The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-10-30
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (29,451 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On October 30, 2025, the Portland City Council held a work session on the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF), focused on the Climate Investment Plan (CIP) covering 2024–2029. Bureau of Planning and Sustainability staff, along with three PCEF Committee members, presented background on the fund's history, its organization into strategic programs and community grants across seven funding areas, and the committee's role in recommending CIP amendments while council retains final approval and annual budget authority. Presenters described current spending, encumbrances, and remaining allocations within the $1.6 billion five-year plan, noting figures were described in slightly varying ways during the presentation. A draft 2025 CIP amendment, open for public comment through November 5, was outlined, including proposed funding increases and decreases for specific strategic programs, goal adjustments, scope refinements, and technical corrections tied to prior budget actions. Discussion topics included investment in schools, affordable housing, transportation programs, the Cutter Garage project, geographic distribution of funds including District One, workforce development, emissions-reduction measurement, and the balance between community-driven priorities and city budget oversight. Votes did not occur; no vote ledger applies to this session.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Okay, let's do it.
1 Good morning, and welcome to the Portland city council work session on the Portland clean energy fund. I am calling to order this work session. It is 932 on Thursday, October 30th. As folks may recall, the city of Portland has for over ten years now been moving toward more comprehensive goals around our climate action plan, which included the creation of the Portland clean energy community benefits fund. On the ballot in 2018, what started as a grant program for Portland community organizations engaging in climate and resilience work has grown and now includes a set of strategic programs as well as community partnerships and city investments, which are laid out in the PCEF climate investment plan. That's a plan that is adopted every five years and occasionally includes tweaks in the interim, but generally holds as a series of investments over that five year period of time. The purpose of today's work session is for council to hear more about cf and the strategic programs and community grants that are part of the current climate investment plan. We are starting today with a presentation from our director, Eric engstrom. I believe he is here. Perfect. Pcef program manager sam barrasso and PCEF partnership and policy manager jaime valdez. Their presentation will provide background on PCEF and the current five year climate investment plan that guides our use of the current set of PCEF dollars. We will also hear from a few members of the pcf committee. In order for us to understand a little bit more about the work that committee does and how they interact with the work that we do. And then we will have time allotted for council discussion and questions. I know there have been a number of questions about the pcf funds, how they're allocated, what is held in reserves and why, and that's an opportunity for us to all get on the same page about that work. We are making sure I don't have other notes for the introduction. Sorry. We are going to have a little under an hour for the initial presentation, and then an hour to two hours for our questions, so I am going to turn it over to Eric to kick us off. Thank you both, Eric and sam, for being here today and for bringing your teams as well, to help us get a little bit more background about the work that you do here.
2 Thank you. Council president and councilors. Good morning. My name for the record is Eric engstrom, the director of the bureau of planning and sustainability. Next slide please. We've organized our presentation this morning into a couple parts. First, we're going to just give you a little bit of background and context. This will be material you've seen before. We'll go quickly there. We're then going to move to give an overview of the climate investment plan, which as the slide says, is for the period of 2024 through 2029, including both the strategic programs and community grants. We're going to then talk about the the process that we're going through annually to to fine tune the investment plan each year. As you said, council president, it's a five year plan, but there will be fine tuning on an annual basis. And this is this council's first journey with that as well as ours. We will also jump into a summary of the actual draft 2025 cip amendments, and then take questions and discussion. And before sam gets into the larger presentation, I just want to introduce we have three committee members here with us today sitting in the front row, tracy scott, who's the PCEF committee co chair and director of energy programs at the energy trust of Oregon. D'angelo moaning PCEF, committee co-chair and workforce outreach manager at espousal strategies. And faith graham, vice president of strategy at elevate. So I want to welcome them and then also invite tracy scott to share a few opening remarks on behalf of the committee.
3 Here.
4 I choose either chair, and if you can just introduce yourself for the record, that would be fantastic. These mics don't always pick folks up well, so you may need to scoot close to the table.
5 Oh, scoot as close as possible. And good morning, councilors. My name is tracy scott, and as previously shared, I'm co-chair of the Portland clean energy fund. Pardon me. On behalf of the Portland clean energy fund committee, we appreciate the opportunity to participate in this work session with you and provide an overview of how the climate investment plan amendment process works, the committee's role, and why this independent, community led approach is essential to the integrity and success of PCEF. The committee serves as a public oversight body that reviews data, including program performance and progress, engages in community voices, and ensures every funding recommendation honors the pcf mandate. Our process includes staff analysis, public meetings, and formal votes to maintain transparency and accountability. When voters created PCEF, they envisioned a model driven by and rooted in community priorities. The committee works to ensure decisions are guided by equity, transparency and lived experience, particularly for those most affected by climate change. To build lasting public confidence in our city's climate action, the climate investment plan provides a structured, transparent framework that guides how PCEF allocates and manages public funds. This structure ensures clarity for council, the public and manages public funds. I'm sorry, the clarity for council, the public and implementing partners so everyone understands the goals, criteria and intended outcomes of each investment. It also allows for rigorous performance tracking, enabling staff and the committee to measure impact and make data informed recommendations. So in closing, on behalf of the pcf committee, thank you for your partnership and support. This process reflects a collaborative effort between the community, city staff and council focused on delivering real climate solutions for portlanders and building a sustainable, equitable city for all. Thank you so much.
6 Thank you. Next slide please. Before sam starts, I want to just mention a few key takeaways. We hope this this presentation brings to you. One, is that the cip, the climate investment plan, is a five year plan guiding the program's investments. Second is that 20 2425 was the a year of standing up new and existing programs, a growth year 20 2526 will be scaling up those programs. So that's that goes speaks to the issue of what our spending rates are and where we are in the five year process. Finally, funds are fully allocated. In other words, the the projected budget for the PCEF benefits fund is fully allocated through the cip through 2029, but with an annual opportunity for us to review how that's going and update annually. Sam, you want to take it from here? Okay.
7 All right. Thank you. All right. For the record, my name is sam brasso, program manager for the Portland clean energy community benefits fund. It's a pleasure to be here with you all. Council president, councilors. Portland has been. And so what? I guess I'll just step back. Step back. Before we move into this, I want to set the context for where we've been. It's important just to ground the program, its history, where we've been as we get into where we are now with the climate investment plan, since, as you all know, we've we've been through quite a bit. We've made adjustments and we're excited to be here with you all talking about that. So Portland has been a national leader in climate action since adopting its first climate plan in 1993, represents the city's latest climate innovation, where we're both reducing emissions and over time, and addressing the immediate needs of portlanders most affected by climate change. It's a model that unites climate action and equity in practice, not just in principle. So as we discuss PCEF today, it's really important to view it in the context of the city's broader climate framework. Portland's goals are clear it's to cut emissions 50% below 1990 levels by 2030 by 2030, and achieve net zero by 2050. Pcef is at this point an essential driver towards those targets, but it can't and shouldn't be the city's only tool. We won't reach those goals with just PCEF alone. It's just important to acknowledge achieving these goals will certainly require working on policies, alignment across bureaus, partners and sectors citywide. My colleagues would be remiss if I did not say those things. Now, this timeline shows portland's three decade commitment to climate leadership nationally, starting with the 1993 global warming reduction strategy I mentioned. And it was notably the first of its kind in the us. Since then, we've adopted numerous climate plans, building on each of them. Building on the last and PCEF is the most transformative step yet, providing stable, community driven funding to accelerate progress towards that greener, fairer and more resilient Portland. Now looking ahead, your recently seated climate and sustainability commission will lead the development of the next climate action plan, continuing that legacy, and we're eager to engage in that process. Now, here in this slide, I want to just really briefly speak to the core elements of PCEF that city council enshrined in the city's code shortly after passage of the ballot measure. It included three parts, namely the funding mechanism itself, the program framework, and then ultimately the PCEF committee structure. Now, as we've moved and taken that community program from the very outset, I want to talk to the evolution since we've certainly been on that journey, that evolution that I briefly sort of spoke to first as a program. We started with the heart of our work, community grants. It was the community's design, and it's where we built the foundation of PCEF. We focused on community led climate action. We established trust, transparency and ultimately systems for equitable grantmaking. As we grew, as we heard increased calls for being more aggressive, thinking about different frameworks for accountability and the ability to move faster, we adopted PCEF and created the climate investment plan as our vehicle to do that, to move forward and do so with our first strategic programs. This is primarily where we began scaling the impact of the work that we've been doing, from those community projects to the strategic programs, and that's where we introduced programmatic investments in partnership with government, nonprofits and private entities. We enabled coordination across these sectors, and that was really key to better leverage that institutional capacity that exists within our partners, the private sector, certainly the city and some of the examples that have come out of that are things like PBOT transportation wallet for all program, the Portland e-bike rebate program, our equitable tree canopy program, and one of our earliest really strategic programs before we called them that, which is cooling Portland and so many others that we'll talk a little bit about today. And I'd say that last iteration of change for the program came with the collaborative climate action funding opportunity, where we've been driving even really larger collective impact. And this is where we brought forward collaborative investments to advance greater climate equity, bringing partners from government, from nonprofits together into some substantive projects, which will will acknowledge here shortly. And so with that, all of that ultimately sits within the climate investment plan. You've heard a little bit about that. The plan itself is ultimately lays out our programmatic allocations for community grants or strategic programs. It's our core guiding document. It sets the stage. And it's really in some ways, it's the structure so that as we work, as you all look to our work, as the as the public looks to our work, that there's clarity on what we're going to do together. But plans organized by funding areas, there's two main funding pathways in the plan. There's strategic programs where we drive the work, and then there's grants where the communities driving the work. We provide that oversight to it. And the cip is updated annually. This year will be our first annual update process. We're going to bring to you all in order to remain responsive to community priorities, get aligned with program performance and so forth. And each update is developed by the subcommittee with support from staff and ultimately recommended to this body for council approval. Now, when you take one step down within the program, the program itself and in the climate investment plan, we're organized across our funding areas. We have seven funding areas. Broadly, energy efficiency, renewable energy financing or funding, transportation decarbonization, Green infrastructure, regenerative agriculture, capacity building, climate jobs, workforce contract development, and the other catch all category for our emissions reducing projects. Okay. Now here I'm just going to briefly speak and pause, take a moment to speak to the roles of the committee as well as this body in council. So the PCEF committee adopts a methodology to measure, track and report the effectiveness of PCEF, the adopt the workforce and contractor equity plan. They also recommend to council the climate investment plan, amendments to the climate investment plan, as well as amendments or changes to the city code. Now, it's important to acknowledge, as part of those changes, as part of evaluating and making adjustments, the committee does not recommend individual grant awards. That's an important change, and they ultimately are there to ensure that north star, that community voice, equity and accountability are guiding the program's direction. Now, council is the ultimate approval body for this program. Council approves the climate investment plan amendments and any changes to city code, and you all authorize the annual budget and program actions consistent with that adopted climate investment plan. So here I'm now going to walk us through the elements of what sits within the climate investment plan itself, starting with the overall timeline of climate investment plan. Before I turn it over to colleagues to talk about the changes in our change process that we're working to bring so that we can bring amendments to you all early 2026. Now, the climate investment plan lays out a five year implementation horizon, providing structure and predictability for how we invest in climate and community outcomes. The plan was adopted by the prior city council and September 23rd, and amended in December 24th. We update the plan annually to make sure funding levels and program design stay right sized, responsive to program performance, community needs and the available resources we have. And we generally expect major new initiatives and program expansions as part of the next five year climate investment plan, so that we can build on lessons learned in this cycle. Our evaluations and lessons learned from current programs will certainly inform, and we expect them to inform how we design the next climate investment plan, and that planning for the next one will begin in earnest in the next two years, so that we can ensure we have a smooth transition between the end of this plan and that one. So meaning that we want to know well before the end of this plan where we're going into the next plan. At a high level. The plan is again organized by funding areas. What you see here is within each funding area, there's an allocation for community grants, which I'll detail in the next slides, as well as strategic programs. And it varies the makeup of strategic programs. As you look at transportation decarbonization on this slide, we've got a community grant allocation. And then we've got eight strategic programs there, for instance, two of which are administered by us, and then six of which are administered by city bureaus. All right. Now, this was our first climate investment plan. And so, understandably, it's important to note that each of our programs move through different stages and timelines depending on the project type and level of complexity. That would be the case with any climate investment plan. It's more so the case here since we've been standing up many new programs now, capital projects such as streetcar acquisitions or major facility upgrades often span 2 to 5 years from concept to completion. Our program based investments, some of those build on existing work and can scale quickly. Those many of that. That's been the case with many of our bureau projects that we've taken on, while others represent entirely new initiatives that take time to design and stand up for new programs that are externally facing. So essentially, those that are maybe offering a product or a service to community, those typically take 24 months to reach full implementation where funds are flowing and measurable outcomes begin. Because we go through design, RFP and contracting, program development, launch, etc. And through all of these efforts, we remain committed to intentional design, authentic community engagement and partnerships and long term impact, ensuring that the programs are built to last and deliver meaningful results. This slide gives a little bit further of an illustration of some of those timelines, and what you see in this diagram is a simple timeline for a handful of our programs and projects. So what you've got here in the top two are really programs. This is our building energy efficiency grant program. That's a program with prosper Portland followed by our e-bike rebate program. That's a program that we administer. Programs are really continuous efforts where our capital projects, which are the bottom three in this diagram, those are reflecting things that are more time bound. In either case, both of them require substantial lead time to deliver efforts. The key takeaway here being every one of these projects involves years of development work before outcomes are fully realized. When we launch a program or project, we're making long term commitments that often span that five year period. They involve complex stages, design predevelopment procurement, development, construction, pilot, soft launch, implementation. And that's really what you see here. And you know, perfect example is the 82nd avenue high capacity transit project involving multiple jurisdictional partners where there's a lot of pre-design work, procurement work to bring on the contractors. Obviously, the design stage where we expect actual construction not to begin until fy 2627. So it just gives you sort of a sense in that construction or fy 2728 and ultimately the commissioning towards the end of the cip period for that project just gives you that sense, because in many instances, we make these commitments early on to set these projects on these paths to get to these meaningful results. This diagram here just gives an overall funding breakdown across our funding areas. Well, you're going to see several diagrams that break down our funding based on different parameters. This talk this shows it by our funding areas. And what's really important here is that the majority of our investments, 51%, are focused on energy efficiency and renewable energy, which is generally focused on our buildings, our