The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-12-18
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council held a session on Thursday, December 18, 2025, convening at 2:01 p.m. with roll call confirming attendance, followed by rules of order and brief informal remarks before the agenda proceeded. The council heard a presentation on the audit of the city's financial statements for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025, including discussion of a clean audit opinion, identified internal-control deficiencies related to capital asset accounting across several bureaus, and a related finding involving Prosper Portland's pollution remediation liability calculation; no council action was requested on this item, with follow-up items expected before the Finance Committee and full council in January. Public testimony was heard on pension funding policy. The council also confirmed an appointment to the Portland Elections Commission and took up appointments to the newly created Portland Street Response Committee, including a motion to separate and vote individually on one nominee's appointment; votes occurred on these matters, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The council additionally adopted a resolution directing budget transparency measures for Portland Parks and Recreation as a pilot program, with an accepted amendment addressing scalability to other bureaus, and adopted a resolution establishing an annual council strategic priority-setting process, after debate and votes on multiple proposed amendments, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting closed with tributes to the outgoing City Administrator.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 Councilor Avalos.
1 Is there anything I can help you with? No, I just want to make an announcement. At the top of the meeting, I sent a message to council president about it. I know what you saw. Yes. Oh, gotcha. Thank you.
2 Good afternoon. It is 2:01 p.m. On Thursday, December 18th, and I am calling back to order our city council meeting. Rebecca, could you please call the roll? Clerk here.
3 Corinne Zimmerman. Avalos.
4 Present.
5 Dunphy here.
6 Smith here.
Procedural episode · turns 7–15
Parliamentary activity detected in this stretch (see the markers above). An editor-reviewed analysis has not been published for this episode yet.
7 Now. Here. Ryan. Oh. Pardon me.
8 Koyama Lane here. And I want to say hi to Novick. Bali.
9 Morillo here.
10 Novick here. Yes. I deliberately put bali in the picture.
11 Pirtle-guiney here. And I can't see who's there. Oh, hello. Could you read our rules of order and decorum, please?
12 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 w-w-w. Portland council agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's webpage. Individuals who testify for three minutes 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. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying one. State your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. Two if you are a lobbyist, identify your organization. The organization you represent. Three virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.
13 Thank you so much, adrienne. Colleagues, as you'll remember from yesterday, we heard items 11 and 12 then and agreed to move items five and six up in the agenda. So today's order of agenda will be item ten our time certain item, then agenda items five and six which were pulled from the consent agenda yesterday. And then we will move on to agenda items 13 and 14. Councilor Avalos, are you in the queue?
14 Yes. I have a quick announcement if you don't mind.
15 Go right ahead.
16 Colleagues. So I wanted to take a quick moment to say that you might notice I'm wearing a purple today. I am a queen of controversial takes, but I'm about to make a really more controversial one, which is I want to welcome the james madison university dukes who are in town. They are taking on the u of o ducks, and I just wanted to recognize and I'm wearing my purple and gold because I bleed purple. I know that's controversial, but I am from harrisonburg after all. So I want to say hi to the h burg hotties. Thank you. That's all.
17 All right.
18 Councilor, I want you to know that our colleague, councilor Ryan is showing great restraint right now. Oh, nope. He's in the queue. Councilor Novick. Do you have a a point before we jump into the meeting?
19 I do, although I am a proud duck, I have to say that I have an affection for james madison because it's named after the shortest really prominent American politician in our history.
20 Thank you. Councilor councilor Ryan, do you have a response to councilor Avalos?
21 I'm just thrilled that councilor Avalos is a football fan. And my question is, are you going down to autzen stadium because it never rains in austin stadium?
22 But I'm going to be cheering them on from Portland. And I will be seeing them at the little party today in downtown.
23 All right. Well, I was going to do a friendly gesture to tailgate with you on Saturday, but you will be there in spirit and I hope we win by a lot. All right, go, ducks.
24 Thank you colleagues. With that, we are going to jump into our first agenda item. Rebecca, can you please read agenda item ten.
25 Item ten present audit of the financial statements for the year ended June 30th, 2025 and related communications.
26 Thank you. Colleagues, I'd like to invite up auditor rede to and I guess bring up whoever from your team you would like. And I believe we have jonas joining us as well. Perfect. We are hearing today this audit report, and I just want to flag now that we will hear more about this from jonas, that there are some follow up pieces to the report that will need to come through committee. And I believe the finance committee will be hearing those at the top of the year. This is just to hear the report from the auditor itself. Go right ahead, auditor.
27 Thanks and good afternoon. Council president pirtle-guiney, vice president Koyama Lane and councilors. I'm city auditor simone rede joining me from our outside audit firm, baker tilly. To my right is principal keith simovic and manager david levitsky. And to my left is the city's chief financial officer, jonas berry. As part of the auditor's office mission to ensure open and accountable government, I periodically present our audit work to you, presenting the work publicly allows our community to engage with it. While the city's form of government has changed since our last financial audit presentation, my charter authority and my responsibilities to follow government auditing standards have not. Those standards require that I share our results with the full council, and that I publish reports and make them accessible to the public. Next slide please. I can't see the slides, so maybe you can. The title slide is what I'm looking for.
28 I think we have somebody working on the slides okay. Perfect.
29 Okay.
30 We'll have them in just a minute.
31 So our charter our city charter charges the auditor's office with auditing the performance of our city government and overseeing the audit of the city's financial statements. And I'm not asking for council action on my presentation of this financial audit, but the chief financial financial officer will be previewing the administration's next step for the finance committee and full council. So waiting for slides. Okay.
32 Are.
33 Auditor rede we don't have we haven't received a presentation for this item. There's a staff member who was sharing. Oh is it floated okay. Thank you.
34 We could have counselors pull it up individually so.
35 We'll pull it.
36 Up okay.
37 We've got it. Thank you.
38 My item. I'm gonna quickly.
39 While we're waiting to pull this up, I just will flag that. I was citing the agenda with the agenda order numbers from yesterday, and some items have been renumbered. So for anybody who was looking online and was confused, the numbering for today posted online is accurate and equivalent to what I said using yesterday's numbers. And now we have a presentation.
40 Thank you. Slide three has the different types of audits. So I want to explain the difference between performance audits and financial audits. Performance audits review the efficiency, effectiveness and equity of one city, program or service at a time. And those topics and methods are chosen by my office, consistent with government auditing standards and with input from city officials like you, audit staff and community members. By contrast, a financial audit is a review of the financial statements, and it follows state law and accounting standards. Today, we're looking back at the last fiscal year which ended June 30th, 2025. The objective of this financial audit was to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements of the city as a whole were free from material misstatement, and I'm going to jump right into those results. The city received a clean audit opinion on the financial statements. This means the outside audit firm concluded that the city's financial statements are an accurate reflection of the city's finances. In addition, the outside auditors issued a letter describing how the audit went, plus other issues that are required by audit standards. This letter is included with today's council agenda and documents. This year, our outside auditors found deficiencies in the city's internal control, and keith will describe what that means in more detail during this presentation. Next slide please. Now I want to differentiate the roles of management and the governing body as they relate to the financial audit process. On this slide, you'll see the elected officials in our city government highlighted by city charter. My office is in charge of the financial office or the financial audit, which resulted in a four page audit opinion and that is attached to the financial statements, city charter and our standards also require my office to be administratively independent. That means we have no role in accounting or responsibility over the financial statements that are subject to this audit. Separation between auditors and management enhances auditor independence, which increases trust in the audit results. My office contracted with the firm baker tilly to complete this financial audit. Management is responsible for preparing the financial statements. That's a 400 page document with detailed tables and numbers, also known as the annual comprehensive financial report. Management is also responsible for putting internal controls in place. You and anyone watching can read this document on the city's website at Portland.gov. Accounting finance reports in our mayor council form of government management includes the accounting division under the direction of the chief financial officer, responsible staff across the city, the city administrator and ultimately the mayor. City council is the governing body of the city. By state law, city council receives the financial audit. And that's why we're presenting to you today. If there are deficiencies, as we have this year, city council is responsible for determining the necessary measures and adopting a plan of action to respond. The city had a similar deficiency last year, and the cfo offered the council at that time actions to take for their consideration. The financial statements and audit are an important resource for decision makers such as community members, taxpayers, investors who buy the city debt and you, the city's lawmakers. Interested parties can use them to see what financial shape the city is in. I appreciate the leadership of the city's chief financial officer, jonas beery, as well as staff in my office, his office and across the city for facilitating the audit process over many months this summer and fall, and for answering requests from the outside auditors and for working diligently in the past few days to ensure that we completed the annual comprehensive financial report. I also want to thank baker tilly for their continued excellence and professionalism in conducting financial audits on my office's behalf. And last slide, please. If you have any questions following this presentation, my office can set up a meeting with you and your staff upon request. As we offered earlier this week, and the contract manager for the annual financial audit from my audit services division is here to help answer your questions. Anyone watching should know that they can access the auditor's office here in city hall on the first floor, online at Portland auditor. Or they can call us at (503) 823-4078. Now, I'd like to turn the presentation over to keith and david, and then cfo barry will speak about the financial statements and how management is responding to the deficiencies in the city's internal control that the outside auditors found after his remarks. We will be happy to hear public testimony as well as your questions. And again, I'm not asking for council action today. Thank you.
41 Thank you very much for bringing this forward, and welcome to our guests. And please go ahead and introduce yourselves. And I think we're getting the presentation up right now.
42 Perfect. I'm keith simovic, principal with baker tilly.
43 And david levitsky, manager with baker tilly.
44 Perfect. And there's our presentation. Fantastic. Well good afternoon council members. Very happy to be here to present the results of the June 30th, 2025 financial statement audit. We completed our audit just earlier this week. We delivered our final audit report. So our goal today is to go through the results of that audit process, what those different deliverables are, how do we get to the point where we can give those different audit opinions and what each one of them means at the end of the day? So we're going to spend some time to go through that, and I'll pause along the way. If there's if there's any questions, go ahead and advance the slides. Probably a couple slides. Past the agenda is fine. Perfect. So before I dive into the the city's financial statement audit for this year, just wanted to kind of give you an overview of kind of the landscape of the different financial statement audits that are covered under our current audit contract with the with the city of Portland. So in addition to the financial statement audit for the city of Portland, we also do the audit of prosper Portland, which gets its own standalone set of financial statements and audit reports, just like the city does. But then, of course, prosper. Portland gets captured in the city of portland's financial statements as well. We do a standalone audit of the fire and police disability and retirement funds. And so there is a separate audit report for that. That information also gets captured in the city's financial statements. And then we also do an audit of the mount hood cable regulatory commission and a standalone audit there. With that information getting captured in the city's financial statements as well. So a number of different pieces that go into this, a lot of different teams that we work with on our side to to get to this point as well, to get through all these different audits and get to the point where we have the city's financial report, go ahead and advance the slide. So the different audit reports that you're going to see attached to what's called the or what we call the acfr, the annual comprehensive financial report, first and foremost, probably the report you're most familiar with is going to be the report of the fairness and accuracy of the financial statements. We're able to get to a point where we can issue that audit opinion through a number of different tests that we do. One, evaluating the internal control environment, that system of checks and balances in place. We also do some analytical procedures, but where we spend the bulk of our time is going to be that substantive testing, tracing the information that's been captured into the city's financial systems, tracing that back to substantive underlying evidence to support that that information was recorded and reflected in your financial statements at the right amount, in the right period, in the right account, and follows the governmental accounting standards that that that the city has to follow. Once we get to that point, we can issue our audit opinion. And what you'll see in the city's acfr for this year is we've given a clean opinion over the fairness and accuracy of the city's financial statements. That's exactly what you're looking for. Any third party that gets a hold of your financial statements, they want to know that you had an independent audit done by a cpa firm that's that's approved to do this work, which baker tilly definitely is, and that you got a clean opinion and it was done in a timely manner as well. So all good news from that perspective. We also issued a government auditing standards report. This is a secondary report that's attached to the acfr. And this is a report where we note if there's any instances of material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in internal controls or any instances of noncompliance that would impact the financial reporting within that report. As you heard the comments from auditor rede previously, there is a couple of material weaknesses in internal controls that we'll go over in more detail. In. In the following slides, we issue a report in line with Oregon minimum standards. This is unique to the to the state of Oregon and the the local governments within the state of Oregon. The state of Oregon wants to make sure that every independent auditor that is in doing a financial statement audit of an Oregon municipal corporation is also doing certain tests of compliance with specific state statutes. So within that report that's also attached to the act for you're going to see a bullet point list of the different areas that the state wants us to look at and that we test each and every year. And note whether we have any instances of noncompliance. Some of those areas that we that we spend our time on within that report is whether the the city followed Oregon local budget law, whether the city followed public procurement statutes, whether the city followed the state statutes in terms of where the city is investing its funds. So there's a number of different things in that list that we have to look at each and every year and pull different transactions to see if there's evidence to support that the city is in compliance with those statutes. And then finally, we issue a separate letter. This is not it's not attached to the act for report. It's addressed to the governing body of the city itself. So to the to the mayor and council. And the intent with that letter is to give you more information as to how the audit went, not just did you get a clean opinion or not, did you have compliance findings or not? But did you run into any disagreements with management? Did you run into any difficulties in conducting the audit? Did you have any audit adjustments or errors that you noted that were corrected in the final version of the act for? Did you have any recommendations that came out of this process? Those are the types of things that that you'll see in that letter. Go ahead and advance the slide. And I think I'm going to turn it over to david. You'll get to hear another voice here for for this next slide.
45 Thank you keith. Our auditing standards require us to communicate certain a certain communications to the city council. The first one on this list. Here is our planned scope and timing of our audit. We initially communicated this as part of our audit communications. We completed our audit scope. Within the communicated scope. We did have a delay in audit timing due to the audit finding. We worked with the city auditor's office to adjust the due dates on our deliverables and finalized our audit December 15th. The second item there is changes in significant accounting policies. The city adopted gasb 101. This standard prescribed the city to record all types of leaves, whether they are paid upon termination or not. Previously, the standard only required leaves to be accrued only if they were paid out upon termination. We audited the implementation, the restatement of the beginning net position, and the disclosures noting they were fairly presented as prescribed by the standard. The next item there are audit adjustments. We identified a material audit adjustment in relation to the closing out of completed projects for construction work in progress, and moving them into assets placed in service and depreciating those assets. We will describe that adjustment in the next slide. We are also happy to present that there are no disagreements with management or and no difficulties in performing the audit. Perfect.
46 Go ahead and advance the slide. All right. So this slide is intended to give you kind of a summary of the different audit adjustments. And then we'll go into some of the recommendations. And typically whenever we have audit adjustments it's going to trigger some kind of a recommendation. As we say we found something during the audit that wasn't recorded in line with the the governmental accounting standards. It's gotten corrected. What can we recommend to prevent that from happening in the future? What should what should change. Right. And so the different audit adjustments, they're all related to really the the same item, but just in terms of where the dollars flowed as a result of that adjustment is what you're seeing on here in terms of the different numbers. So this has to do with a few different departments and bureaus that were involved, whether it's parks, fleet or PBOT where we were going through and doing our testing and identifying that there were certain projects that were sitting in construction work in process, not being depreciated, that were actually in service. They were being used for their intended purpose. The accounting rules say at that point that should be capitalized as assets in service, and you start the depreciation process. So as we went through our testing, we identified certain certain projects that were that that met that criteria and determined that those should be closed to assets and service. You should start that depreciation process. And the dollar amounts on here are the results of that one. Reclassifying amounts out of construction work in process to assets and service. Kind of a reclass there one recognizing the amount of depreciation that was missed for those assets not getting placed into service in the time in which they were completed, and then finally expensing certain projects that were not shouldn't be included in construction work in process, as they weren't moving forward to capitalized project or capitalized asset. So our recommendation at the end of the day is that there be additional internal controls established to review the status of those open projects periodically, at least annually, if not more often, to determine if there are projects that are completed and should be moved to assets in service. So you can timely start that depreciation process. I will say to these adjustments that you're seeing listed here. They have been corrected in the aquifer before you. So all those have been corrected and are reflected in that. In that version go ahead and advance the slide. You will see one other recommendation noted within our our audit report. But this has to do with specifically prosper Portland. And because of the audit that we do there, and because the fact that prosper Portland is included in the city's financial reporting as a component unit, if there's any significant material findings that we have during that audit, we have to note it in the city's audit report as well. So we did have one finding related to prosper Portland. We met with the board of commissioners yesterday with prosper Portland to go through this, and it had to do with how prosper Portland was recording its pollution remediation liability and an underlying spreadsheet error that occurred that led to an adjustment and increase in the liability from the information we initially received. So that has been corrected as well. And the the act for before you has the updated information there. Go ahead and advance the slide. I think that's everything that we had prepared for for today. So I will pause if there's any questions. Otherwise I think jonas is next.
