and this city administrator, it is wrong. We need to talk about those folks and the reason why some of those folks are still here, those 450 folks, because they are hard to fill positions. We can't afford to lose those folks. We have to train up a workforce. We have baby boomers that are going to be retiring at the rate of 10,000, 10,000 folks a a day, and we have to figure out how to replace those folks, because we're going to have a brain drain if we get rid of those 450 folks. So that's the other piece. I do support your sincereness about really wanting to do this, but I think you need to go back to city life, and we need to have a conversation with your chair, councilor Pirtle guinea, to figure out how do we report this back and how do we work with the administration. Again, I don't want us to try to burn down the city. The other piece is I am not totally convinced of the accuracy of the numbers that you have, where they come from, how you got them, and those kinds of things. I need to look at it. It's too hard for me to process that in this short amount of time. And as we're talking about public safety, we need to be very clear when we speak, when we're talking about the public public safety service area, not public safety, because there's a difference between police fire and 911. There's a difference between those folks who are the ps3's and the folks who are doing cease fire and the violence prevention that's in the public safety service area. And let's be clear on what the difference between the two are. We took a 6% cut from police, 4% from fire. Those cuts are going to make a huge difference in public safety in my district. And I can't say it more clear vulnerable populations in district one and throughout the city of Portland and in district district one and district two. I'm concerned. I'm concerned about forest park in saint john's because I have family and friends who live in those places, and I want them to have the appropriate fire truck to be able to put out those emergencies that we may have. But I think right now we need to rally around what we have, understand the unintended consequences of your amendment, both of them in the the budget note and figure out how we can do this inside our committees before we go forward on something this drastic. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Councilor. President, can I briefly respond?
Yes, councilor.
Great. So I had my amendment in Thursday morning to be scored by the cbo. So this is this has been scored by the cbo. So if you don't have confidence in my numbers, I don't have to say beyond that. But this I didn't make this up over the weekend. These were all scored.
Can can I respond? They're not scoring yours as the the the validity. They're not scoring it for the validity of what you're saying. They're scoring what we put forward on what we thought was a priority. They're not scoring this.
No no ma'am. They they scored it in terms of the budgetary impact.
In terms of where the money comes from. Okay. Again, we also need to hear from city operations until you identify about those 450 people who have 30 years plus in this city, in your calculation, we're miscalculating. We have a group of folks, we need to find out what are our our hardest to fill positions. Why are these people still working?
It's seven minutes.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, colleagues. I'm going to limit debate to those who are currently in the queue so we can move forward to a vote, as most colleagues have had an opportunity to speak at least once. Councilor, I'm going to it's going to be colonel Koyama. Elaine murillo.
Thank you, council president. First, let me just two quick clarifications and I'll speak to this amendment one more time. And one thing that we missed. First, councilor Ryan makes a really good point about quarry alignment. I want to be clear. I support the idea of realigning services up into the service areas from the bureaus. I said that yesterday as one of the reasons I voted no on the technical amendment one, because it reversed some of that work. I also support the conversation that might result in moving some of the services up into the core of the enterprise. And I appreciate kelly mentioning that some of those folks are managers as well. When I say I oppose core realignment, I don't mean the shifts in staffing. I mean the 20% reduction target that was imposed without math to get there or an understanding of change management. I think, councilor Ryan, you're right that we made the changes to the political side faster than the administrative side. You say that often. And as someone who is not directly involved in realignment but was in the emerging service area, as I had employees realigned from the bureaus to be my colleagues in the service area, I have observed quite a bit of what worked and what didn't, and one of the things was the targets did not work because right when the realignment happens, it often actually leads to a short term spike in costs because people are not paid the same in the bureaus. And when they come together, they have to be city administrator. Lee, I appreciate the clarification of the policy. I completely take you at your word. I believe what you're telling me. I'm just going to ask that you work with the council president to send something to the workforce that that that tells everyone in the city what the policy is. I think coming from you specifically would be better, because whether it comes from misunderstandings or from direction from previous or whatever, there are scared employees out there. I've had them talk to me as well. That's my experience. So I think just making sure everybody has that information, I want to talk a little bit about station 22 here. I want to go off topic. There are three amendments still in play, including this one that fund that fire engine. But of the other two, one of them doesn't have a funding source at all, and the other is one time funding. I'll speak to that one because it's mine. It's canal two, I like it, and if one fails, I'll still fight for canal two. But Green one is better because it funds it with ongoing dollars. And when we talked. I appreciate the chief being here. When we talked last time at the work session about public safety and what the impacts were, we pointed out that the the four firefighters of the eight that are there would not be regularly staffing station 22 anymore, which is one of the largest in terms of its official fire management area geography. It's one of the ones that serves the northern half of the ci hub and linton, in addition to saint john's. And it is also the primary support for the portsmouth area station 26 because a few years ago we cut the fire engine from station eight over on lombard and interstate. And so there's not that apparatus there. And those firefighters are coming to support in station 26. They need to come from 22. You may be wondering, well, why not come from north side of it from hayden island? Well, there's a bridge and sometimes there's a lot of traffic on the one way on and off of hayden island. And so, in addition to its official area, station 22 also has to cover a lot of the north peninsula waterfront up there. And these are all things, oh, not to mention highway 30 out towards saint helens on scappoose. So I think that there are a lot of needs that are being recognized here. And there's not a another way to do this that's ongoing, that's been proposed, that's still in play. If the. I hope that what I'm hearing from colleagues is in the commitment to fund. This is simply saying, we want to do the one time option if you are concerned about this one, because there isn't another way. There has to be an option that will be taken, a vote that can pass in order to fund this fire engine. And this one to me, seems like the best way to get there, because it is the one that prevents us from having to do this again, not to mention what it does for districts one and three. With the restoration of half of the funding for the two person rescue units, the two person rescue units are cost saving. They're an example. Cutting them, in my opinion, is an example of penny wise and pound foolish to use the council vice president's phrase, because often the calls that they're responding to would otherwise need a response by a truck or engine that have four firefighters on them. And so there are things that we are doing here that will actually save money in the long run, or will, if we don't do it, lead to reductions in services that are going to increase all the response times, everything. I could be arguing this for a while, but I just say, let's rewind the tape to maybe half an hour ago because all the arguments that were just being made about response times still apply here. And so I hope that you support this amendment to help us get towards keeping north Portland safe and, and also a good swath of d4 as well. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor. Councilor mullen.
Thank you, council president colleagues, if I'm honest, when I first learned of this amendment, I wasn't sure I could support it. And I was nervous. I sat down with councilor Green, and what gave me some reassurance is that it's really clear in there that there's a three month runway where there's no immediate reductions required. There's three months and giving lots of space for our city administrator to make decisions and be thoughtful has until October to really make sure that a lot of thought can go into this. I think that's a reasonable timeline to identify efficiencies, address concerns, you know, maybe even bring in different different leaders, different councilors. I want to highlight that. Earlier this month, katu reported on a house fire in saint john's that station 22 responded to. And someone with the firefighters union said, we had a house fire. We were able to respond with water and stop the fire where it was. If they're out of service starting in July, the next engine is going to have to come from farther away and there might not have been might not be the same outcome. So like councilor Connell said, looking at our run of show, the last amendment didn't pass. This is looking like our last chance to fully fund engine 22 in district two with ongoing funds. So I'm especially appealing to my colleagues in district two and district four, which has the cei hub. I'm imploring you to please consider supporting fully restoring your fire station 22. My colleague just said she doesn't want to burn down the city. I agree, let's literally start with not making these cuts to the fire bureau. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor. Councilor murillo.
Thank you, council president. We talked about the numbers from 2019 and how they've changed now between management and frontline staff. And there were comments made that because other people broke the system, it's not our responsibility to fix it. And I don't believe that at all. It's not at the mayor and the city administrator's feet. It's at our feet as this budget committee, as the budget authority, as the council. It's our responsibility to city workers and to employees and to our constituents in the city of Portland. The budget note that is paired with Green one outlines the process, and we want the city administrator to be the leader of that process. Everyone is saying that they're worried about the fire station that serves the c, e I hub, but they're not concerned enough to do something about it. The best alternative that was offered is a loan with no path for repayment. That is not a truly viable option. Councilor green's amendment has ongoing funding. It will never allow this fire station to be used as a political football again. We got our amendments in early. They were scored by cbo with strong recommendation for viability. And I can't say that for all the other amendments, but I suspect the goalpost will keep being moved because this isn't about cutting excessive management. This is about wanting to halt the office of community based police accountability. That's what this is about. So I suspect folks will vote this down and then try to bring up that other amendment. Again, even though it's a loan and it doesn't have ongoing funding, and it's not going to serve the city, and it's putting a fire station, public safety with police accountability, public safety. Yeah, there are hard choices. And this is the only option that creates ongoing funding for a core fire station that serves our districts in a critical part of the city with the c, e I hub. This is the serious governance option. If we want to talk about good governance, it is the one that offers ongoing funds. It outlines a process that incorporates the employees that were excluded from the core realignment process. It isn't just another committee discussion in a vacuum. It will be a joint executive and council process that is grounded in the reality of management growth, vastly exceeding the growth of frontline staff at a time when we have to make trade offs, and the current options on the table that were given to us, which are firing frontline staff, and the mayor choosing not to fund a fire station, putting council in a very difficult position. Those are unacceptable options. This is the responsible option that we have to never allow this fire station to be used as a political football again. So, colleagues, I hope that we will put this discussion to rest, that we will pass this amendment and that we will do something right by portlanders today.
Thank you, councilor Murillo. Colleagues, as we are moving into a vote now, I wanted to recognize councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: I'd like to separate the two questions. Green one and Green four. Thank you.
Councilor Zimmerman has moved to separate the question. Councilor Green, I don't know if it needs a second on that, but councilor Green, you get to decide which part of it we vote on first.
Let's vote on Green four first.
Okay, we're voting on Green four. The budget note first. Keelan, please call the roll.
Thank you.
Oh, sorry. I think the budget was read when we.
First I was late.
Explained what the budget said just now.
So council president the reason I'm separating it is because I intended to vote yes on Green four, which is the budget note which says let's have a drawn out, you know, rehashing of these decisions. I think that that's fine, but no money change, which is what Green one does have. I have I. Guess that that would be accurate. Correct, councilor.
Yeah, I would say that if.
It's a summary of the management changes, yeah.
Green four could stand on its own even if the Green three did not pass because it's still sorry. Green one because it's still directs the city administrator to engage in this process that we've described. Where you look at rank and file, you meet with the unionists, you have a conversation about what management cuts might impact their work, and then you bring that back to council for a report. So of course, I hope Green three or Green one also passes, but there's value in Green four being adopted on its own.
Okay.
I recognize that maybe some folks don't think it can stand, but in reading as if Green one were to fail. I think there are parts of Green four that can stand. That's all.
Okay.
Thank you. If others have a different read, I would be all ears in there.
Okay. And we are. The question has been divided. We are moving forward to a vote. Keelan, can you please call the roll on Green four.
Green four. Moved by Green. Seconded by canale canal I.
Council president without time to understand how this acts as a standalone. I'm not able to support it at this time. I wish we had been able to debate the separation in some way. No.
Ryan, I. I maria.
We need the money for the fire station. So I'm going to vote yes for this and pair it with Green one.
Novick.
Nay.
Clerk.
Yes.
Green a.
Zimmerman a.
Avalos I.
Smith.
No.
Dunphy I.
The amendment is approved with a vote of nine eyes and three nays.
Please call the roll on Green one. Councilor.
Yeah.
Mitch Green: I just wanted to ask a question here. When we're considering this. You know, if you look at this is page 18. It overlaps to 19 Green for the first piece of it talks about explaining the amendment. And then when you get to the city administrator's required, which is the beginning of 19. That's the standalone part. Is that is that an accurate read of what we're talking about here in terms of what we just approved.
Is the carrier. I would suggest that, yeah, we the intent here is to describe that process. Of course, it wants to be paired with Green one, but if we've adopted Green four without the other piece, I would imagine we would clean this up to remove any extraneous language to make it not be weird.
Okay, so what I'm asking is in the middle, just above the middle of page 19, it says that the fall toe shall include a cut proposal only among the positions described above that that is no less than $3.325 million. So the question now is, do we allocate that money in the amendment? Because we've already we've already created it through the note, or we've directed the administrator to create it in Green one just wanted to get that on the record. Thanks.
Thank you councilor.
I think that my understanding is what councilor Canales is, but I'm going to ask it as a question. I believe that Green four had the actual cuts mechanism. Green one has no cut as a standalone. Green one is just an allocation of funding that is not balanced. Is that accurate? It get somebody from the budget office to make sure that I'm understanding what these do.
My understanding is it takes it from contingency in Green one and then in Green four. The cut mechanism in the fall toe replenishes the contingency. So the money is taken in Green one from.
Mitch Green: The floor. And I'm asking our cbo this. So ruth Green four just past that directs a cut. Is that correct?
Mitch Green: Yes. So the way this is drafted is Green. One takes it from contingency. I, I guess from unrestricted general fund contingency and allocates it to Portland fire and rescue. And then Green four directs the contingency to be refilled through a proposal through the fall tor.
So my colleagues just voted to make cuts and put the proceeds from those cuts into contingency. Is that correct?
Budget.
Right. There's no money moving as a result of Green four. It's just if if it were standing alone. I guess my read would be that the administration would come back in the fall with a proposal for how to make those cuts, and then council would decide what to do based on that proposal at that time. I don't quite know how the contingency piece of it would work, given that it wouldn't. Yeah.
So the read here is that Green four is a standalone doesn't create cuts. It just directs a report. And we could decide whether or not to take them in the fall. Green one as a standalone is not unbalanced because it pulls the money from contingency, which may or may not be replaced depending on the decisions that we make in the fall.
That's correct.
That's correct. Thank you. Thank you, council president.
Okay, councilor, really quick. And we are in the middle of a vote.
Mitch Green: Just put one question on it. It's not a report alone. It says the fall town. This is Green four shall include a cut proposal only among the positions described above that it specifically says a proposal. I think that's maybe a distinction without a difference to some folks. It matters to me. I just wanted to get that on the record. And that's all. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. So if those who voted no believe that this is an unworkable note, I'll remind you, you can always bring it back and call it into question. But I think that some members of this body voted yes because it's reasonable to have a breakdown of these different management positions and how that process occurred. I think there's a question about transparency. That was the intent behind separating the question. But if it is unworkable and and and there are people who want to interpret a note as a cut, I'm happy to have the question called again, and I'll vote no, because that is not the intent. The intent is transparency to it. So I'll leave that in the category of those who voted no. If you want to question it or frankly, to the sponsor, I don't think that the separation deeply. Causes concern to anybody who reads it. With an adult pair of glasses, I think you can talk about what is administrable and you would do the best forward. I think that would be your intent. But I don't want to put words in your mouth. So if this needs to continue to be belabored, we can do that. But I'm kind of looking to the sponsor in terms of how you view it as well.
Yeah, I mean, I, I didn't contemplate it to be used this way. I think it adds important legislative intent for this body to point to a direction that we should look at these ranks to make cuts. And I appreciate the willingness for some to think about that in a separate piece. So I'll just leave it at that.
Thank you. Okay. Can we please call the roll on Green one.
Green one. Moved by Green. Seconded by canal. Canal.
Thanks I.
Reluctantly no.
Ryan.
Same. No.
I murillo.
The only ongoing funding for fire station 22. I.
Novak.
No.
Clark.
Sadly, no.
Green I.
Zimmerman no.
Avalos. I Smith no.
Dunphy I.
The amendment fails with a vote of six ayes and six nays.
Colleagues. It is 215. We have made it through three amendments today so far. We also got a good lunch break so that's nice. These are also the beefiest of our amendments to this point. We still have one, two, three, four, five additional public safety amendments and we need to get to prosper Portland. I think it is highly unlikely we will get passed the prosper Portland amendments today. And we have an absolute hard out at 6:00, but I'm trying to get us out of here closer to 5:00 today. Tomorrow will be a very long day. Counselor Novick.
Thank you, mr. President. My staff is trying to formally update my proposed amendments in order to track with what councilor Rios amendment did this morning, because it both removed part of my funding and also reduced part of what I was trying to fund. But. So I will just before we have to pass that, I'll tell you that Novick two, as revised, would do the following. It would cut council office budgets by 200,000 a piece, except for district one. It would cut the city administrative chief of staff and $250,000 for strategic planning. That's the budget. And we cut the assistant chief administrator plus two manager threes, which, frankly, I'm a bit confused about that. I'm going to ask the city administrator, is there a chief strategy and change management officer or those two different things? What it would restore is half of engine 22, and you can do that. You can restart it for during peak hours, which is basically 8 to 8. I talked to the chief about that. It would restore a senior pass position in the police bureau. I think that these folks do critical behind the scenes work that is that gets ignored. So that's why I highlighted that and would restore, at this point a mere one of the ps three. But even one means something. And do you mind if I like, discuss both of them? Like so the second one would not make the cuts to council office budgets. It would simply make the cuts to the city administrator's budget. It would restore one of the rescue units, and that is rescue 19 at 72nd and Burnside. I asked the fire bureau to prioritize the rescues in terms of like the need in terms of the call volume. And they said they would prioritize first 19, which is near the district one, district three border, second 11, which is on the other side of the border, and then third, the one that's out at Gresham. So that's how 19 was, was selected. And again, it would restore a senior past, past position. Obviously, I would like to have the rescues in my district restored, and we could mix and match this. We could I would certainly be open if somehow we get more votes for restoring two of the rescues than the engine using the both the city administrator's budget and the council office budgets. I'd be okay with that. I was throwing out very various options. I will say again, as far as council office budgets are concerned, that we are slated to get $1.45 million a piece in this budget, compared to the 992,000 that the county commissioners across the river get. And I would hope anybody who votes against this proposal would explain why they need 450,000 more dollars for their office than their county commissioner Across the river. As to the cuts to the city administrator's office, administrator lee, I actually would like to ask you because I to just explain why do you need both a chief of staff and an assistant ca why do you need 250,000 for strategic planning and a chief strategy and change management officer give you an opportunity to lay that out.