homes, apartments, school buildings, commercial buildings and so forth, followed by smaller but similar investments in transportation, decarbonization, Green infrastructure and then other funding areas. Now here in the next slides, I'm going to talk about each of those funding areas conceptually give you a sense for some of the programs, not all that are in there. So you can get a sense for what's what's working within that and encourage obviously, the discussion to dig into these afterwards. And our energy efficiency renewable energy portfolio. We've got about $156 million allocation set aside for our community grants annual cycle. And then here we're highlighting about four strategic programs, first of which is our program with housing bureau to invest in new multifamily affordable housing, making sure that every affordable housing project we develop is greener, more efficient for the for the life of that building. We're investing in single family homes. So making sure that folks can retrofit, stay in their homes, stay comfortable, and make sure they're addressing deferred maintenance. We're investing in small commercial buildings in sp for that building energy efficiency grant program through prosper Portland. And last but not least, on the slide are energy friendly schools energy friendly public schools program. That's about $120 million investment into the seven public school districts within the city of Portland boundaries. Within our transportation decarbonization funding area, we have a community grant allocation about 59 million. And then similarly, a handful of programs here, the e-bike rebate program that we administer, a reputable clean transportation access program that's the transportation wallet for all that's administered by PBOT. We've got our increasing city electric vehicle and charging infrastructure that directly supports the bureau of fleet and facilities, as well as our active transportation small capital projects. So that's a direct investment into PBOT, into the sidewalks, bike and pedestrian improvements, and then several additional awards through our collaborative for climate action funding opportunity. Green infrastructure. This includes about a smaller, about $8 million allocation to our community grants and a range of investments across city bureaus to do this work, and bureau of environmental services to the tune of 75 million within the urban forestry division at Portland parks and recreation, to the tune of about 110 million. And that's for planting new trees and maintaining and establishing existing street trees, as well as doing some private property tree work as well. Regenerative agriculture. This is oftentimes where you see a lot of the heart of our of our work and community showing up. This is where we often have some of the wonderful I mean, these are these are projects that we'd be incredibly excited to take you out to see, because there there's just there's a lot of community, a lot of joy in these projects. But there's about a $24 million allocation here through our community grants, as well as one strategic program focused on expanding access to urban farming opportunities, workforce development primarily occurs through our community grants, where we provide that grant funding to community based organizations to do job training, contractor development, pre-apprenticeship support, as well as youth climate exposure. And then we have sub allocations across some of our programs so that when we administer a strategic program, there's a clear expectation in a handful of them for that workforce development, capacity building. That's that's an important element. We've got our mini grants program as well as one strategic program focused on that. And then really in the next set of slides, I'm going to talk about how that all comes together in the community grants program. So I spoke to how those cut across our different funding areas. The community grants program is is is an important program. Again, it's the heart of PCEF. It is our annual funding cycles where we've awarded over 220 million to date for 180 projects. We also have many grants as part of this, which are more quarterly funding opportunities to small, responsive, time sensitive needs. And in the current cycle, which we'll talk in the next slides, we're going to be granting up to about 67 million with an expectation of in this climate investment plan, about three additional rounds through June of 2029. Should have probably taken a pause as we got through community grants. But I'm going to keep us moving. We've got some we've got some decks here, so I'll just keep moving through this. But our community grants and it's just an important to make that distinction known. So it is such an important program we've got these are the purpose here is to invest in community led projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and advance economic, social and climate justice. This is primarily open to nonprofit organizations. Projects have to be within the city boundaries. Workforce is a little broader. In total, funding amount in the climate investment plan is 300 million. Again, this current cycle, 67 million. We're working through that process. We are currently in the scoring stage where we're getting gearing up for making recommendations, ultimately to the city administrator for later this fall. Similar this touches across all our funding areas, which we've teed up, but we are able to fund both planning grants and implementation grants so that we both get to seed projects so they can do their energy assessments, their evaluations, and they ultimately come back to us in future rounds to do their implementation grants. As you think about our community grants program, the important thing to note here, it's an annual cycle. It takes a lot of effort, which you'll see in the next slide is just some of that effort. We go through multiple stages of application review, scoring and ultimately bringing together scoring panels. And you see some numbers here to the to the right side of the diagram, but involves a range and hundreds of hours of review going through those phases, ultimately resulting in about over 1100 hours of scoring panels where we convene about 19 scoring panels. And this current round, sometimes it's 20, sometimes it's 21 to evaluate all the applications as they move through the stages. And so with that, before we turn it over and begin talking about the current update process, the review process where we're at and giving you that sense of the budget, the status, etc. I want to just give you this overview of how the the program and the the climate investment plan is cut across when we think about different implementing partners. Now, of that 1.6 billion, about 740 million is being implemented by city bureaus, 363 million is being implemented through grants to community based organizations. About 311 million is being implemented through contracts that we administer. You'll hear more about those. And ultimately, we have our public schools, about 120 million in TriMet, about 55.5 million. And so now with that, I would like to just it's important because this annual review process is something of a long work in progress to get here, to figure out how we do this, how we bring updates to you all annually. And so I'd like to bring up co-chair d'angelo moning to speak to the the thinking, the framing behind that before our staff will walk you through the rest of the process, and then the actual amendments that will come before you all later this January.
8 Welcome. Thank you so much. Just a reminder to please introduce yourself for the record, and then feel free to jump right in.
9 Thank you, city council. Council president. For the record, my name is d'angelo moning. I serve as the co-chair of the PCEF committee alongside tracey scott, who you've heard from previously. And I served on the climate investment plan subcommittee alongside robyn wang and faith graham, faith, of which you will hear from later during this presentation. In my 33 years in the city, this is the first time that I've come before city council. So I'd like to show gratitude and appreciation for this moment and for the opportunity to speak to you all about the climate investment plan and the process that we have performed. The subcommittee is central to keeping the climate investment plan effective, equitable, and accountable in the communities that it serves. Through the annual review process, the committee reviews progress and recommends adjustments to ensure the plan stays aligned with portland's climate and equity goals. This process was developed and championed by PCEF committee members, past and present, to ensure that PCEF priority populations, populations most impacted by climate injustices are prioritized during the allocation process. It has been a difficult road leading up to this point, where proposals have been brought to the committee very abruptly with the short window for discussion and decision, and so this process also serves as a guardrail to prevent many of the impacts that come with last minute decisions. Through its annual review, the committee helps ensure that the funding decisions reflect voter intent and meets the real needs of portlanders, especially those most impacted by climate change. This open public process builds transparency and trust by showing clearly how funds are spent and what results they achieve. The annual review process creates a structured way to measure progress, learn from results, and make timely adjustments as climate, housing and economic conditions are rapidly changing. The committee's oversight allows pdf to pivot and redirect resources where they can make the greatest impact, while also maintaining fiscal and programmatic integrity. This structure is essential to public trust unless portlanders see where funds are going, what outcomes they're driving, and how decisions are made. And as conditions change, PCEF must remain agile and responsive to evolving community needs. The sip amendment process ensures that the plan remains responsive and impactful. It allows pcep to recalibrate and shift resources where they're needed most, while staying true to his established framework. This process enables quick adaptation to changing circumstances, from supply chain disruptions to extreme weather events and new opportunities for action. It's a transparent, flexible mechanism that keeps PCEF investments effective and aligned with the city's climate and community priorities. By learning from program results year over year, pccep can pivot and respond to emerging needs while staying true to its core values. It shows that portlanders can lead with both urgency and integrity, not with urgency and with integrity, with purpose and not rigidity. And in closing, this structure and process are designed to give portlanders confidence that PCEF manages public funds responsibly, remains accountable to community priorities, and stays responsive to the evolving challenges of climate change. And with that, I would like to turn it over to james valdez.
10 Thank you.
11 All right. Thank you. Good to be with you all today. Council president, members of council. My name is james valdez and I work on the program as strategic partnerships and policy manager. And today I'll first talk through the framework and process that we've engaged in over the past few months to come forward with the the subcommittee's work on the draft cip amendment before going into some of the details and the actual content of that draft amendment. That is out for public comment right now. So next slide. So you actually already saw this slide, but just to reground ourselves in where we're at in this moment in context of the larger cip, we are in the second fiscal year of the five year climate investment plan. And as director engstrom mentioned, there's still a lot of the ramp up of different programs, both within the city as well as our programs and elements of the cip that are administered by PCEF staff. And so we really are looking to have this annual cip amendment process as a way to refine and rightsize programs, to be able to respond to needs that emerge. But really, what you'll see in this annual cip is it's largely technical changes, scope adjustments, and the learnings that we've had over the over the last year of engagement and ramp up of those programs. So I'll go through the next slide here over the last over the last few months, as dangelo mentioned, we've been working with the three person subcommittee of the larger committee consisting of faith and d'angelo, as well as robin wang. And I'll walk you through the steps that we've taken with the subcommittee in in helping them develop this recommendation. So the first was really an assessment of the status and the the funding expenditures of of the different programs within the cip and the grant programs. And to really just understand the launch and phases of the different programs in the cip, which consists in total of 37 strategic programs, as well as the collaborative for climate action program, which is seven grants, as well as a much larger community grants. Then the second step is evaluating projected revenue or budget, and I'll just share it here. There's no additional projected new revenue into the clean energy surcharge over the five year period of of the climate investment plan. And sam will talk a little bit more about that later. Then we with the committee worked to evaluate selected programs to look at those that had data behind them, that had performance reporting, and to be able to evaluate which ones to dive a little bit deeper into. And I do want to highlight that for every strategic program, there are goals and metrics as well as reporting that happens. And so that's both for the city bureau projects as well as for all of the ones that are implemented by by PCEF directly. Then the subcommittee has developed a draft recommendation for amendments and adjustments in the climate investment plan. And those are really designed to address the learnings and opportunities that have come forward over the past year in implementation. And then we're kind of in this step five in the light blue here, which is we're out for public comment on the 20th of October, I guess just two days ago, we went out and published the public comment draft that was also shared, I believe, with many of you all, and that contains both a redline of proposed changes as well as a summary of those changes. And we have a survey that is available in open right now. And we welcome public input. The message went out to all of the all of the people who subscribed to the PCEF mailing list, as well as out to the broader community. And so in contextualizing where we are with this cip amendment, I mentioned this before, but we really still are in that ramp up phase of many programs. We we don't have a projected new revenue into the clean energy surcharge. And we the the subcommittee really focused their review on programs that were close to meeting their allocation goals or that had demonstrated significant success in implementation. And so with that, I'll pass it back. Oh, no, there's one more one more slide. So when we look at that status of different programs within the climate investment plan, this is a brief overview of kind of those phases of development that sam had mentioned. So we have 22 active projects and programs both within city bureaus as well as some of the some of the other ones that are implemented directly by PCEF staff or administrators. We have three programs that are in the beginning implementation phases. We have nine programs that are in development, including in procurement of rfps or or kind of deeper, deeper launch. And then we have two programs that are in early design. We have two programs that have functionally or effectively not started yet, but are still anticipated to be launched in the coming year. And then we have three programs in the strategic strategic programs in the climate investment plan that have completed their activities. Largely. I'll just note this is parks, facilities improvements with that. Then I'll pass it over to sam.
12 Thank you james. So this pie chart shows our total $1.6 billion climate investment plan funding over a five year period. That framing is important. It's five year period now. So far, our actual spending primarily from fy 2425 last fiscal year totals about 146 million. Now, this current fiscal year, we are budgeted for 340 million. Separate from that, we have about 170 million in encumbrances and about 479 million under contract for future spending. Now, the remaining 515 million of this climate investment plan is committed within the climate investment plan, but not yet contracted, not yet encumbered or budgeted now. So I'm going to break that down because I suspect there's going to be interest in that remaining $550 million in the next slide. Now of that remaining 550 million. And what it speaks to is for the bureaus which you primarily see in this pie chart to the right side, it's about most of that, the left side of the pie chart, it reflects the future bureau, future funding in the climate investment plan that's heading to the largest recipients would be Portland parks and recreation, about 67 million PBOT, about 101 million remaining over the next five years. The cip Portland housing bureau about 59 million, followed by. And I missed the order. But your environmental services, prosper Portland and so forth. Now the community grants are also captured here. Remember, the community grants is an annual cycle. So we've got three more cycles in this cip remaining, and there's about 132 million in the next fiscal years, as well as our PCEF administered strategic programs that are not yet under contract, about 49 million. So that that's what comprises that remaining 515 million in allocations. Now, this is another way of looking at that same chart you saw earlier. And what this does, this overlays our existing our current beginning fund balance. And what you see is the current fund balance certainly covers what's budgeted for this fiscal year. That 340 million. It covers what's been encumbered as well as it covers the remaining contracted spend to the tune of about 48%. And so it's to acknowledge that in order to cover the remaining contracted contracts or the allocations, those future revenues that are going to be coming into the surcharge are, are key. So just want to frame that so that I know that that question around the fund balance and context to the current budget, our encumbrances and contracts is always the question mark. And I try to provide that overlay here. Okay. And so last before I turn it back over to, to to james, and we talk about the actual amendments ahead before you all. Is this just want to give a snapshot of our our version, one of our PCEF dashboard. This provides an overview of some of the key metrics and outcomes around our broken down by our funding area. Now this important to note was developed focused on our community grants. We're continuing to build this out and refine this for strategic programs. And part of that is figuring out the the quarterly reporting we're getting from our bureau partners, understanding how we do that quantification and have that ultimately feed into our database. And so right now, those metric tonne emissions reductions are on the and they're focused exclusively on our community grants. But I want to name that just ongoing work to build this out. So we get to that that next stage here and ultimately capture the entirety of our work in this dashboard related to our strategic programs and other programs. And here I just a summary of our council process and engagement as we talk about, again, this update process is that, again, as james had noted, we are the public comment period is currently open. It closes on November 5th. The PCEF committee will review those comments and make ultimately their recommendations on the annual cip update in mid December. We're working to bring those to you all and engaging with the council on that update content. Between that mid December through January period, you're going to hear, obviously, you're going to get a sneak peek of it today, and that engagement will focus on understanding the committee's recommended adjustments and what to name. And we've begun these conversations on ultimately teasing out a council focused process. So we've started the conversation on developing a secondary, structured process to better capture the council's priorities and inputs ahead of the budget process. And that's a conversation we're currently having with city leadership as well. Ultimately, council president, your team chair. With that, I'm going to turn it back to james, and then we'll bring you all home here in a few more slides.