47 Great. Thank you keith. Good afternoon. Council president, councilors and esteemed council furry friends. For the record, jonas berry, the city's chief financial officer. First, thank you, madam auditor, and thank you to the team at baker tilly for your work to coordinate the annual financial audit. I also want to take a moment to thank and acknowledge city comptroller john maloney and accounting supervisor kevin sanders, although he's moving on to another position at the city and will miss him in the accounting team. I want to thank accounting division staff and the dozens of employees citywide who have critical roles in gathering information to support the audit and who do quality technical work every single day to ensure year round accounting compliance and accuracy. As mentioned, the city's objective is to publish the annual comprehensive financial report or act for no later than December 31st. I want to call out. For a few years, we were able to accelerate that process to an earlier publication date, but it's becoming more challenging to meet the current target, let alone an earlier target, due to a difficult combination of staffing constraints, growing depth and breadth of cities, the city's financial systems and structure, and increasing complexity of the generally accepted accounting principles, or gaap, and the standards of the government accounting standards board or gasb. Despite those challenges, due to the great work of the team, we were able to meet this December deadline and, as was noted, published the acfr on the city website on Tuesday of this week. And I'll just note it's online. This is last year's. But it's a big, thick document as is referenced. So if you're tactile like me and like a hard copy, we will have a handful printed. If folks are interested in that. Normally at this time, at the time of the auditor's presentation, we would also be presenting a request to city council to accept the audit report. Due to some unique timing challenges with having necessary information, we were not able to get onto a committee agenda until January, so we'll come back for that action at finance committee on January 5th, and then we'll get on to a council agenda as soon as possible in January. I believe targeting January 14th, that report is simply acknowledgment that the acknowledgment by council that the acfr was in fact published and exists, in addition to the formal acceptance of the report, as was mentioned, council will be required under state law to adopt a plan of action related to material findings previously referenced. When a material finding is identified. Oregon state law requires that a plan of action be adopted by the elected body and submitted to the Oregon secretary of state within 30 days of publication of the audit. Again this year, there was misalignment between the timing of having the available information to prepare the plan of action and our ability to get on to a committee and onto a council agenda. We did have a reasonable heads up from the auditors that the findings were coming, and we certainly greatly appreciate that. So we're finalizing the plan of action documents right now, essentially, as we speak, given the unique circumstances of this year, publishing this week and then not being able to get to council until January, we did request and were granted a 30 day extension by the secretary of state on a one time basis. So we'll aim to bring the resolution to approve the plan of action again in January. Council approval of that resolution on the 14th, so we can submit to the secretary of state by the end of January and be in compliance with that with law, including that 30 day extension. I do also want to note that in our in the response to our request for extension, the secretary, secretary of state's office identified that, quote, governing body meeting schedules do not constitute good cause for granting extensions. So it will be absolutely essential to work collaboratively with the audit team, with council president in operations and with committee leadership next year to ensure that we don't hit the snag next year or in subsequent years. Lastly, I'd like to discuss and preview the findings that that baker tilly identified and what will be in the anticipated, anticipated plan of action that comes before you in January. The accounting division, which is within the office of the cfo, is already actively working with financial staff and PBOT parks and city fleet to address the deficiencies that were identified around capital asset accounting and controls. We did have a similar audit finding last year for the fiscal 2324 act, for which was very similar in control deficiency, but was specific to PBOT only. And we've seen great progress over the past 12 months in addressing that, the volume of that deficiency, so many of the actions to correct the underlying issues have already been in motion in regard to solving for PBOT, and we've made significant progress and can use that that knowledge and information as we address the remaining challenge. Obviously, that will continue to be an area of attention until the issue can be resolved. The package of correction actions related to the findings will include three general components. It will be increased staffing resources, which is not adding necessarily new staff, but rather reassigning existing responsibilities or prioritizing vacant positions. Filling of vacant positions. It includes improved monitoring and reporting between the bureaus and central accounting, and includes enhanced training and education to the people that are performing that work. We'll be working diligently to resolve all those capital accounting issues by the end of June, so we can have that corrected in time for the fiscal 2526 financial audit, though it is possible that the effort may overlap beyond the fiscal year end and carry on to the subsequent fiscal year. We don't hope that we don't intend that. But but that is a possibility. More detail on those corrective actions can be will be provided in the formal plan of action currently being drafted that will be published, posted publicly as part of the January 5th committee agenda and eventually the council adoption agenda. Also, as it relates to the additional findings specific to prosper Portland, which, as was noted, is a technical kind of a technical calculation of potential liability related to future pollution remediation costs on prosper owned properties. That error was noted, has already been corrected, and prosper is in the process of implementing and maybe already has implemented additional procedures and documentation requirements to avoid recurrence of that error in future years and as we noted, was noted as well. Prosper board approved that plan of action that will also be included in the council packet, the plan of action document adopted by prosper Portland for approval by this body as well. I appreciate the auditor's independent review and assessment, which also I would highlight. I think two things that are really important is that the city does have accurate financial statements, that when we're communicating that information to the public, it is in compliance with standards for providing accurate financial information. The second thing I would highlight is that it does illuminate one of the major challenges that we face as an organization right now, given the nexus of severe budget constraints and realigning to a fundamentally different form of government. As I've noted in prior conversations publicly and privately over the last 12 months, the city is severely under-resourced in many critical areas, including financial and accounting services. This council has made clear that you have high expectations around financial controls and reporting, and I'm 100% aligned with you on that. Yet we have a legacy of consistently deprioritizing the budgetary resource to achieve that shared objectives. Given the upcoming budget and financial realities in the coming fiscal year, I don't anticipate that increasing staff capacity is to significantly improve in the immediate term. That is probably not realistic, and I do expect that we might experience challenges like this until we can get to a place as a city where we have the capacity to to increase and prioritize that work. Despite all that, I as a cfo, the controller, the staff, staff citywide who have responsibility for that daily technical work take our duties very seriously, and we appreciate council's understanding of those structural constraints. And we appreciate your support in providing the bandwidth to provide this, perform this essential work. So with that context in preview, and of course, happy to take questions, I'm hopeful that given a little focus time today, that when these actions come back in January, it can be a relatively tight and efficient conversation. There won't have been a lot that's changed over the next three weeks, but happy to take questions or feedback now. Happy to have conversations offline between now and the next. Council actions if that's appropriate as well. Thank you.
48 Thank you very much for all of the information from all four of you. We do have at least one individual signed up for public testimony. So before we get into questions, I'm going to let that person come up and speak so that they aren't wading through what I think. We'll get into some technical conversations, but please don't go far. We are going to need you all back up here. Rebecca, could you please call up anyone signed up for public testimony?
49 We have one person signed up. Kevin. Matches.
50 Welcome. Thank you for being here.
51 Thank you. I'm kevin matches. I'm a cfa charterholder. I recommend that the city request an analysis of a comprehensive actuarial funding policy. It has been 20 years since the city obtained the last analysis. Turning to slide two. There are several benefits to abandoning the city's current pay as you go pension funding policy. I'd like to elaborate on intergenerational equity and risks to the city's financial condition. Turning to the next slide. In 2013, the public accounting firm that audits your financial statements, moss adams, wrote a warning to city council. Although this firm now goes by the name baker tilly after merger. It's the same accounting firm that's before you today. Governmental net position has decreased from 1.788 billion to 0.355 billion over 11 years. They further explained that the net position trend is a measure commonly used to determine whether a government's financial condition is improving or declining. It is also a measure of how well the city's financial policies are addressing intergenerational equity. They emphasize that one often overlooked consequence is the inherent unfairness that results when future generations end up paying a significant portion of costs by past users. In addition, there is an increased risk that the the portion of current revenues that are required to make the payments against prior obligations will not allow sufficient resources left over to maintain current service levels. Turning to the next slide, how has the governmental net position fared since moss adams sent their warning to council? This chart shows the city of portland's governmental net position over time. On the left side is the positive 1.788 billion for 2002 mentioned by moss adams. In the middle is the positive 0.355 billion mentioned by them for 2013, and on the right is the latest figure from this report. -0.898 billion governmental net position has turned deeply negative. Why has governmental net position suffered so much? A key driver is the Portland fire and police disability and retirement pension plan. Each year that goes by, the city incurs pension interest costs and pension normal cost over the long term. These costs must be paid for with contributions into the plan. To the extent that contributions fall short in any individual year, you have a practice called negative amortization. The city consistently engages in negative amortization every year. Negative amortization detracts from the city's governmental net position. And unfortunately, as a result, in Portland, Portland running the most costly pension system in the united states. Turning to slide five. In summary, moss adams warned the city council about its declining governmental net position trend a decade ago, and things have further deteriorated since then. They correctly pointed out that the trend was detrimental to intergenerational equity and increased risks to current service levels. I recommend that the city take the first step to addressing these problems by requesting an analysis of a comprehensive actuarial funding policy. Thank you.
52 Thank you very much for being here. We appreciate it.
53 That concludes testimony.
54 Okay, colleagues, we're now moving into questions and discussion. I will note that the auditor has not asked us to adopt this report. There will be action items that come through committee to full council at the start of the year. But today's purpose is just for discussion. Councilor Dunphy, thanks.
55 I think councilor Smith should have been.
56 Okay, I apologize. It looks reordered on my screen from before the presentation. Councilor Smith, go right ahead.
57 Thank you, madam president. I want to could the auditor and the team, the financial team come back up? I want to thank you all for for the presentation. And thank you, auditor, for leading the effort on on this audit. And it's it's a lot of work. I also do want to note that earlier in the week, we had the wrong report noted on the noted on the online, and you all corrected it and put up the new exhibits. So that was we didn't get a chance to to have questions based on this report. Initially when we worked on this. So I have two questions for our auditors in regards to the internal controls. If I understand this correct, does that mean that we have $200 million in restricted or general fund to program for other projects since they were not properly canceled out? Is that what's happening here?
58 Thank you for that question, councilor Smith. I'll defer to our our outside auditors to answer that question.
59 Sure. Thank you for that question. So, no, the 200 million has to do with construction projects. The value of those assets on a full accrual basis. So the the adjustment that you were seeing on the screen here has no cash budgetary impact. It's for financial reporting purposes for your act for that's done on an annual basis.
60 So that's very similar to when you do a business return. You have to see what the depreciation is for your. So that's what that was okay. So I just wanted to make sure I've done that before. And. Does this. The dollars account for. So I'm going to go back. We learned that we had $21 million that had not been programed. Obviously it had been in the bank. So this audit does not account for where funds lie. It just accounts for that. The funds have been deposited and they're recognized, but it does not recognize which funds they belong to. Is that correct?
61 We are we are auditing the financial statement document itself. So our audit opinion gets attached to that financial statement document. And our our goal there is to make sure what's reported in there is a fair and accurate representation of the city's finances. So those those funds that that you're referring to that we kind of looked into as well when we were aware of that situation with the with the finance team, and we were able to trace it back through to where it was reported in the financial statements previously. So that's our goal is to make sure.
62 Is that in.
63 The report.
64 Or the report that's coming later? The 21.
65 Previous year reports it's been there. It's, you know, all the funds that are within the bank are reflected in the financial report.
66 Okay. So I can safely say that those $21 million wasn't hanging out somewhere else, that you all didn't know where it was. It was it was there. But we just didn't have the accurate accounting in-house of that. It was available and that it had been basically programed for a particular account.
67 I couldn't comment on what what's causing that, but I can say, yes, those funds were in the bank and had been reflected in the act for, okay.
68 They just were not given. They they were not authorized or recognized by us in, in our budget document. But they were there. They weren't just somewhere under a couch or a mattress somewhere.
69 Correct.
70 Right. Okay. Thank you. After after reviewing this this report, would you say that we there's there's nothing else that we need to rightsize in terms of our financial situation.
71 Other than the items that we that we noted today in our presentation? We don't have additional items to to note during the audit this year. No.
72 Okay. Thank you so much.
73 Anything further, counselor? Nope. Counselor. Dunphy.
74 Thank you. I think my question might be for jonas. It was about prosper Portland. You know, this body serves as the budget committee for prosper Portland. But as we learned more or less, that is an up or down vote. And we don't we are presented with a budget and sort of said, hey, do you want to approve this or not? And if you don't, all kind of bad things will happen. But I was a little surprised to see prosper Portland in this because I, I assumed that we don't have authority to dictate either accounting or financial policy or accountability or changes to how they do accounting. Is that accurate, or do we have the authority to be able to direct prosper?
75 Thank you for the question, councilor Dunphy. I would I was just we were here yesterday before the board of commissioners of prosper delivering a parallel presentation to this. So as far as structure goes, you know, the mayor appoints the board. The board then oversees executive leadership, including the prosperous financial team. So much like the structure we have here at the city, there's an executive leadership over those controls. And I'll let the cfo, barry, respond as well.
76 Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And I would disagree. I mean, I am not qualified to talk about the legal. Mechanisms of how those authorities work. But yeah, I think also it's just important to note that prosper is included as part of the audit package and as part of this engagement, but that's actually managed somewhat separately, but also in conjunction because there's connective tissue obviously between the parent agency, so to speak, the city and the sort of sub agency of prosper. So it's just acknowledge we do stay connected, at least with the financial staff, to make sure that, you know, we're sort of sharing best practices and working together to help align those in aid of the broader, you know, collective relationship.
77 But just just to put a finer point on it, if the prosper side of the audit came back with just covered in red flags and, you know, worst, best worst practices, we wouldn't necessarily be able to be directive to correct that.
78 I I'll start by saying thank you for the question again, councilor Dunphy, that it may be a question of materiality. So significance of those findings. Prosper is only a component unit of the city's finances. So, you know, definitions of materiality vary based on quantitative and qualitative measures. But I think it would depend on on the significance of the finding.
79 Okay, okay.
80 Thank you.
81 Councilor councilor Green.
82 Yeah, just very briefly, thank you for the presentation today. I won't I won't ask a bunch of deep questions because I, I don't need to, but I do want to just signal. Jonas, I appreciate that you had made it very clear to this council that we do ask a lot of questions, and we do have pretty high standards and that it takes resources. So I just want to signal that what I'm really hoping to see in the mayor's proposed budget, and between now and then, is a pretty clear statement of what you need to be successful, not just for maintaining what we have, but to sort of address deficiencies here. I know you're thinking about it, and I just want to signal my support for that. The other thing I want to signal my support for is that I think this may be the fourth time since I've served on this dais where kevin matches has presented more or less the same presentation, asking us to call for special actuarial report. I hope we do that. And if it takes council action, I'm willing to carry that. But but I do think it's time to have that conversation, because I think it's a meaningful set of questions to ask, that's all.
83 Any response.
84 I'll say, thank you, councilor, for your support as we get resources and appreciate the the public comment. Appreciate your response. I'll circle up with the dca of city operations who oversees the mpd in our system. I'll I'll call out. It's very complicated and and it may be worth having a conversation to sort of realign to some, some realities and trade offs that that will also need to be part of that comprehensive analysis and decision making, and there will be cost to doing that. And so I just want to make sure before we incur that cost for the city and for taxpayers, that we know that we're doing it with eyes open and that we're getting good value for that work. So appreciate calling it out and happy to to have additional conversation with you about that.
85 Yeah. And I appreciate that. Nothing is for free. There's no such thing as a free lunch. And we should have those conversations through the finance committee and the relevant, maybe even work session down the road. So voters understand that it's also costly to future generations if we don't take action today. So it's not just trading off in our current budget, it's also trading off future generations.
86 Understood. Yeah. And again, happy to have this this conversation. I am concerned that the trade offs will actually be reversing and actually having the opposite impact that we're actually the statement that you just made and actually expanding that impact into future generations at a higher rate in cost than the current structure. So again, I don't know that now is the moment to have that conversation, but look forward to to taking that conversation forward so we can get those facts out and spoken for for public consideration.
87 Thank you very much, councilor. Councilor clarke.
88 Thank you, madam president. Councilor Green just stole my thunder. That's exactly what I was going to ask. I'm really interested in knowing what it would cost us to have now, baker tilly, do that kind of actuarial assessment. Sounds like it's been quite a while. And I think that as a new council, we need more education on that. Those of us that own property have very aware of that on our property tax bill. But I think just a dive into that would be helpful, whether it's in finance or with the full council. But I would just echo some of councilor Green's remarks and appreciate mr. Manches bringing us forward. Again. Thank you.
89 Thank you, councilor Councilor Kanal.
90 Thank you, madam president. I'll cosign everything that was just stated by councilors clarke and Green. I'm also interested in this, I think for people who may be watching at home, who may not know this, one third of your city property tax bill goes to the fpd in our system, and that will likely rise to near 40% within the decade here. But we're interested in understanding how to continue to meet the obligations we have to our public servants, while also seeking to minimize not only the overall cost, but the intergenerational equity aspect of it, too. So I just wanted to start with that. I wanted to ask, there's a letter that was mentioned that was sent three days ago to management requesting information or representations. Is that letter somewhere publicly available?
91 Thank you for that question, councilor Kanal. I think if you're referring to a letter issued by baker tilly that would be attached to the acfr, there's an audit opinion, and then there's an additional letter that keith may be able to speak to.
92 If you're referring to what's called the management representation letter, that is a letter that that management sends to us so that we can release our our audit reports. And so I don't I don't know if that's I don't think that's publicly available, but that's something that comes to us that that's a standard letter in all the audits that we do that basically management's representing to us that they gave us all the information we asked for. They did things in line with the accounting standards. They were truthful. They were accurate, all those things. So that's a letter that we get.
93 Okay. I'm referring on. It's on page five of your communications with those charged with governance. It says we requested certain representations from management that are included in the okay. Yes.
94 That is the management representation letter. Correct.
95 Got it. This is more maybe a question for our city administrator or team over here. But there's these discrepancies that have been noticed in PBOT parks and fleet. And I wanted to know the process for double checking and guaranteeing that these sorts of things don't happen again in the future. Similar to I ask in the I think.