I'll start first with the assistant city administrator role for the organization. Currently, right now there are 13 direct reports that report to me and over 14 direct reports to our dca of operations. This is an attempt to restructure the organization from a span of control standpoint, to realign some of these direct reports where the organization is more balanced. And as an organization, we're having the proper oversight of these areas and creating a new layer within our organization to kind of manage these operations. Right now, our office of sustainability, civic life equity are all reporting to me, and it's trying to give them a little bit more oversight and a thought partner in the day to day work that they're doing for the organization, and remove some of that direct reports from me so I can really focus on the strategic direction of the city and where we're heading and how we're planning on getting there as an organization. The chief of staff role is to develop to really work with a lot of the council offices as well as we have 12 councilors. There's a lot of legislation. There's a lot of things that are coming at your offices that honestly, we just don't have the bandwidth to keep track of as an organization and ensuring that we're providing support, but also follow up and follow through on a lot of the requests that you have from a council perspective. I've also been asked of our labor groups as well, could they have a liaison out of our office to truly help with them as it relates to things that they're needing from the administration level of the organization? There's also a ton of outside groups that are constantly reaching out to meet and have a touchpoint with the city administrator's office, where we're just limited on the bandwidth to be responsive to the requests and the needs of the community as a whole from a change management and strategy standpoint, a lot of the conversations that you're honestly having around the dais right now are regarding realignment work, how we went about that realignment work, the transformation work that is happening within the organization. We have never truly dedicated a resource to that as a city, and that has caused a lot of the turmoil that we see in the discussions that we're seeing today. Strategic planning is strategic planning. Without having a strategic direction for this city. We're just spinning our wheels as an organization. There's no true direction for staff to really follow and say, okay, these are the expected outcomes that council is on, that the community is on, that we're on, and this is how we plan on getting there as an organization. It's just continuing the stuff that we did in our old form of government. If we don't have that strategic direction as a city, any organization of our size. And now in this proposed budget of $8.5 billion, I never heard of not having a strategic plan. That's just best management practices for us to have one. And that role is try to help facilitate that conversation, because that's a change of culture as well for our organization. So there's work that has to be done internally. There's work that has to happen around the council, and there's work that has to happen in the community. That $250,000 was the funds that the mayor wanted to set aside for strategic planning process for our organization. That's to help facilitate that conversation and ensure that it has the adequate funding to support a successful process. That's why we have that money set aside. The other manager role that you're referring to is our asset management role. This was a role that we had within the organization that we're just realigning to my office and elevating that work. Really due to a lot of the conversations that have happened around this dais as it relates to the oversight of our assets as a whole, most organizations, that is a director role, that is overseeing a capital improvement program or a bond program for your city to ensure that you have adequate schedules and you're adequately allocating resources to maintain, restore, or replace the assets that you have in your city. Things that we have not done successfully through the history of our organization. These roles is just to try to help support the changes and the transformation that this council has said they want to see in our organization. And from administration standpoint.
Thank you, mr. City administrator. I appreciate your explanation. I tend to think that you were hired to manage change and to be strategic, and I'll leave it to my colleagues to decide whether you need a chief of staff to interact with us. But I know I appreciate the explanation. I will tell you that as far as spokes and labor are concerned, I have not heard folks in labor say that they think that city administrator needs a million plus additional staff. That's something that has actually stuck in people's craw.
Thank you, councilor. Councilor Novick, which amendment are you moving at this moment?
I'll start with the first. I'll start with Novick two.
Okay.
So councilor Novick moves Novick two. Is there a second?
Yes.
Can I ask a clarifying question? Yes. Is Novick two staying as is, or are you getting us language with the updated numbers?
Oh, sorry.
We we're working with cbo to like make sure the update, but what I just read off was, was what it is.
Now can I see a written version? I'm just not like a verbal processor.
Let's see. Darren, you can ruth.
Is trying to say something. I can see her.
Oh.
Ruth, I have it. Sorry. Let me send it to the clerk right now.
Two.
There are.
Two separate amendments. There is Novick two and Novick four. And we are per councilor Novick, we are going to discuss Novick two. The language is coming from ruth. Now. I'll second and councilor Elaine is going to second. So, colleagues, as we are pulling up the language to formally debate that we have the outlines of it. Let's begin our our discussions. Colleagues, I'm going to ask a favor. It was clear about an hour ago that the last item was going to fail. I would love it if we could talk to each other and not pass each other to the maximum extent possible. And as we are starting to get towards the point where it is clear how these things are going, let's, let's just vote. So with that councilor Null.
Steve Novick: I just have a question. And it's I'm not sure if it's for councilor Novick or for the the staff on the budget side, the numbers that are described here are not in alignment. And I just wanted a little bit more explanation as to why that might be. Sorry. I know you were the it says that it reduces. This is Novick two. It reduces 1.8 in the city administrator's office, 1.8 million in the council offices except one and just shy of a million. So we're talking about $4.6 million. And then when you look at what it's adding up, it doesn't add to that same amount. It adds to what. I'm not going to do the math on the desk, but there's a, there's an amount that's lost here. And I was hoping that you could speak to how that money is that that's not money. That's just going into unusable or sorry, usable by another amendment categories. Right. It's it has to do with overhead, if I recall correctly.
Sorry. My guess is that it's overhead, but I'm trying to track in the updated table. What it is. So give me a second. Sorry.
I'll may I offer a partial explanation? So it's I mean, partly the numbers. This is overhead. So it's about 42.9% of what gets cut is can be used. Also the numbers do not quite add up. We have a total of 1.549 in cuts and 1.511 in adds. And my staff is working to. They say that the maria one didn't restore all of the m's budget for cease fire, so that excess few $30,000 would go towards that purpose.
Okay.
We did.
You did.
We did.
Okay. In that case. In that case, the 38 million is up for grabs. Okay.
So. Yes.
Yeah. Councilor.
Seconded.
Okay. There's 42.9% of what gets cut can be used. What happens to the other 57.1%?
Ruth. Take it away.
For. So as a reminder for overhead funded items, the general fund picks up about 43% of the tab, and the other 57% come from all of the other funds in the city. The way it works is essentially any any cut that doesn't get used from those other funds would just go back into contingency and those funds. So there's a line in the tables that says general fund overhead payers, where we've accumulated all of those funds, and that's the amount that would get shared out based on their respective proportions. And then after the approved will update attachment b, which is the full listing of each fund to conform with whatever passes. It's just hard to list them all out.
So okay, so just to put a finer point on it, this what we end up doing is we cut $2 million more than we need for the stated purpose of the amendment. And that. So part of it, the additional amount that 2 million extra beyond what's used to fund the stated purpose of the amendment goes into a contingency fund and then is reallocated across the 20 something odd bureau.
It goes back into multiple contingency funds. So like 10% is transportation. So that goes there. It goes back into the transportation fund, and bess goes back into the sewer fund and the like, so on down the line.
Okay. So for those that I will say not a question, a comment for the math reasons alone, I will be of no on no to, but I'm looking forward to the other amendment you're bringing. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, councilor. Councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you. Councilor Novick, you have argued that one of your motivations, motivations for cutting council offices is that we are, what is it, 400 some odd thousand dollars to the richer relative to our counterparts of the county. Is that correct?
That's correct. We're further ahead. We're about $400,000 higher than our counterparts in seattle, and about $750,000 more than our counterparts in denver.
Okay. Thank you. Have you done the analysis of what portion of our county counterparts pay in their internal materials and services? Do you have that to share?
I don't, but I do know that they get along with they generally get along with three staff, one chief of staff, a policy person, and a scheduler.
Thank you. I would argue that their favorability is also quite low, so perhaps.
Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Green, councilor Murillo.
I feel like a few of us are a little bit confused. So if we could have that language emailed to us so we could review it better, that would be really helpful. But I think I'm starting to get the gist of this amendment. I am generally supportive of cutting some of the city administrator stuff. I will say the comparison across cities isn't really it's not apples to apples. And the reason I say that is because in other cities, they have central staff that don't show up in a per office number. So cities like seattle have a really robust council central staff. It could be like our council ops if they were fully realized and fleshed out, do a ton of legal and policy support. But that's not what we have here at the city of Portland. My policy advisor is basically an economist, a researcher, a policy person, a lawyer. Like she has all the things. And so we don't have that same beefed up system the way that other places do. I know when I worked at the state legislature, when I was lobbying for policy, they have a really robust legal team and finance team that independently from the administration, actually helps with all of that. But we mostly just have our staff doing that. So it's a very different thing to compare. And I think that's important to point out when we're talking about this. I we need staff that are going to be here to implement charter reform and allowing the council to cut staff while the administrative side is adding staff and limiting our access to information is very difficult for me. I, me and my team have had an easier time getting information from the county on their policy and their work than we have from our own city or my team has even been actively blocked from having full access to information in order to create well-informed policy. So that is part of why I'm very hesitant about this, because we need support as council in order to do our legislative work, and we haven't been really granted that power as of right now. County commissioners like Portland commissioners, they lean on county bureau capacity. The whole point of charter reform was to give councilors an independent policy capacity. So we're not dependent on the executive. And as we established earlier, we just don't have the same access to information that other folks do. Portland, you know, we have chosen a heavy individual office model, and that's very different than what they have in other cities. So I guess I'm just noodling on that as we're having this discussion. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Murillo, councilor Zimmerman, thanks.
Councilor Novick, I'm concerned with the, I guess the the focus on the city administrator. And I say that with a couple of thoughts in mind. I voted no on the previous item, and I'll continue to vote no on anything that I think is stunting our movement toward a single, single city who works in a single pyramid for a single boss and. I think that the city administrator. He's got some moves and he's got some evaluations after, I think, consulting of a year plus with the mayor in terms of his experience. Now, his in the first five, six months of his tenure here as the city administrator to put together the c-suite. That makes sense. I say that with I don't know how many bureau directors and deputy directors should remain in the model moving forward. Right. I think pulling into a centralized position where you also hit the middle, I'll call it the middle. Senior managers of the organization is a reasonable take, but investing in the one person who is international city, county manager credentialed in this organization, which I believe makes us not only the largest city in America with who, until raymond showed up, didn't have a credentialed manager. I'm going to put my faith in the credentialed manager approach to it, because, frankly, this experience of I want or I don't want to consolidate or be in one pyramid. Et cetera. Et cetera. Reeks of the old politics of the bureaus, where all they had to do was convince the commissioner of the day how to get their way, which is why we find $106 million in a housing bureau who thought they didn't have to tell us last budget. So I'm going to invest in a system that means that raymond has the team, just like we have the team, frankly, to find information, to set a culture, to figure out who is going to continue rowing on this boat and who is going to ask to be let go and let off in those senior roles. I don't think he can do that by himself, because I think the. The kinetic energy it takes to make change means you need teammates. And I think that that's what I'm going to invest in here. I think it requires transparency, though, and I don't think that this goes unanswered unquestioned. I think there has to be a lot about it, but I what I hope to see is that as you make those changes in the city administration side, you are being clear with us about where you're pulling it from. Who doesn't need a second deputy director who doesn't even need a director? Does this need to be a bureau? I think we have some bureaus that don't need to exist in the old form. 27 micro cities isn't the thing, but I, I, I also, you know, I don't write the blank check. I'm just, I'm telling you that this movement right now to kind of stop two and four years worth of work is, is causing me a lot of strain in terms of whether or not and why we would do it. And this seems like it's kind of complementary to that. I want to also say there's two people here who know the county better than anybody, commissioner Councilor laura Smith and myself as the chief of staff at Multnomah county for two different commissioners over two different decades of time and service, that job is nowhere near as intense from a constituent relations perspective. And I will tell you, the county commission staff, excuse me, the county staff who provide budget information, provide access, and the ability to find and advocate on information is far easier than our system. And I agree largely with councilor Murillo in that. And that we would be we would be tying one hand behind our back the further we go. And not enabling this form of government to thrive and do well. And lastly, I think it is a terrible precedent to set one council office aside because of whatever the reason is that they would have different sized budget makes them a target in ways I think would be inappropriate. And so I won't support such a such a strange and odd change. But this having been a chief of staff at Multnomah county, I'll just tell you, our chiefs of staff here are fielding a larger bank of requests requirements and frankly, more time in committee. This job is a bigger job, and more portlanders know who their city councilor is than they know their county commissioner. And that's why we get questions about homelessness. That's why we get questions about wick. That's why we get questions about. The the mental health issues, all of which are the rivers, the across the river's duties. So I would encourage you not to do an easy fix here that actually will make your job less effective at this role of government.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president, councilor Zimmerman, I need to always go behind you because I want to say ditto, ditto, ditto. And I want to say to councilor Murillo, ditto, ditto, ditto for what you said. I can tell you firsthand, I have never worked so hard. And I worked for a u.s. Senator for 21 years. And that was hard. This is probably one of the hardest public service jobs that I've had as a county commissioner. We did not have eight committees for a whole year that we had to staff up get. I mean, we had to learn about issues that I never thought that I would ever have to learn about. But I campaigned for this job because this is the job that I wanted, because I thought it was important to have someone on this commission, council that had experience. Okay, so let me go back to fiscal year 2425, mr. Novick, counselor Novick, I appreciated having you at my public safety budget listening session. Do you know how hard my staff had to work to fill that room with the type of people that we had in there? You saw it. I need people to help me do that. I don't know if you do that in your job, but I do that all the time in every month. It is no change. Secondly, fiscal year 2425 for this council, the five councilors that sat here, their budgets were at 1.6 million. So if you can tell me that we deserve less than what they had, I don't know. Yes they did. That's where we got the numbers from. One, when they left here, they had a they had a budget size. They had a budget size of 1.6 million. And so we're down to 1.4. And I, I feel that our folks, there's an expectation that we do more work. East Portland had the lowest undercount voter undercount of the entire city. Our folks didn't come out. We have a responsibility. People are happy that we have district one offices. They're happy that we're there, that they're engaging them. The folks there, you heard it. You heard it for yourself. They're happy that we had the chief out there. We had chief day a couple of months ago. We had chief johnson. Last week we had the dca. I do this every single month. And that's just on public safety. I also have community, neighborhood. I go to schools every week. So you can't tell me the work that we're doing in this district does not warrant a fully, fully complete budget. And I do not support us having different budgets. We're all the same. You can choose to give your budget back to, to the to the general fund, but I can tell you giving your money back to the general fund has never put anybody in office. It doesn't do it. I've never seen it. My old boss did it, but he got back in office because he had constituent services and he talked to his folks, not because he cut their budgets. And I, for the life of me, for the life of me. And I'm going to say it again, I said it last year. How do you cut off your own neck? I don't know how you do that. I just don't do it. I'm not for it. And the issue around the city administrator, he needs to have a fully functional staff that can give us the direction that we need. There was a city, an assistant city administrator in michael jordan's budget. I didn't hear y'all talking about that. Y'all didn't say not one thing about it. So don't talk about what c a lee is having if the previous one had it, and that's what that's the way it was. Don't start because that's that's something else. The other issue is our, our ability to have offices. Not only do I have to pay for an office and then turn. And I can tell you, mr. Mayor, and I told you this before, the internal services that we pay at the city is much, much higher than we do at the county. Not only do I have to pay for internal services in city hall, I have to pay for them out there at my office and I have to pay for. At least I did what we said we were going to do. I had my office open for over a year and a half. So for you to not a year and a half, but for about a year, in two months. So to take my budget away or to give my colleagues less than what we're getting, that's their choice. Let them choose how they want to spend their budgets. We have to keep up with the administration. I can't keep up with the administration, with the number of staff that were here. I can't keep up with the communication. There's an expectation that we do all this stuff on social media. I have to still hire my social media person. So for me, it is ridiculous. I hear you, sir. I hear you, but it doesn't make sense and I'm not going to take from their budgets or vote to take from their budgets so that you can make a point. You can do what you want to do with yours. Take 400. Take 500 out of your budget if you want to. I don't care, I support it, but for me, I think we need to stay where we're at. We need to give the administrator, the city administrator, the things that he needs to do and stop taking. We have the. And by the way, we do have the lowest budget in the city, the lowest budget. You can't expect us to balance a $169 million budget on the backs of city council officers. And the other thing is county commissioners make 150 some odd thousand dollars. What are you going to do about that? We don't make that much money. Are you going to give us some money so we can have an increase? No, you're not going to do that. So if you're going to do apples to apples, make it real. Apples to apples. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Mr. President, I just point of paper clarification. Yes, we passed out two versions of no. Two. The first one was one that I think that evan passed out in. The second one is the new cbo formatted one. I don't actually know if they're any different, but that's why there's two of them.
They're different.
Okay. Oh, okay.
Mr. President.
Can I have a point of personal privilege?
Yes, counselor.
I was in the queue next. I had to take myself out of the queue. I need to leave. Colleagues. Some of you know this, but I'm not sure if everybody does. My wife had surgery last week. I have a lot of friends helping a lot so I can be here this week, but I unfortunately need to get my kids home. I will be calling back in as soon as I am home, so that I can continue to debate and vote with you all. I just wanted to state that on the record. I'll be needing to leave in the afternoon tomorrow as well, but I will be here for as long as I can. Thank you, council president.
Thank you. Counselor.
Can we take.
The vote? Yes.
We still have three more people in the queue. And so I'm going to limit debate to those who are in the queue. And actually I only see two in the queue now. So vice president clerk.
Thank you, council president. Now we're really having fun. I want to thank counselor Novick for working so hard to try to find resources for public safety, which is a high priority for me. And of course, if we had voted on my amendment in a positive direction, this would not be necessary. I, I think this is what we're looking at is really a part of becoming a grown up city. I'm very supportive of dedicating resources to the city administrator's office. You know, when I first took office, I learned that we're in the middle of a culture change, tremendous culture change, and there is resistance in the bureaus to that culture change. So we do need change management. We do need help in that area. And there's a lot more change to come. The also, the other thing I learned that in asset management, we had no plan. We had no direction. We didn't know where we were going on asset management. We had no capital plan. It's one of the first things I talked to jonas berry about is what's our where are we going to do? How are we going to pay for all taking care of everything that we have? We don't have a system for that. So I'm really glad that the city administrator is going to have a asset manager in, in his office. And I'm really happy to hear that you're going to have a labor liaison as well. I think that's super important. I know that the city administrator has been all over town. He goes through a tremendous number of meetings, and he can't keep that up and run the city. So I have respect for all the things that you're trying to accomplish on our behalf, to move our city forward in culture change. And really, to me, part of that is a part is just becoming a grown up city at this part. Now, I'd be happy to cut some of my budget, and I know that I can actually move some of my office budget to areas that I think are important, and I'll continue to do that. I've done that already, but I just want to express my appreciation to councilor Novick for working really hard to restore some of the things that I care deeply about, but I do not want to cut the city administrator's office to do that.