13 All right. So yeah, this is really the content then of the draft cip amendments that the subcommittee has brought forward. We'll also have an opportunity for faith graham to to speak a little bit to some of this. But the content itself is broken into kind of four categories of adjustment. Go ahead next next slide. And so the the recommendations or draft changes fall into these four areas. The first and is funding adjustments opportunities to either increase or decrease funding for strategic programs within the cip. Based on that evaluation process that I mentioned earlier. And then the second and the largest bulk of content within the cip amendment is adjustments and scope refinements. As I mentioned, there are goals for each of the strategic programs and a scope of work of of that kind of eligible uses of fund of funds within each strategic program. And so this provides clarity, incorporates lessons learned from past years of engagement in launching those programs, and helps us be able to monitor and track those as we go forward into the cip. And then there are some technical changes, really just correcting inaccuracies. The the cip itself is a document that is close to 100 pages. And so there are some pieces there that needed revision as we reviewed them. And then the fourth is really city budget alignment with past council action that you all have made in either the 2024 25 or 20 2526 city budget. In elements where the current version of the climate investment plan doesn't align with some changes that were made. And so this these pool of changes kind of brings that into harmony and reflects those adopted city budget adjustments. And with that, I think we'll get into the actual content and we'll bring up faith to talk about the first, the first one.
14 No name, namely, because funding adjustments are critical work here. And I think that was important to really hear the committee's perspective on that. So faith thank you.
15 Yeah. Great. Thank you. Good morning. Council president. Councilors, thank you so much for having me here today. My name is faith graham and I have been a long standing member of the committee and also on this subcommittee, so I'm very happy to be here with you, grateful for the work that you do, and also for the invitation to talk about with you today. So, as I said, I'm here on behalf of PCEF committee that did the evaluation of the cip amendment in this round. We I wanted to share both our analysis and the intent behind the recommendation of funding reallocation to strategic program one, and that is the clean energy and new regulated multifamily affordable housing. So why were we interested in this particular program and looking at potential funding reallocation when the opportunity arose to put inactive funds to use this program in particular, clearly stood out? It's the only program within the strategic programs that has fully committed all existing funds to active projects. It met or exceeded its goals that were originally set forth, and it has an established and proven and effective, efficient pathway to deploy the additional funding quickly. This is administered by the Portland housing bureau and is in line with what they do day in and day out in supporting housing developers and owners in putting much needed affordable housing on the street. In short, as strategic program one is performing exceptionally well and ready to do more. With its original 63.7 million in funding, the Portland housing bureau supported 25 new affordable housing projects and created more than 2700 energy efficient homes. These the investments in in the energy efficiency from PCEF dollars, average about $22,000 per unit and have supported all those those specific kind of measures, including insulation, high efficiency hvac, energy, star appliances and solar installations. The result is that housing is cleaner, healthier and more affordable for Portland residents while advancing the city's climate goals. Kind of the perfect sweet spot. I wanted to share a couple of examples that I'm sure you know about the julia west house in downtown provides 89 homes for seniors exiting homelessness, offering stable, efficient housing, and it was supported by PCEF funds. Another example is the alder nine project in buckman, which includes 159 affordable all electric units that was completed this month, directly lowering energy costs for its residents. These projects represent what PCEF was designed to accomplish clean energy solutions that directly improve people's lives. The demand for affordable housing, as you all are very aware of, continues to exceed the available supply. Rising construction costs costs are often a pressure when developing new affordable housing, but that is particularly so now. And with that rising construction costs, developers and owners often remove the energy efficiency features called value engineering that keep housing sustainable and affordable. In the long term. These dollars are able to avoid that value. Engineering. As a committee, we see this as a critical opportunity. Investing in efficiency now will ensure lower lifetime energy costs, greater resilience and reduced emissions across our city. For these reasons, we anticipate recommending a $15 $15 million reallocation to sp one. This investment would support approximately 580 additional affordable housing homes, and focus on projects that are ready to move forward and can deliver immediate, measurable community benefits. These are homes that will get built, and with the efficiency measures that PCEF could support, it means that we're not kicking the can down the road. On bringing that affordability and the climate goals to those homes will be building that in at the front end. Thank you very much for your time. And that's all I have for you right now. Thank you.
16 All right. Thank you, beth. And then I'll speak to the decrease. Decrease that the committee proposes, which is a decrease of $15 million in strategic program, 13 from $35 million to $20 million. And this is a program that within the climate investment plan, envisions opportunities for financing for commercial use of electric vehicles, as well as for ride hailing vehicles for drivers of taxis, lyft or uber. As we as as staff have been building up lots of other programs, this is one that admittedly has not be due to staff capacity been launched yet. And so this is still we recognize that ev financing is a is a need out there, that there is both interest and opportunity for commercial use of evs. But the scale of this funding and what can realistically be deployed over the remaining part of the cip, is in alignment with a reduction. And the the committee evaluated that opportunity. So this reduction helps, you know, to be able to balance that. And also, you know, I will acknowledge that there's been a lot of changes in the ev landscape, including over the last few months. Go ahead and go. Next slide. So the bulk of changes in the cip amendment draft are really related to goal adjustments as well as scope refinements. And so goal adjustments are those elements of metrics that different strategic programs are, are intended to meet. And then scope refinements largely pertain to the eligible use of funds within a strategic program. So I'll briefly walk through these here. One of them is strategic program seven, the PBOT equitable clean transportation access, which really consists of two major programs that PBOT manages and runs for the community. The first is the transportation wallet access for all, and the second is the biketown for all program. And the draft amendment really makes some edits to reduce the focus on numerical emissions reduction associated with that strategic program. Recognizing that the real intent of this program is universal transportation access and that mode shift, while it is measured, is not the primary driver of access to transit and and micro micromobility in in that program. The second is strategic program 21 Portland hydroelectric bureau and the relicensing project that's ongoing right now with ferc. And this simply adds some goals specific to the individual milestones of that ferc relicensing, rather than just the end result of having a license at the end of the five year period. In strategic strategic program 22, bureau of environmental services has an allocation and manages a broad range of programs within this strategic program focused on Green stormwater, infrastructure and watershed health. And as we've worked with them, we recognize the need to be able to see with greater resolution and detail the subelements of that program. So the the draft recommendation splits that program into seven different sub allocations with goal measures for each of them, so that we can track those through the remaining part of the cip with greater resolution then in the scope, refinement or eligible uses section also to strategic program seven, there's an expansion of allowable use to allow biketown fleet upgrades to be part of eligible costs, with specific circumstances and conditions attached to that in strategic program 14. The fairly broad and flexible access to fair and fair and flexible capital. This broadens the scope of that program and really reflects both current needs and opportunities, and create specific allocations for both the consumer financing product as well as prosper Portland programs, including office to residential conversion and an anchor destination program within strategic program 29. The PBOT active transportation maintenance operations, which is really focused on bike Lane sweeping and electrification of the equipment used for that. This allows additional vehicles to be purchased, basically additional street sweepers, electrified sweepers, as well as equipment to support those operations. So the next slide, so there's only one technical adjustment proposed in the strategic program 25, which is implemented by Portland housing bureau, is focused on existing affordable housing, energy for regulated affordable housing, energy improvements and preservation. It removes sub allocation of funding that was really not implemented and was paid for by other funds, and also reflects a previous subcommittee decision of moving some funding from this to strategic program one. Then getting to the last bucket or or category of proposed changes in the draft. Those are the ones that capture, as I mentioned before, the budget decisions that were made in previous fiscal years. This includes in strategic program five, which is allocation for building upgrades for community severe weather response, or kind of making resilience hubs for extreme heat or or ice events. This provides provided in the 20 2425 budget, a allocation to Portland parks and recreation to make upgrades to three different community centers, to be able to make those more energy efficient and resilient, as well as funding lighting improvements throughout many city parks, as well as a light pole upgrades. Then, in this fiscal year, there were a couple budget moves that we wanted to be able to capture accurately in the climate investment plan, which includes strategic program 26. This is the electrification of city fleet and the investment in electric vehicle and charging infrastructure. There was a debt retirement offset of $5 million for ev infrastructure and charging that we needed to ensure was accurately reflected there in either retiring that debt or offsetting the cost of debt that would not be issued. And then in strategic program 34, this is an allocation that Portland parks and recreation is launching for street tree care citywide, as well as some workforce development elements. In this year's city budget, there was a redirection of some funds and staffing to Portland permitting and development. And so this reflects that move. The exact amount still to be determined as we work with city budget office on that. And that was a lot. I think we're yeah, we're open for questions and further discussion. And if we need to bring other folks up here, we can.
17 Thank you all. I know that there are a lot of questions that folks have been writing down as you've been talking. Councilor Novick, would you like to kick us off?
18 Yes, I have a massive questions, but I'll try to make them quick. One is about. There's a couple of examples where I'm curious whether what's being done with PCEF money is different from what we're being done without it. Like in terms of the multifamily housing, energy investments was for the Portland housing bureau building really energy efficient houses before, and that was their plan. And because because of the investment, they're building different housing than they would have otherwise.
19 I think this is this is a wonderful question, and I think I welcome our committee member, graham, to come up. I think it's maybe do you want to speak to what your observations in terms of the value engineering that's occurred on these projects? Or and I'm happy to chime in too.
20 Sure. Thank you. Thank you for the question. My understanding and belief, having worked with Portland housing bureau and and in the affordable housing space for a number of years now, is that indeed it is Portland housing bureau's intention to build this much energy efficient housing as possible, often when adding new units, that is the first thing. However, the high efficiency above code efficiency measures are the things that get cut out of budgets as you're trying to build extra units. So as we're seeing construction costs go astronomically up, we are seeing more and more of those high efficiency units being and again this is above code measure that says funds are funding.
21 So funds are specifically tied to investments above code. Yes. Correct. Okay. Similar question about the schools money. I mean we're giving 120 million to the schools where the schools really going to not make investments in hvac systems, etc. If actually if somebody give me the background of how we wound up giving 120 million to the schools, period.
22 So yes, there's two stages. The first tranche of funding came through the original climate investment plan, where we engaged community members over the period of nine months. And through that, schools funding surfaced up as a key priority area. And so in that we had originally funded about 50 million. Some of that was for student led activities. And about I want to I think it was about 40, 47 or so million was focused on infrastructure upgrades. And it's I think that was just a cumulative of engagement that had occurred over time around schools having this deficit and this need for addressing some of this key infrastructure. Yes, I know Portland public schools certainly has had several bond measures, but that has not necessarily been the case for many of our other districts within the city, whether centennial park, rose, david douglass, etc. And so then the second tranche of funding that was awarded to schools came through our collaborative for climate action funding. Opportunity for the school districts came together after that first round. They had a long summary. They, with leadership from education district, brought the districts together and really came up with a pretty comprehensive list of measures and improvements that they would make to buildings across the districts to meet their climate goals, keep kids in schools longer, etc.
23 We touched on a question I had, which is, I mean, the Portland public schools seems to be able to get the public to approve multibillion dollar bonds. And you said that a chunk of the money goes to the other districts that aren't able to do that. How big a chunk of the money is going to the other districts as opposed to bts?
24 It's a question I'd love to follow up, but I'd say at a high level is that we do have we did have a more equity oriented formula for distributing funding. It was based on essentially percentage of kids on free and reduced lunch, etc. And so while wps is certainly the district that is getting most more resources than the other districts, the east Portland districts are disproportionately getting more. I know that at a high level, because that was a subject of a lot of discussion, but wps just being still the behemoth that it is, is, is still getting.
25 And you said this bubbled up through community process. It wasn't a matter of school board members or school administration asking about this. It was just sort of spontaneous people saying we should give money to the schools.
26 I almost now now I want to go back to the recesses of my memory of that process. But no, that that's that's correct. I think that for a long time, leading as we implemented the early parts of the program, the community oriented framing of the program, we heard consistently where school districts to others saying, how can we access PCEF resources? And at that point we were really focused on nonprofit, nonprofit organizations. That was the primary avenue. And so when we created the cip process, that was a clear that was a clear calling that came up. And we then did we then did actively bring together the districts to say, okay, if we were going to do something here, how do we make it make sense?
27 Did anybody was there any engagement with pbs saying, why can't you pay for this stuff with all these bonds you do?
28 That's a that's a I think I think that's a good question, not a question that I maybe I hear the question that was an explicit question that we asked as staff.
29 One of your big categories on your implementation implementers slide, which I thought was very useful, was rfps for seven strategic programs. And that unlike the others that doesn't identify with the implementer is it doesn't say the city community grants. What can you quickly go through what that means, who the implementer actually expected to be.
30 These are situations. And this is a really wonderful example where we're able to leverage and tap into the private market capacity where we put out. We work with our procurement department to put out essentially rfps for administrators. We're putting out requests for proposals where we say we want to bring in an external administrator, not the city, not us directly as piece of staff to administer program. A good examples of that that we've recently awarded. We have evergreen energy as a group that's administering our single family home program. They're they're an administrator that administers typically many utility programs. And so they're going to be administering one of our programs, a $150 million program. We've got resource innovations group. As an administrator. We recently awarded a contract to to administer our e-bike rebate program. And so these are the these are for programs that there's a lot of tremendous community interest. We want to structure the program. We as staff weren't going to directly administer it, but we were going to bring on contractors to do so. So that's what those that's what that bucket of resources are for.
31 How does lighting improvement in the parks relate to climate and equity goals?
32 I think this is certainly at base level. We have plenty of lighting that plenty of lights within the park system that are operating on still halogen lights, and we're getting them to move into led lighting. So there's just base level. Yes, there is that efficiency upgrade. Yes. As part of that, as part of those projects, many instances, we took on more of the infrastructure as well and got some into the deferred maintenance. But at a baseline level, it's just getting lighting over from these high energy halogen lights to led lights.
33 I thought parks decided to do that years and years ago. Like before.
34 You there, I'm sure I city streetlights. That's a portion of what some of the work that's happened a lot of city streetlights. I would have to turn back to colleagues to get to the extent of whether that's happened. I will acknowledge that's not universal, like that's that project. And that investment is not universal across the parks. It was certainly focused on some of these historic old lights that we have in the parks. But I'd have to follow up with our colleagues to get more information there.