96 Yeah. And councilors confirm you're talking about the the material findings in the audit. Yeah. So I mean, again, as I had mentioned, you know, in this particular case, because we have a similar finding last year, we are already implementing those those actions. Right. So frankly, we had bureaus that have a large amount of capital projects and things are falling down. They're getting completed. And then that work is not getting closed out. And that was a problem of both staffing staff not catching that work, a problem of training staff not recognizing that that work needed to be done, and a problem of connective tissue not monitoring to see that that work wasn't done. So over the last 12 months, due to the similar finding last year, we've built up and emphasized both the humans. I think in PBOT, for example, they filled, reassigned a vacant position and filled a vacancy to add two more fte to help do that work. We prioritized it in central accounting to provide that training. And then, provided I believe it's quarterly forums, to touch base and make sure that they're sharing information between the bureau and central accounting to make sure that we're catching that. So we've shored that up, and I don't know the numbers, but we went from a large number in PBOT last year to a small amount remaining this year. We now have to replicate that within parks and within city fleet, and indeed make sure that we're replicating that citywide. Does that answer your question?
97 Yeah, I think it's I think it does. And then just the last thing I understand, the materials, you know, were posted for this. Now we have it. And if there's anything new that will be part of the when we eventually do vote on this in January, I would just ask that we get those more than a day in advance.
98 Yes. Councilor. Yeah. Thank you for flagging that you will. We are working on it right now and we will have it posted, I believe I believe January 5th will be the finance committee date. So it'll be posted the last week of this calendar year attached to that finance committee agenda. So it will be available at that time attached to that agenda. And then of course, it'll carry forward as soon, we hope assume it'll carry forward to the council agenda if you need it, to receive it in another form. I'm happy to make that happen as well.
99 That'll work. Thank you.
100 Thank you. Councilor councilor Zimmerman.
101 Thanks. I'm looking at these material findings, and while they're significant numbers, they're also areas I understand in terms of how they occurred. I'm challenged, and I'm trying to understand why some other things were not found as material. For instance, this council moved a work unit from one bureau to another bureau this year, and then months later was told that the money and the fte to that actually didn't cover what we'd been told it covered. And so if we're going to say statements like our financial reports are accurate, I call into question that statement. So in my career, the cafr has been something where the material findings are seemed to be pretty important. And yet making a budget decision this year resulted in just fundamental. We couldn't we could not pay for the number of ftes that we were told that the bureau was paying for a number of ftes with the amount of money that was associated with it. For me, that seems like a big deal, but it didn't rise to be a material finding. So I'm just trying to understand better how to best use this report because depreciation is nice, but it is. It is. And it's important to calculate. But knowing how we fund teams, right. Our fte is something that feels more one easier to make sure we capture. But two very important to get right. So can you explain. Just help me out a little bit for like what qualifies as significant enough for you to put it in your report versus all the other mistakes? And all organizations make mistakes. I'm not looking for perfect. I'm saying what mistakes rise to the point of being important enough to include and what mistakes are like. Okay, got it. We work on that. But that's not a thing we need to rise for the governing body. I'm looking for a little bit of education here.
102 Sure.
103 I can take that. Councilor thank you for that question. I would say, first off, the audit itself is just on the representation that you see within the financial statement document. Right? And so we're not auditing decisions that were made. We are auditing what has been captured in those financial statements and reflected. And does that align with the governmental accounting standards that the that the city has to follow? So we're looking at the, the, the fairness and accuracy of that document itself and what's represented, not necessarily the decisions that were made or information that was that was shared along the way to make those decisions. Unless it's coming from that document specifically.
104 So if the document, if the document says this, this many funds are being used to fund this type of program, but that is inherently an untrue statement. Is that a concern for moss adams?
105 That wouldn't be the scope of the audit. We would. Our goal would be to say, hey, is is the the funds that are sitting there, is that a fair and accurate representation of what funds are actually there? Okay. And the different balances that you see, whether it's.
106 So it's more about if you brought in 100 million, let's make sure you actually brought in 100 million. Not whether or not it spent what you said it was going to be spent on.
107 That is that is the goal. Unless there are legal restrictions. Say, for example, if you had bond funds, right. And you can only spend those on a certain thing.
108 Okay.
109 That that can be a part of what we're looking at. Definitely, if there's a financial impact to it.
110 Okay. I think it's helpful just to frame up like how to use this report, because there are so many aspects that if we were to just look at these three things, our constituents, our job and our city would not still be in a position to not have any errors. Right? These, these, these three things do not encompass really when we apply the word audit, I think the lay public uses that word very differently than the professional staff. And that's an important distinction here that I would raise. We have some problems that are not populated in here because that was not your scope and what you're looking at. Okay, I'm a little unclear about I thought that we adopted reports or received reports and we took votes. When the administration has brought reports previously. Is that accurate, madam president?
111 Every time that the administration has brought us a report, they have asked for us to accept it or they have been reports that we are required to accept in this case, the auditor specifically asked that we not vote to accept the report.
112 Okay. Can I understand that better because I've always voted on them, or the people I have advised have always voted on them in my previous roles, so I'm unclear about that. This was scheduled for the 8th of December to be in finance, and I understand it was not desired to be presented there because of this report aspect, but I am still unclear about why, even if it comes to this full council, why it's not being voted on, and I'm hoping we can get into that, particularly given what mr. Beary noted about our need for an extension, given that we had scheduled this in finance many months ago for the 8th of December.
113 Sure. Councilor Zimmerman, I'm happy to provide clarity on that. There's a lot of terminology being used today a little bit interchangeably. So there's the achefer, the annual comprehensive financial report that is also the city's financial statements, which have been audited. That is why there is an opinion attached to that document now. But this report, as we name it in our governing process, is really just my presentation of these results. So I, I've asked not for council action to be taken on this presentation because it's not legislation and it's not the plan of action that you're taking to respond to the deficiency findings from the audit. That is the the item that will come before you in January from the chief financial officer, not the auditor's office.
114 So thank you. I we will vote to adopt a plan of action. I just want to make sure that we don't have a legal requirement to accept the report. We just have to accept a plan of action there.
115 I'm not sure if there's a legal requirement to accept the achefer, but that item will be paired with the plan of action that comes before you in January from the cfo.
116 Okay. All right. I there was a word used earlier about the collaboration on this. I deeply hope that this will be a more collaborative experience in the future. I've found this to be less than pleasurable, to participate in what we were trying to be upfront on. And there's been some strangeness in terms of what our roles and responsibilities here are. And I, I hope that we can get very clear eyed from the administration in the next year about our official duties, our plan of action duties, the role and our relationship with the firm. And that we do utilize the if the council continues to have committees for certain items that we do utilize our committee system in order to provide time for what I thought was the intent of more in-depth conversation, more in-depth culture around like, this is where the committees dive in. That would be my goal in the future. Madam president, wherever you can help craft that agenda. And to the administrator incoming. I think we need some help in this area because I consider this quite important. And yet this this is coming off quite differently than I have experienced in other governments thus far. And I think it probably has to do with a new form of government ironing out the kinks. So that's all I have. Thank you, madam president.
117 Thank you, councilor, for bringing that up. I think there were a lot of pieces of communication on this one, and this certainly would have been more ideal to hear all three items together. Councilor Smith, did you have final words?
118 Yes. Thank you. I want to go back and get clarification. Cfo berry. So to be clear, you are the financial books and the the budget office for the city of Portland. They are the budget office for prosper, right? They do prosper's numbers. There was some confusion when you were talking to councilor Dunphy, but they're one in the same.
119 So and I don't I think we might have prosper staff in the room who can help help me out here. But I don't believe that the. Well, the city budget office coordinates with with prosper Portland. And ultimately council does have a role with regard to adoption of prosper's budget. That the prosper piece of that budget, the prosper specific piece of that budget is managed by prosper.
120 Well, I I'm not that's not what I'm asking you all do the budgets. Our budget director ruth. She does the budgets for prosper. You all reconciled their their numbers. They don't have a budget office. Their budget office is your is you correct?
121 Well, the city budget office.
122 City budget office and the cfo, you all do all the financial work for prosper. They don't have another cfo or another ruth in under under them because we do their their books for them.
123 Councilor I don't think that's accurate, but prosper does have a a cfo or a it is a cfo position. I believe that prosper creates and manages their budget, their agency budget, and moves it through their board. We have dollars that are city dollars that can get contributed to prosper, and that's part of the city budget. But the the management of prosper's budget is not within the city budget office.
124 I'm not saying the management, because if I'm not mistaken, our our city budget director, ruth told me that they do the books because I was asking, how did we not know about the $4.3 million that we owed prosper? And because there was an empty space in terms of staff that that happened. Right. And we all know the story on that. But she told me in that conversation that they're the ones who do the books for prosper.
125 Well, if I may. Councilor Smith tony barnes is the chief financial officer from prosper Portland. He's here today and can likely share some insights into this structure.
126 Okay.
127 Yeah. And as tony's coming up, I just also acknowledge that I'm not I'm wondering if something is was a little lost in translation there because I think the cbo does play a role in insofar as there are city dollars that are going to prosper. And so in that instance that was connected to city dollars going to prosper. But that's different from managing the prosper budget. Antonio, I'll let you take it from there.
128 And I just want to flag that inasmuch as this relates to the topic before us, I want to make sure we have this conversation. But I don't want us to walk.
129 I don't want to get sidetracked.
130 Madam president, but because they brought it up.
131 Yes. So let's get the answer. I just don't want us to walk too far afield.
132 No, I wanted to get some clarity because they acted as if they have no role in prosper's budget. And I know that not to be true. So I want somebody to explain to me what it is.
133 Mr. Barnes, please introduce yourself.
134 Thank you. Council president. Councilors. I'm tony barnes, cfo with prosper Portland. And so as a municipal entity and a discreetly presented component unit of the city of Portland, we present or we develop and present our budget throughout the fiscal year, make revisions to that budget. But we bring the budget, the entire budget, which includes district budgets, other district funds to our board, but also to city council as prosper portland's budget committee to take action on and approve the full budget. But that includes the component from general funds in the city budget office is managing that contract for the city to prosper.
135 I want you to tell me, say that managing okay.
136 For general fund resources.
137 Exactly.
138 And we manage the implementation of those general fund resources with community partners and programs. And then in turn, invoice the city of Portland city budget office for those general fund resources.
139 Right. And that's where I was trying to get to, because the money that we had to pay back to prosper is because we do work for prosper. And and that's how that whole relationship got mixed in together. And I was wondering why how the 4.3, how do we owe you all money? But there is a management piece that we do the city budget office, office for prosper.
140 For reviewing invoices and paying those invoices to prosper for the for the work that has been accomplished throughout the fiscal year related to both general fund and rct resources.
141 Yes. Thank you very much. I appreciate your explanation. I was just really confused because I think we were thrown off. At least I was thrown off through the conversation with councilor Dunphy, it made it appear that there was no relationship there, but there is a relationship there. So thank you.
142 Colleagues. If there are no further questions, I want to thank all of you for your presentations today. Thank you both for being here and auditor rede for bringing this forward. Jonas. We will look forward to more conversation in the finance committee and then coming to full council in the new year, and we will move on to our next agenda item. Thank you all. Rebecca, could you please call agenda item five?
143 Item five was renumbered to agenda item 11. Confirm appointment of member to the Portland elections commission for a term to end April 30th, 2029.
144 Thank you. And this comes out of the governance committee. I believe christopher here is bringing that report to us today because craig is. Oh, you know what? I'm sorry. I see christopher looking at me. This is an appointment. We don't get the committee staff summaries verbally on appointments because it comes off of the consent agenda, so I apologize. We have a committee staff report posted online, and I was going to turn to our governance chair for an introduction, but I am going to look to our vice chair. I apologize for putting you on the spot, but our governance chair isn't here. Is there anything you want to say by way of introduction of this appointment? I'm sorry councilor, I did not give you a warning on that at all.
145 Oh, no. It's okay. I was looking at the last item deeper.
146 This is the elections commission appointment.
147 They're all here and they're all wonderful. They don't need to. Do you want them to come up and presentation?
148 We usually.
149 Don't.
150 Do that. We don't get a full presentation. We sometimes have a, you know, 32nd here's what here's who we have.
151 Well, thank you, madam president. We had a very thorough conversation. I asked my usual curiosity questions and all of us did. And after some great conversations, we got to a place where we voted and it was unanimous that we appoint jenny lee to this esteemed committee. Commission advisory. Which one is it? It's a committee commission.
152 The Portland elections advisory.
153 There's commissions. This one's a commission. Abcs. Anyway, it's great to see you. And I want to make note also that jenny has a very busy schedule and she's shown up in person for all of these conversations, as have the staff. And I want to acknowledge that.
154 Thank you. Thank you. Councilor.
155 So that was off the cuff and I hope that was helpful. What happened was I just turned around.
156 We lost a few people temporarily. We're still at much more than a quorum.
157 We're still quorum. So I this was moved, seconded and approved unanimously. I hope now it's moved to the committee. We can take a vote.
158 Yeah. Colleagues, are there any questions about this appointment? We have folks from the Portland elections commission here and other members of the governance committee. Councilor Smith. Is that a legacy hand? Okay. Colleagues seeing no questions, I would ask that, rebecca. Actually, I'll put myself in the queue briefly first, just to to reiterate councilor Ryan's gratitude to jenny for being here, for listening to some extensive questions and conversation that had nothing to do with your qualifications and everything to do with just some questions about board appointees and how that operates generally. And we appreciate you being willing to serve and put the time in with us to to make sure that we have a good sense of how this commission is operating. So thank you.
159 I could just add that we were in the middle of conversations about advisory boards and commissions. So we were so deep in that conversation that I think there was extra dialog because of that.
160 I think you're right.
161 Yeah.
162 Rebecca, could you please call the roll?
163 We need a motion to accept this.
164 So moved.
165 So moved or no, you get it? Yeah.
166 Was that a second councilor Ryan?
167 Yeah.
168 Okay.
169 Thank you.
170 Eyewitness officially brought. We don't need to do that.
171 For reports. We do. And I didn't have I didn't notice the note that this was a report.
172 Okay.
173 Go right ahead, rebecca.
174 Thank you. And now I will call the vote clerk. I Green.
175 I Zimmerman.
176 Avalos.
177 Incredibly grateful for your service. I vote yea.
178 Dunphy. I Smith. I know.
179 Thanks for stepping up I.
180 Ryan I.
181 Koyama Lane thank you for your service I Morillo.
182 Novick I.
183 Pirtle-guiney I.
184 And the report is accepted with ten I and two absent.
185 Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you for being willing to support our city in this way. Rebecca, could you please read the next agenda item?
186 Agenda item 12 appoint members to the Portland street response committee.
187 Thank you. I am going to turn to councilor Canal, who I believe chaired the community and public safety committee during this appointment session and who also brought the underlying policy that led to the creation of this committee. Councilor Kanal is there anything you'd like to share with the full council?
188 I just wanted to note that councilor Novick actually chaired this part, but I'm happy to give the carrier side of it.
189 Okay, I apologize councilor Novick anything that you'd like to share with us about the time in committee.
190 The community and public safety committee had an opportunity to hear directly from many of the pointees and was satisfied in their qualifications and commitment to serving in this body, voting unanimously to refer the appointment to the full council. Several offices, including mine, were involved in the process of vetting 85 applicants. Thanks to all of those who applied and to those who were involved in the vetting process, which included many hours of application review and more than 15 hours of interviews. The result is a group that has at least two members from each district, with a variety of professional and personal backgrounds, and thanks to councilor Kanal and his staff for the work they put into standing up this committee and the appointees for your service to your community.
191 Thank you. Councilor councilor Canal carrier report.
192 Yeah, councilor Novick covered a lot of it, so I won't repeat it, but I will say this is in follow up to our June 25th resolution on Portland street response that the mayor's office, civic life, public safety service area supported council offices in creating this process and running it through. I wanted to quickly note, because I said this in public and it was erroneous during the committee. I want to correct it in public too. When we gave the residential information for the applicants, we were in error on one thing. We said there were two members from d1 and four each from d2, three and four, for a total of 14 community members. After the committee meeting, the selection panel we found, had an error designated somebody one of the people we marked as living in d4 who actually lives in tualatin. So the accurate information is two from d1, four each from two and three, three members from d4 and one from two. Alton. The error was not on the applicant's part. It's the application doesn't ask for city and state of residence. It simply asks a yes or no on do you live or work or play or worship or go to school in Portland? And additionally, from the notes on the selection panel, the applicant disclosed that they were living in john's landing in d4, then became houseless, also in part in d4 and rapid rehousing services placed a nominee into housing into walton. And while that applicant is here, they're making efforts to move back to Portland. So I mentioned that now just to disclose it. Three final notes on that. We did I did ask my team to go back and check the other applicants to make sure it was just this one error. This doesn't change my personal commitment to this applicant or this list. I intend to vote yes, and I would ask for your support in doing so too. And third, I actually think the bigger issue that I don't want to get lost here is that once again, we didn't get enough applicants from d1, and I don't think that's on d1. I think that's on us to do better. And I want to highlight this issue so that as we move forward and try to build this back up, this is a six month appointment. So it's a slightly different situation. But if this committee does continue into the future, and certainly for all the other abcs that we recruit, that we continue to highlight the need to focus on d1 and engaging our colleagues and our fellow community members in east Portland. So with that, I'll conclude and just say I would appreciate your support in approving this list. Thank you.