Steve Novick: Thank you, vice president, clerk, counselor Novick. I'm sorry, counselor Ryan Novick.
Yeah, I'll be real quick. Thanks. Council president counselor Novick. I, too, have a lot of respect for yours. And I agree with everything that councilor Clerk just said, and mostly because I'm not comfortable tapping into the city administrators budget. Thanks.
Okay.
Counselor Novick, take it away.
Thank you, mr. President. First of all, in response to counselor Smith, I do think that there is a legitimate reason for district one to have bigger budgets than the rest of us, because they're farther away. It's harder for people to get downtown. And also, historically, it's been a less engaged part of town. So I can understand the need to have more resources going towards engagement. That was not a that was not a lightly done. Difference. And I just have to say, of course, we can come up with lots of reasons why we have to have more money than the county commissioners, why we have to have more money than the seattle city councilors, why we have to have more money, far more money than denver city councilors, sure. But, well, I everybody can always come up with juices for everything. As to the last city commissioners getting $1.6 million. Yes, that's right. And each of them represented the whole city and got constituent calls from all over the city. And each of them ran bureaus, and several of their staff were dedicated to interacting with the bureaus. That's the way it was when I was a city commissioner Ten years ago. And I think that people would be astonished to think that we need almost as much money when we're counselors without running bureaus. And when we were district counselors without bureaus than when people were city wide commissioners with bureaus.
In two offices.
I.
I, I mean, I, I mean, I'd be happy to I'm curious, are there people who would vote to cut council office budgets but not the city administrator's budget? How many can I say, a show of hands.
Wait.
What I'm thinking, what if. I mean, some people have expressed concern about the city administrator. Probably not the but not the council office part. I'm just curious if I divided this up and only cut council office budgets, how many votes would I have?
Point of order, point of order. What are we doing right now?
Counselor Novick is is thinking aloud. Actually, it seems like.
All right, I'm not going to get. In response to that. I will say this to paraphrase shakespeare, the bloat, my colleagues, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
Thank you, counselor Novick. Keelan, can we please call the roll on Novick two. We on two. Yeah. Novick 2.6.
Yes. Novick two. Moved by Novick. Seconded by Koyama. No, no. Guinea is absent. Ryan. No. Koyama. Yes. Murillo.
No.
Novick.
Yes.
Clark.
Regretfully. No.
Green.
Yes.
Zimmerman.
No.
Avalos.
No.
Smith.
No.
Dunphy.
No.
The amendment fails with a vote of three eyes and eight nays.
Colleagues, it is 3:00. I'm going to give us actually 255. I'm going to give us a ten minute restroom break. Please be back at 305. And we are going to move to the last few public safety amendments, and then we're moving to prosper. Thank you. Please. Welcome back, folks. Thank you so much for your patience. While we acknowledge that we are all human beings. We still have. Ryan one, two, four, five, and Novick four to get through. I am going to counselor Ryan. Are you ready to?
I am, but we're waiting for the final. Okay. We're doing a lot to cbo today.
Yeah. All right. Why don't I move to counselor and I'll come back to.
Okay.
I'm I'm. I'm supposed to recognize counselors who have been recognized already for an amendment. So I'm going to go. And counselor Novick did two. So I will come back to Novick for counselor canal.
Okay, let's.
Do this.
I don't see her.
Online canal two I colleagues, I'm going to move canal two. I'll ask for a second in just a moment. I wanted to just explain it briefly. I mentioned this earlier. I said that if Green one failed, I would be happy to fight for canal two. And here I am. That's what happened. That's the timeline we're in. This amendment would remove $2.5 million from the new business license tax reserve fund that currently has $8.7 million in it. That is an $8.7 million increase from the zero that was in it before. It would take 2.5 million of that and transfer it to the Portland fire and rescue to continue staffing of engine 22. It is narrowly focused. It just does that. There is not a whole explanation or any need to put further legislative intent on the record, although it is one time funding. I do want to be clear about that. It is $2.5 million more than they have right now, and it is the only remaining amendment related to this that neither breaks the charter nor lacks a funding mechanism. So I am going to move canal two and ask for a second.
Second counselor. Canal moves. I don't know who Green seconded colleagues. Debate on channel two. Please go ahead and jump in the queue.
Just.
Counselor Novick.
I just wanted to know, is our chief financial officer here to talk about the consequences of dipping into reserves.
On canal two.
Or our budget director.
I'm sure he's on his way down.
Okay.
Sorry.
I was. Well, let's say it's probably him that should be directed to. I mean, I've had conversations with him about that reserve and he is concerned about jeopardizing our credit ratings. So I just want to give him an opportunity to elaborate on that.
Yeah. Do you want.
To well, actually this with maybe you know, this, I think that what percentage variation in vlt revenues are we accounting for now? And what percentage variation would we have to expect if this amendment passed?
So, I mean, I think peter can speak to the blt. Forecast. I think the general thinking with the blt reserve is that it's a difficult number to get exactly right in any given fiscal year. And so the reserve itself was based off of a 4% calculation. But our goal was to get closer to 15%. So the. So 4% of blt is what the reserve assumes. And peter can speak to what he's seeing in the forecast.
And what would this amendment knock us down to? 2%.
Sorry, it's 3.25. Okay. Sorry. I'm sorry. Which amendment are we.
Canal two.
Thank you.
So.
It's not quite half, so it would probably knock us down closer to oh it's 2% 223.
So but for you, peter, the question is how high likelihood there is that we might be off that much based on previous experience.
I. Blt is easily the thing that I am the most concerned with in the forecast year to year. I say that one taxpayer also. For the record, peter city economist peter holtzman, one taxpayer paying late or. You know, amending the return so they can have a $10 million fluctuation year to year. So I always say I'm happy to be within $10 million. The this was modeled well, this is kind of a two part modeling on where this came from. It's one that we had a contingency before. It was just compensation set aside, which is sort of unique. And post-covid bureaus have been relying on that for for ongoing operations. And so the reality is that we haven't had much contingency contingency for forecast errors. And this that kind of came to bear this past fall. And so when we looked around, we saw the county and they have a 12% blt stabilization reserve policy.
So if we if the forecast winds up being too optimistic, then that means we wind up making cuts to the budget in the middle of the year. Is that right?
That could happen. It could be covered by underspending. It could be covered by other revenue sources. But yes, if, say, I'm $10 million. So the forecast last year, last fall was $12.7 million short of the forecast. And that was in part what caused the very tense fall budget monitoring process.
And. Cfo barry, do you what what concerns, if any, do you have about this amendment, both in terms of just our budget stability and our credit rating?
Yeah. Thank you, councilor, and apologies to be a little late getting back to the room here. My concern about any additional draws from any reserves or contingency is very high. We have gone over the last few years from a place. Let me back up. One of the key things that the rating agencies identify in assessing credit strength. The city has been triple-a rated for 50 plus years, and we get huge benefit in cost reduction for that. One of the things that they've identified, the very first thing, there's a section of the rating reports and their independent assessment that says, what could make the rating go down? The very first thing they note is reduced reserves. We've seen those reserves go from 20% in the general fund side, from 20% in 2023 to 17% to 15% the last couple of years. So right at the target, the 15% target that they advise in this budget in the mayor's proposed that number drops to around 12%. And we have an intended intentional strategy around the blt reserve and the creation of the sideboards around that reserve that mitigate going below the 12% by putting a framework around that. And in the mayor's budget note, have a strategy to replenish that back to the 15%. So the what exists in the mayor's proposed is the very edge of the level of comfort. And I would have high concern with with cutting that deeper, I think a rating downgrade and the negative impacts that come with that would be. That
That would be a high risk.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you. I see cfo. The rating agencies, when they give us a credit rating, they list a number of contributing factors that could change the rating. Isn't that right?
Yeah. Correct. The methodology that they use is quite complex.
Thank you. And when they do so are they looking at our entire balance sheet or are they looking at our entire in income statement and fund balances, not just specific funds?
Yeah, it's a good question. The moody's methodology moody's rating agency, which is one of the two that rate the city, does look citywide. Standard and poor's looks at a more credit specific rating. And both agencies do provide different ratings based upon different lenses at the body of revenues that we commit to repayment.
Great. That's wonderful. So they they look at the sort of they probably have some understanding of the color of money and what's restricted and what's unrestricted to evaluate the liquidity.
100%.
Okay. What's the balance of our enterprise funds currently?
I don't know, off the top of my head councilor, what the balance of our enterprise funds is. Again, that we know for a fact that standard and poor's, for example, has used a 15% target. It was only recently that moody's changed their methodology to look citywide. I would note that from an investor standpoint, investors take a little more gradient lens. They know, for example, that even though moody's methodology in this case might include the water revenue bond water fund in their calculations, investors are wise enough to know that that's not how it works in practicality. And so we're being mindful of those credit considerations to make sure that we can maintain that that investment in the city.
I appreciate that. Do they also look at the city's practice of issuing short term loans as sort of stopgap measures or floating kind of interfund loans?
They would look at those kinds of things. If we had a legacy of not repaying those or using them in an irresponsible manner, which which we have not.
Okay. That's great. And then I think my last comment, colleagues, is that earlier this year, the jody allen estate sold the Portland trailblazers to a different owner. And that is a that is a transaction that generates business license tax revenue and that that is expected to accumulate. And I know you guys can't talk about it because you can't tell me exactly what the revenue is because it's a single person and there's it's masked by confidentiality, but we all know who it is. That number is going to be between 40 and $50 million. And I say that because that's what's been told to me. I've read that and I've read that in the print. Because, mayor, you've said that on the record. And it's also the $45 million is the is the gap between $75 million in soft money and what you need to get to 120 million. So some elected leaders in this region think that we've got that money to use sometime in the next few months to appropriate a package. At least that's what we've been communicating to the public. And so I would argue, folks, that we should expect to receive significant, significant business license tax revenue over the next two years that will more than replenish a $2.5 million draw. And I think we should just keep that into in mind as we as we evaluate our risk profile, as we make these amendments. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you. I always like going after the folks over on that side. Thank you, councilor Green, because I was just going to bring up the fact that the s and p is scheduled to deliver. You know, they say it's going to be between 8 and 12%, but they actually believe because we have one of the highest one of the best days in the stock market, and we have some of our money in the stock market, right. And we have a diversified.
No counselor. We don't we don't invest in equities. We only invest in fixed income. So the stock market does not impact our investment portfolio.
The fixed income is averaging about what, 4%? That's what we kind of that's that's the safe way to go with the fixed income. But we know that because of of market fluctuations that folks have, have been doing pretty well. And I think that if we are going to be really transparent about what's happening, we're receiving a considerable amount of interest from PCEF, from our other accounts that are sitting there. And I, too, wanted to know what the enterprise. What's what's in the enterprises, you know, bank account. And I'm not so concerned about the 2.5 million. Director levine coming out of contingency, because I do think it is so very important that we have a fire engine in saint john's and forest park, and if we have if this is an emergency, because this is an emergency, I believe I think we need to make sure that our services that we offer to the public and to businesses that we're able to meet. The moment I was out here when the plane was not too far from my house in fairview, when the plane went down less than a mile from my house and Portland Gresham, everybody went all hands on deck. And if we were not there to help with the fire engine, that could have been so, so bad on many levels. It was already bad enough that there were some fatalities, but to get that fire under control, it was because we had resources. We had engines there and this is not necessarily directed at you, director levine, but I am just saying to my colleagues that we have to make sure that that fire engine in that space, that people are protected. There are too many ways that this can go wrong, particularly in the forest park and saint john's area. So I will be supporting canal two.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Vice president Clark.
Thank you, council president. I want nothing more than to restore the fire truck and station 22. But it's curious to me that given the statements that were made earlier, that this is just a one time, a one time funding, I offered a one time funding as well that had touched no reserves, touched no contingencies, was a no risk to the credit rating, no risk to the accountability fund. So I'm not so interested in going down this road. Thank you.
Thank you, vice president Clark. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Thank you, council president. This is definitely the right ad, but it is the wrong grab. The blt forecast since I've been here have been off as you know, in 2020 122. They went beyond the forecast as lease agreements ended. And our city was not favorable to businesses. The optimism optimistic forecast have been often in a different way. They've kind of leveled off. And so we all know what that's doing to this year's budget. Our revenues flat on boats. This was our bread and butter revenue for 20 years. Blt and that is now flat. And so based on the information I've heard and thank you for the questions, councilor Novick. I won't be supporting this. I would like to remind everybody that council perkins amendments coming up will also try to restore station 22. And we can also debate that. So that's coming soon, right after this, I believe. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Councilor. Oh, no.
Yeah.
They're the same thing. The amendments that were just mentioned, just as the the Clark amendment, they do the same, the same thing to the ocpa. They're basically the have all the same concerns about it. They're not a real alternative. And we need to stop pretending that they are for those who of us who are opposed to it before. But what I do want to talk about, and I appreciate everything, councilor Smith said, because it's all correct, is to say that if there are colleagues who are concerned about the fund, I think that there may be opportunities later down to put a little bit back in. We should talk about those. I know councilor has interest in that as well, but I think that if we fund this today with this vote to get the money back into into station 22, we're going to put a lot of people on the north peninsula as well as in linton at ease, who are probably watching this a little nervously right now and have seen some things that probably concern them, regardless of what side they are on of any amendments. I think we should we should put some folks mind at ease today with this vote.
Thank you councilor. Councilor Smith, is that legacy okay, colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue to debate, can we please call the roll on canal two?
Canal two moved by canal. Seconded by Green canal?
Yes.
Any she joined. Absence.
Ryan with a lot of hope for the next amendment from council, I vote no,
I maria. I. Novak.
No.
Clark.
No.
Green I Zimmerman. No.
I'm sorry. Was that. Nay. Thank you.
I.
Smith yes.
Dunphy I.
The amendment is approved with a vote of seven eyes, four nays and one absent.
Okay. Is councilor Back online okay?
Oh, yeah. I'm not sure she's online here.
She's online.
Dan Ryan: I see her logged in, but I don't see. Okay, then I'm going to move to Ryan two. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Okay. Yeah. Kind of stalling, hoping he's in because I actually think reading hers before mine would have been a great idea for all of you. So here I am. She back.
You can move hers for her if you want. I.
I don't really want to do that.
Okay.
So here I am. I'm back. The guy that had council ratings much lower than all of you. But here I am six years later. Oh. She's on. Councilor, can can we have her phone? I'm happy.
To recognize, councilor.
It's more comprehensive.
Okay, councilor.
Hello.
Am I being recognized for six and seven?
Yes.
Thank you. And thank you for your patience while I just jumped on here. And I'm sorry, I think I missed a couple of votes. Colleagues, you have in your inbox two amendments, Pirtle six and seven. And I would like to talk about them together. I want to talk about them together because I think they provide two alternatives, and I don't think it is worth talking about them separately. If one has more support or interest than the other. I am all for that. Colleagues, we have been talking a lot about a couple of really important sources of funding and really important things to fund, and I have heard from some of our colleagues, well, we just need to do x. You just need to come around. Eventually you'll get here, you'll vote for my thing. But what we actually need to do is talk about compromise. And the thing with compromise is it isn't easy. And a lot of people are left not fully comfortable with what they have before them. But what I've tried to do with the ideas that are before us here, is hear the concern that many of my colleagues raised. I agree that $10 million was more than I was hoping to have to pull from the cbpa, because I hope that they are able to get up and running faster than we think they will. And I heard a lot of concern from many of you about that as well. I also have heard a lot of concern about drawing from reserves and not wanting to take a full 2.5 million from any of the reserve pots, given the. The continued reduction and the needs we think we will continue to have in the future. I have heard concerns about the various ways that we fund our offices and so what you have before you in portal six and seven is a slimmed down version of what we talked about earlier today. This is about identifying the sweet spot. This is about the opportunity to preserve frontline jobs, leave a buffer and cbpa not draw too far into any reserves and fund those public safety priorities that I think many of us have identified. What you'll see here is that it is not everything that was before us previously, but it is the things that most people have talked about. Station 20 twos, engine two. But unfortunately, not all three of the fire rescues the PPB admin positions, but not the additional position. That was in some previous amendments. A smaller add to ps three getting us to 12 ps three. That is two per shift per precinct. In one of the proposals before you, there is an attempt to restore the training only, but not the rest of the ems within PPB. In the other. That's cut completely. You can see the funding sources before you and I would ask for real conversation. I would ask for an opportunity to think about our costs and benefits. And if folks are willing to move forward, I would also ask, because we have litigated much of this, that if people are not willing to move forward with either of these options, you just say this. I offer this as a way to try to find compromise, but I certainly don't want it to slow down our work that I know council president, we are already behind on today. Thank you colleagues. I'm looking forward to hearing from folks.
Thank you, councilor Genie, councilor Zimmerman. Oh, actually, wait, first, are we in debate just about them broadly? Are we actually moving them? Councilor polygyny.
Council president, I know you don't want two things open at once. I would love to open both so that folks can speak to either, and then ask for a second only on the one that has the most support if you're willing to do that. But you tell me what process you're most open to hear.
I think, why don't.
We want to do is take the time to debate both separately. If they're interchangeable.
How about we move both? When we move to a vote, we will separate the question and you can withdraw the one that has less support.
That sounds fantastic. Then I would move both together.
Okay. Councilor has moved six and seven together. Is there a second?
Second.
Councilor, vice president, clerk, seconds count colleagues to the amendments. Councilor Zimmerman, thanks.
I'm just trying to understand there's quite a write up in purgatory six that talks about where it's taking the funds from. But then in 87, it's a smaller write up, but it looks like the numbers are basically the same. So either you didn't put the. Is it maybe council city council budgets right up in your second one, but you did in the first one. Was that an error or which one is correct here? Should I go by the numbers or the narratives?
The second one does not pull money from council budgets. Portal six I didn't talk about the differences in the funding. Maybe I'll do that.
Can I just can I just.
Can I just pause you because I'm I'm looking at something that says portal 87. Am I reading it incorrectly? That 774 from council ops is included in it? Am I the only person everybody's agreeing with me? Councilor.
I'm seeing that.
Sorry, that's an error in the table. That's my fault. Sorry.
Okay, so I'm going to I'm going to clarify it. And councilor Perugini, let me know if this is correct. So count portal guinea seven is pulling 211,000 from a council. Excuse me, a city operations analyst position and is also pulling 4.5 from cbpa in that same loan construction kind of situation against the facilities fund not touching council ops. So that would be a scrivener's error in portal 87.