35 So a number of months ago, the mayor suddenly announced that he was going to take $15 million of PCEF money and use it for office to residential conversions, which I'm sure prompted members of the council to say, hey, do I get $15 million in sf2? So it's in a context where most of the money is allocated to something or other. How did the mayor get the idea that he could take $15 million off the top?
36 That was within strategic program, I believe, 14 and that is a program that has the fair and flexible capital allocation. It has flexibility for the administration to make decisions about how to allocate money. And so that's where that is coming from. It's not taking from a different program. It's it's making a decision within an existing program.
37 And how big is that program. The access to flexible affordable capital.
38 45 million.
39 Okay.
40 It's notable, you know, when you look across the climate investment plan and we've shared this, it's but for the rest of the council members there's many of our programs are fairly prescriptive. We target exactly. We say we're going to target 600 households that are between up to 80% area median income, 300 households between 80 to 120. We're fairly prescriptive on many of our programs. This was one of the programs that was less prescriptive, recognizing that as we implement this plan, that we would need flexibility to serve, particularly some of those opportunities where and certainly we expect this in the private marketplace, in the commercial building space, where we would need more flexibility so that this program was entirely designed with that expectation of needing that flexibility to complement many of our other programs. And that was the program that we leaned that that the mayor leaned into there.
41 So if this access to flexible capital program didn't exist, it would have required a revision of the cip for the mayor to say, I want 15 million for this particular purpose.
42 Correct?
43 Okay. I think that those were most of my questions. I oh, no, I had one more 41 million for the cutter garage and related things. What's that about and what does that have to do with climate change.
44 Yeah. This came through the climate action collaborative for climate action funding opportunity. It's really a three part project. I'll turn it over to my colleague james to to briefly describe it. Maybe I'll just go ahead and turn it to james.
45 Yeah. Thank you. Councilor Novick. So this is a program or project really that came forward through collaborating for climate action, through that competitive grant solicitation that happened in 2024 or. I'm sorry. Yeah. And really consists of three different parts. One is the upgrades and move to cutter garage and the electrification infrastructure needed to make that really a new, you know, maintenance and repair and operations hub focused on electric fleet rather than the current garage, which is mostly gas and diesel servicing the fleet. And so that requires both infrastructure upgrades as well as there are to allow for all the charging needed, as well as hvac upgrades and making that that whole facility as efficient as possible. So that's one part of that allocation. The other part is making energy efficiency improvements at other city facilities that bureau of facilities manages, and developing a scope of work and doing lighting, hvac installation, upgrades to a suite of facilities that they're still in the process of scoping. And then the third is an allocation of their community partner, Portland community college and Portland community college foundation, which is focused on a few different elements of workforce development and building, kind of the next generation of workers, really in these trades, both for electric vehicle technicians as well as building operations and maintenance folks, to be able to have both a broader pipeline for that workforce development throughout the entire community, as well as also over time to to serve the city of portland's workforce needs. And so there's really three elements, but cutter garage and the city fleet kind of moving to there is is a large component.
46 And that that program is allowing pcc to essentially get into the business of training electric vehicle mechanics.
47 Correct? Yeah, they're building a whole new curriculum around that.
48 So, I mean, is the PCEF money in the new garage that really specifically tied to. Electrification, or is it mostly just, you know, we're giving we want to help out the city, pay for the new garage. And and it would have been electric anyway because we made a separate decision to electrify the fleet.
49 It's tied to proportional amount of the garages functions that are focused on electric vehicles. And so it is that's kind of the approach and framework that's being used.
50 All right. Thank you.
51 Thank you councilor, councilor Dunphy.
52 Thank you. I also have a number of questions and I'll try to get through them quickly. Colleagues I apologize. No surprise. Many of my questions will be east Portland focused. But my first question is looking at the goal adjustments component of what's coming as an amendment. Are the goals that are set for this outcome based or are they upfront goals? Meaning, are we setting categories for which to set our goals and then setting those goals? Or are these focused on tangible reductions in carbon emissions or tangible reductions in cost? Or how do we set goals?
53 It's I would say it's generally outcomes based. It is about emissions reductions. It is about cost savings because of the the there's 37 programs in there. So the goals are certainly variable. In some instances we're targeting we want to make sure that we're saving businesses at least 20% on their energy bills. And so but then there's some areas where you see, as we've gone through, we've realized the goals aren't quite the right goals. And that really is a really that's a good example, for instance, where we talk about transportation, wallet or bike town, where the focus of that is really providing more equitable access to clean transportation. It's about reinforcing a system, but we don't have emissions reductions that are happening. We're strengthening a system, but we're not getting people out of internal combustion engine vehicles and cars into evs, because these are folks that would not allow just getting better access to moving around the community. So it varies, but generally speaking, outcomes based. And I'll look to james to see if you have anything else to add. But generally speaking, outcomes based.
54 Yeah, I will just say that, yeah. For the goals. You know, a lot of that is based on both the energy savings carbon metrics, but also a number of people served, the number of homes improved, kind of the community benefit element of it. And so for each one, each program has kind of a different flavor of goals based on the type of work that that is being being done in that program.
55 Okay, good. That's great. I mean, I'll tell you that the criticism I've heard of this program is that sometimes it is money in search of a program to fund. And if we are working towards a a tangible reduction that we can measure and say we reduced this much reliance on fossil fuels, we reduce this much carbon emissions. And we got there by investing in these backwards. That is exactly what I think this should be. To that end, within the the pot of dollars that went to community groups through nonprofit groups, my team was given a a briefing earlier this year and demonstrated that the investment in district one is less than half the district, two less than just about still less than half district three, partially. That's because we don't have as many nonprofits. How are there is there any effort to try and make ensure that either the citywide goals or citywide investments are disproportionately being spent in district one, where the highest need is and the highest concentration of poverty? But poverty is.
56 It's it's a point that you've made there, councilor Dunphy, that we've been watching for quite a while and starting from a very early community grant rounds and seeing just where the nonprofit capacity existed, it was in many ways what reinforced some of the shifts in the pivot to our strategic programs, where we can be more directive of those and cooling. Portland is a perfect example of an early strategic program, before we called it that, where disproportionately we are actually distributing our cooling units in district one. And so that is similarly what we expect for many of our other strategic programs we are targeting there. Obviously, we're standing them up now. We expect that to be the case for our transportation wallet for all program in a handful of others. And so that's work that as we rolled up, as we roll out more of these strategic programs that we we absolutely are expecting and working to make sure that that that balance is coming, that is coming into balance.
57 That's particularly in the programs that we're managing through those private rfps where we've hired an administrator, we've built in language to their contracts and their expectations that relate to getting that equity outcome across geographies.
58 Yeah. And, councilor Dunphy, I'd also just add that part of this is our work with partner bureaus and implementation of projects, both, you know, with PBOT and sidewalks to schools program, as well as when we look at the major investment on 82nd avenue corridor with TriMet. You know, that project is actually a little tricky because it spans three different districts, but largely in district one.
59 I mean, largely related. I'm going to jump ahead of my questions. I, I feel like investments in bike town are counter to that goal. Bike town usage in district one is dramatically less than it is in district four, for example, right? It's more convenient to use a bike town bike in downtown than it is out in parkrose. Additionally, bike town is, as I understand it, it's a collaboration between PBOT, nike and lyft. Why is our investment in their infrastructure come with any requirements for private capital to be also investing? Does nike or lyft on the hook for electrifying their own bikes, or are we simply taking that on to the benefit of some, but against other communities?
60 Let me speak first.
61 I think I think at a high level, I think just naming what you spoke to there around bike town being probably disproportionately used in district four and likely two versus district one, I think that that's we certainly see that. And I think I just want to acknowledge the balance. We know some programs there's going to be just a balance where programs are going to be more heavily used in one geography versus others. I just want to acknowledge that that we hear that and and I'll turn it to james to really speak to some of the technical questions you just asked there.
62 Yeah. Thank you, councilor Dunphy. And just to maybe clarify the current uses of funds within the in that strategic program, seven are really focused on providing a reduction in cost for income qualified bike riders and the biketown for all program. And so that makes the system available to a broader range of people that do have lower income. The amendment proposed would be to allow some funds to be used as an investment in the fleet upgrade, and to move towards what's called the new cosmos bike, and that would require some renegotiation of the lyft PBOT contract. I don't want to speak too much to the particulars, because that is something that PBOT will have to engage, engage on. But there are there's a vision of conditionality there, with some changes to the way that biketown operates.
63 Okay. I want to make sure that we're not just throwing money at a private company that doesn't serve my my community, especially when if you've gone to any other city, we know that there are other companies that are offering electric bikes without deep subsidies from a clean energy fund like this, and I suspect that there are free market solutions to try and getting to the same outcomes. Whereas I think investment in infrastructure might be a better use of those dollars, rather than just seeing it go out the door. To that same similar end, sort of following along councilor Novick's question about the school districts, 40% of all the kids in the city of Portland live east of 82nd. 82nd is our geographic center. I understand that there are some ties to both poverty level and need, but I've also heard from some of the school districts that the needs that look different east of 82nd reynolds, for example, has some newer buildings, but they have no shade for their kids. And so when they applied for a grant to try and build some shade infrastructure, they were declined because it didn't directly tie to carbon reductions. Are we taking a closer look to ensure that east Portland is getting its east Portland school districts are getting their fair share? I would expect that at least 40% of those dollars would be going. Understanding that pbs is the behemoth, but also, are those investments able to look and adapt differently to the needs of of my neighbors.
64 On the percentage number? I'd love to follow up on that and just make sure we have that with with with clarity and offer you that on the you know, what we do is what our staff work with the districts and all the districts, and I forget the exact number, but they have at least 100, 150,000 or so to begin planning and developing their projects. Correct. In that particular instance, I'm familiar with the shade structure that the reynolds school district was trying to develop, and we worked with them to tease out to what extent we could make that a solar shade structure. So we work with the staff to say, what do you need? How do we make sure it fits within our parameters? And so our staff are they're more than willing to figure out. And I think given more than willing to figure out how do we find those eligible projects, given the extent of need within the districts focused on hvac cooling, all that? I mean, we know that I believe it's david douglas has no schools with any cooling. We know that those resources, we can target them in alignment and find those needs. But, but but our staff always are available to to find that it's we see that as a partnership and making sure that alignment is there mutually great.
65 I mean, similar to what councilor Novak was saying, you know, Portland public has been able to pass multi-billion dollars worth of levies and, and bonds. And the park grove school district has tried twice now to pass a bond and failed by 125 votes. The needs are just dramatically different, and I hope that we can have that reflected. Similar question with regard to investments in city bureaus and similar to what councilor Novick was asking about, like upgrading lights to leds. Is that are those investments focused on cost to the city or usage by the city when we're when we're trying to upgrade, you know, is upgrading the led lights, reducing the electricity usage and the cost to the city at such a level that is worth it as compared to other upgrades? I don't know, replacing the pool pumps or whatever it is.
66 I think, you know, and when I maybe I'll bring this back when we talk about the evolution over time of peace, I think if you think about this current climate investment plan versus what we anticipate working on in two years and beginning in earnest and teasing out, it's going to look very different. I think we've learned quite a bit about our approach, the different resources that have come in at different times. And so I think I would acknowledge without a doubt that we would take a more comprehensive view and look at the city more holistically. I think in times right now, as we came into the first plan, certain bureaus have information, certain bureaus don't. We have some information about some of our buildings? We don't have information about others. So we don't we haven't always had the ability to take a really comprehensive view we would like to take. So we're looking fully at the entirety of the city's assets and being able to make that evaluation. And so in these in those instances, yes, those will save ongoing operating costs to the city as a function of switching over to leds. They also certainly save the city capital upfront capital costs of making those improvements. And so and that's what the target in that instance was, the upfront capital cost. In order to enable the city to leverage those both energy savings and and utility bill savings afterwards.
67 I would also add that we are in conversations with the efforts underway at the unified capital improvements projects, because we we recognize that a more holistic view for the future of cip is is a likely likely path.
68 Two more quick questions now, one comment and one quick question. Slide 37. The pie chart is wrong. It said one section was 10% and another section was 30%, and they were roughly the same size. Just for the future.
69 I will. So this is it's it's the visual that overlay that 29 or 30%. There is actually partially underneath the Green and partially on the other side. And so it's partially because we took two pie charts. We overlaid them because what we wanted to show is of the different ways in which you parse out our funding, that Green which we overlaid, and there's no clean way to do it. So with more time, we will do it better. That Green reflects the fund balance, the beginning fund balance. And so that's why you see the smaller wedge. But it actually is part. So what what the fund balance covers is goes into and covers about half of that that contract.
70 Understood. Okay. Thank you.
71 It's more correct here.
72 Quite confused about that. But and then also james you said there are no no projected new revenues coming in. Is that above. What do you mean no projected above what we anticipated or no revenues are coming in. End of sentence.
73 No, no, I definitely meant in relation to the projections that have already been made over the five year period of the climate investment plan.
74 The 1.6 million number has not changed.
75 Yeah. Okay.
76 And then my last question is when investing in affordable housing, I think my numbers are going to be wrong here. But it looked it was about $25,000 per unit of investment. Is that coordinated with all of the development partners and the city agencies ahead of time, or is that a sort of retroactive adding, you know, do we build that into the cost of these units generally? Is this offsetting other funds?
77 Each project has kind of a unique capital stack, but I will say that in many cases, PCEF was instrumental to getting these projects out of the ground during the difficult times in the last few years of changing interest rates. So it's it's part of their financial planning with a lot of other layers.
78 Okay.
79 Thank you. Those are all my questions.
80 Thank you councilor, councilor Smith.
81 Thank you, madam president. Good morning. Y'all can say good morning.
82 Good morning. Morning.
83 Thank you for the presentation. And very extensive very comprehensive. And I just want to say that I appreciate the work that you all do and the new cip plan and everything that you're doing. But I'm going to go along the lines of councilor Dunphy in terms of district one. But first, I want to go back to the cutter garage since we talked about that yesterday. And so that I'm clear, we just did $44 million in, in, in, in bonds to, to do that project. And you're saying that you all have awarded 41 million to the project. So. Is that money going to the new leased site to upgrade the evs, or is it to the old site to get that cleaned up?
84 Yeah. Thank you, councilor Smith. And that is definitely for the new site for the new cutter garage facility on swan island. It's not for kirby garage.