193 Thank you, councilor Colleagues, I see some hands in the queue, but we also have a few people signed up for public testimony. So I'd like to have us hear from those members of the public. And then we will take questions and comments. Rebecca, could you please call up our our folks who are signed up for public testimony?
194 We have two folks signed up. They're both online. First is vicki payne. Vicki, you can unmute to testify. And you can go ahead.
195 Hi. My name is vicki payne and I'm a big fan of what Portland street response could become as a vital resource in our crisis response system. But I also understand the challenges it faces as it attempts to grow into that. I'm speaking today because while I'm happy to see diversity in lived experience selected as members of this community committee, I'm saddened to see there appears to be no real apparent diversity of thought. This is a larger issue of having no one on our community committees that can act as a constructive criticism of the ideas being tossed around, and is a disservice. And not unlike donald trump, only surrounding himself with yes people. We applaud diversity of opinions on our various police oversight committees, yet we do not seem to uphold the same values on any of our other bureau oversight groups. It's disheartening to see what I would view as not a, quote, regular member of the community and on this committee in particular from district one, which was noted as underrepresented despite having a more than two applications submitted. I know a lot of our neighbors have multiple interactions with psr, sometimes on a daily basis, and it seems like a negative to not include at least one of their voices of experience as a neighbor. Councilor Kanal and caroline. The selection from the mayor's office, both mentioned in the committee meeting. A great diversity of community input and voices. But that's not really what I'm seeing here. Diversity and equity extends beyond skin color and lived experience, and I'm wondering if anybody in this committee has any union bargaining experience. I see at least a couple people selected that were involved with friends of psr pledge, which is noble, but it contained a lot of ideas that will require extensive union bargaining. I also wonder if any of the PSU researchers and social workers have any working knowledge of the project respond program at the county. Because I'm a firm believer that a lot of the issues the city faces with this program would be resolved if it evolved into a county entity that had access to project response network with cascadia health behavioral health resources. I'm also curious if the paramedics selected was at all involved with the amr pilot project, contract negotiations at the county, or at least followed them as a member of that line of work. That's a huge issue for psr two, the ability to transport clients and how long that negotiating took. I'm wary that the county doctor who lords over this insurance will ever give the city the Green light to allow this to happen. My last question would be regarding the former cahoots member. Were they part of the recent destruction of the program in eugene? Portion of the contract, which is was a nationwide pioneer of mobile crisis response until the newer recruits decided they didn't want to work with the police anymore. After decades of coequal response, the program is still active in springfield, and I would like to remind council that the organization organizations that the public safety committee invited earlier this year to share data about crisis response, all included co-response data, because whether we wanted it or not, this is a system that requires multiple partners to respond. We shouldn't mimic the demise of the program. Thank you.
196 Thank you very much for that feedback.
197 Next is benjamin gilbert. Benjamin, you can go ahead.
198 Council. My name is ben gilbert and I'm the volunteer lobbyist with Portland dsa, a strong supporters of Portland street response. We welcome the appointment of members of this committee and its creation. Portland street response is a co-equal branch of the first responder system, and we hope that it is clear that that means the fully funded 24 over seven operating psr. We'd also add Portland dsa has members who have been pushed onto the streets and out of city limits because of the cost of living of the city, and I think that's important when we consider, you know, who our portlanders. I yield my time.
199 Thank you very much.
200 That concludes testimony.
201 Okay, colleagues, let's move into some discussion here. Councilor Zimmerman.
202 Thank you. I just want to really appreciate councilor Kanal transparency about the member or the recommended member whose residency he addressed and is in question. This was a big part of my questioning on committee about where each person, which each person, which district they represented. I, I said, and the chair at the time said multiple times, please identify which district you're from. And while I recognize that perhaps this bias can be intimidating or confusing, I don't think it was confusing about the intent was to know if people were from the district. And my point there is, are you from Portland? Do you live in Portland? I'm not prepared to support a person, particularly from district four, as one of the district four appointed people who does not live in my district, so I cannot remember the name of that individual, but I would recommend that we pull them off this list and not accept it or vote on it separately, so that we can go back to the drawing board and reappoint with a district four resident who is a Portland resident, I think it's important that Portland bodies be advised by Portland residents. So thank you for that. And councilor Kanal, I am again very appreciative on that transparency. You are top notch on that. And thank you.
203 Thank you. Councilor councilor Morillo.
204 Thank you, madam president. I was actually going to speak to that issue as well. I believe that during the the committee presentation, councilor Zimmerman and others made it very clear that they wanted portlanders to be the ones representing us on this committee. And I think that sometimes we assume that people know exactly what district they're in, and sometimes they don't. It's actually easier to ask people what neighborhood they're in. And for us to determine that just off the top of their head. So I would just assume best intentions there. But the thing that I wanted to say was part of the reason that I do feel comfortable voting this person through, regardless of whether or not they live in Portland, is because our standard for committees, as I understand it, is that it's someone who lives, works or plays or or plays in worships in Portland. So this person, this individual has lived experience having been and this is public information, I think in a lot of what they testified. So I feel comfortable sharing it. This person has lived experience being homeless in Portland with their kids. They've been through different mental health crises and domestic violence issues. And I think that that gives them a very specific perspective about the importance of Portland street response in their life. And I think that if we have issues with regards to people living in Portland boundaries in order to be assigned to committees, that's a very fair critique. But that needs to be a code change. We can't apply different standards to people who are applying to committees, when as of right now, it says that if you live, work, play, or worship in Portland, you are allowed to apply to be on a committee. So because of that, I feel comfortable moving ahead with this. And if it needs to be a discussion in the long run about those requirements, then we should have that discussion. But we shouldn't apply that to people who I think are doing their best to play a part in the city.
205 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Ryan.
206 I noticed your hands up. Councilor Kanal were you going to address any of what was just mentioned? I would rather have councilor Kanal go next.
207 Councilor Kanal would you like to take that courtesy?
208 Sure. Thank you very much.
209 So two things. One, related to a piece of testimony and thank you to one of the applicants, not the person we're talking about on the residency side, but one of the other applicants did reach out since this has started via email and said that they are a member of their union bargaining committee in a workers union committee for for her job is the exact quote. So that's to the testimony raised. I, I was not part of the interviews, but I am personally fairly confident that there is a significant range of opinions about psr within these 14 folks, and certainly the additional 15th person who's a staffer with relation to councilor Zimmerman's point. I wanted to make sure this was raised because I did recognize the the degree to which your positivity in committee was around the residency. Our resolution that created this, which is 37 709, exhibit b, says that the applications will ask all applicants to commit to the six core values of the city of Portland and confirm that they live, work, worship, play, and or attend school in Portland. That's something that I worked with councilors Morillo and Avalos to put into that original resolution, based off of what civic life already does. That's their standard practice. So that is the requirement. All the applicants meet that requirement that were considered and interviewed. I recognize the the the desire to have it. I happen to disagree, but I do respect it and I appreciate that. So I will be voting yes on this, but I wanted to make sure that that was addressed.
210 Councilor councilor Ryan, would you like to go ahead now?
211 Yes. Thank you. Thank you, madam president. And thank you, councilor Canal, for further explanation. I've been really reflective about this and I want to acknowledge your vision councilor Kanal in coming to fruition at this moment, you've been very crystal clear about this priority and you created legislation to support it. It's a milestone when we are proving members of this new committee and congratulations, councilor Kanal. Well played. So I want to acknowledge that this moved rather quickly once you took that on. I have a general statement about committee appointments. I've been I brought this up. When we do committee appointments, especially at the committee level, we need to make sure that we have a balanced representation on our city advisory committees and boards. As governance vice chair, I sponsored code changes as we were working on our city advisory boards and commissions. This sets consistent process for the city going forward in how we establish, manage and recruit our volunteers to serve on these bodies. It is best practice that advisory bodies have representation from a spectrum of positions, from those who are supportive, to those who have critical perspectives. It takes both cheerleading and scrutiny to improve the city's programs and services. My question is, how did this committee recruitment process take program advocacy into consideration? In the committee member selection? And I would, I guess, propose that to you then. Right.
212 Councilor, would you like to respond?
213 Can you clarify what you mean when you say program advocacy?
214 I think that when you have a history of advocating for the program, even a history of maybe receiving some funds because this program was awarded, that's just the type of depth of, I think, objectivity that we go to. As you know, you are a strong advocate for not having anyone from, say, the police force or law enforcement to be on a certain committee for police accountability. So I think that that gives us a really good benchmark to how important objectivity is. When we put together. I don't have any issues at this moment with each appointment. It's just I wanted to daylight the importance of that, that balance that we seek when we're putting together any sort of advisory committee.
215 Thanks for clarifying that. Just to clarify one thing, I was a strong advocate of respecting 82% of Portland voters who voted to have that restriction for that other commission. But as it relates to this one, we did not require any sort of statement of opinion about psr. We asked people to talk about their experience with it, if any, if they had personal experience with it and their ability to contribute to planning on it. And you'll see that some of the folks, one of the things that I really appreciate from the selection panel is finding people who had experience in related fields enough to have some level of expertise without necessarily having experience as psr employees themselves. I'll note that I did mention this in the committee. There was 15 people who the selection panel sent on for 14 spots, and the reason for the 14 being selected was to ensure that there was district balance. Again, that was based off of the information we had, but also because there we didn't want to have a bunch of former psr employees on it. There is one former psr employee in here, if I if I recall correctly, but it's not going to be a large group of it. And you can see that the emt who's on here is, is someone who was started being an emt outside of the system, is not directly involved in it. And to that point, I'll also point out that in exhibit a of the resolution that governed how we did this, we said that the committee will conduct research, invite experts to participate and receive public testimony, and then build on that further and said, invite and seek out subject matter experts to inform their work, including experts on behavioral and mental health first responder programs addressing the needs of people with behavioral and mental health issues. 911 telecommunications and other first response systems, including policing. And I want that was specifically written in there to ensure that they're hearing from a wide variety of people in addition to their own aggregate level of experience and breadth of of personal and professional experience. I do agree with the testimony that diversity of thoughts are really important thing. I have brought that up in all the selection processes I've been involved in, in advisory groups as well. And I believe from what I've seen, again, I wasn't on the interview process, but I did read the excuse me, I did read the notes and I do feel that that is accomplished here personally.
216 And I appreciate that. Again, I'm not on the committee. And so this is where those of us that aren't on the committee can ask broader questions to try to get a better understanding. And I thought that answer was extremely helpful. And I think that it's important that we continue to look for that type of balance as we put these together. And I heard that from some from your statements. So thank you for answering the question transparently.
217 Anything further, councilor?
218 Not at this time.
219 Okay. Councilor Zimmerman.
220 Thank you. I'm comfortable with the terminology that we use in terms of different ways person might access Portland and being eligible. What I'm saying is, as a district four person, my test for this committee and for many others, and I've stated that for most of the year, is residency. And while for district three or for district two, that might not be an important test for you. As I said in the committee, I'm looking forward to meeting with my district four representatives that are on this committee because I think we're in kind of interesting times for, I think, like the next chapter of psr, which is going to be very healthy. So I am going to call to separate the question I would request from councilor Kanal if you could identify the member's name. But. My this is a request for, I think, a professional courtesy that if we're going to take so much time to discuss what district a person represents and we have equal except for one, we have some equal representation across districts, it tells me that we do care about the district perspective, because if we didn't, we wouldn't list that. And so as a district four person, I'm going to I'm going to move to separate the question, because I would appreciate your deference to me as a district councilor on the people who are representing my district on this councilor Kanal what was the name of the individual?
221 May I respond?
Procedural episode · turns 222–230
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222 Yes, go right ahead.
223 It's the ninth line in the table, and rebecca morgan is the person's name.
224 Thank you. That's right, I remember that. I appreciated her coming. That day was important. But, madam president, I would move to separate the question of rebecca morgan's appointment to this body as separate from the rest of this resolution.
225 Second. Okay.
226 Colleagues, are there any objections to that separation? Okay. Why don't we move forward? Councilor Kanal do you have a preference on which piece we take up first?
227 Yeah, let's do that part first.
228 The appointment of rebecca morgan.
229 The division. Yeah.
230 Okay. Colleagues, I'm not seeing anybody in the queue to debate the appointment of rebecca morgan, councilor Avalos.
231 Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate the points everyone's making. I understand where it's coming from, but a question. It was my understanding that rebecca was was a d4 resident, was unhoused in d4. In my understanding that. Right. Yes. I assume you know the answer.
232 Yes. That's correct.
233 Okay. So I think that is a value as well. And especially given the types of populations that Portland street response is working with, that this individual was a d4 resident and was living unhoused in d4, and happened to live outside of the of the city limits due to finding housing, which is something we should celebrate. And I think that experience is really valuable to this commission in particular, and as well as just all the points that everyone has already made about the current standards that we have, for the types of people that are able to help our city thrive. And that means that they can live here and they can work here, and they can play here and worship here. So for those reasons, I feel comfortable moving forward and I plan on supporting rebecca's appointment. Thank you.
234 Thank you, councilor, councilor Green.
235 Yeah, I just wanted to get clear on what what a yes vote here. Yes. Would be to confirm the appointment of this person who's been divided.
236 Correct. We are moving toward a vote on whether to appoint rebecca morgan to this council.
237 Okay. I'm going to support that. I'm a district four councilor. And my you know, this is fine with me.
238 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Dunphy.
239 I just want to note that councilor Zimmerman, repeatedly, you have shown deference to me for the unique needs of district one. I'm going to return that favor. And thank you for calling that out.
240 Thank you. Councilor. Appointment colleagues. I put myself in the queue because I think it's just important to note as as we weigh this and I am weighing it, I actually haven't decided what I'm going to do here. Now that I know that the district four councilors are split on this matter, that this is something that we wouldn't find acceptable for district one, it's something we might not even find acceptable for my district. And I'm trying to hold making sure that that I hold that same standard for every district. Colleagues scene. Oh. Councilor. Morillo.
241 Again, I just want to emphasize that this is not about our individual feelings as councilors with regards to our districts, which are very important, and we are meant to advocate for our districts. But if we have an issue with the standard of how committee appointments are done, that needs to be a code change. That needs to be a change that explicitly outlines that it's someone who lives in the city of Portland because, again, right now it's someone who works or plays or worships here. And so I, I would hate to treat this individual differently than we would treat other individuals because of an error in the code. If that's something that needs to be taken up in governance, then by all means take it up. Take it up in governance. But this person has, I think, very valuable lived experience. Did live in district four, was unhoused and just I don't know, I think their perspective would be really important for Portland street response. So if it wasn't a matter of just changing the code, then I would maybe defer more to the majority in district four. But because that's how it is right now, I don't feel comfortable doing that.
242 Thank you. Councilor councilor Koyama Lane.
243 I do feel moved to jump into this now because I specifically remember another appointment that we did pass. That was our cebpa. There was a position and there was someone from representing district two who did not live there, but they worshiped there. And so for me, I do feel confused when we talk about where we stand. My my colleagues do and make statements, but then change it on different votes. So I am a little bit confused because I didn't hear that same pushback then. And I can tend to be, I understand a little literal sometimes, but I don't see why we would single out this one person unless we're really going to be doing that in every situation.
244 Thank you, councilor Councilor Kanal. I'm hoping we can move to votes pretty quickly here, please.
245 Yeah. Thank you, madam president. I first I just I know that nobody here is trying to single out anybody. I know this is about the principle and all that. And I just want to apologize to folks who might be feeling personally under attack on this. And that's not, I don't think, anyone's intention up here, any of the 12 of us. So I just want to get that out there. The second thing I want to note is there were no district requirements. We I, we presented that to make sure that in particular district one knew what was going on and knew why that was. The balance was the way it was. That also means that if we were to hypothetically, if we were to go back to the drawing board, it is highly it is not necessarily guaranteed that anybody else who would fill this spot would be from d4. In fact, the need would be greater in other districts, but it wouldn't necessarily be about that. The 15th person who was recommended is from d3. So if anybody, that's probably what would happen there if we were to do a quick fix to it in that way. But I did want to mention that I do encourage that we vote yes on this appointment, and note the same way we do with all the others, that we are going to try to be better about the way we do outreach for d1, but also making sure we avoid some of the small errors I've already mentioned in passing to the civic life folks that I want to make sure that the application questions require city and state response. And we also know that there is a request that will go forward to have a district for those who know it. Although I agree with councilor Morillo that not everybody does know their district off the top of their head, and we don't need expertise necessarily to be on those sorts of things, to be qualified, to give your your views and to be a part of the conversation. What we do need is to have a connection, which all these applicants do to the city of Portland, and as well as to be able to speak on the specific subject matter of it. And I think that all of these applicants do as well. So I'll wrap it up here and let's I welcome a vote and ask you to vote. Yes.
246 Thank you. Counselor. Rebecca, could you please call the roll on the appointment of rebecca morgan to the council?
247 Clerk?
248 No.
249 Green.
250 Yes.
251 Zimmerman.
252 No.
253 Avalos.
254 Hi.
255 Dunphy.
256 No.
257 Smith.
258 No.
259 Canal I.
260 Ryan.
261 No.
262 Koyama Lane.
263 I Morillo. I Novick.
264 Very difficult call, but no.
265 Pirtle-guiney.
266 No.
267 The motion to nominate rebecca morgan to the psr fails to be adopted with five I and seven no votes.
268 Thank you colleagues, that brings us to the question of the remainder of the appointees. Councilor Koyama Lane, are you in the queue for that purpose? Okay, colleagues, seeing no one in the queue. Rebecca, can you councilor Zimmerman.