That is a scrivener's error portal guinea seven pulls a significantly smaller amount through that loan that we discussed earlier. It reduces a new position in city operations in order to realize those funds for for these expenditures. And it pulls some new unrestricted contingency. It doesn't touch any existing positions or contingency from the past year, and it does not touch council budgets.
Okay. Thanks. So I have two questions. One question. One point to make here is I'd like to know what the analyst position was or intended to be. And then I'll just kind of note, colleagues, when we have the budget office writer amendments, this is why we end up with things that say, fund management, 100 general fund constantly on everybody's amendments today. And if you know what that means, I've got a gold star for you. But in the world of actual budgeting in in the world of actually describing what these are, it'd be a hell of a lot more helpful if that just said, this is coming from and then talk about it specifically. But we've now gone through, I don't know how many amendments, but they all seem to have fun slash debt management, 100 general fund. Instead of talking about the program you're making a change to. So while the budget office forces you into this structure, I would encourage you always to please describe it. And this, mr. Administrator, is part of what we are highlighting as a problem in this process that has now two years not been fixed. So if these become a little unclear, it seems to be set up that way. So thanks, councilor Perugini, I appreciate you clarifying. If we can get an updated pearl city seven, I do think that would help the rest of this debate go more smoothly. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor null.
Yeah.
I'll keep this brief unless we hear something else from colleagues, because I think it in addition to councilor Perkins, request that if you if there's no if you're going to be against both of them to just disclose it, I would also ask if anyone is going to vote any differently on these that they disclose it so we can get into the debate. Otherwise, we can just save a bunch of time. I'm not changing on this. The same conversation, everything we said earlier with relation to the clerk amendment still apply. I also love saint john's and would love it to have more firefighters, but I don't think it needs a second engine in addition to the truck right now that we just funded, so I'll leave it at that. Thanks.
Thank you councilor. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Yeah, that was going to be part of my question, because if we just passed the last amendment to fund the 2.5 million for the fire truck, then these amendments are out of date. Am I reading that correctly? Yes. Both of these amendments include that 2.5 for fire.
Yes, it.
Would require a troop.
Okay. So either way, I'm voting no because we're still taking from cbpa. And that's a bright line, so we can just move on. I don't plan on voting for this, and I'm grateful that we were able to restore fire station 22 in the last vote. That was most critical to me. So I'm voting no on both of these.
Thank you, councilor Avalos, councilor Murillo.
I will also be a no vote on both of these. And I'm wondering if they have been publicly posted for the public to get to review them as well.
No, this is happening now. So they are being published that way.
Council president, the clerk's office does have them. My guess is that there's a slight delay in getting them posted.
Yes. Yeah.
Thank you, councilor Murillo. Councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you. I appreciate your willingness to try to seek some compromise. I'll just say, as long as it continues to reference cbpa underspend, I'll be a no. If you want to bring back a version of this that restores those other pieces and it's it collateralized in a different way. I mentioned earlier the enterprise funds that we probably don't need the money for in the next nine months. I would be open to that. But until until that language is struck, I'll be a no.
Thank you, councilor Green, councilor, vice president, clerk.
Thank you, council president, I want to thank councilor Perlini for her spirit of compromise, which I'd like to see a lot more of amongst my colleagues. If we take out station 22 in perlini seven, that means we're only borrowing about 2 million from the cbpa a very small amount, because clearly they don't need all that money. And in perlini six, if you take out station 22, it only it comes down to just under $4 million. I'm not sure that councilor Perlini was aware that we had voted on another budget amendment that included station 22. So I, I again, I really appreciate your work on this councilor and appreciate your spirit of compromise. And I'll be voting for this.
Thank you. Vice president, clerk, councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Mayor, you weighed in on Clark et al. One, which seems to be a larger version than what this epg7 is. You supported the first one. I'm wondering if you would support this one. And I say that with full acknowledgment that if this one were to pass, we would need a corrective amendment to the blt thing that just passed and was taken from the reserves. But I'm curious on on your thoughts since you weighed in on the other one, which is quite similar, and I appreciated your weighing in on that because it is it does fall into an operational of how you expect to execute funds.
Going off of support for obviously, engine 22 has been resolved, and so that's going to remain open. So, you know, that's good news. Certainly the concern is, is how we're funding it. We're deferring risk to future periods and bond rating and such. So alarmed with that, the other items two fire rescues the admin for pbb and the ps three that certainly welcome news. And with the knowledge of what we had with p, p, a and p for union and afscme support, I'm going to assume that there supportive and I'm going to be supportive of this as well.
Okay.
Thank you mayor, I do I do lean toward supporting this, as I did the previous. Clerk one and I acknowledge that if it passes, we'll need a fix it amendment on the blt. I think not using those reserves would be a good thing, given last year's $13 million hole we experienced. So I thank you, mayor, for answering that and I appreciate it.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman, councilor Novick and colleagues, I will note it's 340.
Councilor, you talked about your amendment refers to two fire rescues. I'm wondering which ones those are. And if with the dropping station with station 22 no longer being an issue, whether you want to restore all three.
Thank you, councilor Novick. I would defer to the bureau on which rescues were most critical to restore. First, I think you have that data from them and had noted that it was 19. And then I honestly, I apologize. I don't remember which you said they had put in line after that, with station 22 being covered out of councilor Canals amendment. I think, frankly, colleagues, we have a few options. If one of these would pass, I would work with the council president to have a true up amendment come forward, and we could either restore the blt funding, restore the third rescue, and then put the remainder of the funds back into the blt reserve or restore the rescue and put the remainder of the funds back into the the fund from which this loan is taken. So I think we have a couple of options of where that restoration would take place. And certainly because that third rescue costs far less than engine 22, I would be happy to bring forward a true up amendment in partnership with the council president, if he is willing to have us do it this way. That restored the third as well, and then returned the rest of the excess dollars.
Thank you. I just want to take a moment to talk about some of the types of calls the rescues go out on. I had this from the fire chief the other day in 2425. They included chest pain, 365, overdose, 190, cpr in progress 62. These kind of calls are usually associated with life or death outcomes, so I would hope that my colleagues would agree that it doesn't make much sense to allow our constituents to die so the money can sit unused in a bank account.
Thank you, councilor Novick, councilor.
Thank you. I actually said most of what I was going to say anyway in response to councilor Novick, but I would just add that if somebody wanted to make an amendment to restore that third rescue here as well, we could do that in process. But again, I would want to make sure that there is ample support.
Thank you, councilor Vice president Clark.
Olivia Clark: Thank you, council president. I just wanted to remind my colleagues that the pb precinct administration are desk clerks that are represented, and they mean by restoring these cuts. That means that those precincts will remain open and available to people in several districts, and that restoring the four ps three is going to help with our response time. And that's very important to most of the people in Portland. If you have a problem, if your house is if you're being attacked, if you're in a traffic accident, whatever it takes, the police will be there and someone will be there to respond to you. Because the ps three are doing other kinds of work. The police. This is no risk to the cbpa. I will repeat that this is no defunding intended. This is actually addressing critical public safety and health needs in our community. And I would ask that you consider a compromise on both six and seven. Thank you.
Thank you, colleagues. Again, it is 345. We still need to get to the prosper Portland amendments today, and we have four more colleagues in the queue, councilor.
No, thanks.
I'll request to limit debate to the queue that's currently there and ask for unanimous consent on that. And then I will also add, just to look ahead, I have canal five, which would fully fund all three of the rescues without breaking the charter. Thanks.
Thank you. So I'm limiting debate to those in the queue. Thank you very much, councilor.
Thank you councilor. I don't quite see how this is a compromise. You've heard from many people, and we've already voted and said that there's a pretty hard line on touching ocpa. If you really are interested in figuring something out and compromising, I'm happy to work with you, but I think that is what is required for it to actually be a compromise is to talk to some of the people that were not with you the first time. Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Yes, thank you councilor. I will be supporting your compromise amendments. I appreciate the hard work you put into this. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Councilor cano, is that a legacy? Okay, councilor.
Thanks. Council president. Colleagues, rather than piecemeal, we can restore many of the public safety cuts that we all agreed we wanted to see. Move forward. We can do it with a far smaller draw than we had discussed earlier today. I truly have to believe that portlanders don't want to see us leave money that we know we will be reallocating a few months from now to whatever hole happens to be there then, or whatever pet project happens to be there. Then when we can continue to fund core frontline services that people rely on for safety, we can do it quickly. We can move it now. I believe that this reduces the risk that I heard from many of you as a concern. Significantly, without significantly drawing other risks. And we can make sure to support our frontline workers and the services that they provide and the portlanders who rely on them. Even without station 22 being a part of this. I think the other pieces are so important that it is worth moving forward, including, I'll note the desk clerks who may not be able to have all of their work backfilled. As I understand, some of the bargaining compromises that have been made in the past, and that work may have to go not done if we don't pass something. Thank you very much. And I hope to gain some support.
Okay. Councilor perlini, you moved both six and seven. There was no one else in the queue at this point. We're going to move towards a vote. Would you like to divide the question or withdraw one of them?
Was there a. Yeah, let's divide.
There wasn't actually.
I'm sorry.
Councilor Clark. Seconded.
Yes.
Councilor Clark seconded. I'd like to divide the question. And councilor Clark, I suspect we will have more luck with seven. Are you willing to move that first as my seconder?
Absolutely.
Okay, let's divide the question and move seven. Thank you, council president.
Thank you. Can we please call the roll on seven?
Seven moved by any seconded by Clark. No, no.
Any I.
Ryan.
I elaine. No. Maria. No no.
Vic I.
Clark I.
Green no.
Zimmerman I. Avalos no. Smith I. Dunphy no.
The amendment fails with a vote of six eyes and six nays.
Okay.
Should we move to the vote on six.
Six. No.
No.
I Ryan.
Let me yeah I.
Know maria. No no. I Clark. I Green no.
Zimmerman no.
Avalos.
No. Smith. No. Dunphy no.
The amendment fails with a vote of four eyes and eight nays.
Thank you, councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Yeah thank you council president. I know that we've heard a lot of arguments on this in theory. I hope that you could just listen to how this is a little different. It's like a bargain in comparison to the other two that have been offered. I want to talk about shared sacrifice the city is making in this budget process. City bureaus, the administration of all taken cuts to their budgets, and I do not see why the council should not, should be held harmless. The chief of police did that in his budget process to restore funds to cease fire. Thank you, chief de. My amendment proposal will take a haircut to our council office budgets 8% and council ops 3% to restore funding to ps three, allowing this council to show up and respect the police is part of community safety and finally give police something back. Originally I was aiming to restore that funding, but I'm pivoting because chat restoration was done earlier today and I'm thankful for that. There are many public safety gaps at this time, but ps but ps three present the opportunity to take call volume from police patrol officers, which will reduce officer response time to emergency calls. Again, we have all heard portlanders begging for those response times to improve. My proposal does exempt district one from the budget because those offices have expenditures that other districts don't. District one have district offices to provide direct access to their constituents who are removed from the city's central districts. In meeting with the auditor, a couple councilors mentioned that it was not fair for the mayor to make cuts to the auditor's office, which she made clear was acceptable to adjust to this reality of our budget pressures. Let's be fair then, and share in that sacrifice we are imposing on our front facing bureaus. I did pass out the new words because we obviously have new numbers, because chat was provided for earlier, and I do hope that you will all consider the importance of the unarmed ps three s who really have helped so much to improve our response times for Portland police bureau. Thanks.
Thank you. Formally moving your amendment. Yes. Okay. Councilor Ryan moves. Is there a second?
Second.
Councilor Clark seconds. Vice president Clark seconds colleagues to the amendment. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: I just want to note that actually this year's proposed budget for the city council is a beyond inflation $50,000 increase over last year, because last year we made a one time $50,000 cut. So we have been living with that amount 5000 less than this. Next year's budget assumes we have. So exempting district one, that adds up to 5450 000 money. That will just be sort of found money for us. So in reducing the overall city council budget by 1.16 million, that's really only a reduction of about six, about 600,000. So that's an addition. I, I support the amendment. And I thought that was important context.
Thank you. Councilor Novick, councilor.
Councilor Ryan, can you explain how much this would be in a reduction for each office?
Yeah.
1.16 like.
8% per budget, excluding it's 129. Thank you. I want to make sure I had it right. Yeah. 129 if we if district one wants to be included, we'll allow that. Then it gets it down to less than 100,000. But I really do think that the district one exception is valid. They're not a part of the central area. And I think the case has been made. So I understand the sentiment on why you don't want to stand out like that. But I think from an equity lens, it's just so clear and fair.
I still. I think a priority for me is we still haven't funded those three rescues. Right. I think that would be a priority for me to make sure we figure that out before we're.
Yeah, it's adding back three, correct.
Yeah.
And we have not.
Okay. So I think I while. I open to.
Public safety, but. Ps three the unarmed officers.
Not the.
Rescues her.
Admin never say things like that because someone's going to say, oh no, there's this, this, this. What else are we missing?
Councilor Ryan there are three rescues.
Dan Ryan: Oh, I was in the I was in the police world. Ps three yeah.
This is also public safety. I would I would like to restore those cuts to fire. And I could consider looking at the office budgets for that, but I'm not ready to do mine.
Mine was mine was in police because we have not done one thing for the police bureau in our add backs. So this is an attempt to do something.
That. Acknowledges that police.
Are part of community safety.
That's fire safety.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor.
No thank you. I made a point about Novick for that applies to Ryan too as well. Sorry. Novick two. That applies to Ryan two as well. And it's this lost money. We are adding $500,000 into police budget, but we're cutting $1.1 million in our budget because of the math calculation. I think there are better ways to do this. So I'll be opposing this particular one. I mean, the other points about the staff cuts are also there. And I'll just say this I have a I recognize the unique needs of of d one, but I do want to say that people in Portland deserve a response to their email just as much as people in Portland do. People in northeast Portland deserve a response to their email just as much as people in east Portland do. And so I don't want to get into the the, the exact nuts and bolts on it about exact needs of each district because they are unique and we could debate it forever. But I do want to say that it's important because these these expenditures are not an extravagance. They are an investment in democracy and representation. Not to mention that our staff is unionizing right now. I just want to point that out while possibly unionizing. I know there's an open vote on that. I don't want to put a thumb on the scale in any direction there, but I certainly want to have that conversation later. Having said that, I do see the merit in a lot of what you're trying to do here. Councilor Ryan, I just don't like the idea of 663,000 not going in the majority, not going to what we're talking about here. Thanks.
Thank you councilor. Councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Yeah, I just I also had some confusion about the $500,000 is the restoration to the ps three. But we're cutting it looks like we're just more than half of the cut just goes to overhead the overhead pool. Is that is that right?
No, I understand, but could council could ruth, could you please come up and explain the general fund overhead explanation? We I was thinking the same thing. All of you were about simple math. Yeah. Please explain.
Sure. So I know this is somewhat painful, but because of the way we fund overhead functions, which is not uncommon, we draw resources from all of the different funds in the city. So the three biggest payers, the three biggest non-general fund payers, the general fund, bears the largest share at 43%. The next biggest ones are sewer, water and transportation. Those are legally restricted funds, so they pay in for, for example, city council. And we charge them on a allocation metric that's been approved. And that means, you know, we can we can spread the costs accordingly to our all of our different sort of colors of money in the city. The flip side of that is it means when you go to cut it and you want to fund something that is discretionary, only you, you return the non-general fund portions to those general fund overhead payers, and they can then use it, right? Transportation gets a portion of that money back. They can fill potholes with it or whatever. So it doesn't mean it has to sit there unused. It just has to go back to the legally restricted source from which it came. If you're, you know, swapping general overhead for overhead, you don't have that same problem. So it's just a color of money issue. There's no way around it. It just is. Those are restricted funds and they're eligible to pay for things that qualify as general fund overhead, but they're not able to pay for things like fire.
Colleagues, I hope you understood the color of money explanation that was delivered to all of us. I'm sure everyone at home understood that as well. I'm being a little bit facetious. Can you please? This is what I was given when we were working with your office. Could you tell us when those monies could be released? Is there a does it when can they be released back into the budget? They can only go towards overhead.
They can they they get released back to the payers. So if we're charging less to transportation, sewer and water, they, they get that money back and they can use it to do things like fill potholes. So it's just a color of money issue. It's just you can't pay for, you can't use legally restricted funds to pay for things that do not qualify for those as a use for those legally restricted funds. That's the issue.
Why ruth is up along with owen. Would anyone have any more questions to try to understand what we're voting on?
And councilor Green, I think you were still recognized.
That answers my question. Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you. Colleagues, it is 4:00. Just giving you a heads up, councilor Smith. Oh, actually, I'm going to just very quickly note, you all know I'm trying to get us out of here as close to 5:00 as possible. But our council staff and security and everybody have a hard out at six. So we're probably going to be closer to six. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, president. Thank you, councilor Ryan, for your thoughts and I appreciate it. You know, I believe that the first law of nature is self-preservation. And I try not to go against that. And I don't want it to be lost on us, that we also have a 3% increase. While we may be getting that $50,000 back, councilor Novick, we do have a 3% increase in payroll that we must pay colas to our staff. We have an increase in internal services that we must pay. So for me, it's still the same. Everything that I said to councilor Novick, I think it applies here in. I agree with councilor Cano. He has a district that is the northernmost part of our district. Saint john's borders on to district four, and we are the the most eastern part of the city. And so I think our ability to to have forums, have staff and the ability to, to go in and out of these communities in a way that is meaningful, not just as a, you know, check the box kind of thing. I, I think this is a, I think this is something that I'm going to pass on. Councilor. I usually support stuff that you do, but this is this is not going to be that day. But thank you so much.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. I just want to you know, if you look at the entire day that we've spent here, I think that a lot of our conversation has been on this idea that the thing that's closest or the thing we understand the most is the easiest to cut. I just disagree with this, and I know you knew that coming into it, but we've spent a lot of time talking about council ops. We've spent a lot of time talking about council budgets, security, the thing that we see closest. But this scarcity mindset, I'll remind you, we've got hundreds of millions of dollars. There are bureaus who are sitting in the Portland building right now who are sitting just fine watching our conversation because they know what they didn't put up. And so I am not happy that we've spent a day naval gazing and I've defended it. Right. I'm defending I'm going to defend to, to, to this. I don't think gutting this still experimental thing is the thing to do. But. An $8.6 billion budget with $750 million in general fund, significant number of bureaus who think for some reason, because they're not general fund, that they shouldn't have to consolidate into one single city, one water, one public works department. I, I just want to I'm going to caution us to take a step back and think about how silly this is, that we continue to get forced into this 1 to $2 million conversation. And it's nobody up here's fault. It's I really, I just don't I don't feel that way. We all disagree and agree on various things at different times. But on this one, I, I'm going to continue to look for things that are a larger look at a larger budget bucket across a larger swath of bureaus, ones that aren't super close to me that I can't point to a name or point to a person that I either want to save or want to get rid of. But this is. We've been asked to talk and argue over the last few crumbs. Of a feast. Frankly, that has happened in the other buildings, and I just am going to reject that on its face. And so we were put into some difficult positions with this budget. No doubt reconsolidation is important, regardless of what we hear from from folks who are fighting for for programs. But I want to talk a little bit about just the difference between last year and this year. This year, we're hearing a lot of people talk about, I don't want to be reconsolidated or, or downsized. And that's that's fine. I understand that I've been in that position thinking I was next up on the layoff list, too. Last year we heard a lot about what programs to preserve. I do think that this budget has largely preserved a lot of programs, even though a lot of things that have come to a reduced sense, which is why I'm not other than other than a couple of public safety things. I'm not looking to make a huge amount of changes here. And, and those changes that I am looking for are in areas where no money is being spent. But the idea of taking from areas that are programed ready to go, doing good work, to then fund a thing that the city administration has said, we want to consolidate here or do others. I'm just not there. So let's remind ourselves about the feast that has occurred. The crumbs were being asked to argue over, which don't always put us in our best positions as our best selves, and that whether we've done a good job as the 12 up here over the last 18 months, our ability to do better, and the next council's group to do better and best relies on us not gutting the things that help us be good at it.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Ryan, final word.