85 Okay.
86 So it's a portion only of that total amount in in that award is to.
87 I know 10 million is for pcc for the for the apprenticeship program that they don't have. So we're creating it for them when they should be creating it for themselves. Secondly, the other money we had, we had an extensive conversation about this yesterday, and one of my colleagues said that we should that the the private sector owner should donate the the land in back to, to the city of Portland. And I thought, wow, that's interesting. That's an interesting public private kind of partnership. But then as I'm listening today to see all the money that we're also putting in, and it was said yesterday that they were doing all the upgrades, but it sounds like we're putting $30 million into that leased site. So maybe she was on to something.
88 Yeah, I'll need to quickly double check, but I believe the amount of funds going into the garage is more around 19 million.
89 How much?
90 Around 19 million.
91 19 million. And that's still a considerable amount of money that we are investing in somebody else's land in project. And so the question was yesterday whether or not we should have bought a piece of land that we owned. But we have we're going to upgrade this site. It doesn't sound like the owner is going to be doing a whole lot of upgrades. It sounds like we're doing the upgrades. It sounds like they're getting the lease money. They're getting the new value of that property. And it it is something that was not talked about in yesterday's. City council agenda item. It was our last item. But I'm just trying to stretch this out because I want my councilors to have a full understanding of where and how much money we are actually putting into that site, so that we have a full understanding. So the second piece is miss graham. I believe she talked about sp 580 and the 18 million additional dollars that were going to be put into that project. And my question is, with that additional $18 million, have we identified how to incorporate either in our application process when those dollars are, you know, committed to help projects in district one? Because district one, as my colleague has said, there's a huge disparity in terms of resources that are being used in that district. Considering that we have the lowest family salary size of the entire district, our average salary for a household is $60,000, compared to the other three districts where it's like 91, 92. And it would be great if we could see some of those resources be spent. In terms of affordable housing, we talk about building affordable rental housing, but we're not talking about building affordable single family homes for folks who are who are basically not able to to spend $100,000 on a down payment of something. So that is really important to to my district. And the other piece is. As I'm thinking about the the application process, I'm wondering, are there some ways that we can change the the nature of the questions so that we are actually inviting folks from district one and they will get a certain piece of this, you know, the granted programs. And so it doesn't have to be just the nonprofits if it's going to serve low income folks and reduce the carbon, that's that's the goal of the project. So I would just like to be able to work with you all to see where we can actually kind of embed district one or the districts that you're going to equally. And I know everything is not equal, but that we're we're looking we recognize that there's a disparity in district one, and we need to make sure that we try to close that gap in that disparity.
92 I think that's something we would love to follow up with you alongside, certainly our colleagues with the Portland housing bureau. We tend to our objective oftentimes is finding those emissions reductions, those savings for those households. And as you know, housing projects are complicated, and we tend to be about 10% of the capital stack. So we've got to find that other 90% or some other chunk of that percent. Councilor Smith and and bring that alignment where we can say whether it's Oregon housing and community service resources and low income housing tax credits, and make sure that we're having that conversation, because what I'll say is that extra, additional 15 million, obviously, we've got to get that ultimately passed by you all. And then and then we would begin working with the housing bureau to structure a notice of funding availability, funding opportunity so that we can get those resources into projects. So that opportunity certainly is there. But I want to acknowledge our sort of slice of any housing project. And so it's equally as much about those other partners being able to bring that alignment together.
93 Because that program is largely allocated. We could give you a distribution of how that particular program is allocated across the district. So it's easy enough.
94 Thank you. And so the other thing I'm sure you're well aware of a, a piece of legislation that that I authored and passed. It's a two part kind of thing. It's called cip. It's the sidewalk improvement and paving project that identifies district one and district four as the recipients of money to create new sidewalks to build to, to close the potholes and pave streets and all that kind of thing. And I think it's great and it's amazing. It's also a workforce development project as well, because it will hire folks that will folks who are journeymen, not journeymen, but apprenticeships to try to get their journeymen through that process and to use cement that's Green cement and all those kinds of things, because that was the original intent of the clean energy program is to create Green jobs. And I'm noticing that it's a small percentage of the new cip of where the dollars are going right now. But in terms of this economy, we have a responsibility to try to keep the economy going. We're number eight in terms of our output into this Portland areas economy. So we have a huge responsibility. And I want to make sure that the sidewalk programs that you already have in that you've allocated that they also take a look at the resolutions that we're passing and we're going to do a bond request next month. And looking at that. And so figuring out ways to serve low income communities, low income workers in the same communities, and be able to work to to somehow figure out some kind of way that we can we can all exist on the same, same page. So I think you know what I'm talking about, but I, I see that as an issue. But when I looked at the entire I'm going somewhere with this, I looked at the entire ecosystem and I saw very few black led, black organizations that serve black people who received any grant funding for programs from PCEF. And and I'm not talking about in district one, I'm just talking about in general. And so I was really kind of taken aback by that, particularly when we had programs in this community that were. That were highly talked about. And I can talk about, you know, rose quarter, that's probably a moot point. But it was there. We had programs with poc. They didn't get funded. We had programs with ci. They didn't get funded. All these black led programs who were doing good programs who were in process, in motion, not talking about it, because you all have a significant amount of money that is allocated but have not been contracted or monies received or encumbered at all. And so my my issue is I think we need to do a better job of identifying bipoc communities to actually get some of this money, to be able to do the projects that that are in motion. They're not thoughts. These are projects that were in motion and they were looked over. And so I'm just concerned about that and how we're actually identifying folks that we award these very precious and their general fund dollars, pretty much because you can put them anywhere. You've identified that, that case. So how are we going to do better in terms of identifying those bipoc organizations throughout all of the the districts?
95 Councilor Smith I think what I would love to do, I think there is a complex program, and I think that hopefully that that's what's seen here is just the different tranches and buckets and ways in which we move resources complex. We've got 37 programs, we've got our annual community grant cycle, and we've got our collaborative for climate action. I believe you're talking about collaborative for climate action as a funding opportunity. That was and that has its own constraints at the time around our seeking really certain sizes of projects that we felt had the all the resources aligned to make sure that those could be spent within this time period. I feel really confident and strong about the projects we've done that we've funded many of the groups and organizations we do fund annually, and I feel that obviously every year to year things change. But I would love to have a brief report and walk you through those projects that we have funded within the black community, just so that. If you in many ways, we tell groups, if you don't get this year, there's next year. And I think that's where we've done a lot of that work to make sure when organizations applications come through, we're there and available to provide that feedback, work with them so that they're more successful the next round. And it's what gives us the confidence that we might not get it in one year, but that next year we tend to balance things out. And so I would I would appreciate the opportunity to walk you just some of our previous projects, knowing that I know that particular funding opportunity for the projects you're speaking.
96 To and I appreciate, I mean, you know, at the rose quarter project, that's one project, but they have an amazing bringing back community members into the community and building one of the largest urban projects, you know, housing projects in the country. And when we can't fund them, I don't know who we can fund. In the city of Portland particularly, they already had additional resources at the table. And the last thing that I'm really curious about this, because I think we have to hit some kind of metrics, that program that the mayor has, what you all are spending $45 million, the office to residential program. Shouldn't some of those residential? Spaces serve affordable its market rate? This is for market rate, folks. No affordable, no low income. And that's one of your target areas is to hit low income folks. But this is helping market rate developers rehab their office buildings to serve market rate residents. And so for me, I that's not explainable to me. But I'm going to ask you how do you reconcile that?
97 Thank you for the question, councilor Smith. The when you look across our portfolio of investments we're making, I want to say ballpark in the realm of two, in the realm of 180 $200 million of investment into affordable housing, 80% area, median income and lower. And that shows up in our community grants, which probably tick that number higher, shows up in our two programs with Portland housing bureau. It shows up in our actually no even higher. So it's probably close to 300 million shows up in a couple of other strategic programs in our single family homes program. So we have a pretty deep, deep investment in affordable housing, the office to residential. It's starting out as a pilot, $10 million pilot, and so pilot. So certainly the conversations about going larger than that, but and in that particular case where we've entered that conversation in earnest has been a recognition that, yes, this isn't the same sort of affordability. It is an 80% area median income. They will have affordability and rent stability covenants as part of that agreement. And ultimately that that that financing will be tied to that. It was it was about other benefits. It was about understanding how do we take these old buildings and not lose all the carbon that's embodied in them and understand and understand the benefits and trade offs? And in doing that, ideally, some of the other benefits of getting more activity happening in central city. So I think there are other benefits there. But I do want to just acknowledge I wouldn't.
98 Want you to say that I support the project. I support us trying to identify ways in which we can repurpose these buildings that have been left here in, in the central city. But I needed you to tell me about. There's the carbon benefit. I need you to tell me why. You know, when we look at PCEF, we understand it's for bipoc underserved communities. And no low income people are going to be using that. I needed you to say that. So I appreciate you and thank you. My office will be following back up with you. Thank you.
99 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane.
100 Thank you. Council president, can you hear me? Okay.
101 We can hear you just fine. Yes.
102 Okay. First, thank you, colleagues, for your patience and understanding as I'm taking many calls this week virtually as I support one of our colleagues. Really appreciate this conversation and many of the things that councilors have already brought up. Really appreciate councilor Dunphy and councilor Smith highlighting the importance of supporting district one families in district one appreciate councilor Novick talking about the investments in our schools, and really want to share my appreciation for the Portland clean energy fund's investment in our public schools. I'll say, as a mom and an educator, it's really powerful to see those dollars going directly to support kids and resilience. I also will share that two years ago, when I was deciding to run, there were quite a few public couple public officials who couldn't see the connection between my experience as teacher with teaching and in our schools, with the city overall. And I think that's very problematic because our schools are. So. Important to our community and our heartbeat, and oftentimes are doing a lot of the on the ground work with community. And it's also literally where our future is. Our many children are there and thinking this new form of government. I love how we're we're desiring so much. And so it is important to see those silos. Kind of change and shift and siloing. And I see that in the way that we're thinking about our schools. Also. My question is, what more can we be doing to be supporting our schools and having that be a part of our city's overall strategy for resilience and working with community. And many know that when snap benefits run out, it's probably going to be our schools that are going to be filling those gaps and are so connected to when systems are falling short. So we'd love to hear that now or follow up later. What other opportunities we can be thinking about for that collaboration?
103 Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane. One of the opportunities that we expect to come up in the next little while, and it's a it's a conversation that doesn't always line up perfectly with schools, but it will line up with schools and other sort of public spaces that communities and schools are such a perfect example of. They're in every one of our neighborhoods. There are many times walking distance and so forth, but has been our community resilience hubs. We invested about $6.2 million into the mount scott community center to make that a resilience. That was one of our recent investments that's come to closure or near closure. And so we will be putting out another, essentially a grant funding opportunity to bring in others that are at least if we remain and stick to the plan to bring in others that are willing to wanting to make energy upgrades to their buildings that ultimately save on their bottom line and create more holistic buildings within our communities. But ideally, that can serve these other purposes whenever we have, whether it's the grid coming down or whatever, we have extreme heat, extreme weather events. And so those are the kind of conversations we've had, in part with some of our school districts to explore whether that potential exists so that we can go deeper in, in making these community assets be that much more of a community asset. So I just want to name that. I think beyond that, I think there's a lot of work ahead of us on the existing schools investments in terms of really developing and getting into a cadence. You know, a lot of the work that happens in schools happens in the summertime. So we're figuring out what are all those opportunities as we go through with this existing $100 million investment. And that will ultimately tee us up so that we can see the full landscape of opportunities as we move into the next climate investment plan.
104 I also want to acknowledge, sam, that there are a couple other programs outside of the school program that are touching school schools. Physically, there's a couple d paving projects that are happening on schools. The some of the transportation investments in terms of sidewalks and bike access are are really aimed at school neighborhoods and then like, like bike bus kind of things as well. So there are a couple activities outside of the formal ps slash schools bundle that that are going to going to schools. In effect.
105 As director engstrom said, that it actually makes me feel like we should have a more schools focused. What are all the connections? Schools? It's actually quite a bit. Thank you for that reminder.
106 Thank you so much. That's helpful and I look forward to hearing more.
107 Thank you. Councilor councilor Zimmerman.
108 Thank you. This was a lot. I kind of wish we could have been asking questions along the way. So particularly in the strategic initiatives area, I certainly have appreciated some of the tweaks that you've identified. So thank you for those. Even some areas where I, I have concern, I think the way you've laid those out is helpful. I there's a few different lines of questions that I've got in terms of where we go from here. You mentioned sam early in the presentation, which seems like 9000 slides ago, that the committee does not award grants any more. Can you go into what has changed, what was happening before and who now makes grant allocations?
109 So when the program was originally designed at the ballot and voted on, we had it was actually in many terms called the grant committee. And it was structured in many ways, designed by in many ways, like the children's levy making grants. And in that incarnation, the committee did make grant recommendations to city council. As our scale and our scope has grown, and as we reckon with the reality of running annual grant cycles and having strategic programs and taking in an audit that had very critical, helpful feedback in 2022, a lot of those things set into motion, bringing clarity between the relationship between city council staff, the committee, and dividing that up and coming out of that in October 2022. That's when we really brought that overhaul to be responsive to certainly the audit and bring more clarity of roles and relationships between the committee, council and one of the key elements was really the creation of this climate investment plan. And so in doing that, what we were attempting to do is really level up the bring the committee up to this, this, this higher level where they're looking at the cumulative, our investments, setting out those goals, those strategies and making recommendations there. And so that's the decision point. That's the recommendation that the committee is making to you all is on the climate investment plan. And in that setting allocations. Now every year when we run our annual grant process, we still bring in and invite committee members to be reviewers. But there isn't that obligation that you review 300 some odd grants and spend three weeks of your life doing that work. The focus is on we want them focused at a high level on these goals, these metrics to climate investment plan. So they're community members, committee members that are involved in the review process. We have multiple stages of review that I'm happy to walk back through, but ultimately we make those recommendations. So based on the scoring panels, the portfolio balancing, etc. Staff ultimately make those recommendations based on all that input to the city administrator.
110 So the city administrator is the awarding authority then.
111 Correct?
112 Okay. Okay. So Eric, I'm curious how you have instructed your team in terms of how to view the city council as the sole budget authority in this government? How does this square with that statement?