269 I don't I don't want to end on what felt like a negative. I want to say that there are a lot of people, including miss morgan, who showed up, who I think are in this for the right reason. I share some of the concerns and everything of the wants for diverse thoughts for this group moving forward. I think that the staff who helped select this for the co-chairs worked hard, and your intent on a variety of people from a variety of parts of Portland is well-meaning and has well landed. So thank you for that. I think this is an important next chapter. I think I appreciate the mayor's appointment, and I appreciate the appointments that all came forward to public safety, the diversity of experience, and that I think that it's going to be a challenge for everybody involved in a new a new service in its second or third chapter. I'm not sure which one we're in, but I appreciate their their service moving forward. Thank you. I'll certainly be approving or voting yes on all these.
270 Thank you. Councilor I'd like to speak directly to the appointee, rebecca, and just make clear that this is not about your qualifications or the experiences you would have brought. I think that when there is a robust debate about representation and where people live, that sometimes gives us pause when we find out new information and and makes it hard to move forward in the moment. But I want to make sure that we don't leave that vote with a person who has history in our city and is interested in being a part of our community, feeling as though we don't value their willingness to serve. Councilor Ryan.
271 Yeah, I just wanted to say I'm looking forward to voting yes on this. I also think it's an opportunity for a reset. I think what I've experienced is this program being more political than it needs to be, and it's an opportunity to reset it to be focused on practice. We need to clearly improve our coordinated public safety response period. And I look forward to this committee having I have hope that they will be focused on practice and how they are coordinated with the entire public safety system. I look forward to that day and with that hope, I'll be supporting this.
272 Thank you. Councilor councilor Green.
273 Yeah, I look forward to supporting the rest of these appointees. But I do have to say that our district, district four, has a large volume of residents who do not have permanent addresses and who move between tents, who move between shelters, housing, couches and what not. But but their district four residents. And I think if we don't want to have if we want to change our expectations, let's change it in code. I'm a little disappointed. I understand we have a diversity of thought at this dais and I respect that, but I needed to name that. Thank you.
274 Councilor councilor Morillo.
275 Yeah, I'm a little disappointed too. I understand the need for the district representation, but it feels like we kind of wasted applicants times. If it was a prerequisite that they live in a certain area, then that should have been there so that they wouldn't waste time doing applications and interviews and other things when I'm sure they have very busy lives. So I'm a little disappointed in that. If that was a need, then that should have been set up front. I also will say, I don't understand what it means when politicians, namely us, say that we want something to not be political. I genuinely don't know what that means. All of our work is politics. All of it is political. What we choose to fund, what we choose not to fund, who we choose to prioritize when, where and why. Those are all political decisions. And Portland street response was born from the need of a community that was experiencing mental health crises, that was being disproportionately killed by our police because our police were not qualified to respond. That is why Portland street response was created in the first place. That is inherently a very painful and delicate political question that we have a responsibility to answer now with our dollars and with our votes. And so I hope that when we say that we want to move away from the politics of it, that we don't move away from the intended mission of the program.
276 Thank you, councilor, colleagues, I will note that we are 21 minutes over time. Councilor Koyama Lane.
277 I need to share that I am disappointed in the decision that we just made. I know that the mckinney-vento homeless assistance act doesn't necessarily apply here, but I am reminded about that. And what that does is ensures that when unhoused youth are moving around, that they still have access to the same school and that there's some stability there no matter where they ended up moving. And so it just seems like we could be a little bit flexible, especially in an extenuating circumstance, especially around an advisory body that's supposed to be talking to us about how we're interacting with our homeless community members.
278 Councilor Kanal cosine councilor Morillo comments from before I will also say that this means that this committee will be starting a member down, so there'll be one less community voice on it. That's okay. We'll, we'll we'll figure out the next steps on that. But but this does not change. And I want to note this for legislative intent, the importance of getting this this work started. For 11 months, I've been criticized for pulling appointments off of the consent agenda at the risk of humiliating a potential appointee. And I just wanted to name that here because of what just happened. Because it has nothing to do with the type of agenda that this item is on. It has entirely to do with how the conversation develops. Having said that, there are some really amazing people who applied to be a part of this committee, not all of which were chosen, but the people that were chosen are great. I'm looking forward to working with you. My office is available as a resource for you, and I know many other council offices up here are as well, and I look forward to appointing you all to this, as well as confirming the mayor's appointment and getting this committee started. Thank you.
279 Thank you. Counselor. Counselor. Ryan. Yes.
280 Thank you, madam president. As the nonpartisan elected official up here that mentioned the word political, I just wanted to say that I. I meant what I said, and I think that my values are clear, that there are times where an operational program should not be politicized, especially when we have a crisis in how we respond to first responders. So I'm okay with the fact that we have different lenses on that. And so I just felt it was important for me to further explain myself. Thank you. I look forward to voting yes on this.
281 Thank you. Counselor.
282 Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue for debate, rebecca, could you please call the roll on appoint on appointing the remainder of these nominees to the council.
283 Clerk?
284 I read Zimmerman. Avalos. I'm sorry, was that an I councilor. Avalos.
285 Yes.
286 Thank you.
287 Dunphy I.
288 Smith I.
289 Now I.
290 Ryan I.
291 Koyama Lane. I Morillo. I Novick. I pirtle-guiney. I and with 12 yes votes the resolution to appoint all nominees except rebecca morgan is adopted.
292 Thank you rebecca. And I trust that the committee on community and public safety will take back up the issue of ensuring that we have an additional member to appoint. Rebecca, could you please call the next item on our agenda?
293 Item 13, request the city budget office, provide balanced program, offer information to Portland parks and recreation as pilot project for fy 20 2627 budget.
294 Thank you. And in this case, I believe we do have a committee staff summary from christopher hair. Welcome. Thank you for being here.
295 Thank you, madam president and council. For the record, christopher hair, policy analyst with council operations. And I serve as staff to the finance committee. The resolution before you document number 2025 465 was considered in the finance committee on December 8th, where it was referred to council with a recommendation to adopt the resolution. Request that the city administrator require Portland parks and recreation to prepare its fiscal year 2026 through 27 budget request, with detailed information on all funding sources and the associated allocation of funds across programs, staffing and services. The resolution further requires the budget submission to clearly identify which parks and recreation programs are fully or partially supported by the 2025 parks levy, and to demonstrate alignment with the commitments presented in the levy. Ballot materials, the city administrator is requested to incorporate this direction into the annual budget preparation guidelines, and the resolution also notes that should the mayor's proposed budget not include the requested information, council anticipates requiring these details prior to budget adoption. The full impact statements on this item includes financial and budgetary impacts and analysis, economic and real estate development impacts, community impacts, and community involvement. There was no verbal or written testimony provided prior to committee action. This concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.
296 Thank you very much, counselor Zimmerman. You were both chairing the committee and are the carrier of this item. Would you like to share any additional information with us in in either capacity?
297 Thank you. I've appreciated that this moved out of of finance. The transparency in how our budgets come forward have been a fairly large topic for us as a body over the last several months, and particularly several weeks. The pilot project, as it's being called, is we wrote this, I think, with an intent for one to show what right looks like moving forward to, because we have this unique opportunity, having just passed a parks levy. And so there's a particular amount of of lens on the parks bureau to deliver a promise for the public. Three I am nominating parks as the place for the pilot, because I think it might be the bureau who is most understood by the public in terms of what its impact is in every single neighborhood. For every family who has a kid who goes to a sport or recreation facility, and it may be easier for us to make sure that we're budgeting in a way that passes the every person test in terms of understanding. And I think that's always been a goal for government, but we've probably strayed from that. And so given that, and in my consultation with the budget office, the cfo's office and the city attorney's office, while I share the desire to expand these practices to more bureaus in the future, I don't know that there's a capacity to do that before we adopt in this next spring budget. But I do think with one bureau there is a capacity to do that. And so did the cfo's office and the parks staff director and finance also came and supported this in committee, and I very much appreciated it. I did want to pause there because one of the committee members, councilor Avalos, mentioned in committee a friendly amendment or an amendment, and I think she will introduce that. And if it's the one I think she's introducing, I do certainly consider it a friendly amendment. So thank you, madam president.
298 Thank you, counselor and counselor Avalos, I see you are in the queue. Is that to introduce an amendment.
299 Correct?
300 Yeah. Thank you so much. First, I really appreciate counselor Zimmerman bringing this forward to committee. I agree with its importance because transparency is so critical. I've been working closely with our cfo to talk more about how we strengthen budget reporting, because portlanders deserve clear information. And what I stated in committee was that my concern was not with the goal of the resolution, but with just applying this standard to one bureau. We talked it out, and I offered a amendment so that we could scale this up in the future. I believe that this is a good example to use parks for all the reasons councilor Zimmerman mentioned, and I think that it would be good for us to set up a standard for the future. So I will introduce the amendment, which is on the website for you all, but I'll read it out loud. The clause says be it further resolved, that to ensure this pilot establishes consistent and equitable transparency standards across the city, council directs the city budget office in partnership with all bureaus, to develop a scalable reporting framework based on this pilot. This framework should outline the data systems, staffing, and preparatory work required for every bureau to produce a comparable revenue and expense breakdown beginning no later than the fy 27 eight budget cycle, and the city budget office will return to council by October 2026, with one eight proposed standardized template for all bureaus to a readiness assessment detailing what support bureaus need to meet these expectations, and three a proposed implementation schedule, including potential policy updates that ensures all bureaus adopt this enhanced transparency standard and the next budget cycle. I talked with councilor Zimmerman about this on the dais, and he agreed that this could be added as friendly. I also, in between this meeting and our finance meeting, I checked in with jonas and ruth just to make sure that the language was right and attainable. So we changed it to October. We added a couple little tweaks, but yeah, I will put that on the floor and sounds like councilor Zimmerman is open to it. Being friendly. I don't know what the process is. You just say yes or I don't know how that goes.
301 Because we need to adopt this from the start. We're not. For example, in the middle of a discussion about amendments, I think we will need to vote on this, but I think it's helpful for folks.
302 To.
303 Glad to second it. Thank you, councilor Avalos.
304 Okay, perfect.
305 Thank you both. Colleagues, I want to pause. It sounds like we don't have anyone signed up for public testimony. Rebecca, is that the case?
306 No one is signed up.
307 Okay.
308 Thank you. Then we are going to jump into both questions and discussion jointly. Councilor Morillo. Go right ahead.
309 First, I just want to say thank you so much to councilor Zimmerman for bringing this forward. I think this is really important oversight with with the new parks levy passing, I think this is exactly the type of information that we need as a council to make sure that we are making good decisions for the community. So I'm very grateful for that. I'm also very happy. It sounds like it's friendly, but happy to support councilor Avalos amendments. I think they're very common sense, and this is also a very useful and complementary accompaniment to my budget. Notes Morillo three and 11. Because those budget notes during the original budget cycle requested detailed evaluations of our city programs, and they specifically requested exploring enhanced line item detail, program level structuring, and other formats that enable council to more effectively review, amend, and engage with the budget in a manner consistent with its legislative responsibilities. So this to me is very complementary with things that I have asked for in the past. And it seems like our body as a whole is ready to receive more information to effectively handle our budget duties. So I also don't think this will be too burdensome for the bureaus. Systems wise, bureaus are not super far off from producing this level of detail. The structure just hasn't been produced that way currently, and bureaus already produce program offers, but sometimes they include more than one program, and the financial details aren't as explicit as we're asking for in this resolution. So I think that they should be. And yeah, thank you both for bringing this and for the amendments.
310 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Clarke, thank you.
311 Council president. I really appreciate you bringing this forward. My colleague. It looks like a great pilot and it seems very appropriate as as councilor Morillo has said, as we move into the new form of government that we have this kind of a template. But I do want to ask a question, just more of a big picture question on the levy. There's an oversight committee for the levy, and there are kpis being developed. So is there a way that all of this fits together?
312 I think that it's a great question. I actually think that this is complementary to that work. If the levy oversight responsible for oversight of the levy dollars, doesn't have a good partner in the general fund and in the fee dollars, then I think the product is half baked, so to speak. And so I think this actually provides that all funds, regardless, are articulated, provided and noted to what program, how many fte et-cetera in a way that will actually make the levy oversight team and their charge even more effective. And so the the basics of being able to say, what fund do you use to fund this part of your program should be a basic but it wasn't or it isn't. And I think the levy oversight will need that to do their work. This ensures that the rest of the bureau or excuse me, the rest of the bureau's funding strategy, follows what I think the levy oversight is going to demand.
313 Great. I think it's really important that all of that be integrated and included in the kpis that other folks are beginning to develop for the bureau as well. So I appreciate that.
314 Thank you, counselor and counselor Zimmerman.
315 Thank you for the answer there. Colleagues, I want to start by thanking councilor Zimmerman for bringing this underlying proposal forward. We've had a number of discussions about how we can make sure to get more clear information in the next budget cycle, and I know that many members of our cbo, our budget office and our cfo want to move in the direction of more transparency and uniformity in the information that we get from bureaus as well. And my hope is that by doing this as a clear pilot, we're able to continue to move in that direction. I want to thank councilor Avalos for her amendment for that reason, and also for the process here where we aired the the need for changes in committee. And while this comes to full council, there was already a discussion. So committee members knew this would be coming. And we're able to talk about what we might want to make sure to see there. I just I think that the the work that was done here is fantastic. So thank you, councilor Avalos. I want to make sure that as we move this forward with parks and rec, and I'm saying this on the record to make sure that it's captured. We don't lose the leverage funding model, which is an important way that we make sure to stretch our levy dollars as far as possible. I think that we can both meet the letter and intention of the item that I hope we pass today, and also continue to support the leverage funding model that ensures we budget as responsibly as possible. I think it's important to note that. I also think that it is important for us to move in this direction, the direction of of budgeting in this more specific way that we're requesting today for all bureaus. And I'm excited to see us extend this work beyond just this year. Thank you to the councilors for bringing it forward. Councilor Smith.
316 Thank you, madam president. I want to thank councilor Zimmerman for bringing this forward. We love program office. And I think this body will benefit from this pilot greatly. Not only do I think the parks bureau should do program offers, I think our whole system should do it. It really gives us an opportunity to see if this is a service or fte in a in a snapshot. And so this targeted approach will allow us to work within an area that the public will want more transparency and accountability. And following this passage of the parks levy. So looking forward, the feedback and engagement we build from this process can expand the entire budget and build better collaboration between policy makers and the administration. And I will be supporting this resolution. Thank you so much for bringing it.
317 Thank you, councilor Councilor Novick.
318 So I voted for this in committee with some reservations, and I just want to state my sort of amorphous concerns, particularly in the situation with the levy and non-levy funding. You mean we're not giving parks direction as to what we think should be paid for with what? And I think we're kind of leaving them with a choice, which maybe should be ours, which is should they go? I mean, the levy is not as reliable a source of funding as the general fund because it could go away in five years. Does that mean that we should be telling them to prioritize all park services and say the most important ones are paid for the general fund, and the least important ones are paid for with the levy. That would involve like really tough political choices that we wouldn't want them to make on their own. Are we asking them to just say what? Assume that everything gets paid for? You know, the same percentage levy, same percentage, general fund and express it that way, then they might sort of get criticism for, for for doing that, for just saying, well, it's all lumped together. So and I'm also a little worried about the idea of extending it to other bureaus, like a, you know, the general fund bureaus generally are paid for by, to a great extent, a combination of the property tax and the business license tax. The business license tax is a more volatile form of taxation. So should we be saying that the parts of the police bureau that we care about least are paid for the business license tax, because that's more volatile? This is going to pass, and I understand the intent behind it. And I don't think it's like a terrible thing, but it just kind of makes me uneasy. And also I just want to note that to me, the most important thing about finance is that the parks bureau should be doing in the next year is telling us whether, assuming that same services and the same amount of money, we are going to be heading towards asking the voters to increase the levy yet again in five years, or if we and if so, what steps do we need? What are some options that we have to raise revenue, change services, etc. That will put us in this position than five years? We can ask for a simple renewal of the levy. I think that's a lot of work for parks to do. I might bring my own resolution asking them to do that. So those are my those are my amorphous concerns. Thank you.
319 Thank you, councilor, councilor Ryan.
320 Yeah, I do understand the reason for councilor Zimmerman's proposal that we get information differently. And it's been hard because it's been hard to understand how the parks levy dollars were allocated. And that was a lift when I had to try to understand it. On the former council. There's reasons for that. The long and short analysis. I was surprised, though, that there were prioritized funds in some limited funds in ways that I think were surprising for the average taxpayer. But it was murky, especially because the color of money conversations, although they were helpful. There's the front load, the backfill conversations. I remember those conversations as well, and it was tricky. It was a lot of accounting, gymnastics, and I don't envy the good people out there that have to figure that out. We have to figure out a way to make it more digestible. And I think that's the that's what I'm hoping for here as well. I want to say thank you to council Zimmerman for making the point about the whole enterprise as a whole. I know a lot of us think that we're on to some better practices here, and I, I was a little concerned. Why are we beginning with parks and you explain that. So any hesitation I had kind of went away and dissolved from that explanation. I just do have empathy for the budget office about the capacity that it will take working with the good people in parks that are also managing money. So the fact that you've had thorough dialog with the people that are here from parks, you're nodding. I'm seeing nodding. I will be supporting this measure. And I think it's a step in the right direction, and it's the type of transparency that will help taxpayers understand and also force us to look at how we can continue to bring in revenue and revenue streams that are not just the levy and general fund. Thank you.