I get the final word. Just two things. I am disappointed we are avoiding the support for police's unarmed ps threes. And I do think that a small sacrifice was something that was necessary from all of us at this time. So I am disappointed. I'm really clear this isn't going to pass and I will just end with that.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Keelan can we please call the roll on Ryan two.
Ryan two moved by Ryan seconded by Clark.
All know.
Ryan I. No no.
No I.
Snark I.
Green no.
Zimmerman no.
Avalos no.
Smith no.
Dunphy no.
The amendment fails with a vote of four eyes and eight nays.
Okay. We have three more public safety related amendments to get through. Councilor. No.
I'd like.
To formally withdraw canal four.
Okay.
Just to get that off the table, what are the other ones that are left?
Canal five and Novick four.
Steve Novick: Okay, I'm content to let councilor Novick go first because there is a. I want to make sure that the table is correct. Okay. Go up.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Unless somebody can contradict me. I didn't get the sense that Novick four would have any more support than Novick two, so I was going to withdraw it. But if some of the if several of the people who voted against Novick. Two are for Novick, four speak up.
Give me a second.
Okay.
Oh, okay.
So I'm hearing that. Sorry. I'll let this play out first.
Okay.
Councilor Novick, I'm not hearing other people chiming in.
Oh that's great.
I, I want to stay consistent. I do want to cut overhead. That's like I've said before. So I would I would entertain this. I'm not saying I'm voting yes, but.
I voted yes on the other one was asking for people that didn't.
Yeah. That's right. Okay. All right.
Okay. Okay. Hearing no further councilor No more.
I'm going to I'm going to move five. There is one adjustment that's getting printed. I'll just get this over with here. So colleagues, what this does is it takes $1.8 million that has been received in settlement funds from the opioid settlement. So we are a party to a lawsuit against the major opioid manufacturers. There was a lawsuit settlement, and money gets paid out at a, let's say, inconsistent pace. It doesn't come in on a on a chronological basis or on a on a regular basis. There is $1.8 million of it that was unassigned going into this, but is going to is proposed in the mayor's budget. I'll talk about that in a second. As a result of that inconsistency, it is one time dollars. This would move that money from where it is currently going, which is towards shelter services and Portland solutions. And it would move $1.8 million to fire to fund the two person rescues. That is $1.65 million. And this is the table that's being updated, because we don't actually need the money to backfill psr. The other 150 k would go to backfill the remaining cut to chat. Chat has a decision package that got reduced by, I think about $1 million. I'm gonna get you the exact number. We backfilled the 500 k already, but this would help fill the rest of it and allow for that. I'm going to get you the exact numbers on that. But basically it's a move of opioid settlement dollars, which by the way, need to be used on things related to this, to two programs that deal with medication for opioid use disorder, that deal with things like drug overdoses, that deal with things related to opioid use. So I will get that printed. But you can look at canal five as it is currently posted, and replace where it says psr with chat, and you will be correct.
Okay.
And are you moving this?
Yes.
Okay. Council councilor Canal has moved canal five. Is there a second?
Second?
I heard Avalos first, I think just slightly so colleagues to the amendment. Councilor Clark, vice president Clark.
Thank you. Council president, I just have a quick question. I we haven't gotten the updated piece yet, but are you still reducing the city administrator's office by 1.8.
So that the.
City administrator's office is Portland solutions? This goes back to what councilor Zimmerman was referring to about the funds. Portland solutions is not separately budgeted because it's not exactly a bureau, not exactly a anything. So it's currently under there. It's an office. And so this is money that would be going to shelter services.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, vice president Clark, counselor Novick.
Thank you, mr. President. I would like the mayor to have an opportunity to talk about what he thinks the impact would be of this cut to shelters.
Council president. Thank you, counselor Novick, the opioid funds. Are for recovery beds. And the overall goal is is if we take money away from that, then we're asking these individuals essentially be thrown from recovery back onto the street reductions to the shelter and the shelter system will harm Portland street response
Will harm chat will harm the rescue's ability to get vulnerable people off the street, which is essentially what shelter is supposed to work in the continuum of care. Treatment should not lead to the housing continuum. It should lead to the housing continuum, not to treat an abandoned model. We are keeping psr for the most part, whole with our response vehicles. We are taking a 30% reduction in our sheltering system, and I did that to fund our public safety system for the most part, to ensure not one fire station was closed, no patrol officers were let go. Parks and community centers were kept open. If we take this money, we're only going to put more pressure on an already underfunded public safety response system. We've built a continuum in the city in this last year, has shown the improvements we've made and the hope we've restored to continue to cut shelter is only going to put pressure on the city of perhaps having people having to go back to the street. In fact, I would recommend sky speak in terms of what would happen with continued cuts.
Very briefly, sky.
For the record. Skylar barker, director, Portland solutions thank you, council president. Thanks, mayor. Quickly, I my shelter team's proposal. If this cut were to be taken. Of the 1.8 million in opioid settlement funds would be 50 beds at bybee lakes. Those are 24 over seven beds that are focused on recovery and 60 beds of overnight shelter at saint stephen's, with additional $100,000 in flex capacity for winter surge up that we would lose.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president, I just want to say that I fought for bybee lakes for so long. And it is one of the the high functioning. Shelters. And we need those. And we need the opportunity to serve those who have drug and alcohol abuse issues. And this will will solve it. I don't think that taking this money away is going to is going to solve the actual problem that we really need to solve with with the rescues. I urge my colleagues not to support this and to keep the opioid money with the with the shelters at this point.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor murillo.
Oh, I think my question already got answered, but I'll double check. We're getting updated language to remove chat from it.
Correct? To replace.
Psr with chat. In it, you can see the 150 k going to. If you look at the. This is the the first of the lines in the table where it says office of the public safety dca that would be replaced with Portland fire and rescue. The upper left.
Okay. So was it not fully funded already.
Get you this number?
We can have fire rescue staff kind of address that because there is a component to the chat program that councilor Kendall is adding.
Okay, because I thought we fully funded chat and murillo one, which is why I'm trying not to duplicate if we've already done that. But.
Yeah.
That's why I.
Pulled it by my winter amendment.
Yeah.
Got track people.
Okay.
Councilor.
That's my question. If it can be answered and that's all I have, chief.
Thank you. Lauren johnson fire chief, for the record, I think to clarify, it's important to note that 2 million would restore them to what they had received in years past. And so that was the 1.5 congressional earmark funding, plus 500,000 from maria one. The first one we did today. I wonder if councilor Canales amendment is planned to take the 1.5 million. That's congressional earmark. And no, I shouldn't speak for you then, did I? Did that answer the question.
We got.
Our are we make sure we get wires crossed.
Might have been with cbo. I'm just going to verify real quick there.
Perfect. But yeah.
So then yes, just to emphasize, chat has been restored to the 2 million that we asked for in the original budget process because of the amendment this morning that passed.
Okay. Then I think, councilor, when you're able to, I'd like some more clarification on what exactly this is. Funding in chat. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Murillo. Thank you. Chief councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: I just want can somebody tell me like the history of the opioid settlement and what the money was supposed to go to? Mary, you said it was supposed to go to recovery beds. Is that literally what it's going to now?
Director of Portland solutions, just quickly and then robert, correct me. But just so we're clear, there's an addendum to what the settlement agreement that was passed with various pharmaceutical companies, and it outlines what you're allowed to use it on. The allowable uses are pretty broad. So for recovery beds are included, psr chat, anything that would be kind of relevant to opioid use disorder or folks using opioids or any kind of recovery process within that continuum. So fairly broad is kind of the easy answer. But related to opioids.
So if we're using it to fund people who are going out, responding to people with chest pain and no opioid use, would that raise any sort of legal problems?
We had this scored and checked for feasibility. I just want to be clear about that.
Mr. Taylor.
Yeah, thank you. Robert taylor, city attorney. Thank you. Skye. Yes. We have received settlement funds related to opioid litigation. Those funds are governed by the settlement agreement. There's a. A lengthy exhibit that talks about what the allowable uses are. And so whenever we get a question about that, we compare it to the exhibit. And we also work in consultation with the grants office, who helps administer this. So, you know, I think we have reviewed these amendments against this list. We have found that they have been would be allowable. So if we're going to talk about other things we want to do with these funds, we would like an opportunity to review it against the list.
So you have you have reviewed councilor Canales amendment against the list.
We we have in the past used opioid funds for psr and chat.
But this is not psr in chat. This would go to the rescues which respond to general medical calls.
We have reviewed that issue and we believe that one of the harm reduction categories is for supporting efforts to prevent or reduce overdose, overdose deaths or opioid related harms through evidence based or evidence informed programs and strategies. So this two person team, if they're responding faster than other first responders, we believe that would fall within that category.
Even though overdoses are just one aspect of what they do.
If it's one aspect of it, we think that would be allowable.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Novick. Colleagues, just as a heads up, it is 420. Councilor canal. Councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Just thank you. It's good discussion today. I just want to note that I unless I'm mistaken, you don't have to use opioid money to have space at bybee lakes. You can use any money and there is a lot of money in the shelter budget. And I'll note that we are creating in this budget a 275 unit pod or 275 person pod site at north Portland. And so each of those pods is about $29,000. You you could pay for this and keep bybee lakes going by just reducing those pods by 62. And frankly, you should on its own merits, because you should never concentrate that many people in one site, you get terrible outcomes. So I think we could absorb this cut, get some very, very good outcomes in terms of our first response capability versus first responder capability, while also keeping those beds going at bybee lakes. So I just wanted to place that on the record.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Yeah, thank you, councilor Greene. I don't know the data on that, on what the outcomes are on on that. But I just want to remind you all you just said something very interesting. City attorney taylor, I tried to get some of this money last year, $1 million of it for summer works, who serves underserved kids who are at high risk. Some of them have drug and alcohol issues. And you said that as long as they're covering one component of it, I tried to use it. And you all told me last year that that was not usable. And I also want to, but now you can use it because you may pick up somebody with chat that might have an issue with opioid overdose, just like kids of, of color, bipoc kids who participate in summer works, they have the same high risk of opioid overdose as folks who are being seen in chat. And so I do know that this money, we're going to be receiving it for the next 23 years. And so it should be put in ongoing money that we can attach. And I would like to I'm not doing it now. I'm taking the money out of the cannabis, but just, just know I am looking for $1 million and I will be back. Mr. Taylor, I will be back. You know, I do not forget. So. I think that right now we need to keep the opioid money where it is and go forward and take a vote.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Vice president Clark.
Thank you. Just really briefly, council president, I harken back to councilor Zimmerman's comments. I feel like we're robbing from peter to pay paul, chasing our tail all over this place that we if we have a humanitarian crisis, this amendment is really just inviting problems. I don't understand why we're going down this route. If you've been to bybee lakes and you've seen what they're doing out there and how successful they are with substance abuse and behavioral health, why would we cut that? Why would we cut the winter surge funds? Why would we cut one of the last remaining overnight shelters? I just I don't get this at all. We have a crisis and we're going to we're going to we're going to rob this.
Thank you, vice president Clark. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Yeah thank you, council president. Thank you, councilor Clark. You know, opioids is about addictions. This money should go to those who who are serving the most difficult population. Bybee lakes is high performing. It's turning around lives. I'm not sure why you'd want to cut such a service in district two.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Councilor null.
Yeah. I want.
To just start with two things. One, councilor Greene's completely correct. The money that remains is fungible. This is the national monuments thing that we've talked about a lot. It's putting up something in my district as something that's going to get cut that everybody supports. I understand that I asked for where the money was going a while ago, as as many of you have probably experienced as well, we received a lot of information well after the amendment deadline. So we went with our knowledge of where it was going, which was shelter. We put it up. And so it is frustrating to have this occur up here now and be told that it's it's this specific thing when we know that the money is fungible. And I agree completely with councilor Greene's point about the idea of putting a lot of people together, which I know, you know, the mayor has spoken about his belief that we shouldn't be warehousing people. That's the term that we're avoiding. And I think that this is an opportunity to say, actually, don't put so many people in a single place that we're going to have that potential risk be realized. So that's the frustration that that I have in terms of the information being provided here. But I do want to talk about the fact that in many ways, what we are doing is deciding between two things. That may be that nothing here is perfectly good or perfectly evil. We are changing priorities. We are talking about what we value more. So if we're going to have the conversation and I think we should have the conversation, I'm trying to see over who's here from from Portland solutions about what other things in the shelter services situation could be adjusted to hold it. I did want to take the opportunity to ask if fire could come up and talk about the rescues, because I think it's an important conversation to ask, and I do see chief johnson here to talk about it, and I want to point out that there are three different units. One is on the line, as councilor Novick has put it, between d three and d one and then one each is in d three and d one altogether. And I believe this is the only remaining amendment that funds them. But I will verify that.
And colleagues, it is 425 and four more colleagues just got in the queue. So I really hope that you all have really exciting and new and compelling new arguments that will convince all of your colleagues. Chief johnson, please stay away. Is there more to to councilor Ryan's or counselor connell's question about the the rescues?
Just to put a finer point on it, chief johnson, thank you for being here. Can you please speak to what the. I have two questions. One is that what the impact is of the rescues or not? And the other thing is when you were evaluating station, not station closures, double company reductions, you said that one of the reasons you were not looking at woodstock is that it would be negatively impacted by the loss of rescues.
So.
25 yes.
Yeah.
Can you speak to both of those two things, please?
Sure.
Thank you for the question. So to answer the second one, just because it's top of mind, station 25 would be negatively impacted by the reduction of the rescues because it's on the same side of town. And so we expect that if the rescues are closed, station 25 is run, volume is going to go up because it's a station close to those stations that have the rescues. In terms of the loss of any rescues. So that's 11, 19 and 30 ones. They all contribute to taking the workload that happens out in east county. They respond to medical calls. They have als paramedics on them. Happy to answer more specific questions. I mean, they are there because that's where the demand for additional units exist in the city.
I'll say I don't have any additional questions you might get asked by my colleagues. So I don't want to make you do the the musical chairs thing, but I will say I did double. I'm uncrossing the wires here and just coming up with the revised chart here, we're just going to do 1.65 out of it for the rescues. And that leaves the 150 000 for shelter, of which 100 k can absolutely be used for the the overnight piece that that director brucker talked about, because I do think that's important.
Thanks.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Thank you, council president chief johnson, thanks for being up there. You know, when when I asked first responders, I've been asking this for six years now. What's one of your biggest challenges in dealing with the humanitarian crisis? And it's that no matter how many rescues chats we have, there are times where you need to take someone somewhere, and we don't have a lot of options for that. As you know, as all of your all of all of the first responders understand. And so is there a relationship that fire has with some of these systems that have been built under Portland solutions? The support that we've offered to, to keep bybee lakes going? I'm just curious. This is this motivated me to run for office is because the county and the city fail to provide services for people who are in active addiction that have some desire to be sober, but all we offer are low barrier without much motivation to utilize those services.
Right? No, I appreciate the question. I can tell you that our partners at Portland solutions and Portland street response are who our firefighters and our chat responders call when they have a client that is ready for those, those services that have to do with addiction and needing treatment. Chat recently has received and is being outfitted with two vans or two vehicles that we can shuttle to take people to treatment centers specifically related to substance abuse. But then we largely rely on psr and Portland solutions to provide the follow up for housing.
Thanks, colleagues. This is personal for me. I think once I heard that you were wanting to cut money to buy be lakes, I became very against this. I lost a brother on the streets in 2014. That's one reason I've been supportive of bybee lakes, because it does. It's built by people who understand addictions, who have the lived experience, who have been sober now for a while. And that is exactly the type of program that every addict I talked to on the street would like. They realize that we need to aspire to something that has the higher barrier and has some tough love element to it. I'm really grateful that they have hung in there. Councilor Smith, I remember we both were supportive of that, and I think it was ironic that we were in the runoff since we were one of the two, the only two that were supportive of bybee lakes. We got to I'm really concerned that we're that we're trying to take down the very services that all outreach workers I've talked to have said, do not cut the shelters, do not cut bybee lakes. Those are the places where we are trying to guide people towards. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Ryan, councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. Councilor, I share your frustration with. Washington monument stuff and how we got information or don't. So I just want to I want to talk to you about. Having worked at the county as long as I did. I know that the most difficult shelter bed to create is the recovery one or the recovery oriented one. It's the most expensive. It's actually from a workforce skills perspective in in our community, it's actually the least, it's our least capacity. And that's largely because we had a culture for a long time that said, anything that was sober or anything that was higher barrier wasn't something we invested in. And I think we've kind of turned the tide on that in 2015 and 16. You know, I was part of the team at Multnomah county who tried really hard to get bybee lakes at the time, called wapato funded. I largely lost my election in 2016 because of being on that. But in 2023, working with julia edwards, Multnomah county, being there as the guy who wrote the program offer, when we finally got it funded, it felt real good. And so I also think about Multnomah village, the safe rest village, and that's moving toward a higher barrier, recovery oriented. And as a person who helps set up test sites to start with, which were designed to be no barrier, which are designed to be the toughest of the tough. One thing I've learned over the last couple of years is that some of our our residents, our clients who are at some of these places are desiring a more clean and sober situation. And I, I admit that I see it and I want to continue. So in any area where Portland solutions and Multnomah county is going toward recovery beds, I'm going to continue to support those I. I do while the money is fungible and I think we at least are legally covered. If it went to rescue, I think it is harder to get that type of funding out of general fund for recovery. And that's a population who I am going to continue to try and find funding for. So I appreciate the effort to put this up. I do think it would be probably fine, but just on a personal level, I want to keep those dedicated to whether it be the Washington monument in your district or the one in my district, keeping that dedicated toward recovery beds is something I'm going to try to do here, so I won't be supportive of your amendment today. But again, I share your frustration in the way that sometimes things get framed or how information gets to us a little late in the process.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Colleagues, I'm going to limit debate to those in the queue, councilor Lane, canal and Novick, and then we'll move to a vote.