113 Then you all have the responsibility and authority on an annual budget basis. And so ultimately the the the check and balance there is that that if you don't like how the administration is running the program, you have budget control over how that money is allocated on an annual basis. So the cip is setting out a five year blueprint that you have an opportunity annually to budget for. And as as we've seen it over the last couple of years, what does happen each in each budget process is that there are some budget decisions that affect sort of the directionality of the program, and then we have tried to this year, we've tried to align that annual cip process so that it's occurring before the budget, so that we can use that process to project what we think, what adjustments council may be making there. So you ultimately have authority about how much money is being allocated to community grants versus any one of our strategic programs to the bureaus, to the to the ones that PCEF itself is running. That's kind of the ultimate accountability there. And we've made it clear to staff that that you're the decision maker there.
114 Okay. Earlier this year, your team referred to a lot of the numbers that are in this presentation as things like reserves and contingency. And I'm taking note that you've taken those words out of your presentation now. So now we're using words like encumbrances, allocations committed. Where was that decision made. Is it in alignment with the city central city budget office. Because those descriptions really threw us into a bit of a tailspin several months ago. And I'll note how. Strange that interaction was with your team in terms of getting an idea for where is the city council's budget authority versus where PCEF gets to run in within its own Lane and not get checked on this five year idea? So where did where did the decision about these terms to present today versus what was presented to us earlier in the year? Where does that made.
115 The reserve terminology? To be clear, I came, I think came from budget documents, not from our program. And we've have there was a lot of confusion last year in the use of that term. And so I think the intent of what was meant by that was the, the, the money that is not in this year's budget or already spent. The remaining fund balance, the budget office will refer to as reserve. But what what we're trying to show there is that there's a blueprint in the cip that shows how that's allocated or intended to be allocated. We don't view it as a reserve. We view it as the planned future spending. But back to your earlier question. Ultimately, council does have a decision making authority to redirect how we because it's not under contract yet, you ultimately could decide to redirect it. And so we want to be careful about how we have that conversation. Because on the one hand, there's a plan for it. And and and it's allocated. So making a change in direction would involve taking an allocation or a promise from something and putting it somewhere else. You do have that.
116 Which is what we do every day.
117 You do that all the time. Yes.
118 And I.
119 Get.
120 That we if I was to project out any city department for five years and put their future spend in a reserve account to hold for five years, I mean, I could do that, right? But it would be an unusual practice. But it is somewhat relevant given the influx of funds that you all received that was outside of what you had predicted. So there's there's a logic based that makes sense there. I'm bringing this up because there's a lot in here that I want to get really jazzed about. There's a lot in here that I really want to get down to. How do we make sure that everybody who's involved in these climate action plans has what they need? That isn't very possible. When a single question about a size of a fund or the or the appropriateness of certain things is met with hair on fire responses and calling in, dozens and dozens of community members simply because of budget questions. And so I found that very off putting, and I want to get past that. And so I think that this presentation has better shown your plan in terms of how you want to spend money and where it makes it makes sense. But. Like all departments, like all offices and like all funds, there is only one budget of Portland, and it's the city council. And I just think that's really important to keep in mind, because if we can't get to that point, I think this will be confrontational for the sake of please don't get into my sandbox, and that's just not a conversation we can have. Right? So. I, I want to transition a little bit. I the discussion about the school districts earlier. Really important and I and I've seen that money too. And I just really appreciate my colleagues questions along that when I look at some of the school districts that were mentioned, some of them have very small footprints inside the city of portland's boundaries. In your decision making or I guess in your like, cross checking after the fact, is that taken into account of oh, it's only I pulled up all the maps so I would actually know what I was talking about here. It's only glenn fair elementary and margaret scott, for instance. Or it's only, you know. Alice, for some I'm just using examples that sits in the city of Portland. So it's not reynolds high school that is in Gresham or in troutdale. Is that something that comes up in your decisions?
121 It is. It is. We've got a list of essentially eligible schools, and their footprint has to sit within the city of Portland boundaries. And that was equally part of the essentially the funding, the the balance of like how much funding they got was based on some of those proportions.
122 Great. That's all I needed to hear. I appreciate that a lot. I the the change, the $15 million reduction in the ev stuff. I'll just say stuff because there were a few things. There was there was vehicles, there was charging stations. I guess I both understood it's james, right? Not okay. James, I understood what you were saying because it wasn't started yet. So you're making a capacity calculation there. It also is. It feels disappointing from a perspective of I get really excited about what are the things that will incentivize portlanders to make better purchase options and the infrastructure for charging the infrastructure to make it that much easier. I feel like right now we're doing well as a community, but you got to really kind of seek out charging stations versus they're just so damn abundant. They're they're just part of life. Just like a gas station today is just part of life. How do you think that the overall five year impact of I guess I'm trying to understand what a $15 million reduction is. What are we giving up in that case?
123 Yeah. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman, for the question. And the reduction, I guess does have a few impacts. But I also wanted to frame that in terms of the context of other programs and incentives that we're aware of, the scale of those, and what might be a reality that this would have been a very ambitious amount of money to spend, even within five years, the original amount. So, for instance, in the Oregon deq has had a rebate program available with various income levels for both commercial use and residential use. And in total, that has been around $65 million over a five year period in the. State of Oregon throughout all jurisdictions, totaling about 27,000 vehicles purchased in the kind of the greater market ones, not actually the income qualified pieces. And this strategic program was really designed and focused on commercial use of electric vehicles, either by businesses in the city or really, you know, when we did the nine month climate investment plan development, the first the first round of that, we did hear from ride hailing drivers and people who were, I guess, what you'd call heavy users of vehicles and the opportunity or need to do a fuel switch. And so that was the ride hailing sector is something that we've really worked with PBOT to understand better because they regulate, you know, the licenses given to lyft, uber and taxis. And so that's something that has evolved quite a bit even over the last couple couple years. And you mentioned something that I didn't mention, which is that in this amendment draft, there was also the addition of the opportunity to finance dc fast charging infrastructure, because that through our preliminary conversations with PBOT and their their stakeholders working on ride hailing or tnc, as they call it, transportation network companies, they have identified that one of the big barriers for those drivers is fast charging, because time is money. And, you know, there there is a fairly small number of dc fast charging stations. And so I think this shift does bring that opportunity to be able to make financing investments in that infrastructure piece while still being calibrated to a reasonable deployment of incentives for for that smaller sector of commercial users. Because I guess, just to name it, this isn't really focused at everyday commuters or people driving to and from school and work. This the intent is to have a strategic program focused on high users of fuel right now, and making that shift to electrification.
124 Okay, thanks. So how does that then relate to sp 26 and its bff? So bureau of fleet services, not best friends forever are increasing city. That's Angelita for me. Increasing city vehicle charging infrastructure. I guess I'm not understanding what the description here is telling me. It's a $5 million debt. Retirement. What's changing in this in terms of the infrastructure?
125 Yeah. Thank you. In this case, really not much is changing in the immediate term. There was a budget move made. They have not fully allocated or expended those funds, but they anticipated that they would need to incur debt for some of those costs for ev charging infrastructure. And this just makes it that body of work eligible to be funded by PCEF. And just to to, I guess, clarify that strategic program is focused exclusively on the city's own fleet needs and and charging needs. It doesn't really help support public charging in that particular strategic program.
126 I'm going to add that since we'll be coming back, add that to a how do we get a larger, publicly accessible network is something that I, I don't feel like I've got enough yet to help that mission. And so I'm looking for some information there. I'm going to flag sp 21 Portland hydroelectric project relicensing of a. I don't want to get into it now, but I don't know what we're doing here. And so I need to understand that one a little bit more because that seems. I, I have, I have, I guess. Generally. I guess. Okay, let me, let me reframe this. So one of the areas I feel that I take on faith, the p sff program is and I think I'm saying this the right way, less of the strategic projects, but more of the community based grants. That's the area that I feel I know less about what outcomes we're seeking and how we're seeking, because what I've noticed are a lot of nonprofit providers who, when I first got into government, weren't in the environmental space or weren't doing anything related to it. But now that there's a fund, all of a sudden they're environmentally focused nonprofits. Where do I where does the council get to see the report back or the audit for how successful these small grants are? Small being a relative number there so that we can evaluate who's actually doing good work. And I say that from the perspective of I'm a pretty big fan of taking a look at all of the nonprofits who do work for us, regardless of the sector, and lopping off the bottom third and giving money back to those who are doing something well and stopping this with this happens a lot in our homeless services. We have legacy providers, and we have governments sometimes who want to help legacy providers. But what that really says is they haven't changed with the times. It means they're funding things the same way they did in 1990. I'd rather find today's providers who seem to be meeting their metrics and give them more to meet more metrics. Is that a possible evaluation in this space and what are how do we find out what community providers are actually accomplishing relative to what they told you they wanted to accomplish?
127 It is this year, we're working on our first annual report that will summarize a lot of these investments in some of the outcomes that we're getting from both strategic programs and community grants. I think you're raising a really good point. I mean, it goes twofold. I think there's a I think we acknowledge on our end that for the scale of climate work we need to do in climate work is community work, right? I don't want to just simply call it climate work, like we're doing more than that. Clearly, I hope that that's coming across. But in that we need more practitioners to do this. We need more hvac technicians, we need more ev mechanics, etc. So there's one I just want to acknowledge we do need more folks in the space, but there is a real point around we invest in some organizations and some are going to do really well and knock it out of the park. They they take it, they grow, and they they're a little slow the first time, but once they get to speed, then they come next time and they're doing things twice as fast. We're seeing that and we're we're excited. We're thumbs up. Let's do more of that. We tend to our grant investments tend to be anywhere from 3 to 5 years. There are some that are shorter. And so we're just starting to get to it. It's it's a shift that you're still moving. We're just getting we're fine tuning that. And I think now this being our fourth round of grants, we've continued to fine tune narrow and say this is what we want to see or this is what we don't want to see or you need you need to know with certainty. You need to have this much of your capital stack set up so that we're not on the hook, sitting out there waiting with our resources to come in at year five. So we are I would name that each year we do tighten up and try to channel folks and make sure that they're better situated.
128 There's an annual report about all of our nonprofits who are getting community grants that's coming this year.
129 It will, but it will not. You will not get the detail that you want until we get to more completion, which will likely come in the next two years. Just because our biggest round of grants that we made was in 2022. And so generally we close out and those on average were four year grants. So once we got to get to the end to close them out and then start writing up what we're seeing in that first cohort.
130 I hope they're able to provide yearly progress reports. If I had to do it in third grade, they should be able to do it now, right? Progress reports are important.
131 We get we get quarterly reports. We do get quarterly reports. But it depends on whether it's a program or a project. Sort of when that when we get that that full that full.
132 I think progress reports are helpful from my standpoint, having an idea for how much we've deviated from the glide path is helpful in knowing whether it's time to cut bait or time to give it time to mature. Right. And I think glide paths are are helpful. One of the slides here mentioned, I think in your comments, you said something about 176 million, but there's another slide that said 300 million. How much each year are we giving out in community grants? Can you clarify that.
133 The and this has been a point of probably tension within the community. On average, the intention was 60 million. That's on average. So five years, 60,000,300 million over five years.
134 That was an overall.
135 But we did give more in the first year. We're a little higher this year. So we'll start to calibrate and level out.
136 And then part of the cip, as I understood it, was a recognition of how much darn money came in from the program over what our initial projections were. So we had this. We had to put a plan around, at what year do we get to the point where we are more like in government? We should spend generally what we bring in in revenue every year. That's the whole point of taxes. Stay at a certain point so that they're not growing. So when will we see okay, we think PCEF is about steady at this number, and we expect to put this much work out into the community this year, where those numbers are far closer versus the large bank account right now that we're working through.
137 You will, because of the nature of the investments that we make, both in programing. And I brought this slide up because you see programing sort of continues. Once you bring it up, it continues and it keeps going and you can sunset it, but you can just as well keep it going. And then there's projects. What you're going to see here obviously in the next couple of years is we're still because we've taken on big projects, big capital projects. You're going to see our spending going up. It's going to start to peak at around 370 or so million, and then you're going to start to see us level out. And I think what you're going to likely see is some baseline amount of programing starting. It's really going to be as we get to the next cip. But towards the end of this cip, you're going to start to see us level out where we'll have to figure out what that balance is, where this is programs, let's just say 120 million is ongoing programs where we're doing affordable housing related work and call those programs because they still happen on a even though they're discrete projects. You tend to have a pretty steady cadence of them versus, you know, this much 80 million years, big discrete projects we're contributing to each year. We're going to get there. And I think that's that next cip, we're going to have to figure out what that balance is between those two.
138 Thanks for that. These answers have been really helpful. You guys appreciate you taking this time. When I look at things like our housing, energy efficiency, housing, stuff like that, I guess, what level of income do we cut off and not actually provide a service to a portlander.
139 100 on our on our energy friendly homes program, which is currently in its soft launch? We'll be launching full, full scale next month. The income is to get the full subsidy, which is you've got to be lower than 80% ami, but you still can get subsidies up to, I think, $15,000 if you get up to 150% area median income.
140 Okay. That's helpful. You know, I I'm going to have slightly different comments than some of my, my colleagues in that I actually do appreciate that some of the stuff like the nike biketown fleet of all the bikes an eligible uses, is getting upgraded, right when I go to other cities and I see what looks like a better system than ours, I get a little bit crazy about that. And I think a way in which this is an interaction of a commercial market and a way of life for portlanders, and I think there's an aspect and I and I don't disagree with councilor Dunphy in terms of we should be very careful about where we are subsidizing corporations. There's also a but if it ceases to exist in our community because the fleet is so darn crappy or we stop using it, I don't know that. Right? Measurement. So looking to the PCEF committee for that kind of insight, for how do we thread that needle so that it does stay here, or that different providers are able to give us, you know, a fleet of bikes that portlanders and visitors are able to meet is important because ours is getting a little dusty. So I have some comfort in there, but I but I recognize the challenge in that, and I and I actually am I, I'm kind of challenged by if you consider what it takes to to own a home in Portland today and to maintain a home in Portland today, I think that a lot of people will fall out of the income that you just cited, but still have desires to make home energy improvements, and that doesn't make them bad people for being slightly above 120 ami, but certainly cutting 15, 30, $45,000 checks is not something that exists in in a lot of different parts of all of our districts where home ownership was possible, maybe by the skin of your teeth. Home improvement is something that still challenges many of us, and definitely challenges seniors who are aging in their homes. And so I just I want to think about that a little bit, because I actually have some comfort with a part of this program going to things that are not just the most affordable housing programs. So some ideas there. So appreciate all the strategic stuff. I'm actually I have a lot of comfort in the big the big things, the big things that change. But I also think that the small stuff along the way is helpful, especially the things that portlanders can see and feel and experience all the time. And then wherever possible, sam, if things are a pilot project, which I'm on the record for, even before we started the innovation lab at Multnomah county, like, I think innovation pilot projects are important and we should segment them off, because if you're in pilot projects, you're trying something new, you might fail. And we shouldn't dog people for failing. But in the big ones, I want to dog people that fail, right? So it's like, let's use pilot projects to get ideas generating for the next cip. But the big ones, that's where the progress report question comes in. I think you can have both. I'm trying to express my value statement for like what I want to, what I want to see, to be able to evaluate this and go through it. So appreciate the updates. Thank you.