321 Thank you. Councilor councilor Smith. Okay, colleagues, seeing no councilor Avalos.
322 I just wanted to add one final note that I shared those same concerns that I've heard from some folks, and it's why I put forward this amendment. I definitely agree that we need that. The parks bureau is a good place to start. And in talking with the budget folks, you know, they're intending to do this anyway. I think that should be said as well. Like they are wanting to create more transparency and find better ways to give us information as we are transitioning to this new form of government. So really, councilor Zimmermann's work is really, you know, just building on things that the staff are already trying to do. And then the amendment that I added is just to, as we are, you know, piloting this to identify the ways that we can scale this up in the future. So that's why I'm supporting it. But I just wanted to add that extra context that you guys know, so that you guys know that the budget office, I think they're always we're intending to do this in the first place. Thanks.
323 Thank you. Councilor colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue, I'll ask.
324 That our clerk call the roll on Avalos one, which I believe was moved by councilor Avalos and seconded by councilor Zimmerman. Is that correct? Okay, perfect. Go right ahead.
325 Clerk I.
326 Green I.
327 Zimmerman. I Avalos.
328 Dunphy I.
329 Smith I.
330 Now I.
331 Ryan I.
332 Koyama Lane I.
333 Morillo I.
334 Novick no.
335 Pirtle-guiney I.
336 The amendment is approved with 11 I and one no vote.
337 Thank you and colleagues seeing no one jumping in the queue for further debate on the underlying resolution, I will ask that we now call the role to take a vote on the resolution.
338 Clerk I.
339 Green. I Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Dunphy. I Smith. I now. I Ryan. I Koyama Lane. I Morillo.
340 Thanks for bringing this forward I.
341 Novick no.
342 Pirtle-guiney I.
343 The resolution is adopted with 11 I and one no vote.
344 Thank you. Rebecca, could you please call our final agenda item?
345 Item 14 adopt procedure for annual council strategic priority setting.
346 Thank you. Christopher, would you like to give us the overview from the committee, please?
347 Of course, madam president. Councilors for the record, christopher hare policy analyst, council operations and reading on behalf of craig cook, who until recently staffed the governance committee, the resolution before you documents number 2025 441 was heard in committee on November 10th and again on December 8th, where it was referred to council with the recommendation to be adopted. This resolution establishes an annual process for setting council's strategic priorities. Each January, council will meet to identify strategic priority priorities, objectives and outcomes for the coming year. This process will include at least one meeting held after the election of the council president and vice president. During this period, council policy committees may be temporarily suspended to allow full council to focus on strategic priority setting. This suspension includes flexibility to address emerging issues identified by policy committee leadership, require city operational matters and other policies that may be brought directly to full council and bypass policy committees until the strategic framework is adopted or until January 31st. The resolution further clarifies that the strategic meetings will be facilitated by the city administrator or their designee, in coordination with council leadership, the facilitator will guide councilors through identifying individual operating values and priorities, establishing shared council values and priorities, and developing a set of core priorities that will serve as the council's strategic framework. The council president or vice president, working with the facilitator, will place the proposed strategic framework on a council agenda as a resolution no later than February 28th each year. This resolution may also include a revised policy committee structure aligned with the approved framework. Approval of the annual strategic framework, including council priorities, objectives and outcomes, does not limit individual councilors from introducing or developing their own legislation. If the strategic framework resolution is not adopted, council may resume regular council meetings and policy committee meeting schedules. The committee approved approved two amendments at its December 8th meeting. Those amendments are summarized in the full committee staff summary posted online. The full impact statements on this item includes information on community impacts and community involvement. Two individuals provided verbal testimony and six individuals submitted written testimony prior to committee action. General themes included keeping strategic priority, setting agendas focused and not overloaded, incorporating onboarding recommendations from the government transition advisory committee, reframing the process to start with, identifying problems to solve, not just listing priorities. Better. Serving key communities by developing a shared, measurable public strategy. Ensuring the strategic framework guides public spending with clear purposes and accountability, requiring a 75% supermajority to confirm the framework reflects shared values, avoiding avoiding adding new taxes to achieve priorities, especially those impacting businesses. This concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.
348 Thank you very much, councilor.
349 Ryan.
350 Well, councilor Koyama, for chair report. Oh, counselor, do you have anything to add?
351 Watching councilor Vice chair Ryan was chairing that day. I was present, though I do not really have anything to add.
352 Perfect. Councilor Ryan. Yeah, right ahead.
353 For sure. I just want. There was a key word there. Thank you very much, christopher. That was a very thorough report. And it was. We had two really long conversations about this in committee, and we even socialized it a bit prior to that. Madam president knows that. I started talking about this last January. And so I'm just really thrilled to move this resolution, even more excited to have these annual conversations with all of you. And I really want to thank the co-sponsors of this work. It's growing, and I appreciate that as well. The councilor Koyama Lane was on board early. We were talking about how important it would be for us to get out of the details of the committee and get into a bigger picture conversation and just get to know each other better with that dialog. And I I'm now very fortunate that to know that councilor Clark and councilor Kanal have also signed on. Councilor Kanal was an honorary member of the governance committee, and I say that with respect, you were sitting out there, kind of intimidated me for a few minutes because I couldn't figure out what you were up to. And, and they you would come up and offer more suggestions. And so the two amendments that were passed were from you. They'll be there's additional ones that were just added over the last couple of days. We had a really sweet compromise. We think it's an opportunity to really signal how the council and the city administrator will work together in this effort, because we want to be cognizant of the capacity issues and and the expertise that will will be offered in this room when we have public servants from the different bureaus. And so I just want to thank everyone in the committee for those thoughtful conversations, plural, on this item. And I want to turn it over to the co-sponsors. And I'll start with a co-sponsor, vice president Koyama Lane.
354 Go right ahead, councilor.
355 Thank you. Council president, I am proud to co-sponsor this resolution, which establishes a structured, transparent and collaborative process to set shared, shared strategic priorities and beyond good governance. These kinds of intentional meetings are healthy for the civic body itself. They create space to pause, listen to each other, align when possible, maybe even build some trust. I believe that adopting this framework will support a more resilient, responsive, and well functioning city government for the people of Portland, which we all serve.
356 Thank you, councilor Clark.
357 Thank you, councilor Ryan, and thank you, councilor Koyama Lane. I really appreciate those comments. As a member of governance, you know, I have advocated for this repeatedly over the last year in our committee. And I'm not alone. Obviously, in that drumbeat. I'm glad we finally got here. And I really appreciate councilor Ryan's bringing forward the resolution very much. I don't usually talk about my background, but I just want to say that I've worked with local government throughout my career inside cities as a liaison governor's liaison to cities and counties, and as a lobbyist for local government. So I know that an annual strategic planning session is just normal. It's just regular. That's what we do. It's an expected activity. So I'm glad that we finally got to this point. I also want to say that when we had our new city administrator, raymond lee, here, we talked about this with him and he spoke in support of this kind of an effort. And in fact, he spoke about doing pre-work. I didn't have an opportunity to ask him what that pre-work was, but I'm really anxious to get going on that pre-work. And each of us, each of us on the dais, identify our own values, our priorities, and those that we share across all four districts. So I'm really looking forward to doing that with him as well. So thank you so much for your support.
358 Thank you so much, councilor Clark. And last but certainly not least, councilor Kanal.
359 Thank you, councilor Ryan. I, I want to just take an opportunity to say that I, I am really grateful for for your leadership on this and for for making this be a conversation. As I said in the governance committee, I don't think that this ideally would have needed a resolution at all. I think that this is something we should have just done. And because it wasn't happening, I appreciate how doggedly you've been bringing this back up. And I also appreciate councilor Koyama Lane always talking about the impact of connecting our relationship, building with that strategic planning. And that's important as well. And I'm pleased to join councilor Clark on cosponsoring this as well. I had a really good conversation with councilor Ryan that he mentioned about the amendment that didn't pass in committee, about the facilitation and the role, the city administrator, and we talked about sort of what was the underlying goal of the text as it was what was the underlying goal of the amendment as I proposed it and realized those were not actually in conflict and figured out a way. And it's it's a proposed amendment. Canal Ryan won. It's on the website. So I think if there's public testimony, then we'll wait till after to officially move it. But just wanted to mention that and say that we we do want to make sure that council leadership is is driving the decision with the administrator on who the how the facilitation works, but also that the city administrator is able to be a subject matter expert or their designees, because a lot of what we're talking about will need that operational expertise and acumen to help us form a better overall strategic plan. So I'm excited to bring that forward after testimony. It's the first of the exhibits in attachments on the website when you find it, but I'm excited as well to get underway on having these big picture conversations because, as councilor Ryan has been has labeled it. We need to be clear to the public about where our north stars are. And there are there may be not not one north star that connects us all, but I think it is less than fewer than 12. And I think that's important to begin that process of of talking out what those are transparently and getting us focused on what we can do to to cover those, while also allowing for the occasional thing outside of it as well.
360 Just end this opening. Thank you, councilor. Thank you all co-sponsors, that this really has evolved quite a bit. I definitely didn't get my way on how I did it when I was a ceo, and that's good. It was awesome to get the feedback. And I think one of those sticky widget points that just kept coming up was, if you're working on something in committee, does this mean you're putting us in like timeout and like, no, we there's a word may. And that word may is really strong. Like you can work in your committees. You might find that the work sessions that we do are time consuming. And you may want to look at your own time consumption on that. But it was that's why the word maze in there. But please know this does not restrict committees that are currently in place for a meeting. Why we do this exercise and I want to just make that clear. Thank you so much. I would suggest we probably read the amendments into the record before the testimony so that those if there are those that are testifying, they'd have that information.
361 Thank you. And I was going to suggest to councilor Kanal that I suspect we will see other amendments moved just before we go to testimony. So if you wanted to move yours, feel free.
362 Thank you, madam president. So amendment canal one canal Ryan one I apologize is it's the last it's the first link under exhibits and attachments. But it is to the. Fifth be it further the fifth resolved. So it's the fourth be it further resolved. And it currently reads the strategic meetings will be facilitated by the city administrator or their designee in coordination with council leadership. And it replaces that with two be it further resolves one, be it further resolved that the strategic planning meetings will invite the city administrator and their designees as subject matter experts to contribute to council discussions and be it further resolved, that the council president, vice president and city administrator will jointly determine facilitators for the strategic planning meetings.
363 Thank you. Second.
364 Second.
365 Second. Okay. Thank you, councilor Clark.
366 Councilor Avalos, are you in the queue for introduction of an amendment? Go right ahead.
367 Okay. Yeah, I've got a couple. So thank you. First of all, thank you to councilor Ryan and to all of the co-sponsors for bringing this forward. Before I offer my amendments, I just want to take a quick step back and just name, just give you context for why I'm offering some of these. Just to name a couple of my concerns about just the process and and some of the substance which I will hopefully address with some amendments. This resolution makes meaningful changes to how council sets priorities, structures, its work and potentially suspense committees. It sounds like there's some flexibility, and I appreciate that given its scope. I was a little surprised to see it move out of committee and onto the council agenda before a broader work session. I really think we could have benefited strongly from having a work session on this, and I hope that we would have had an opportunity for all 12 of us to kind of discuss the intent and the trade offs and some safeguards as well, together, before being asked to vote on a formal operating framework. So since we didn't have that opportunity, I did pre file a series of amendments to surface and address some concerns that I believe warrant some collective discussion. I originally filed seven amendments, but based on some of the work that we heard councilor Ryan and canal have done, I have decided to withdraw a couple of those. So I'm going to be withdrawing amendments one, two and five. But I am going to move forward with amendments three, four, six and seven. So let me read those into the record real quick. Okay. Starting with Avalos three. So this one is about requiring transparency about areas of agreement and disagreement and unresolved priorities in this strategic framework. So I am adding a clause. And when you look online you'll see where all of these clauses fit. I have a line by line, but this one says be it further resolved that the final strategic priority framework shall clearly identify areas of consensus, areas of divergence, and unresolved priorities, rather than presenting a unified summary that obscures disagreement. Before we can talk more about these data, I'm just going to read them in right now. Avalos four is about ensuring that we are adopting a shared framework that doesn't sideline district specific or culturally specific equity driven issues that might not emerge as citywide priorities. I think we all have said over and over, we really want to protect our ability as districts to bring forward district specific issues. So I'm adding a clause that says, be it further resolved, that adoption of a council strategic priority framework shall not be interpreted or applied in a manner that limits, prioritizes or discourages council consideration of issues that are district specific, culturally specific, or equity driven, even if such issues are not identified as shared council priorities. Avalos six is about clarifying that the strategic priority framework is advisory and cannot be used to delay, block or otherwise impede a council's ability to advance legislation. I agree that we need a shared strategic framework, and I also want to make sure that this framework is not used as a gatekeeping tool. So it reads be it further resolved, that the council strategic priority framework is advisory in nature and may not be used by council leadership, the city administrator or city staff as a basis to delay, block or discourage the introduction, referral, consideration or advancement of legislation proposed by any councilor. And then lastly, amendment seven. This is about ensuring that we have an ability in after this first year to evaluate this process, and is not that it's not permanently institutionalized without further council review. So my last amendment reads, be it further resolved, that this strategic priority setting process shall be reviewed by council after its first year of implementation, including an evaluation of its impacts on equity committee autonomy and legislative responsiveness, with council retaining the authority to amend or repeal the process. Again, I just want to emphasize how important I believe that us having a strategic vision is. In fact, I have been trying to get us to have a unified housing strategy. That is the same goal of us having the ability to, as council, discuss what our vision is and be able to communicate that and start rowing in a certain direction, especially on those big picture things. I just am introducing these amendments to protect what I believe are some loopholes that I don't want to be used against councilors, and I just want to instill some of these fundamental things into the resolution as a result. I'll leave it at that and happy to discuss once we move into that part later. Thank you.
368 Thank you, councilor. And I do want to make sure that we get seconds on any of these that folks want to move forward. So I believe the first one that you introduced was Avalos three. Is there a second on Avalos three? Yes okay. That was a second from councilor Canal. Is there a second on Avalos four.
369 Second.
370 Thank you.
371 Councilor Morillo is there a second on Avalos six.
372 Is giving five.
373 I believe that the councilor is not introducing one, two and five. So yes, but by intention and by direction from the councilor. Is there a second on Avalos six. Councilor. I'm not seeing that at this time.
374 I would. Second that.
375 Okay. Councilor Morillo is there a second on Avalos seven?
376 Yes.
377 Councilor canal okay, so we have five amendments. Open a canal Ryan amendment and four Avalos amendments. I'd like to move us to public comment at this time and then we will open up debate. Rebecca, do we have any individuals here for public comment?
378 One person is signed up, jared essig.
379 Good afternoon.
380 Thank you for being here.
381 Thank you. Thank you. Council president, miss pirtle-guiney and administrator councilors, the strategic priorities of Portland are important to talk about, align interests, build trust, all these things. Like you say most of the public find about discover your strategic priorities through your announcements at public events like the christmas tree lighting a couple weeks ago, where we learned that your most important priority is to free Palestine. So I just want to address that priority. You know, the greek empire, after alexander the great was partitioned, they colonized and occupied syria under the seleucids and egypt under the ptolemaic. And between them they fought over the land of Israel and traded it back and forth and attempted to conquer it several times. And that's where the name Palestine originates, with the greek historian herodotus. Actually, it's a greek word, because Palestine has always been a colony of the greco-roman empire. Hanukkah celebrates the anti-imperialist, postcolonial liberation movement of the indigenous Jewish people in rededicating the temple. After recapturing jerusalem from the seleucid greek Palestinian occupiers, Palestine was the name officially imposed on the holy land in the year 135, the common era, by the roman emperor hadrian. After rome conquered judea and occupied and colonized it, along with samaria and the rest of Israel and Palestinians were the roman settler colonists. Overlords like pontius pilate, along with their local collaborators like king herod, ruling Jewish subaltern natives like the nazarene, and his disciples like raphael and rav shammai and their disciples. As puppets installed by rome. King herod's dynasty and the high priests annas and caiaphas were the first Palestinian nationalists. But you know, christian dominionism in the roman catholic empire turned this history on its head and made Jews the, the, the, the ruling class, even though it was actually rome that ruled the world and the roman catholic church. So your attempt to rekindle traditional christian anti-jewish bigotry at your christmas tree lighting is contemptible. It's dishonest. It's ineffective as a catharsis for guilt for your own sins of consumer capitalism, which the event was designed to promote, and for the continuance of Oregon as a colony of the American empire, which this event was also designed to promote. Let's just be honest about where we are and what we're doing here and how we got here. Israel is a national liberation movement of the indigenous and exiled hebrew people. And I know some of you proposed a resolution looking into Israeli weaponry in in Portland. Well, I want to get you to investigate this councilor Green and others. Wisdom is greater than military might. Wisdom is greater than weapons of war and your own prejudice. Ignorance will be the cause of your failure and your magical thinking.
382 Thank you very much for your comments on our priorities.
383 That concludes testimony.
384 Thank you colleagues, that moves us into discussion and debate. We do have five amendments open before us. I will start with the canal Ryan amendment, and then we will move through the amendments in the order in which they were proposed. Councilor Smith, are you in the queue to discuss the amendment?