Thanks. I'm starting to feel that frustration that council president talked about earlier of feeling like we're going round and round and talking past each other. When we're clear how this is going to go, I can tell you, I could have told you 40 minutes ago what the vote count is going to be. And pretty sure this is not looking like it's going to pass. I hear this conversation of compromise. I don't think that that's actually happening off the dais. So I'm putting it here really clearly. I, I really think these things need to get funded. My constituents want them. My conscience says that we really need to fund these. I am willing to look at office budgets. I'm also open to. I'm sorry. See, I told you, I really do believe that you need to be fully staffed, but I think maybe either I'd be open to cutting one dca or the aca and thinking about that. And so there it is out there and being very open. And I understand that I have colleagues that don't want me to cut my budget, and I will listen to that. But I also consider what my constituents need, what my conscience tells me, and what I think is best for the council as a whole. So I'm leaving that out there. I am willing to compromise.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor, in.
2023.
I was the project manager for the police accountability commission. This is relevant. I went and did a a visit to bybee lakes, and then I did a listening session on police accountability there with the with the folks who were staying there. I am very interested in what folks who are in different parts of their life and different types of relationships with police had to say on that at the time, and it was very helpful for, I think, the members who were making recommendations. It was also very helpful for me personally to get an idea behind what what happens at each and every one of these facilities that have had a chance to visit. Had I been told before the deadline and had the ability to change it, that this was going to be earmarked in the least politically positive way as a reduction to shelter beds, I would have ensured that there was a note written in there that said do not defund bobby lakes or the the grand recovery as well, by the way. And that's just an option that wasn't available to us. Having said that, I do think that we have to have a conversation about the fungibility here and say, why can't we look at it? I'm not going to, I think councilor Koyama. Koyama is correct, is correct that we should not be debating this forever because it appears unlikely to pass. But I would ask if colleagues are interested. This is what a potential compromise could look like. Can we talk about it with each other and potentially look at a way to look at other parts of the shelter budget for this in order to in order to find ways to free up these opioid settlement dollars and fund the rescues. Thanks.
Councilor. Thank you, councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. This is not an easy vote for me. Two of the rescues are either in or adjacent to my district, and it's also not an easy vote because I to some extent, I feel compelled to defer to the people who've been working with these with these facilities and are familiar with and are familiar with the outcomes. I also don't buy the Washington monument argument. I think that when politicians say they're going to cut something and the bureaus say, well, we're going to have to cut this, then the natural reaction is, no, there must be a lot of easier cuts you can make. That's the Washington monument argument. I assume that if the mayor and his guys say that the next cut is to bybee lakes, then that's probably true. And I think for this for me, this is hard. And my vote today might not reflect why we have a an adopted budget coming up. We can make changes. If we don't adopt this today. We might I might be willing to vote for a version of it a few weeks from now. Right now, I'm not prepared to do that. And I have to say that part of that is because of the visceral, negative reaction I have to the fact that at least some councilors who are unwilling to cut their own bloated office budgets are willing to cut shelters.
Thank you, councilor Novick. Councilor cano, I received a note from the clerk that the the draft that you handed out is different than the draft one. We had said we were moving it. So if you could officially withdraw your previous and reintroduce your new.
Thanks, I formally withdraw all five and submit canal move canal five.
B. Yeah, there we go.
And counselor Avalos, you were the second on that. Is that okay? Okay, great. Can we please call the roll on canal five b?
Canal?
Sorry, was I oh that's. Oh yeah.
Let the kid tell us.
Yeah.
Let the kid.
Canal. Yes, yes.
I know, I'm sorry. I was looking at the wrong amendment.
No.
Ryan.
No.
I.
Maria.
I think that we could get ongoing cuts elsewhere from dca or admin. So I on this.
With with again the caveat that I might change my vote on this in a few weeks.
No clerk. No. Green.
Yeah. I prefer rescue trucks, over 67 shelters at north Portland, I.
Zimmerman no. Avalos I.
Smith. No Dunphy. I the amendment fails with a vote of six eyes and six nays.
Okay, colleagues, we are through our public safety. Wait. Actually, councilor Zimmerman, would you like to move yours? Okay. We are now turning the page. Colleagues. We are now. We now turn to amendments that impact the prosper Portland budget or in the case of Smith one do not directly impact prosper but are. On the topic of workforce development. We have one amendment from councilor Pirtle guinea that only impacts her office budget. I'd like to start there. Then we can go round robin. Between the amendments introduced by councilors Smith, Avalos and myself, councilor Pirtle, guinea.
Thank you, council president. I would like to move guinea one colleagues we are looking at in the mayor's proposed budget, an over $400,000 cut to workforce development programs through a program in which funds are sent to work systems, inc. Coordinates state, local and federal, as well as private funding.
$2 million.
To provide workforce training and other services to portlanders in our community. The cut of over $400,000 is a direct cut to training opportunities to people within our community. I think that that is unacceptable, but I also went into this budget cycle not willing to pull from reserves if there was any other option available. I expect to have enough funds left at the end of the year in my office budget that even after the separation of funds, which we discussed previously, I should be able to make a $100,000 contribution in general fund dollars from my budget, from the 2526 fiscal year to restore a portion of those grant dollars. That is what the amendment before you does. And I will note that if we pass this amendment, we will need to pass a conforming amendment to the prosper Portland budget as well. Thank you.
Thank you.
Councilor moves Pirtle, guinea one. Is there a second? Second councilor Vice president Clark seconds. Colleagues debate on guinea one councilor Zimmerman thanks.
Eric Zimmerman: I don't understand the purpose here. This seems like something the councilor Could just do. You all do this? This seems like something that doesn't need to be voted on. Why would we debate it? Why would we change people's budgets? If the council wants to do this with her budget, she can do this. I do not understand the vote and why we're going to go through this.
Councilor, are you able to respond to that?
I was told that this was the most effective way to move these funds. Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: I would encourage you to resist the continued bad advice.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Well, I thank you, councilor. I do agree with what councilor Zimmerman had said up to the point of. Anyway, I did agree with most of it, so I, I know that councilor Canal and I are working on something out of our offices to support. I had no idea I'd have to tell you all about it. I'd love to brag about it, but I just don't know if this is necessary. But who's. Who could tell us why this is necessary?
I just.
Get it done.
I just, I just.
Have colleagues.
I'm also tired.
Everybody chill.
So anyway, yes, on your statement, councilor Zimmerman, it looks like people are excited.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: I just have a question. Is there a difference between this and are people going to bring eaos later?
So an eo is an overexpenditure ordinance in order to keep funds over to the next year, rather than allocating it differently? What councilor is formally moving money from her this year budget into other items, which I'm not familiar. If this is a actually, I'm gonna ask. Yeah, ruth levine, if you could please come on up here and help us understand the difference between this versus how else we can do this.
Part of why I ask is because I thought last year there were a bunch of folks that took money out and did it, put it towards programs, but it was all in an eo package. So why is this different from that?
So I believe what we did last year is that the we the current year portion of it. So with the carryover, there's money coming out of the current year and going into next year. Last year we took the money coming out portion out in the eo, and I would recommend you do the same thing. We would just file the eo with the conforming d appropriation in the current year. And then this is to budget to budget the expenditure in the next year. What we have told some folks is that if they if there's a small amount of money that the bureau. I'm not sure how else to do it other than budgeting this $100,000 in the budget because she can't write a check to prosper for $100,000 because it's not. You have to budget the use of the money according to where it goes. So that's this is a recommended process from, from my perspective. And if any carryover amendments pass from any anywhere here, I would just recommend we would just plan to file a sort of mirroring adjustment in the eo. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you, councilor Avalos, councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you councilor, I support you doing this. I'm a big supporter of workforce development. And whether we can do it or not, I support you doing it.
Okay.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, can we please call the roll on any one?
Any one. Move by poeltl. Guinea seconded by clerk. Canal.
Sure. Yes.
Guinea I.
Ryan I.
Absent maria I no. I clerk. I Green. I Zimmerman I Avalos I Smith. I Dunphy. I the amendment is approved with a vote of 11 ayes and one absent.
Congratulations counselor. Thank you very much. If only all of our amendments could go this quickly, folks. Counselor Smith okay. Calling Smith 1 or 2, whichever you prefer.
Give me a chance. I would like to move Smith one to support restoring funding for summer works in fiscal year 2627 budget from the from the cannabis contingency pot. The reason why this is so important. There was 532,000 that was taken out of summer works, which is going to be a huge deficit in the number of jobs that underserved students will be able to get for the summer. Summer works provides paid, mentored work experiences that help young people gain the skills, the confidence, and the connections they need to succeed in the workforce. For many participants, this is their first job in a critical step towards long term economic mobility for young people facing economic barriers or limited access to opportunity, paid summer work is especially important. These early work experiences help build a foundation for future success, supporting continued engagement in school, skill development and entry into a career pathway. Summer works also delivers clear value for portland's employers and community through partnerships with local, business and community based organizations and the city of Portland. The pipeline, while providing employers with access to motivated emerging talent. It also gives us an opportunity to say that we have provided a training ground for our next level of engagement in workers, at a time when many young people continue to navigate the lasting impacts of economic instability and disrupted pathways to work, maintaining access to these opportunities is more important than ever. Reductions to summer works would limit access to a proven program with strong outcomes and deep community impact. This proposal proposal offers a clear path to protect this investment and ensure that portland's young people continue to have access to meaningful work experience that set them on a path towards stability and success. I respectfully urge my colleagues to consider this and support this amendment as it moves forward.
Second.
Councilor Smith moves Smith one, and councilor Zimmerman seconds colleagues to the amendment. Councilor murillo.
Thank you, councilor Smith. I just have a few questions, but I love what this is funding, and I appreciate you bringing it forward. So my understanding is the cannabis rec fund has $2 million in contingency, and the fund has been decreasing for a few years as the novelty of cannabis usage has sort of gone down. And I didn't see any cuts for summer works. So is this an expansion of the program, or were there cuts that I missed.
Last year? Mayor wilson put $1.2 million in summer works. We had 200,000 from prosper, an extra 200,000, but he put a million in. And so this year he did not do the same. And I'd like to restore it to to last year's level, which would be $532,000.
Okay. So is this something that summer works requested? Like were they saying we need this in order to keep the program going?
Of course. This is a program that we have done for years and years. I've partnered with the city of Portland when I was at Multnomah county with summer works, and we paid for school for for the summer work opportunities. And I asked mayor wilson and he complied. He put $1 million in the budget so that it would go up to a million. We got another 200,000 from prosper and it was 1.2 million. I'm not asking for the 1.2. I'm asking for 532, which would give us $1 million in this program.
Gotcha. So if they don't get these dollars, since I didn't see a cut or they didn't, they didn't look like a cut when we were analyzing the budget.
Yeah, it was a cut. They did. And that's why I'm asking to restore it. There's going to be tens of 20s of people who do not have a summer experience. And as I always tell my kids when when I used to do this and run the program, I've never seen a kid, you know, doing a drive by on their way to work. Yeah. And if they have jobs, they will be productive young people. And so I want to offer this opportunity again because I think it's important and it's also important for young people to come into city hall and to our city bureaus. We also not in addition to being a funder, we are a site. We accept summer works interns. So we do both.
Yeah. You don't have to sell me on the program. I really like it. I'm just confused about the level of need based on what I've seen. Did they provide any testimony? Do you have any emails that said that they needed this funding?
They came through the the labor and workforce committee. I have a letter from andrew mcguff, who is who was the former. He just they just transitioned. I have a lot of information for you. If you. We actually have a summer works coordinator in our human resources department, if you want that and how successful that. We've been paying for this for years.
Councilor Smith, love the program. Love what you're funding. Just trying to figure out the need because I didn't see any cuts. So if someone can explain that to me, that'd be great. And I will move on while that person arrives.
And let me tell you about underserved kids.
I don't need to know about the underserved.
No, I need to tell you because underserved kids are the last kids to get summer jobs. Kids who are more affluent come from more affluent families. They get all the connections and they're able to get jobs. And so underserved kids have a tougher time getting a job in the summertime.
Tracie warren, welcome to the ice. Could you help us understand some of the logistics of what's moving on here?
Absolutely. For the record, tracie warren, deputy city administrator for city operations, could you repeat the question that was asked? I apologize. I was in a conversation.
When we were going through the budget. I didn't see that there was a cut to summer works. So I am a little bit confused about if this is funding a cut in the program or what the impacts would be. And then also if there's any issues with using the cannabis contingency fund, because I know that those have been dwindling down over the past few years as markets, you know, it's not as popular anymore.
Absolutely. I can answer the first part of the question, but I would have to defer to someone else for the second part of the question. So last fiscal year, there was one time funds added to the worksource Oregon or the workforce program that had been previously reduced in a prior fiscal year to 243 k of ongoing dollars. Last fiscal year. There were one time dollars added to that program. Those one time dollars will go away for next fiscal year. So this is replenishing those one time dollars at half the amount from the prior fiscal year.
Okay. That's helpful. So that's why it doesn't come across as a cut because they had additional dollars. Okay. I think that's what you were trying to explain to me, and I just needed to hear it phrased a different way. Thanks, I appreciate that.
Thank you. Councilor mario councilor Green.
Mitch Green: Thank you, mr. President. Councilor Smith, I'm going to support this. I appreciate the need. And also, even if it wasn't specifically requested, I think I would probably always support this while I have the floor. I just I want to say something really quickly, which is that earlier in the day, some a deputy mayor from your office, mr. Mayor, was running around to city council office saying that I was bringing an amendment to cut prosperous Portland by prosper portland's budget by $12 million. I'm bringing no such amendment. And so if you hear a rumor like that, you should come to me and you should ask me if I'm going to bring that amendment rather than ask my councilors, and then maybe potentially people in prosper Portland and get them all spun up. So I just want everyone to rest assured, I'm not trying that this time. And I told you delegado last time that I apologize for not telling him before I was going to bring something like that, so I'll never make that mistake again.
Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor.
Thank you.
Council president, can somebody tell me how much is currently in the contingency? What portion of the contingency would this pull out?
Yeah. Thank you program.
Love fully funding it. I just want to understand what risk we are accruing in this allocation.
Yeah. Thank you. Councilor. For the record, chief financial officer jonas berry. There is currently, I believe no one's coming up. Can tell me I'm wrong, but I believe there's about 2 million. I think councilor Murillo mentioned this number as well. And the contingency. This is a declining revenue stream. We know we've had to do some kind of backfilling to keep the current programing full. And so as with the use of any kind of contingency and reserve, we've talked about some of that before. There is some risk involved in that. But there is $2 million currently in that contingency.
Okay. So this would pull about a quarter of the contingency and how much money flows through the the cannabis tax every year. So it's a a $2 million contingency on what amount of funding and what is that rate of decrease?
Yeah. For the record on budget and policy analyst so the cannabis tax contingency we mentioned is just over $2 million. That's all based on beginning funding projected for the next year. The tax receipts are projected at about $4.7 million annually. And those have been declining from a high of about.
About 7.3.
7.3 million five years ago, down to $4.7 million projected for next year. And that that could be revised. The state forecast for cannabis tax revenues is often revised downward. This projection is flat for next year, and we may have to make adjustments throughout the fiscal year.
So we're looking at currently a $2 million reserve and a decrease of between a half a million and $1 million a year. In terms of what we have seen over the last few years in revenue. So we have a reserve that will be drawn out in the next few years. Really, whether or not we do this and we're cutting about a year off of that time that we have maybe less, maybe more than a year off of the time that we have this reserve available for to keep other cannabis funding at its current level, we're going to have to cut those programs pretty significantly. It sounds like no matter what. Is that correct?
It's possible. So we don't know where the floor for cannabis tax receipts will be. So it's possible that 4.5 million is an annual floor. But we don't know. And if you're looking at the trends over the last couple of years, it's been decreasing. We expect that at a certain point it will stop decreasing and be about flat. But that doesn't necessarily mean we can inflate programing ongoing year over year if revenues are flat. So we'll have to reevaluate. But what the contingency does is give us some buffer in case, because the cannabis tax revenues are are pretty volatile. And so it gives us that buffer in order to be able to kind of absorb that without making cuts to the programing during the fiscal year. So reducing that increases the risk there that you might have to do that in the future.
Okay. Thank you, councilor Smith. I'm interested to hear what our other colleagues have to say. I'm a big fan of summerworks programing. I'm a little nervous about pulling a full 25% out of this reserve. But again, curious to hear what our colleagues have to say. Thank you all.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. I just want to get some clarification on something. When I when I see contingency, I think the money that's available for emergencies. And if this was the only fund we have to deal with the situation where a bunch of stone people desperately need pizza. I don't want to cut it. So is that but you're saying it's a contingency in case ongoing programs actually need to need more money to continue.
Primarily in the cannabis tax fund, its contingency based off of revenue uncertainty. So whether we have budgeted $4.7 million in tax revenue that backs all of the ongoing programing backed by cannabis tax. And so if ongoing revenue was to if cannabis tax was to come in below the $4.7 million, we would the plan would be not to cut the ongoing programing in the current fiscal year, but instead to draw down contingency dollars so that we don't have to make those cuts now and can be more planful in the next budget cycle.
Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Novak. Colleagues, it's 5:00. Counselor.
I had the same experience indirectly the councilor Green had with relation to rumors being spread about wanting to cut prosper. And I'd ask that that people come talk to my office as well. No intention. Hadn't even spent a lot of time with the prosper budget this year, if I'm being fully honest. I spent a lot more time on the city budget and so just wanted to get that clarified.