141 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Ryan.
142 Thank you. Council president. Good to see you again. I had the pleasure of meeting with all of you last week. So good morning sam. Good morning, james and Eric. I also want to say listening to the expanded council in this meeting this week, asked questions. The dialog has been very refreshing. So thank you for your openness. This is something that I want to acknowledge as even continuous improvement. I also want to acknowledge that we're building something very complex, and we received a lot more revenue than planned, and that's a good problem. It's a challenge, and I think that we have to continue to be open and humble and continue to do really good evaluation as we figure out how to improve this as we go along. And I want to acknowledge, sam, that you have held a lot of that meaning there's people around you that are in your ear that are giving you different opinions, and I appreciate how you take them all in. And you bring those to us in a diplomatic way. You have a hard job, and I just want to acknowledge that you've been doing it really well, in my opinion. So, all right. You always think when you're this nice at the beginning. Now where's this going? Right.
143 I'm holding.
144 And I also just want to say I'm really happy that we were lifting the investments for our children that live in east Portland. I spent ten years in that space, and it's near and dear to my heart. And it was so fun. And the early when was it 2010, to get the powers that be downtown, to just know that there are school districts beyond wps? I would say if you pulled people, 90% didn't know that. So it's great that we're in a different era and I just want to lift that. Okay. So we spent a lot of time. I spent a lot of time with you drilling into my own life experience around being the head of a nonprofit where I inherited an organization that was in debt. They didn't know how much. It was quite fascinating, but what led to their debt was getting a much larger grant than the organization's size knew how to manage. We didn't have the financial chops. We didn't have the infrastructure to know how to handle that much designated restricted funding coming in. And so there I was trying to untangle that and having tough conversations with, I'll just say, at the gates foundation to know that they also played a role in in this screw up. And so I don't want us to be the gates foundation. So how are we. And so we had a dialog. And so I'll just synthesize it to say that, well, that was my synthesis of what my life experience was that I brought this to you, is how we're having those evaluations with the nonprofits. And I do think councilor Zimmermann hit on something that is within my question here. If you wait 3 to 4 years, which is what they did, in my opinion. So by the time they zeroed in on this challenge that other small nonprofits were experiencing by receiving up to ten times their operations in one fell swoop, it was almost too late. And so I think if that that was part of my feedback to them, that this should have been a dialog after one year and then after the next year. So I couldn't tell from the conversation with councilor Zimmermann, if we're waiting to see what happens after three years, or are we having continuous annual conversations so that we can do those important pivots? That is the reality when you're doing some complex.
145 It's thank you, councilor Ryan. It's good to be before you again. Today. We are you know, the there's a closeout of a project that we get we have to get to the end. But we have quarterly reports. And I will say we are far from a foundation, as many of our organizations wish we were. We have a lot of reporting. I mean, so we have a lot we have a lot of check ins at each quarter as we check their invoices, as we're reconciling their advances, saying, where is this? Where is that? Why did you why did you underspend here? So there's a tremendous amount of opportunities. And it happens at that point where folks are wanting to get paid. And so and it's our point where we bring that accountability, where we are saying, okay, what outcomes did you what did you say you were going to commit to this quarter? Why are you behind? How does your spending line or not align? And so we do have quarterly check ins. Obviously if everything is going well we've got the outcomes there. Their receipts are coming through great. But that is our point where we typically check in with organizations. It comes at that point because folks want to get paid, and we want to make sure we're getting those outcomes and we're seeing what's happening. So that's our touch point.
146 Are those all written reports quarterly?
147 Yes. The quarterly reports are. Yep, yep. We have quarterly workbooks where we have that that that submission. And then we typically follow up to get detailed information on questions related to how any invoicing or whatever else is working where things are mis. And so that's that's our touch point. But we try to we try to also step back and do that broad take of, you know, we can be in the weeds at times, but we do also take that broad brush of, okay, how do we get, you know, how do we see there moments where we do need to also look at those, each of those quarterly reports and step back and say, we need to come in for a meeting to see how we're tracking overall. So we have those two. And those are, you know, there's a judgment call when we need to kind of bring that kind of meeting together as well.
148 Okay. This is what PCEF staff do. They they manage a portfolio of grants. And there is an active checking in.
149 I saw some head nodding. So I think.
150 It's the vast majority of our team is focused on that.
151 But let me do this. And I'm not saying I'm hoping this is just feedback and it and it's me not knowing enough yet until I have more conversation with you. But there were the quarterly reports that we're doing by the said organization that I inherited. And I think what was lacking that I experienced in the next big investments we received from ballmer foundation, if you will, and the the continuous improvement there was with ballmer was a learning community. So say here. Oh, you're all smiling. Okay. So you do that.
152 It's no, it's the answer.
153 My question just so. Yeah. Because we're doing. Yeah. Only because public might care. So so we had peer organizations meet. And although people are competitive organizations can be competitive. Eventually we got trusting enough where we'd actually have real dialog and stop trying to impress them and got real with how hard it was. Much better place to be for the children at the time is when adults do that. And so we started to learn more from each other, and we realized how there could be changes to the way we were doing our annual investments. And there were even some that realized they didn't need all that largesse because it wasn't they weren't able to expend it, and so they would return it, which allowed them to, of course, invest elsewhere. My point is, it was like it was this wonderful, fluid, innovative space. And in the other one it was more bureaucratic and fill out these forms and and then by the time I got there, the forms were filled out. Right. But the actual reality of what was going on and actually getting impact was not real. I hope that made it more clear. So now I'm trying to see where we're evolving to. I like how someone's smiling in the back. Is your job as an evaluator?
154 I just do the I run the computer.
155 Thank you. Thanks for allowing me to call you out. I just love your nonverbal right now.
156 It's very so in different ways. We've brought folks together to have those conversations. I would say that's very much the aspiration and the plan, and it's the work we've been doing in building out our engagement work of how we bring our different focus groups. We've done that with our regenerative ag cohort. So it's councilor Ryan, I not commissioner Councilor Ryan, I want to say that that's very much we're not quite there yet. That's we're still closer to the bureaucratic. That's the work we're trying to get to. And obviously amidst all this standing, many things.
157 Fall down. But let the wall down is my advice. And so I'm giving feedback based on my lived experience. I would like to be a thought partner with you on this. I'm not up here scolding. I'm up here again, acknowledging how complex this is and that you're building something. And so I just want to share. I've had experience in this Lane and it's it's fun to see that you're welcoming and you're not being defensive. Thank you. That was a compliment.
158 I'll just add as director, we do have conversations where something might not be going well, the if if a particular grantee is needs an intervention. These are conversations sam and I have occasionally. So there's there's that dialog too.
159 I mean there was there was always those moments where it was just something that wasn't right. That's different, but it was more how challenging it was, like we were doing really hard work. And so instead of there was there wasn't a punitive space. The walls came down and they acknowledged, gee, this is as hard as when you were building microsoft 20 years ago. And and I think that sometimes it's, it's just important to get that wall down so that you become in a space together to do something hard. And I think that's when Portland and my state of Oregon does the best is when we are in that dreamy, humble place to, like, do something innovative. And I think that's what PCEF keeps allowing us to do. And if we don't continue to seize this moment, we'll be sad about that. In 20 years, I'm going to shift to economic development, and it councilor Zimmerman played in this space right at the end of their dialog. But I just want to say this. So Portland fancies itself as a city of the future with a robust Green economy. And I think we struggle to implement that industry. Our fits and starts and actual failures do. Solar construction in Portland just happens to be one easy example to lift. I was the person that started the continuous improvement work for permit improvement, and I'd say after three complaints, the solar industry's frustration with how hard we make it to implement solar in what we think is the greenest city in the planet, was really depressing. And so I think that we have to continue to just look for opportunities, I think with this investment, to actually figure out how this can be an economic development before everyone that's anti private sector and capitalism stops listening. Hold on a second. So there's these places called higher education centers. There's nonprofits and there are private sector industries that are in this space. And so cities that have investments often have always figured out how to knit together the incubation at a university. They do incubation well, they don't know how to implement. I know this about the culture of higher ed. So they usually have to partner. And you know this from any school of engineering, any school of medicine. They partner with industry and you can partner with the community nonprofit. So say the lead organizations are higher ed and the nonprofit, but eventually they probably need a private sector industry to be a part of that continuum. So you can actually start to get results. Are we already allowing that type of investment, or do I am I or do I have to keep lobbying for that?
160 We have examples. We have examples where we've done it. I think it's the kind of conversation as we get to the next climate investment plan. And what I suspect is, is going to likely be something more geographically focused and probably sectoral focused, that that's the kind of thing we'd want to lean further into. We have one grant. It's for the clean industry hub. It is with Portland state university, prosper, Portland, bureau of planning and sustainability, Portland metro chamber, many others. That's where that one project is a good example, where we're bringing those those sectors together in that more collaborative, innovative sort of space. But I think there's there's without a doubt more that we can do there.
161 I think in my opinion, clearly, and I have a history, when I was as young as a couple of my council members to the left at the pacific science center, I was on the board with all these people that now have big foundations, and they were starting the technology center at university of Washington. There's a reason why uw and the community and invested in that. It was to make sure, for the long run, the seattle puget sound economy was a leader in innovation in technology. I think we can all say they've been succeeding in that. But it didn't just happen. They built an ecosystem, and they had investments that came in from places that I can't remember where, but I just want them to give money to the science center. I'd just be in the middle of listening to these conversations. But my point is, I think the PCEF allows us to think a little bit bigger and be more of a sophisticated, world class city that wants to actually build a Green economy and use the PCEF investments to help kick start some of that. I don't think it should be a thought off to the side. I think we have to get real about our economic development in Portland, in the state of Oregon, because we're failing miserably. So with this large investment, how can we get out of the box and get out of the tribal like, oh, this is good, this is bad, and figure out more collectively how we can come together to move these investments so that we have more jobs, living wage jobs in this economy. And while we're at it, think of retrofitting not just for office buildings to housing, but office buildings to makerspaces. Since we are a leader in makerspace economy, which is sometimes can be very Green, or we can figure out how to make it more sustainable. So when we have the the makerspaces, like, you know, do we know like the knife we create, we manufacture more knives than anywhere else in the country? I think we're up there at the top. We have the james beard market coming in. So how do you connect the dots between james beard knives? How do you connect the dots between leather making, which is a big deal here as well? My point is, I hope that we just get out of the box of how we think this was written and what this had to be when it came to the ballot in 2018, and where we are today, and how we can think out of that box and make these kind of investments. So are you having that kind of dialog?
162 Yes. In, in the what I would say is we're as you see, we're focused on implementing these projects, but it's never a shortage of ideas that come in. So we are in continuous conversations with our colleagues at prosper elsewhere around these future ideas, and it's really figuring out what's the right time and place and where is that opening in that window for it. And and so the simple answer is yes. But I think I would say that as we as councilor as you're laying this out, as we get into the next climate investment planning process, there's going to be a bigger opening for that conversation to take more hold.
163 Thanks. I just want to plant some seeds so that we can start to vision forward with some different ideas than the limited boxes we put ourselves in. And does that make sense?
164 Councilor I'll just add that from my viewpoint as I'm, you know, hearing a lot of different ideas about the future climate investment plan and ideas for that. I think this is definitely a space that I'm very interested in continuing dialog with council. I think you're right that we could do better in this space, and the clean energy hub is a a model potentially, that we could look at for other industry clusters. And we've talked about that. There's preliminary conversations. We're also doing small pilot with mass timber right now. And that has a potential to expand into a larger economic development discussion in the next cip potentially. So I want to agree with you there.
165 Thanks. I just look forward to that, that future where we can really use this investment to be visionary for how we can help kickstart and incubate Portland and the state of oregon's economy, to move forward to a different era than it's been in. Thanks.
166 Thank you. Councilor. I think I'm up next and I'll start by just saying. I'm so glad to hear you say some of that, because I have told these folks many times that I think we have with PCEF, the ability to create. Create programs that change the future of Portland in positive ways, including building world class research facilities in clean manufacturing that creates high wage jobs in the region. I often come at it looking from the job side, but I think we're talking about many of the same things. I want to thank you all for being here, for having some of your committee members here and your staff here. I know that there are a lot of really brilliant folks in the room who put a lot of time and energy into this work every day, so start with some gratitude there. As I look at the interface between your work, the committee's work, and council's work, I see three touch points coming up, and I just want to make sure I'm correct in thinking about it this way. We have the changes that you'll bring to us to approve. That's the nearest term. We'll have the conversations that, for better or worse, bubble up every budget cycle around how PCEF integrates with the annual city budget. And then we'll have the creation of the next cip, the next five year plan. Is that correct?
167 Correct.
168 And help me as I'm thinking about the last piece, because much of what I've heard from my colleagues, though, you're here talking about that near-term piece really touches on the last piece. And I know I've had conversations with each of you about some ideas I have there as well. The current plan was approved in 2023. Is that correct?
169 End of 2023 and an amended end of 24.
170 But the five years cycle runs from 23 to 28. Is that accurate?
171 From July 1st 24.
172 To July.
173 June 30th to July 1st 29.
174 Okay, so we will be talking as a council in 2027, 2028.
175 Early 2027 is when we expect to begin the planning process for the next climate investment plan. And knowing the effort that it took, it was a sprint and all hands on it will run likely between early 2027. Think spring of 2027 until about early to mid 2028, so that we complete that plan, adopt that plan with at least a year runway before this current plan ends, so that as there are programs that are sunsetting, as there are shifts, that folks have that line of sight to make those adjustments.