385 No.
386 Okay. Councilor Avalos, are you in the queue to discuss the canal amendment?
387 No, but I guess I was I had like some general questions I was going to ask. I'm not sure where to do that. I should I do that now before we get into amendments or.
388 Generally we speak to the underlying resolution after any other motions that have been opened. So we would debate the amendments first and then the underlying resolution in this case, because those five amendments have been placed on the table.
389 Okay, then I'll wait for those questions.
390 Okay. Colleagues, seeing no one in the queue for discussion on the canal Ryan amendment, I'd ask rebecca to please call the roll.
391 Clerk.
392 Hi, Green.
393 Zimmerman.
394 Hi.
395 Avalos.
396 Hi.
397 Dunphy.
398 Hi, Smith.
399 I now.
400 Hi,
401 Ryan. I Koyama Lane. Hi Morillo.
402 Hi.
403 Novick hi.
Procedural episode · turns 404–412
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404 Pirtle-guiney. I amendment is approved with 11 I votes one absent colleagues.
405 I did not need that vote tally there did I?
406 I I'm sorry I was unable to come off mute. I do vote on.
407 The amendment is approved with 12 votes.
408 I think that was quick enough that we can accept it without needing to go through any motions. Does anybody have any objections to that? Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you councilor. Okay, colleagues, that moves us to the other motions on the table. Councilor Avalos, do you have a preferred order or should we start with Avalos three.
409 We can just go in that order. Absolutely.
410 Okay. Colleagues, is there any discussion on Avalos three?
411 Yes.
412 Okay. I'm not seeing hands, but I'm hearing yeses. Councilor Zimmerman.
413 Thanks. I guess I'm struggling a little bit to understand why we would want to pass this. I think in some bodies. Right. The supreme court, for instance, a minority report is responsible thing to provide. But I would be concerned if I guess the way I'm reading this is that we highlight where the disagreements are in our strategic project or in our strategic direction. And I think that once we either achieve consensus or achieve a vote, that that should be the strategic direction as it as it stands. And so this seems I do think, like the title of no false consensus makes a lot of sense, but I'm not reading that that would be the case. I think once the body has acted. That the direction will have been given to the city administration to execute in that fashion, and this seems to perhaps say that they have to continue to highlight disagreements or highlight divergence. And I'm not fully understanding what the point there would be, and that that seems like that could be dangerous to a, a strategic vision. So I'm, I have pause on this one before before I'm supporting it. But that's the reason why. Thank you.
414 Thank you councilor, councilor Clark.
415 Thank you, madam president. I guess I'm struggling with it too. I, I guess I don't feel like it's necessary and that it might undercut our effort, but I'm certainly open to hearing other people's opinions on this. I just didn't I just don't think that it's necessary. Thank you.
416 Thank you, councilor, colleagues, I put myself in the queue on this. I want to flag that. I think that the the goal I hope for this project is to highlight our areas of consensus. And while I certainly agree that we don't want to create false consensus, I think that we can put that on the record now as our intent. We can make that clear with the city administrator. We can make that clear with the facilitator. But using a document that is supposed to highlight the areas of consensus, to highlight areas of disagreement, especially at a time when we we know that folks want to highlight disagreement between elected officials, both locally and nationally, is just not something I can get behind. We will have the full year after we do our our strategic planning work to have robust debate about things that are not on the agenda, and robust debate about how we implement the things on the agenda. And I'm sure that there will be hearty differences there. But I do think that it is helpful for our city to have a document that highlights the areas where a critical mass of councilors, ideally, all councilors, see our strategic vision. Councilor Avalos.
417 Yes, thank you all for your comments. I get it, and I think in general, for all of my amendments, I'm just trying to put some extra layers to this to make sure that as we are trying to adopt a strategic vision, that is going to be one really difficult when we have 12 very diverse councilors. I just want the document to be able to emerge. Some of the areas where our ongoing discussion. Right. I just don't want it to seem like, oh, we're all agreeing to this one thing. And it kind of it goes hand in hand with some of the other amendments that I proposed as well. I just want there to be a space in there to be able to talk about the parts where we're not agreeing that that's the right strategic vision, but it's something that we need to wrestle with. I actually like your analogy, councilor Zimmerman, of like a minority report. I think that is kind of the the gist of what I'm going for. But yeah, I just with all of these, I'm just trying to bake in some protections for us to make sure that we are not, I guess, creating false consensus. And we are able to demonstrate to people who are going to be watching this very closely, that it's one okay for us to not agree on everything. And two, let's put aside in its own bucket the things that we don't agree on so we can continue to wrestle with them. I don't want them to get brushed under the rug. That's really been cool for me. Thanks and happy to answer any questions.
418 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Green.
419 Yeah. Thank you. Here's a perspective I'd offer and I'll just say it like this. So I've been part of strategic planning processes and other parts of my career. And in my experience, I do see versions of a report that comes out of a process like that that clearly delineates here were the areas that we we sort of collectively agreed are our top 4 or 5 priorities. But here were some other areas that we discussed that we didn't come to consensus on. That's I think it's actually pretty common practice, but I think just in the context of this body and this council, what we're trying to wrestle through, I actually think creating a little bit of space and acknowledgment to say that that will be an explicit part of that process might actually get us to lower our barriers a little bit and have a little more trust to say, okay, if we know that, at least we're going to acknowledge those areas where we didn't agree and we sort of said, all right, those are sort of edge edge issues that are not maybe less important, but are not going to be areas of collective rowing in the same direction. We can set that aside knowing that they're not brushed aside, if that makes sense. So that's kind of what I'm I'm picking up from this amendment just as I read it through my lens. And I hope that that offers some perspective. My colleagues. Thanks.
420 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Zimmermann.
421 I really appreciate both of those explanations. Sometimes in this past year, I have felt at times that. Part of the staff were certain members of of particular teams have perhaps worked with the perspective because the most informed councilor on that topic got to them first. And you both, in your comments, have me wondering if that is if this if this might be a way we address that that. Staff be very deliberate, that if just because 1 or 2 very informed or very passionate or very vocal people have a topic that does not give marching orders, and it allows them to point back to a place to say, we know you're passionate about it, we know you're involved in it, but that is not a thing. The council has taken a an action on, and so we're not going to operate from that perspective. To councilor Avalos, I'm seeing a thumbs up for councilor Avalos for those who are not seeing the screen. So I think I'm taking it that way and I'm. I would be curious how others are interpreting that at all. I think those were good explanations. I don't know if I'm there. I'm probably pretty close to being a yes on on that. If that is the way in which we think it can be conveyed, because I do think one of our problems has been and I have noted it, you know, I, I think that there have been some things involved with certain work units that seem to have been crafted simply because a councilor or two had a really passionate experience with them, and they got there early and they formed kind of like the working path. And for most organizations, once you get on the working path, it's really hard to get off that path. And I would say, I'm not sure we had a deliberate conversation even to get on that path originally. So this might give staff an out if there is passion but not majority. So thank you councilor Green and councilor Avalos for that. Those explanations. I'm going to keep listening to others. Thanks.
422 Thank you councilor.
423 Colleagues, I'll note the time and that we do have a few more amendments before us. Councilor Green.
424 Yeah I just want to just say Zimmerman. You nailed it. That's exactly what I was trying to convey. So that's thanks. Thanks for reading that back.
425 Thank you. Councilor councilor Koyama Lane.
426 I appreciate the intent behind this. I do wonder if the last part of it is necessary. The part that reads, rather than presenting a unified summary that obscures disagreement, I think I would feel more comfortable if that part was not there. And I am wondering, councilor Avalos, if you think that the same intention would be achieved without that part, it feels like it's editorializing a little bit.
427 Sure, I'm happy to take that part out. I think the first part of the sentence is really what I'm getting at, so if that causes discomfort, I don't think it's going to affect it to remove that section. So I'm happy to do that.
428 Councilors. Is that a friendly amendment to the amendment and should affect what we're voting on?
429 Yeah. Let's go ahead and make it friendly and make the final amendment be be it further resolved that the final strategic priority framework shall clearly identify areas of consensus, areas of divergence and unresolved priorities. Period.
430 Okay. And I believe your second on this one was councilor Canal councilor Kanal. Is that acceptable to you? Yes. Okay. Any other discussion before we vote? Councilor?
431 Clerk well, that's an improvement, I appreciate that. I'm still not sure I can get to a yes, I, I really appreciate council president's comment on highlighting consensus. I really think we need to put a positive foot forward. I don't I don't think I'm a pollyanna. I am an optimist, but I, I'm just I wanting us to highlight the good stuff where we do agree and not not where we disagree. It's pretty obvious. And it will it will continue to be obvious.
432 Thank you, councilor Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue for debate, rebecca, can you please call the roll on the amended Avalos three.
433 Clerk no.
434 Green.
435 Hi.
436 Zimmerman.
437 Hi.
438 Avalos.
439 Hi, Dunphy.
440 Hi, Smith.
441 I now. I Ryan no. Koyama Lane.
442 Hi, Morillo.
443 Hi, Novick.
444 Councilor. Novick. Are you still there? I councilor.
445 Rebecca I just got a note from councilor Novick that he needed to step out one minute ago, so I believe he'll be back in just a minute. But he may miss this vote.
446 Okay.
447 Pirtle-guiney.
448 No.
449 And with eight I, three no. And one absent, the amendment is approved.
450 Thank you, councilor Avalos, should we take up Avalos for next?
451 Yes.
452 Okay. Is there discussion on Avalos? Four councilor Clerk oh. Colleagues, any further discussion on Avalos four. Okay. Seeing none, can we move to a vote on Avalos?
453 Four no.
454 Green.
455 All right.
456 Zimmerman.
457 No.
458 Avalos. I Dunphy.
459 I Smith.
460 No.
461 Canal I. Ryan no.
462 Koyama Lane.
463 No.
464 Morillo I.
465 Novick.
466 Pirtle-guiney no.
467 And the amendment fails with 5i6 no one absent.
468 Okay.
469 Thank you, councilor Avalos. Should we move to Avalos?
470 Six yes.
471 Okay. Is there any discussion on Avalos? Six? Councilor Avalos go right ahead.
472 Well, actually I'll I'll hear what everyone else has to say. I was just going to offer discussion to explain it more if people were having questions, but I'll wait.
473 Councilor Morillo.
474 Yeah, I would say that the way that I'm reading this amendment, I think is important, because I think it's going to be wonderful to go on a strategic retreat together and to discuss our areas of consensus and understand why we there are areas where we don't have consensus. I think a concern and unspoken concern that I have is that if we create a document that expresses our consensus, consensus tends to be what the majority wants, which tends to be our most watered down versions of ourselves and the policies and priorities that we're trying to push. Because our new system with the districts and with ranked choice voting, means that you have a broad variety of voices up here. And I think that that's really valuable and special. And I think that if everything is prioritized by consensus, again, that's going to be the most watered down versions of all of our priorities. So that's part of what I see this amendment trying to rectify that. If there are things that some people feel passionately about, which happens often in policy, you end up getting into niche areas of interest and bringing other people along into your vision. I would hate for that, for this to be an impediment to that sort of work and that sort of creativity. So that's part of why I'm supportive of this. Let me know if I'm misreading the intention here.
475 Thank you. Councilor councilor Zimmerman.
476 I have very similar read as councilor Morillo just described. And so in my review of this, I put a yes next to it. But I also put a question mark of why because of the paragraph above that says that council's strategic priorities and objectives and outcomes in no way prohibits councilors from creating or developing their own legislation. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera. And so it I'm a yes, but I'm a do we really need it? And so I guess I'm not understanding what the second part does, that the first part that was in the original document is achieving. If it's important to folks, I don't see it having a substantive change, but I wanted to make sure both from the original authors and sponsors, as well as the carrier of the amendment, that I'm not missing something here, but I agree to councilor Murillo's point of like, no matter what the strategic vision is, I reserve all rights to bring all legislation from this office no matter what, and you can vote it down or you can vote for it. Nothing changes that. And I give that respect to everybody on this dais.
477 Thank you, councilor Councilor canal.
478 Thank you, madam president, and I appreciate councilor Zimmerman bringing this up. I think the difference is that the the part that's already in there is about a counselor's ability to bring legislation forward. This is about whether or not it can actually get heard. And so I think it's really important that to talk about the introduction, referral consideration or advancement that that is not used, that the framework doesn't prohibit that in any way. So that's why I think it's important. And I'll be voting yes on this. Thank you.
479 Thank you.
480 Councilor, councilor Clark.
481 Well, I agree with councilor Zimmerman's initial response that is this really necessary? I mean, because we already have procedures for moving things, I'm totally confident that the people in this dais are going to move what? They're going to move no matter what our strategic plan says. But we already have procedures and policies for how to move things, you know, to get the 912 or get things out of committee. So I just didn't think this was really necessary.
482 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Ryan.
483 Yeah, I don't think it's necessary. I think this is a resolution. So it's already advisory by its very nature. So I'm I'll be a no on this. I understand the intent, and I don't ever see us behaving in a way like this. So anyway, I'll be, you know.
484 Thank you. Councilor. Colleagues, I certainly don't believe anybody's policy should be intentionally delayed, blocked or discouraged for any reason, let alone because of strategic planning and councilor Morillo, I think you make a really important argument that what we put together through strategic planning may well be the watered down version of the work that we all want to and intend to do. It's one of the reasons that I think the language that was added to the underlying about every counselor's ability to bring forward whatever is on their personal agenda, regardless of what we put on our strategic plan is so important. I also question, though, a strategic plan that cannot take a strategic priority, and I wonder what the goal of a plan is, what the goal of identifying priorities are. If we specifically say in the document asking us to create priorities, that we cannot prioritize those priorities. And so I wonder if we are skirting the line of the point of this resolution. If we add this amendment, obviously we're all free to pursue our own agendas. I certainly intend to as well. And we have very specific rules to ensure that everything can and will come forward. We have multiple release valves to ensure that things can move in different ways through our processes. I think those are important. Nobody in in any position a committee chair, a council president, anybody else on council should be able to block somebody else's item from having a hearing and a vote. But I do think that if we are going to try to prioritize, we should prioritize. Councilor Koyama Lane.
485 I agree with a lot of things that my colleagues have said up here, including a lot of what you have said. I think that this work could absolutely be used to set priorities. And even as we're discussing Morillo 11 from the budget and talking about how councilors access staff on the city side to work on legislation, I hear conversations of, okay, so how are we going to prioritize? So for anyone, I think that they might want to know that there is a a clear way that they're able to get support on their legislation, no matter if they're with a majority or not. I also think it's an important conversation, because I do think we need to do some prioritizing. I don't think this resolution is the place to make all those decisions, and I think that some of that is needs to be the work of the our mayor and new city administrator to tell us what they expect of us and to work with them to build some procedures together to make sure that we agree on what that give and take looks like. I would I feel comfortable with all of it until the in nature, the I feel comfortable with the. Be it resolved that the council council strategic priority framework is advisory in nature. And I hear councilor Ryan saying, yeah, that's the that was already the intention. But what I'm hearing from my colleagues and I, I think that it makes sense to clarify that it's advisory in nature and any other further decisions around how those priorities are used, how staff time is prioritized. That needs to be another conversation. I, I would support having it in there and I'm not sure. Councilor Avalos, how you feel about all of that language beyond the in nature part?
486 Councilor Avalos why don't you jump the the line and respond to that?
487 I'm having trouble understanding the question. Are you saying that we should take out in nature or.
488 Keep keep everything until in nature and then take out everything and may not be used by council leadership and beyond. So clarifying that the council strategic priority framework is advisory in nature only.
489 So, councilor, you're offering potentially a friendly amendment or maybe if not an amendment to change Avalos six to say, be it further resolved, that the council's strategic priority framework is advisory in nature.
490 That is correct.
491 Okay. I think I'm I would not consider that friendly. I'm happy for you to propose it. I think that the what I'm describing in the rest of the sentence matters, especially as it relates to the different players that I'm naming here, like council leadership, city administrator, city staff for a lot of the reasons people have already said so I, I think that would change the intent of what I'm going for. And I'm trying to I was trying to process what you were saying, council president, I wasn't here on I was trying to understand what your point was. So I'm still processing that. I'm happy to answer any questions. But yeah, I think that the way that I have the rest of the sentence written matters to the intent. So I would not consider that for me.
492 Councilor, are you proposing that as an amendment or are you withdrawing the the comment?
493 I mean, I can share with you, councilor Avalos, that I, I saw a couple head nods and someone say that could get me up there with the amendment, so I won't propose that unless you see it friendly.
494 Okay.
495 Thank you. Councilor councilor Zimmerman.
496 I'm sorry.
497 Okay, councilor Kanal.
498 Thank you, madam president. Yeah, I think the second part is the most important part here, because we've had a conversation around this a few times about what is the way that something that is able to be put on an agenda, either because it came out of committee or because for councilors discharged it from its requirement for committee referral, now it's in the ether that it can be placed on the agenda, but it can still be not blocked but delayed 89 days. And that's an important thing to keep in mind here. That's that's how our rules are. And so having it be clear that just because somebody is not necessarily doing something on a topic that's in the strategic priority framework that this process comes out with, doesn't mean that it can be delayed 89 days. I think the same thing applies for the city administrator or the city staff. If there's something that we're interested in finding out information about, we should be able to get that information, especially given what councilor Morillo said on the last amendment about the fact that this can often lead to a watering down of what ends up being in there. So these two things together have a risk, which is that anything outside of the watered down output of it could be used to be to be blocked. And so again, I actually think the part that's already in the document is great and not I didn't think it was necessary, but I have no issue with it. I also think that this first part of is advisory in nature is effectively redundant, but it's the second part may not be used by council leadership, the city administrator and city staff that that is the key part of it here. That I is why I'm supporting it, because I think it's really vital that we don't end up seeing some things get placed on the agenda quickly and other things delayed based on this.