Mr. President, please can we just.
Speak to your amendment.
Because you're not speaking to it. You're talking about something else.
I am I think it's important in the first opportunity we have to talk about prosper to get that on the record. I think you can appreciate.
The I know, do it at the end.
So colleagues, that's all I wanted to get out.
Thank you. See you. Thank you councilor.
Brown. Councilors. Smith. Councilor Smith, you are recognized.
Loretta Smith: I.
To say I've been fighting for this program for so long and. It's not an automatic. And you all deserve to have your questions answered. And just know that prosper also has a reserve as well as we have a. There's a difference between the reserve and contingency. And so if we get to the ongoing programs that are paid with this, like the. Imagine Oregon that supports the black and brown entrepreneurs, then then we have some other conversations that we can have. But I think the most vulnerable of us in the least of us. We have to make sure that we take care of them with jobs. Now, many of you are too young to to understand about a program. When I came to Oregon, I got a job at the forestry department at Oregon state university, working at the front desk, and I asked my supervisor, why did you hire me? Because I'm a city girl. I don't know anything about fish, water and trees at that time. And she said, because you had prior work experience, and I had prior work experience working with the same jtpa money that is now the we I owe money that we are using in conjunction with our city money to pay for summer works. So I believe in this program, not just because. Because I know it works. It got me through a door to be able to pay for my college when I moved here, and I had to pay three times the tuition because I was out of state. It is important. It is critical, particularly for kids in east Portland. I talked to the superintendents of east Portland and they said, do whatever you think you can do to increase the number of kids who will be able to get summer works, and that is what I'm doing.
Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Ryan, last word.
Councilor Smith, I'm a big supporter of this program. I have been for a long time. We were in some of those same meetings back when it got started, so I want to support it. I also and I, you know, I'm old enough where we actually went strawberry picking when we were eight. That was called summer camp for working class people in Oregon. And then you went from that to, you know, getting full time jobs at age 14. So yeah, work ethic is important and learning how to work is really a big deal. My, what I want to bring up to all our, all my colleagues is that the cannabis tax is a big burden on those that pay it in the cannabis industry in Multnomah county, both at the retail and the warehouse and in the warehouses. And they it's the highest of any cannabis industry in the in the state. And do we engage with them on where this investment goes? And so I'm going to be continuing to look into that because they're they're not a part of this dialog, in my opinion. And that's not fair. And they're kind of angry about it when I've gone to their meetings. So I actually think this one could be justified more than some that are that they allocate. But I do encourage my colleagues when they want to dip into the cannabis reserves, if you will, that we start engaging the industry that pays this tax burden. That, again, only occurs in Portland, Oregon. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, can we please call the roll on Smith one.
Smith one moved by Smith. Seconded by Zimmerman.
Yes.
Any. Yes. Ryan.
With hopes this can turn into some workforce. Relate to the industry. Yes.
Yes. Mario.
Thank you for this. Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: I know I Clark. I Green I Zimmerman I Avalos. I Smith I Dunphy. I the amendment is approved with a vote of 12 ayes.
Thank you. Councilor Avalos. Teenagers you're recognized to introduce your amendment.
Okay, here we go. Sucks to be at the end of the day when everyone's grumpy. But bear with me here. So first I want to move an updated version of Avalos two. You will have that in your inbox that just got distributed about ten minutes ago. And so the updated amendment, it's the same concept, but it changes the funding source. There was some there was some mistake. Essentially two funding sources were named the same thing. And we just took from the wrong one. So it changes the funding source from prosper's workforce development package to instead decision package 27152 storefront grants, which is an additional allocation outside of prosper's current service level, specifically dedicated toward downtown storefront support. I want to be really clear, as someone who strongly supports prosper Portland and the important work that they do, my intention wasn't to undermine their core programing or workforce development efforts, and so I appreciate community members flagging those concerns. And this updated version reflects that. Additionally, I'm increasing the amendment amount to the full 300 000, because we also have since learned that the apparent reduction to the diversity and civic leadership program was actually the result of a budget display error related to current service level calculations, and has already been corrected for next year. And I think I'll just echo my frustration that other colleagues have shared today with getting last minute information. I got an email that was like, no, this is a wrong number. And it's like, you're giving me this email the day before we're about to get into this deliberation. That makes it really frustrating to, to know that we're entering in with the right information. But that being said, so Avalos five is what that one is and I'll be retracting that. So this amendment is about ensuring that the city has the capacity to respond to a very real humanitarian and community crisis unfolding in front of us right now. And in east Portland, especially, immigrant and refugee families are living with enormous fear and instability. People are watching loved ones disappear into federal detention. Beloved small business owners are being taken from their communities, and children are afraid their parents may not come home. So at moments and moments like this, communities need more than statements. They need coordination, support, communication and visible institutional commitment. So what this does is it strengthens the city's capacity to support immigrant and refugee communities during ongoing federal immigration enforcement actions and related community impacts. By moving the immigrant affairs liaison into the city administrator's office and dedicating one time resources toward coordinated response efforts. This builds directly on work I've already led and supported, including the protect Portland initiative and the sanctuary city codification ordinance. And because our immigrant and refugee communities deserve more than symbolic solidarity. So I believe that this is concrete action and real coordination and resources that reflect the seriousness of this moment. And this is only the beginning. I know this is one time money, but to me, this is an opportunity to take these dollars and put them into a community that really needs them, and they can start building up their infrastructure with my intention to introduce other kinds of amendments, funding and policy wise to continue to fight for immigrant communities across the city, but especially in east Portland. So that is the newly amended two of those two. Yeah, I move that.
Councilor Avalos moves Avalos two. Is there a second? Second counselor, can all seconds colleagues to the amendment? Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith: Thank you, councilor Avalos so can we take money from other elected officials office because you're taking 194,000 out of the mayor's office to go to the city administrators. Can we do that?
That's that's me moving the position.
I know, but moving. But but but the position is being paid for by. It's like I wouldn't take a I wouldn't take your chief of staff away from you. So I'm trying to figure out how we do this. And the other piece is that. Yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah. The. You're right. It's. But the problem is that this position is being listed as a staffer. But really it's the immigrant affairs position that we created right through our work last year. And so this is about kind of giving it some actual structure and putting it in its own place for, again, for me in the future to continue to expanding on. So that's what it does.
I do like the position. I like where you're going with this. But the other piece is we voted to do storefront. All of us voted, I think it was a 120 vote to do. Was it.
The first one was the first one was the second one was nine, three, 9 to 3.
But it was overwhelming that we needed to get our storefronts together. So you're going to take the money from the storefronts that didn't have any money to be able to pay for this new thing. I would like to work with you this year to figure out how to do this. I'm a I used to do immigration casework for senator wyden, and I understand these issues, and I would love to work with you to try to find. I just don't like taking money from other elected officials to do something with their money that. I just don't think that that's right. But I do like your. I do like your proposal. I just don't like where you where you're taking it from. I don't think it's fair.
And just to be clear, it's 1 million in that program. No, not everybody voted for it, including not me. But also it's additional. And so but and I'm only taking 300 of it. So there will still be 700,000. And this is to stabilize immigrant communities.
Exactly. But I would never take $300,000 from your from your office budget.
I'm not taking it. I'm taking 194 is reflects the position. Right? So that's the position. Me moving the position, the 300,000 is from the actual program, the 1 million.
Exactly. And you know, like I know out in east Portland storefronts, they don't have access to capital. And I don't want to take any of those resources that might impact our east Portland business entrepreneurs. But I do want to work with you on this one and maybe find another source of funding. I just don't like this source of funding. Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: I have a couple of similar questions. I just can we can you help me, councilor, understand that the history you said when we created the the position, but then to the questions about it being part of the mayor's staff, so did the mayor determine. You know, I would like to create an immigrant affairs or did we fund it separately? If can you read jog my memory on that?
Yeah. I mean, I think it is a lot to remember because I think ultimately what was going on at that time is that we were trying to take action as the city, right? The mayor's office, the city administrator, everybody was doing different actions. And I think what had emerged was the goal of ppi was to, you know, stand up, these kind of operations. The mayor went ahead and put together that position. So it's like, well, is it technically did the mayor start it? Sure, but it was, but it was. He essentially preempted me before the the bill passed, if that makes sense.
Okay. Thank you.
Portland. Yeah.
I'm not going to vote to defund the mayor's office budget. And to me, it looks like he took one of he took part of his budget to create the position and I. Your history there sounds accurate, but. Frankly, I think somebody working for the mayor's office can actually operate more sharply because of political cover that you don't actually get when you work in the administration. Bureaucracy is the thing of icebergs and slowness. And with all due respect, mr. Lee, your whole role here is to slow roll some stuff. At times I find it. It just seems to be whether we like that or not. Whereas the cover in the mayor's office allows this person who I think is off to the races, by the way, to act a little bit more sharply, be pointed, be active. If this was a decision about creating a position so that he could expire it in his office, I think that's a valid policy conversation. But this is about removing from his office to put somewhere else. And so that gives me a little bit of pause in terms of the purpose that that piece of it, because I think that the mayor giving it that top cover and giving it, frankly, the only person who can fire him is the mayor and his chief of staff is an important thing when you're doing really divisive work, because we're frankly, we've got a population is under attack all the time. So I would like actually the protection of the mayor's office to be what protects our immigrant affairs liaison position. So I think for that reason, on that line item. I can't be supportive. And having worked in the previous mayor's office when we had to refund or re put more money in the account, the broken storefront windows fund, the repair your stuff fund, whatever it was, we went through it. I don't know how many times we had to re put money into that account over the 23, 2223 timeline. 24 I think after I left. So a million bucks doesn't go super far. 300,000 really is a hit to that. And I'd like to keep that hole. So. Yeah, I'll leave it there. I don't think that I can be supportive of the move. And certainly I don't think the prosper money needs to change now.
Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Colleagues. It is 515 councilor.
Thank you, council president, I have a couple of questions of the the what and how, especially with this new funding source. I do recall the creation of this. I thought we had put it in the mayor's office intentionally so that it would be more of an outward facing coordination position, as opposed to just an inward facing position within the city. And because we wanted it elevated in the mayor's office and not in the administration. Councilor Avalos, when we talked about this with the protect Portland initiative, I thought that that was an intentional choice. So I guess I'll start with the question for you. As the carrier, can you help me understand why you don't want it in the mayor's office anymore?
I think it's not about the mayor. This, to me is about taking that position, giving it real resources. You know, I've been working not only with brenda, but also with immigrant groups to figure out what do they need, right? What is the next phase. And what they need is resources. And we didn't have the brenda's position has no budget, right? It's kind of just dependent on whatever she can find, I assume, but she has no money. Right. And so this to me is about institutionalizing it more, giving it some starter funds. And then, you know, like I said, I have a lot of plans to continue to work on that. So it's not about it doesn't have to do with the mayor. For me, I think it's more so about giving it its own institution with the plan in the future to continue growing that ideally into its own office. So it doesn't have to do with that. I understand what people are saying as far as it feeling like it's taking money from the mayor's office, and I'd be open to using some more of that money to replenish the mayor's office, if that's what people feel we need. But that's the intent.
Okay. And mr. Mayor and mr. City administrator, is this something that as you both think about what the makeup of different offices are within the city that you both are supportive of, or is this something that we are pushing against your against your wills? I want to be clear. I'm not always I'm very willing some to do things that council thinks we need. But I'd like to understand where you're both at on this.
Yeah. This started from like councilor Avalos had noted through the protect Portland initiative, it was a crisis. Everything was moving fast. When council passed this. It was unfunded. We had been working with community groups both locally, regionally and nationally, and my chief of staff and I moved forward on a resource. And so we took money from our own budget to move and act fast. We didn't want it to delay. We've we've since hired brenda alvarado, who's become an indispensable partner in office. She works. She works locally and regionally, and we work with mayors from around the nation. She's turned out to be a wonderful addition.
Was today's walk.
The other point is, is right now with our fiscal crisis, we could take money from prosper Portland and the storefront and reduce and remove that benefit when we need to be investing in new businesses and growing the city.
So yeah, I think I'm specifically interested. I'll ask about the funding source in a minute, but just specifically interested, mr. Mayor, on whether you have a strong opinion about whether this position is within your office or within the administration.
Yeah. In summary, she's been indispensable.
Okay. That sounded like maybe a lean toward in your office, but not specific. Is the fund that this $300,000 would come from the storefront repair grants that businesses can draw on when they have a broken window, a security concern, things like that, that this council. Intentionally funded last year after it had been removed from the budget. Or is this something separate related to the additional storefront work that came out of councilor Ryan's proposal?
Dan Ryan: When you when you say we intentionally funded, I'm not sure what you mean.
In last year's budget, there was a line item that had been zeroed out that this council was very excited to fill. I believe we put $1 million into it. It is storefront repair grants that are available for businesses when they have, again, a broken window, security concerns, those things that they don't want to put into insurance for. Because you do that too many times and costs skyrocket. I'm trying to understand if the $300,000 you're pulling from is that account or something separate. I know we have created some additional storefront programs under the work that councilor Ryan has done, and I'd like to make sure, because this is a new account you're pulling from as of ten minutes ago, I'd like to make sure I understand what those funds are because my my support for this will hinge on where that money is coming from. Like to be able to be supportive. But there are certain funds that I don't know that I can draw from. So I'm trying to understand which dollars these are.
Thank you. Yes. And that's part of why I made the change, because the original fund, again, they were named the same. And so we it was just an error. But and we talked with prosper and realized that that fund we were drawing from was going to take from workforce development and other programs that they already had ongoing. Whereas. So that's why I moved it to this fund, which is a million ad that got added in this budget, taking 300 of that with the intent that one, there will still be 702, that this is obviously important and felt like a pot of money that is already being added to another, to other pots of money. That prosperity has to do that work. So that felt that's why I made that decision. Does that answer your question?
Somebody? It doesn't. Is there somebody from either prosper or the budget office who can help me understand if this is new money? Because we used one time resources last year, but this is actually that ongoing storefront repair grant program, or whether this is in fact, a new program that we would be delaying the buyout of.
Cornell. Cornell wesley proudly serve as executive director, prosper Portland. To answer your question, councilor, this is new money that is being stood up for the storefront program in this new budget.
Is this for the storefront repair program that we have had for years? And it looks like new money in the budget because it's been one time resources in the past. Or is this something separate from that? That is a totally wholesale new program.
Okay, so I'm not fully read on the historical context, but I would say previous iterations of it was backfilled with sif. This one is new resources coming in to, to prosper. And I can bring our cfo just to give more historical context as well.
Good evening, tony barnes, cfo, prosper Portland, for the record. So historically, the storefront grant program, there's a couple different programs. There's the repair program that's been funded by general fund federal resources over the last 5 or 6 years, as well as tif focused dollars. That's called our prosperity investment program. That's more the tenant improvements, larger dollar amounts. So this programing that's in the proposed budget is actually a mix of pip and repair grant programing, a 2080 mix that as as proposed in the proposed budget,
I my understanding.
I council council president, I know that you need to move on. Councilor I apologize. I don't understand still where this money is coming from and what we wouldn't be funding. And I don't feel responsible voting to defund something. That could be what I worked very hard to put in the budget last year. I would love to talk more about this proposal if we can do it after after tomorrow's deadline, because I would like to support our immigrant affairs liaison work and make sure that they have a budget, but I I'm not getting my questions answered right now. I'm sorry.
I will message you. So just check your messages and I'll tell
Okay. Thank you counselor, any colleagues? It is 520 and I'm going to see if we can get to them before 6:00. Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Oh, sorry.
Wait, why am I.
Councilor?
I'll come back.
Okay. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Thank you, council president. I won't be supportive of this false choice. Councilor Avalos, if you would have come to me in advance, we could have discussed. And I would have recommended you work with the city administrator and see be able to find 300 k in another resource. I still think this is possible. The storefronts are struggling. I think everyone knows that in. This amount will make a difference for small businesses who are needing support for repairs due to vandalism and crime. We need to keep the trust of our business owners as we care and show up for them. This will roll back that confidence. So I again, I won't vote for this, but I will instead work with you, councilor Smith, and any and all of us to work with councilor Avalos and the city administrator to find some alternative funding for your proposal. Colleagues. It's it's really a crunch time for a couple of things. One is to stop the. There's just so many false signs everywhere you go, every time someone visits me from out of town, that's all they want to talk about. And they say it's kind of depressing. And so that's, that's on the tip of everyone's tongue. And we need to lean in because this is also where our business license taxes come from. So the reason we're in a place right now where our general fund is down, it's because we're not investing in supporting in our small businesses and our storefronts. So all of, all of the action we've been taking today that I wish was supportive of keeping the public right of way clean and safe is exactly what our storefronts want. And this is a way for them. And you heard their testimony last year. There were so many of them that came from all over the city, and they all authentically spoke to how they wished the city cared about them. They wished the city could see them. They're the ones providing revenue for us. And so I want to thank the mayor, working with prosper Portland, to put this in the budget, to take a budget note and advance it forward. I'm excited about that. Thanks.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Councilor connell.
Yeah, I, I think I just want to speak to one thing. I think councilor Zimmerman's point is correct in large part, but I also want to just say that there are trade offs with relation to this. I, I have not seen this concern happen yet, and I want to be clear about that, but I am aware of the possibility of politicizing a city wide immigration position. And I think that there is a question that is a philosophical one in large part about not just inward facing and outward facing, which I think is one of the differences between the mayor's office and the city administrator's office as a location for this position, but also the degree to which the opinions of the 13 elected, 14 elected positions in the city are reflected, versus one elected leaders position on things. And I especially related to one of the core issues of our time, which is how we respond to the federal government on immigration. I am concerned about the possibility of further politicization of these conversations, especially by the folks who are supposed to carry out our direction as a legislative council. And so that's something I just wanted to get onto the record as a concern. And that's my interest in this conversation, is largely about that. I have no desire to to put any of the offices that we're mentioning here at any sort of disadvantage, but that I think the fundamental need here is what I'm trying to address. And again, not something I have seen occur with this position or the individual in it. Not not concerned with that at at all at this moment. I just want to make sure that we're having that conversation, because I think it is a philosophical one that we did not address. When the two pieces of legislation passed on October 15th, and then separately, the position was created. Having said that, I am very grateful that the mayor created a position so that there is one. And I think that's worth, you know, that's it's commendable and it deserves to be commended. So thanks.
Thank you, councilor. Colleagues, there are I'm limiting debate to those in the queue. Councilor Avalos and then councilor. I'm sorry, councilor. Is that a legacy hand? Sorry. I will come to.
Legacy hand. Sorry.
Thank you very much. Councilor Avalos then councilor Smith. And we're going to move to a vote.
Well, I'm trying to talk a backchannel here with councilor Guinea. It sounds like we just need to get the right answer. And I guess I'm confused by the different answers because I'm what I'm getting from the budget office. This is new dollars. This is the new 1 million. And I see cornell nodding his head. But councilor Guinea does not did not get a clear answer. So can you come back and make that clear?
Clarifying on the package for the storefront package, that is one time general fund that was added to the mayor's proposed budget.
Correct?
Thank you. Does that answer your question, councilor? That we've been talking about?
It doesn't because we funded storefront repair grants with one time dollars last year, which means that, by the way, that we budget under the way that we budget funding that program this year will look like new dollars. And what I still have not had answered is whether this comes out of the funding available for storefront repair grants, which is an ongoing program that in the budget will look like it is funded with new dollars, or whether these funds come out of the new programs that are being set up for the first time. And if so, which of those new programs, which grants it comes out of the way that things show in our budget documents, in the tables, it just says prosper Portland. So I don't actually know which program is getting cut. And that makes a difference for me in terms of my ability to support or not. And like I said, I am happy to not take more time today if this is small enough that we can figure out the answer between now and June. But I can't vote yes without understanding where the money is coming from. On a programmatic level.
The package, or I think the amendment before you is coming out of the storefront package 27152, I believe, is the number. That's a decision package in the mayor's proposed budget.
I will need to look up that package, and I will be a no. Until I can do that. And we are running out of time tonight.
Sure.
All right. Well, I still have the floor. First, I'll just say thanks for the effort. I don't believe I need to ask permission for somebody to put money towards immigrants. So I didn't ask permission because I don't believe that that was necessary. I appreciate the broad signal that I'm hearing that people do want to support this. So if this if there's some kind of technical questions that need to get answered, do I need to can I hold this back? I don't know what the process is for this since we haven't tried this yet. Bring it tomorrow.
If you would like to withdraw it for right now, that would be acceptable and I'd be. I will give you time to reintroduce it tomorrow.
Okay, so we can. And then is there a particular place that you can tell me I can be introduced?
I suspect we're not going to get through all of this because we also have to go through conforming amendments. And so the top of the meeting tomorrow will be the remainder of the prosper Portland work.
Okay. So ideally at the top of tomorrow's meeting, we can return to this.
Yes.
All right. Well, then I will withdraw it so that we can get these questions answered by tomorrow.
Thanks. Thank you.
Did you still want.
I still want to make a clarification. I do not support taking this position out of the mayor's office, but if you want to get additional resources to surround and wrap around that position in the mayor's office, that is what I'm in support of. I think it's I think it's great. It gives us some gravitas being in the mayor's office. And I just wanted to be clear that I don't want to take it out of the mayor's office. Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy: Okay. Councilor Avalos has withdrawn Avalos two colleagues. It is 530. I am moving. Dunphy one, Dunphy one supports our neighborhood prosperity networks. Our neighborhood prosperity networks are some of the strongest tools that we have to keep Portland equitable, connected and resilient at a time when many neighborhoods are still recovering from the economic impacts of COVID 19, our priority should be supporting the organizations already doing the work. The Dunphy one amendment would eliminate a coordinator three position that is being added to the office of civic life through the core realignment. This is a pure addition. It would not affect current workforce. While freeing up nearly $200,000 for direct investments in our neighborhoods, this amendment prioritizes community partnerships by keeping resources flowing to the people already helping Portland from the ground up. This is a. This is to get to the specifics. This is cutting a new position. Currently, the. All of the neighborhood program positions are being eliminated. All four of them are currently vacant. And what we're asking to do is to cut this new dco liaison position. Technically speaking, if we pass this amendment, there would be no staff designation solely to the neighborhood association, but that is functionally how it has been operating for the last two years. Director garcia snell has been the person who signs contracts for the last two fiscal years. So my amendment would take the funding that is currently earmarked for this new position within civic life, and it would dedicate it to the neighborhood prosperity networks at prosper Portland. And I formally move Dunphy one and. I and councilor Elaine seconds. Thank you very much, colleagues, to the amendment, councilor Smith. Legacy councilor Connell.
I'm just going to ask.
A couple clarifiers here. I like what you're trying to do with the money. So this is all about the funding source side. The I'm looking at at decision package 26997. I think this is the one that creates the new coordinator. But I may be wrong here. Is it the there's another one. On the core services realignment for civic life as well. But it doesn't seem to have the the dollar amounts in here, but it refers to a coordinator. Two so if I could get a little clarification on if that. If I'm just looking in the wrong place as to what's happening here. And the reason I'm asking is that is a. It says the changes to the bureau and the realignment package eliminates one part time position currently funded at 0.65 fte, and changes it to a full time. Combined with the reclassification of one other position results in a budget change. I see that chief engagement officer garcia snell is here.
Thanks.
Hi.
Yes, thanks for the question. For the record, I'm amanda garcia snell, chief engagement officer and also the director of civic life. So in regard to the neighborhood program and positions and the. Coordinator three and coordinator two question. Is that the question?
Yeah. Which I mean, is it is it the decision package I was looking at or what are we looking at here?
So there are in the civic life decision package, there was a proposal to make some position changes. And then there is also position changes in the realignment with the neighborhood program. I think that change was incorporated into the realignment. From the budget perspective, from the budget office's materials. But essentially that position is a coordinator proposed to be a coordinator to that classification hasn't been determined yet, but it would be the elimination of the three existing fte in the neighborhood program. So there is a supervisor and two coordinator one positions, eliminating those positions and creating a coordinator. Two position to serve as a liaison to the neighborhood.
Okay, so just two quick clarifications. One, this has nothing to do with the appointed bodies and commissions position, right? That's completely separate.
That's a separate position.
Great. And then second question, are any of the supervisor and two coordinator one positions that are being replaced by this currently filled?
The supervisor position is filled and the coordinator two positions are both vacant due to recent retirements, one retirement in January and one retirement just in April. And those were longtime staff that had been serving the neighborhood program.
Yeah.
I familiar with them, with them both. And congratulations to them both on retiring. Used to work across the way from them. So in the same area anyway, the that is helpful to understand. Thanks.
Thank you. Counselor no.
Counselor Smith.
Thank you, council president. So you have if I'm not mistaken, you have two two actions in here. You have a budget note. It says directs extension of existing district coalition contracts through fiscal year 2627.
This was a scrivener's error from a previous draft that we forgot to remove before we pre-filed. I'll be removing that part because the contracts have already been extended.
Okay, that's that's what I was getting ready to tell you because we had a conversation with administrator lee and the coalition folks, and we did get that extended. So I was going to take that out. Thank you. So the coordinator three position, is it an empty vacant position right now?
It is a proposal for it to be created. Yes. There's not currently anybody in that role.
So but but it's being paid for right now in civic life.
It was being proposed to be paid for. It is not.
By the mayor's office. It was put in the mayor's.
Budget would be a new ad.
Yes.
Okay. Okay. And so this is not lost on me that you're putting money in prosper when historically you've tried to take money away from prosper. So this is a little bit different. I thought I was reading something wrong. I know, I know.
I'm a big fan of small businesses.
I know.
They do good work.
Yes, sir. I'm not clear about this yet. And I get what you're trying to do because I think if we were going to put $200,000 into prosper Portland for a position, I would much rather put two, $200,000 of access to capital or technical assistance, or I would put the ibr in money back in. So that minority businesses could access that technical assistance. And just I'm just walking this through my mind and trying to figure out what, what the what the end goal is.
And this is not for a position within prosper. It would be added to the pool of dollars that are already going to the npn network to help reduce the amount of.
So is that the. Is that the ipn? Let me make sure that we're.
The the the the neighborhood prosperity networks are historic. Park rose living coli, our 42nd division midway alliance. And I'm forgetting one.
And we currently do not give them funding.
We currently do. This budget is reducing the amount of funding that we are putting into that program to. On jade district. Thank you. And rosewood initiative. There we go. We were. Saint john's and saint john's. We are reducing the amount that is in the pot. And this would simply add an additional 200 k to the pot.
To the pot, not make. It says for 20 budgeted for that position to prosper Portland to.
Move the 197 budgeted for the civic life position to prosper. Portland to be added to the pool of funding for the neighborhood.
Prosperity can. Is this what prosper wants? Have they asked for this?
The. The prosperity networks themselves have specifically reached out to, to me, a number of them, and asked for any level of restoration that we could bring.
Okay, okay.
Thank you.
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Thank you, council president. I, I'm not I'm not tracking exactly what the value is yet of this. What will no longer get done if we don't or what we thought would get done with the coordinator three position not moving forward. I think I need to hear that again, this is very opaque. Anytime we start getting really micro in the org chart, it's always confusing to me.
So the coordinator three position is a newly proposed position that would really serve as a city wide initiatives lead for engagement. So that would be someone to project, manage and really provide that over cross agency or organization leadership around like budget engagement, other types of town halls that are not budget related or engagement that would cut across the whole city structure aside from the budget piece, but they would also lead those budget engagements. So the learning sessions, the listening sessions, the open houses, those types of events, this position would project manage those. In addition, it would also serve to be a leadership supportive role for programs across the across civic life. So we have several programs in civic life, like community partnerships would be one of those areas where that position would also provide some leadership support to the community partnerships.
In my very brief experience overseeing civic life, all I heard from was the neighborhood associations felt as though their services had gone way down. How would they respond to this, in your opinion? Are you responding to their concerns? Are you responding to their concerns? Who's listening to the neighborhood associations?
I will say that I have I will say I have been specifically reaching out to both the the individual neighborhood associations and the district coalition offices, and that what I have heard specifically was that the partnerships with the npns are vital for the work that they do, especially in my district, and that they have gone a few years without a lot of staff support from the city at this point. And. As I understand it, largely supportive of, well, my neighborhood associations are largely supportive of this move.
Okay.
So I'll just share just for a point of clarification, most of this fiscal year, there were three fte serving the neighborhood association serving the neighborhood program. Mostly those positions. Liaise with the dco leadership executive directors of the four dcos in the four districts. This has changed over time because of the transition from seven districts to four districts. Last year, there were some position reductions as part of the budget deliberations, and so there had been more staff in the neighborhood program. Some of those positions were eliminated last year. Starting this fiscal year, we've had three positions until those recent retirements. I am very involved in those, and I do sign the grant or the their grant amendments and contracts. But that's because I'm the director in civic life, and there isn't another position that can do that.
Thank you.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Councilor vice president Clark.
Olivia Clark: Thank you, council president. I'm not really familiar with the neighborhood prosperity networks, and it sounds like they're mostly east side. Could you just talk to me a little bit about what they do and how they're different than the district coalitions or.
Yeah.
The neighborhood prosperity networks are really targeted at the economic at economic development and support for small businesses in areas outside of, I mean, not necessarily exclusively outside of tif districts, but it is a small business support program independent of the tif district program. For example, historic park rose in my neighborhood. They are not only providing capacity to some of the small businesses, helping them troubleshoot specific city liaison issues like rv camping or public space management, but also public space event planning and broadly sort of a grant support and things like that. They are really targeted to help those really micro entrepreneurs in distressed parts of our town to, to really get a little bit of a boost.
Up in our.
And are they related to the neighborhood associations?
I would argue that they are related to the business associations in that, you know, the city has as a neighborhood association system and a business association system, prosper handles the business associations. Thank you, vice president Clark. Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Thank you. I love the I come kind of the micro downtowns across Portland. I think it's one of our jewels and gems of of our city. Right. You think about downtown saint john's division, midway, everything we've got going on on 82nd with the jade. I mean, I just think it's amazing, right? And this is something that exists in all of our districts. So from that perspective, I feel quite supportive. I guess I am concerned because I can't see it, but I continue to hear that perhaps at the same time. Council president, you're bringing a cut to the downtown marketing initiative, and it'll be hard for me to get in bed with this if I'm about to get smacked by something else right after this. So I want to pose. I want to just put that out there. The other part, I have very little faith in our relationship with the neighborhood associations continuing to exist through the bureau of civic life. And this is a position I kind of thought when and if we get the support to move them out of civic life, that this could be a position that came with it wherever they live. And I don't know the right answer to that, but that is giving me pause because I do think it needs help. I think that the council d4 coalition, because that's who I work with and the neighborhood associations in d4 may be my greatest feedback loop when it comes to outside of regular constituent emails, but that engagement is huge. But you know, district four, you guys all know district four. There can be like, but the bat signal up in 400 people pack a room in district four with no big deal. But at our budget listening session, there were more staff in that room than there were constituents. It fell flat on its face. The word engagement was nowhere within the zip code. And so to screw up that much with the district four coalition, I'm looking for a home. And so I'm looking for a home for that work. And so that we don't, as council office budgets, have to go beg them to get their money so they can do the work on behalf of neighborhoods. And yet that is the case here. So this position that you're talking about is something that I see a lot of value going to it. I'm willing to work through if we move neighborhood associations somewhere else, that they don't have to have this position with them. But at the same time, I don't want to support this. If in the next couple of days or by the time we adopt a budget, you come after and remove the downtown marketing initiative. So that's my big concern too, because frankly, that's a long time item that has brought a lot of activity in and those those types of activities and those business license taxes do pay for things across the city. So I'm just this one is a true balance for me because I hell, I campaigned on the micro downtowns all over this city. And I think that you've hit an important sweet spot here, but I'm afraid it's going to come with some other things that are less palatable. And I'm not sure if you have any comments there, or I can just leave it out there in the floating ether.
No, I have I have two comments. First, specifically, the executive directors of all four of the district coalition offices have reached out to my office and expressed support for this move, this amendment. Second, I do have an amendment later that does look to redirect the funds from the downtown marketing. We won't be getting to it today by any stretch, but that is done for two Dunphy two. It would redirect the money from the downtown marketing back to restore the cuts to the arts grants. So that is an active debate. But however, I will tell you, my team is actively looking after today to see if there is a different pot of dollars that we could touch other than the downtown marketing. So if that is helpful.
Yes.
It is helpful if if you can eliminate that from from your asking Dunphy to I, I get a hell of a lot more supportive of Dunphy.
One point of order.
City attorney. Are we allowed to. It seems like there's some making votes contingent upon future amendments. Is that allowed? I would love clarification.
Thank you. Great question. There might be two issues with that. One is whether that the one discussion is germane to the item under debate. That would be up to the president to rule on the germaneness of that discussion. So that's one issue. I think the other is that type of discussion may be an effort to to reach a compromise in a public meeting, which I think would be an appropriate thing to do. So I.
Want to clarify.
You.
Said appropriate.
Appropriate the type of discussion among counselors at a public meeting. If you do this, I'll do this. I think that that's appropriate to do that here in this setting rather than in other settings.
Great. Thanks for clarifying.
Thank you, counselor conley. Counselor Lane, you're next on the queue.
I am very supportive of the neighborhood prosperity networks. I know that the main one that impacts my district is the jade one jade district. But I will also say I know councilor Murillo and I went to naia and had a tour of our 42nd avenue and got to explore that area and see how important it is for the native community. There's an amazing restaurant down there. This is a small amount of funds that I think are very impactful and have heard directly from many valuable cbos that this type of support for these programs are very valuable. So I will be very proud to support these and hope, especially my colleagues in districts one and two, where the majority of these networks are, that they will also be supportive.
Thank you councilor. Councilor Pirtle. Guinea.
Thanks. Council president, thank you for bringing this forward. And district two, frankly, our neighborhoods have a little bit of mixed result with these neighborhood prosperity networks, but I have seen how successful it is along 42nd avenue and in cully. And what I've seen there is that often we have business associations and neighborhood associations that are coalitions of those who have the time, knowledge and other social capital resources to be able to be involved, and they then make the decisions in the community and the neighborhood. Prosperity network has done incredible work to reach beyond the usual suspects, to bring in more people, to bridge the residents and the businesses within the district in a way that our neighborhood associations and business districts do in some communities but aren't able to do in all communities. I'm a huge fan of the work that they've been able to do there, and hope that more places in the city are able to benefit from it as well, so I will be supportive. Thanks for bringing this forward to us.
Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan: Thank you, council president. This does add this does add to the to fund prosper's work to help businesses and entrepreneurs. I'm starting to get that. I did the walk along 42nd ave about a month ago, and what I heard was it was good for socialization, which is not a bad thing. So there was like a soft, there was a soft investment, if you will, that mattered to them. So they said, as a network, they're so much more engaged with one another. That helps with business, that actually helps with them coming together to lobby PBOT to get a crosswalk. It helps them with safety as well. So I get the program I do. They also made it really clear to me that they wanted the storefront support program because they need some more concrete investments. So I don't know how we could support this and not support the the storefront support program. Anyway. I'll trust, I'll trust my gut on this one and go with it. Based on those two hours I spent along 42nd avenue. And thank you.
Thank you, councilor Ryan. Councilor murillo.
I have what I'm hoping is a quick question and I apologize if it's already been addressed. I kind of stepped out for a second, but is the position that we're cutting from civic life to give to prosper for the funding, is it filled or is it vacant?
It is vacant. It's a proposed new position.
It's a vacant new position. Okay, great. Thank you. Then I will be happy to support this.
Thank you very much, councilor Smith. Is that a legacy hand or. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Smith.
I like the what you're what you're trying to do. But I'm also struggling because we've struggled with civic life in terms of having some extra support with community meetings like councilor Zimmerman is talking about. And I want them to be able to have the bandwidth to be able to help in a very meaningful way. But I don't want to take their money that's already in the budget and give it to neighborhood prosperity. I think we can find it somewhere else, because I do think that they need the money, too. I think it's just the wrong pot of money.
So thank you, councilor. Okay, colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue.
How's that 200 looking?
We'll see in a second, I guess. Now, can we please call the roll?
Roll on. Dunphy. One move by Dunphy. Seconded by elaine quijano.
Thanks for.
The thanks for the information about the aeds, although I.
I Ryan.
I.
I, muriel. I know. I Clark. I Green. I Zimmerman. I Avalos Smith. I Dunphy. I the amendment is approved with a vote of 12 ayes.
Colleagues, we are out of time for the day to do anything else. I am going to recess this meeting of the Portland city city of Portland budget committee until tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. We'll see you tomorrow.