499 Councilor Zimmerman, are you actually on cue now?
500 I now remember, like oftentimes happens councilor Kanal speaks and I get inspired to oppose it. So that was actually a largely the point I was in the queue for is that I actually I actually expect decision making to happen by council leadership. I have judged each of us who holds the gavel in our committees on how we've wielded that gavel and that decision making. I very much value that, and I think our strategic plan has helped, or it can help you as you evaluate that. I, as a chair, think it would be responsible of me to ensure that the good idea fairy not ever have the ability to jump the what I consider the core of the work. Based on the strategic plan to come into my committee and finance, and I and I have done that already on a few items that I've delayed when they were going to be heard based on, frankly, the needs of the city administration has a lot of hit times that they have to have come through my committee. So I. I believe that the council rules that we adopted early in the year are those release valves that council president spoke about. If you have the worst case scenario and you're angry at your chair and you're angry at the president, there is a mechanism to do that. But I actually think delaying good idea fairy things over strategic things is the right thing to do. And as this has been discussed, it tells me that there is a concern that we would have council leadership in my mind, doing council leadership's job. So I'm going to oppose number six for those reasons, because I don't want there to be anything else in the ether that says that those who we have elected or appointed in positions of leadership shouldn't have the deference to lead. So thank you.
501 Thank you, councilor Councilor Avalos. And I'll note that we have an extension from staff until 515. That is nine more minutes.
502 Yeah. I think the way that I the intent of how I wrote this is really just about making sure that we have access to the information that we need to advance our legislation, that we don't have any blocks on that just because of this, like, but we have a strategic plan, and therefore you shouldn't be able to do that or you can't do that. So I don't know. I'm trying to like juggle all of the different points and make mine. But it's it's getting a little muddled. But I think the intent for me is about making sure that each councilor has the ability to move their work, and that the strategic plan is not used as a way for them to say that they are not allowed to do their work, especially from city staff and the administrator. I hear what you're saying, councilor Zimmerman, about council leadership. I think how you debate what you have to put on the agenda, that has a lot of different factors, but this is really a big part of it for me is about the staff and the administrator for this.
503 Councilor Zimmerman.
504 Yep. Thank you, madam president. Appreciate it. I want to just share an experience I've had in both the cities where I was a deputy city manager, and in those cities there, there were policies in place when a councilor would approach a member of the senior staff to help them work on a thing that there were a couple of times we would have to have that conversation with that councilor and say, councilor, that ask of yours is a significant lift of of employee time. Employee resources, our organization's resources. As a city administration, we're not going to provide resources to that topic unless you can get the rest of your council to take an action that we would like to be directed to do that work, or that you want to direct us to do that work. And I think that that's actually probably one of the most common conversations that happens in the city management form of government across this country. I also think it's responsible because it, it it protects the organization from 12 one off missions where they do not know how much time, effort to give to folks and special projects, and that can be very hard to hear. But it is a very important part in the council manager form of government, and I think our system applies similarly. And so special projects are one thing, but the we will ask our administration to make a judgment call when it steps over that line of being a little bit of effort to a little bit of effort. And I think that that's a responsible conversation to have. And if we want to direct that work, I think it's our duty to get the body to direct that work as a body and not as a one off. So point taken. And I wanted to share that for my experience on the other side of the dais. Thank you.
505 Thank you, councilor. I think some of those conversations have been happening in various forms. Councilor Green.
506 Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, the whole point of doing the priority based strategy planning is so you can figure out how to devote your scarce resources. So point is well taken. I also note that that's also why sometimes like I will just bring I will just bring an item to a committee that I haven't really engaged with the administration a lot on anyway, because I'm like, I already know what I want to do here. I'm going to have the conversation in public. Then we're going to have the iteration back and forth. And so I would just encourage my colleagues to say, to think about this in the context of saying this isn't this doesn't have to stop your work. If we're going to say we want to focus the administration's work on our priority items, you can still do your work. You just don't necessarily need to lean on them to do your work for you. So I'll just leave it at that.
507 Thank you. Councilor colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue, I will ask rebecca to call the roll on. Avalos six. Clark.
508 No.
509 Green.
510 Hi.
511 Zimmerman.
512 No.
513 Avalos.
514 Hi, Dunphy.
515 Hi, Smith.
516 No.
517 Canal I Ryan.
518 No. Koyama Lane I Morillo I Novick. No. Pirtle-guiney.
519 No.
520 And. Is the amendment fails with 6i5 no.
521 Okay. Colleagues that moves us to Avalos seven is there any discussion on Avalos?
522 Seven pardon? I'm sorry. Sorry. Yes. That's not the right number. Apologies. Hang on. 666666666i6.
523 No thank you. Is there any discussion on Avalos seven. Okay. Councilor Avalos.
524 Yeah yeah I'll just add you know I think for me I want to just have some kind of review process. I want us to be able to look at this. This is going to be our first time implementing it and creating a strategic plan as a body of 12 and a new form of government. I suspect we will have lots of kinks to work through, and I want to make sure to safeguard our ability to review it before we just agree to this being an ongoing forever thing. I would like the opportunity to do that, and that's why I wrote it in this way. Thank.
525 Thank you counselor. Seeing no one else in the queue for debate. Counselor Clark.
526 Thank you, counselor Avalos, I really appreciate that. I just take it for granted that that's going to happen, that we're that this isn't really necessary. I'm sure we will evaluate it, and I'm sure we will decide if we want to do it again. And we.
527 Yes.
528 Thank you for that. I'm probably a no.
529 Thank you, counselor. Councilor Avalos, do you have something additional to add?
530 Yeah, I just don't take it for granted. I think that's the point is I really just want to put some bacon and protections. This is a big deal. We are telling we are asking ourselves to create a strategic framework. And I'm creating all of these safeguards, in my opinion, to protect our decision making in the future. So that's why I propose it. I did not see an exit valve and so I'm adding one. Right?
531 Councilor Kanal.
532 Yeah, I think this conversation highlights two things. One, one of the big divides is whether or not we think that the system will work without needing to have a guardrail put in place on it, and I don't think that that's always the same for each of us on each different thing. And I don't think that makes us hypocrites. It's what we've seen in our experiences, and I think that's an important thing to just acknowledge the other. The other thing is that this is, I think, a really good reason why, ideally there would have been some some work session kind of conversation around this with all 12 of us involved. And that's a process concern that is not about councilor Ryan's work at all. And I want to just note that, separate from councilor Ryan's work, I'm going to vote yes on this. I do think it is helpful to have a guardrail, and I think that it is. If it's if it's redundant, then there's no harm in it and I'll be voting. Yes. Thanks.
533 Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue, I'm going to ask rebecca to call the roll on. Avalos seven.
534 Clerk no.
535 Green.
536 Hi.
537 Zimmerman. No Avalos.
538 Hi, Dunphy.
539 Hi, Smith. No canal. I Ryan no. Koyama Lane. Yes. Morillo. Hi, Novick I. Pirtle-guiney.
540 I.
541 The amendments approved with eight I and four no votes.
542 Thank you colleagues. Having had some extensive debate through that amendment process and seeing no one in the queue for debate on the underlying, I will ask rebecca councilor Kanal.
543 I'll just say for the for the record.
544 We have one minute, we have staff for one minute and and.
545 Scheduling a thing we need to figure out in the future. I am concerned about the gatekeeping. I want to put that on the record as a legislative intent item, that I am intending for this not to be used that way. That's all I wanted to say. Thanks.
546 Councilor Novick.
547 I don't think there's any way that this body is going to agree on any kind of strategic plan, so I fear this sets us up for failure. I would love to have a a work session where we all just state our individual priorities for the next year. I think that'd be very helpful.
548 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Ryan.
549 Thank you for making the argument for a yes vote. Councilor Novick. That's exactly what this is.
550 Rebecca, could you please call the roll?
551 Clerk?
552 Hi.
553 Green.
554 Hi, Zimmerman.
555 I Avalos. I Dunphy.
556 No.
557 Smith.
558 I canal.
559 I.
560 Ryan I.
561 Koyama Lane.
562 Hi.
563 Thank you. Apologies. My technology is coming up. I think Koyama Lane I. Morillo I Novick. No pirtle-guiney. I the resolution is adopted with ten I and two no votes colleagues.
564 That was the last item on our agenda. But this is also mr. Jordan's last meeting with us. And I would like to ask staff for forgiveness, for giving us just an extra minute or two so that we can thank you. Setting up a new system and then seeing it start is never easy. A lot of people take a break after setting it up and let somebody else see it start. And you carried us through. You carried us through in a way that helped us to form what this government should look like. You had 12 people come in with a lot of expectations on us, and with a lot of expectations that we had on the administration. And you saw the administration through a lot of changes that we layered on you through the budget process. And again, that is never easy. I know that you have had a long career. We've worked together in other spaces, serving our community in different ways. And I hope that despite the challenges in setting up this new form of government this year, you know how much I'll speak for myself and say I appreciate and how much I think our community appreciates you putting in time here with all of the experience that you have to bring to to knowing how these operations can and and should work smoothly. You have been an incredible. An incredible gift to our city as we move through this. I appreciate the the information you have brought to us, the advice you have brought to us, and the way that you have worked with each of us to ensure that we can navigate the administration as we start our work as this new council. So thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane.
565 At this last meeting of our first year in office under this new structure, it's a time for celebration, reflection and acknowledging of the many transitions around us. A significant transition is that of our own outgoing city administrator, michael jordan. I don't think there are words to actually convey your contributions as city administrator, your experience in city hall and your commitment to Portland is certainly an example of what it means to dedicate your career and service to others, and I hope you and your family enjoy your very well-earned retirement for many, many years to come. Thank you, city administrator jordan, for all you have given to the city of Portland.
566 Thank you.
567 We can clap councilor Ryan.
568 Thank you.
569 It's where to go after clap claps. But anyway, just real quick I just want to tell a story. It was it's a very quick story. But when we were trying to build the permit improvement task force, it was very difficult, especially when most people were at home on zoom and the people on my team who are working on it, and we needed a pep talk, and I didn't know that you were the person for that until they came back from, I think it was an extended happy hour. Yeah. And they were so much different after spending time with you, mike jordan. So I think the reason I wanted to tell I know, the reason I wanted to tell that story is because there's been countless times in your career where you've gone beyond what people can see to be relational, to be kind, to listen with intention, and to offer next steps that are doable. And like every big change in life, it usually isn't as dramatic as people think. It's incremental. And you're so good at that and you will be missed. And thank you so much for your service.
570 Thank you. Councilor councilor Novick.
571 Mr. Jordan, I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the extraordinary patience you have shown with us and the fact that when you've lost your patience, you have done so in an instructive and or entertaining way.
572 Thank you. Councilor councilor Green.
573 Ditto, ditto, ditto. People have already touched on the things that I have found admirable in you, and I want to thank you for your service, and I want to urge my colleagues and everyone else to read the rose city reform stuff. Stubbs substack, where mr. Jordan gave a very thoughtful interview that I think will be very instructive for all of us. Thank you very much. And please do something fun now.
574 Thank you. Councilor councilor Kanal.
575 I was going to mention that rose city reform article two. So instead I will say thank you for making the city administrator reports that have been informative to the public as well as to us. Thank you as well for the the immense improvement that was the city administrator's requested budget recommendations. I cannot speak to how much, although gaps remain, how big of a step that was from what came before in informing us throughout this process. And I'll close by saying, in addition to thank you for your service, you mentioned the other day that you tried and failed twice to retire. So third time's a charm. Congrats. Thank you.
576 Thank you, counselor, counselor Smith.
577 Thank you. Thank you, madam president. Administrator jordan, thank you for your service. This was a really tough, tough thing to do. I know what it's like to leave the work. This is not just a job for you. It is about the work and the people. And I know what that's like when you have to leave that work. And I imagine that it will take some adjustment to get used to. But I think you will quickly get used to it. And owning your own day, owning your own time. But I just want some. I want one last assurance from you. If we call you and ask you for some really good advice, can we call you?
578 Of course. Of course.
579 You don't have.
580 To.
581 Do this.
582 You don't have to. But.
583 No, we and and as we talked in when we started this new fiscal year that we all wanted to be better versions of ourselves. And I think the last part of the year, we have been better versions of ourselves, and we understand the the rhythm of what we are doing here. And we thank you for holding this ship together, and I wish you nothing but but happiness and joy. Thank you.
584 Thank you. Counselor. Counselor. Zimmerman.
585 Mike, you were elected some three weeks. Elected to the city council of canby, some three weeks after I was born. As a kid who spent a lot of time in Clackamas county and. And you were a commissioner When I was in high school. You're a name that I've known of and a face that I've known of for most of my life, even before we knew each other in this professional capacity. And so for a kid who knows, he eventually wants to work in government and potentially serve in elected office in government, you're one of those names that I have known a very long time. And so my hat was off to you at Clackamas county. My hat was off to you at metro, at the state. And when you returned. And so just appreciation to that appreciation for the partnership, I think that we had when I came back to serve mayor wheeler in trying to revive downtown. You gave us a long leash from the administration. I think it has made a damn good difference. And you stayed on when you didn't have to. So your service is commendable. Some 41 years later. I don't know if you fish, paint read or what, but I hope you do it and I hope you have time. I hope your your family enjoys time with you. So merry christmas to you and happy new year. Happy retirement.
586 Thank you counselor. Counselor Dunphy.
587 Thank you.
588 Briefly. Ten years ago, mike, your first week at bts was my first week in commissioner Nick fisher's office. I am grateful for nick's leadership in bringing us both to the city. I am grateful to you for your leadership, your advice, your your counsel, your experience. And I believe I'm a better leader because of your guidance and help over this last ten years. So thank you for everything for our city and I'll miss working with you.
589 Thank you. Councilor councilor Clark.
590 I'm not going to speak very much because I'm going to cry. I have known you as long as zimmerman's been alive and our paths have crossed like this. And I just want to say thank you, and I'll be in touch.
591 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor. Avalos.
592 Taylor powell. First of.
593 All, don't listen to these people. You better not answer any calls. I want you to go enjoy your retirement. I don't want to see you. And I say that with love. Thank you for your time, your service. I've enjoyed sharing jokes with you, sitting next to you, very grateful for everything I've learned from you. Happy retirement.
594 Thank you counselor. Well, I want rebecca to go home, so I'm going to keep this incredibly short and I will cry. And I already have today. So thank first of all, thank to to many of you who could make it to the little gathering earlier today. It meant a lot to me to have you there. I actually expected staff. I did not expect you and it meant a lot for you to be there. This has been a hard three years actually, since the vote for the change. Councilor Ryan and I went through that too, that that kind of initial, how do we go from here to there, and how do we keep a government running and build a new one at the same time? And so there were just tons of things that nobody had ever faced before. And I appreciate your leadership and and the previous council and their, their ability to kind of grok those two things at the same time. It was not easy and very challenging. And then and then 13 new elected officials show up, and we've got a few short paragraphs to tell us what the hell we're supposed to be doing. And and that's not easy. And so I don't think it's any big secret that we kind of bumped into each other a few times and and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as you learn to not bump into each other exactly the same way again. And I think and I think to your comment, councilor, we have learned a lot this year and we will continue. We'll continue to learn. And I've told I've suddenly become incredibly popular with the media this week. But the one thing I've tried to emphasize, besides what I said earlier about this being an incredibly human endeavor, is that I'm encouraged, I'm optimistic. I, I think the city is on the right trajectory. I think there are things you guys are going to have to face in the coming years that are going to be excruciating. They are just going to be really hard and tough, tough decisions to be made. And I guess my hope to be as blunt as I maybe shouldn't be about it, is that I hope when you're all in that foxhole together and you're taking incoming, that it brings you together, that you are stronger for it, and that you find a path together moving forward. And when I say you, I don't just mean you. The 7000 employees that work for the city of Portland, the mayor who was also trying to figure this thing out too, with you and all of you. None of you individually and none of you as those three groups can be successful alone, unilaterally. You have to do this together. And so finding some agreeable paths, some agreeable norms about how we work together. And I think we're on a track. I think we're on a track to get there. That gives me encouragement, because this is a team sport, and you got to work together to be truly successful and really make this place hum. And when it's all working like that, everybody's listening to the same music. It's a beautiful thing to watch. And when you're not, everybody's feet hurt, so you got to get together in the dance, okay? And that's my only kind of I'll leave you with make sure you're doing this. Whatever we're doing together, okay? I will be watching. I am so encouraged. And to be honest, I'm very proud of the work. This this has been my capstone project. After 41 years of trying to matriculate and and so thank you. Thank you for your effort. Thank you for your commitment to portlanders and everything that they are facing in in our community. You guys are going to make this place a great place and I'm grateful. Thank you. Thank you, madam president.
595 Thank you, mr. Jordan. And now, per your request, I will end our meeting so that we can send our staff home. Congratulations. We hope you enjoy retirement.