176 So as we look at the strategic programs that the previous council prioritized, and I think I've heard a couple of my colleagues allude to the fact that there are different things they might want to see there. And I'm I'm setting aside the community grants because from my perspective, and I know there are different perspectives up here around this, but for me, that's something that I really want to hold for community. And I think that's really important. So if I set that aside and really look at the strategic programs, our ability to say, are these the right programs? Are these our priorities that the city, still or not, is an early 2027 conversation.
177 You'll also have a little bit of a bridge. Next fall, we'll bring you another annual update to the cip. And this year we as you saw from the presentation, we the scale of our moving money around was on the scale of $15 million. Pretty, pretty conservative because we don't yet we're still scaling up everything. We will get a better idea by next fall under spending or overspending. And so I think as we get closer to that 29 year, the annual updates will have a little bit bigger wiggle room to move things around to. Not huge, but bigger.
178 More shifts there. Okay. That's helpful to understand. Thank you. I think somewhat related maybe to what you just said about as we get further into this, what do things look like? One of the things in your early slides talked about uncontracted work, and some of that uncontracted work looked like it fell into the buckets where there's bureau spending. My assumption, perhaps incorrectly, has been that the programs that run through city bureaus are likely to get up and running faster. We're already in year two of this project, and it sounds like we have work that will run through the bureaus that we haven't contracted for yet. Should we expect that that is coming soon? Should we expect that that's work that might not happen? How does that fit with some of the city goals? What's happening there?
179 It's that's a it's a it's a good question that I appreciate because I'm not we we should have there's a layer that we don't have line of sight bureau of the financing and budgeting. The city's complicated. We have a certain line of sight.
180 We've all learned that this past year.
181 And as and as us working with all the bureaus, we've learned how all the bureaus budget differently. We're like, oh, you don't do it. So what we laid out here in terms of what has been essentially budgeted, encumbered, contracted, budgeted is what you all budgeted. And that includes bureaus budgeted to the bureaus as well as budgeted programs we're administering now. This encumbered and contracted wedges that you see here on the slide that reflects what we on the piece of side directly have line of sight into. So it's what we've encumbered for community grants, for collaborative, for climate action, for the schools projects, or we've contracted for our energy friendly homes program. So while those remaining allocations that $550 million wedge, that 31% wedge. Yes, we laid out it's future bureau spending. We don't actually have line of sight to what extent bureaus have contracted. So it may be that bureaus have contracted some of those resources, some of those projects out. We just don't have that line of sight.
182 And to be clear, we don't contract with the bureaus. You all do that through your annual budget appropriation. So the that uncontracted slice there represents essentially our assumption of what's remaining to be budgeted for the bureaus in future years. Assuming you follow the five year plan. Here.
183 Part of what I think I'm trying to understand, because you took a five year expected revenue stream and we've budgeted it over five years. We haven't collected it all. We haven't allocated it all because we still have a number of city budget cycles to go through. Does that mean that I'm going to call this slice a third of the pie for simplicity's sake? Does that mean that we are already encumbered on two thirds of the money that would go to bureaus, and therefore we may have some budget challenges in the final year of the cip, because we won't have as much allocated for bureau spending, and that becomes a budget problem we need to deal with is this is the money spread evenly? Is this money that hasn't been planned for yet? And the other two thirds includes the money that's been planned for, even if we haven't put it in city budgets, and therefore we should expect some of this to come back. I'm trying to understand what this means in terms of our role in budgeting and planning. With the many bureaus that are getting this portion of the money.
184 All right. This is this is where things start to get very complicated. And so I'm going to do my best to respond here to this, because I just want to name we don't. For instance, PBOT has 101 million in this wedge of that 515 million that that remains, 101 million is set aside for PBOT for next fiscal year. In the following fiscal years. An example of a project, for instance, in that 101 million that we expect them to spend in that time period is for the acquisition of new streetcars. And so at some point, they actually may they may have executed the contracts for that. We actually wouldn't have seen that. So this is this is a bit of a there's a gap here in terms of our representation of what the bureaus have contracted. But some of those resources are for programing that they've identified in the cip, that you all are going to have to agree, you're going to have to budget each year. And because we're acknowledging it's in future years, that's the space in which there is a decision to be made of. Do you stay the path? There's existing commitments that have been made for the bureaus, or would you change that path? So I it is I for that 101 million that remains for PBOT it is we could break down the programs that it's heading towards. Some of it is self-performed by the bureau, in which case then it's not contracted, it's their staff do the work. And in which case there's obviously a decision to be made there. But does that help explain it?
185 Let me add a couple of thoughts. One is that I don't think it's necessarily linear, like some of it depends on the bureau. Some of the bureaus are weighted to the beginning and some are weighted evenly. It depends on the work and the nature of the work. And there are these like you gave the example, there are some capital projects in there that occur in a particular year, and that's just where they occur. I'm confident that the bureaus have read the cip and, and, and think of that money as theirs, even if it hasn't been budgeted. But it hasn't been budgeted. All that's been budgeted is each year's budget and what's already been spent. So just like think of it like a the cip for capital planning for all the other work the city does. There's a five year plan, but you still have to budget it every year.
186 I think what would be helpful.
187 For me? And I don't expect the answer to this right now, but as we continue to have these conversations, it would be really helpful for me to understand what our one time costs, what are ongoing programs that we have budgeted for for the last few years, and this is continuing funding for what are new things that are coming and within this and this gets, I think, a little bit to what my colleague councilor Zimmermann was saying, this program versus project idea. Because when I look at the vast amount of funds, right, we're talking $515 million in this bucket that hasn't been accounted for yet in bureaus. And we don't know how much of that from what you've showed us here. I'm sure you all know on documents you have, but we don't know how much of that is continuing work that's happening. How much of that is starting? New work will have to continue. How much of that is one time? And what does that mean in terms of two things our budget liability at the end of this five years. And related to that, what one might think of as fixed costs that we should be assuming we will continue into the next five years versus money that's freed up for other one time or new projects. And that's what I'm not understanding in any of the data that you've showed us. And what would be really helpful for me to see as we continue this conversation moving forward. I had a lot of questions about that program versus project piece on some of the specific projects that I'll save. I just don't think we have time today, but that's a piece that really weighs on me as I think about the sustainability of the the dollars that we're putting toward things within our bureaus.
188 That's absolutely right. I think we are going to face this decision point when we're crafting the next cip, that there's going to be a certain amount of programmatic work that's seen by the bureaus as ongoing, that we will have to make a decision if it truly is ongoing. And things like the urban forest maintenance is a good example of that. And then there's going to be some other things like 82nd avenue that we're in theory one time. But of course, there's an interest is what is the next big transit project. And are we going to budget another 50 million for that in the next cip? And so those are the kind of conversations that have to happen.
189 And understanding in advance what's coming there. What's startup or pilot or a project where there will be an expectation that there's a next one, what's truly one time, what's truly ongoing, and there's an expectation that it continue to be ongoing, which we don't have to meet that expectation. But there will be a lot of controversy and conversation if we don't. Yeah, yeah.
190 Thank you, council president. And I just want to affirm, yes, we can kind of look through the strategic programs with bureaus and provide a characterization of those three types that you mentioned. Also, I just did want to give some confidence that, you know, as part of our work in management with bureaus, we do get budget forecasting over the life of the cip from them, and there's opportunity to have some dialog about where programs are behind, you know, where they're expected spending is. And so that is part of the kind of ongoing management and work with with the bureaus.
191 Thank you. Two more quick things, a quick question and a comment when you were talking about the cutter garage piece. And I hate to go back to this. I feel like we spent a disproportionate amount of time on it. But I thought that you said something about that coming through the competitive grants program. I thought that the competitive grants program was separate from the strategic programs, and were the pieces that were designed for community led projects. I'm trying to understand what I'm missing. Is that not what the competitive grants are, or did somehow a city project end up in that bucket?
192 Yeah. Thank you for the question. And that was through a one time approach that the, the, the PCEF committee helped design and then was approved as part of the climate investment plan in 2024, which was the collaborating for climate action process awards.
193 It was within collaborative.
194 So it was within collaborating for climate action.
195 Thank you. I missed that piece. Yeah. And then I'll just note that as we move forward, I'm going to be looking for places where we are creating a value add. A number of my colleagues have touched on this. Are we putting money toward things that would happen anyway? Are we putting money toward a value add? I recently toured a a housing project in my district where they said we were able to use a higher density of insulation because of PCEF money. That's a value add. They wouldn't have done that otherwise. But I've also seen things where people say, oh, we were able to use PCEF to help us offset the cost of these things that we had planned to do. It's not as much of a value add. So I'll really be looking at how are we creating that value add that wouldn't otherwise be there? How are we avoiding offsetting funds that partners could find, or that our bureaus could find elsewhere? And how are we creating? Creating monumental change for our community? How are we doing things that outlast this funding? I think that's why I'm interested in that piece around research and education and job creation that councilor Ryan was also pointing to, because I think that's a place where there might be some one time initiatives that then can spur ongoing change and investment for our community. And how do we really use PCEF on the the strategic program side? Again, community grants are different from my perspective to catalyze the types of change we want to see for our community in a way that is bigger than just the one time investment that we make. So I just will end there with my comments. Councilor Clark.
196 Thank you, madam president, and thank you all for being here today, especially the committee members. This has been great. This is my first deep dive into PCEF. So my head's kind of spinning and I think it's been a great dialog. I really appreciate listening to my colleagues as well and their questions, and some of my questions have been answered. But I'm going to go from the 30,000 foot level. And then two quick questions or comments. At the 5000 foot level, I'm kind of struggling today with what is my biggest takeaway from today's presentation. And it kind of revolves around it sounds like you're trying to balance certain goals, you know, address the impacts on people at the community level, but also deal with the emissions issue, reduction of emissions. And what I'd like to know more about is how did you decide on where you get the biggest bang for the buck on emissions reduction? And because I just don't see that that's not emphasized here. I thought that was a goal. The program. Do you evaluate every piece that every application that comes in on its emission reduction potential? You know, how do you hold? How do you hold folks accountable around that, that I don't I don't see that coming through here to a great degree. So I'm very concerned about, you know, how how you decided where we get the biggest bang for the buck on emissions reduction. Do you want to answer that now or. Okay.
197 I think I think we'll answer that. And I know you have more questions, councilor Clark. So yes, the emissions reductions are central to the work we do. In many ways. It's remiss that I don't always focus on that. I think that key thing to just hold on to is from the outset, as pisf was created, it was an acknowledgment that we've done amazing things as a region, as a state on the environment for many, many years, and we've been fairly forward looking. But a lot of those focused efforts have been really focused in some ways, actually, solely on those environmental attributes and not the community benefits. And so pisa was in some ways an antidote to that. To say it is about the environment. It's also about community. And what I mean by that is when you're just focused on the least dollar investment to get the emissions reductions, it tends to be where can folks pony up resources on the other side so we can put just the right amount of incentive. But that means the other other side has to have resources. So we tended to invest as a region, not as a region. We tended to focus our efforts on well off businesses and households. So with emissions reductions are core. We measured in every instance. Obviously not when we're doing workforce development and things where that's just not relevant, but on any infrastructure projects, emissions reductions are the core. But we also look at what those co-benefits are. And so there are some programs where we hit it out of the park with really great emissions reductions, and that tends to be our ev related. Our our ev programs tend to have really good emissions reductions, whereas some of them it's good emissions reductions, but tremendous community benefit in terms of household energy bills, savings and so forth and other just stability. So we try to balance that across all our investments, knowing that some are going to really hit it out of the park. When you're looking at dollars per metric, tons reduced and some will be they're still going to have it. It's still going to be meaningful, significant. But there are other co-benefits that are going to carry the day for that particular project.
198 Okay. I appreciate that response.
199 I would add just is that there is an intentional relationship between the city's climate emergency work plan, aka climate action plan, in its next iteration, and the cip. That was one of the points of doing a cip was so that we could draw those lines more intentionally because the original pdf program was just response to community grant applications, and the cip introduced this more strategic scan of what are we doing? And how does that relate to the climate action plan. And so in the cip you will see those threads identified. Technically, we haven't focused a lot of that on our presentations, but that's there in the cip. And we'll be part of the conversation in the next cip and in the next climate action plan.
200 Okay. So somehow you're taking the results and feeding it into the climate.
201 And there's no, there's it's not an accident that the biggest PCEF investments are in building energy and transportation, which is where the biggest emissions are in the climate action plan. So, okay.
202 And to a related point, that's at the 5000 foot level is back to sp seven in the scope refinement. I'm somewhere between councilor Dunphy and councilor Zimmerman on this one. Someone on the dais mentioned better access to moving around that. That's what this is about. I, I would say, and I think you're soliciting our opinions, is that the better access by moving around really says transit to me that we should be increasing the mode split, doing what we can to increase the mode split on transit by making it safer, faster, more coverage in the community. Both, you know, for mobility and for emissions. And so I would really go back to emphasizing, and I don't know if that's a 50 million, you know, every every round, because I appreciate the fact that you're investing on the brt on 82nd. And I don't know what the next big thing would be, but it just seems to me that we need a greater emphasis on on transit here. That's my opinion. And lastly, I just wanted to ask you a little question on on the 1.6 billion, what percentage is administrative costs?
203 Our administrative limit is 12%. We've been well under that. I think we're running somewhere in the seven 8%. And so but and then obviously we when we run a program we move program resources. But then there are contractors that have their admin on there. So our administration as a city on our side of the shop is running one, I believe around eight, seven, 8%.
204 Thank you, thank you.
205 Thank you. Councilor councilor Morillo.
206 Thank you, council president. Thank you all so much for this presentation. I feel like we've been lucky in the climate committee to hear from you and learn more about PCEF a few times, so I feel a bit more familiar with this, but I, I think I want to address some of the comments that were made up here because, you know, there were comments about the fact that the city council is the one budget authority. But PCEF was created by and for community. And I think that we really need to center that when we're talking about PCEF and what it was intended for. It is a great problem to have that. It brought in more money than was intended, but that doesn't you know, it's already being used so much to backfill our own bureaus and our own. Crises that were created by mismanagement years prior. Right. So I really appreciated how you put that about the fact that it's not just about carbon emission reductions, but also addressing the human aspect of how climate change happens. And part of that is because we haven't centered the most vulnerable or the most impacted in our communities. And I just really appreciate that you centered us in in those values. I. It's also, I guess, some of the criticisms I hear up here, maybe criticism is too strong a word are kind of confusing to me, because on the one hand, some of my colleagues are saying, well, it seems like these nonprofits are getting funding and they're suddenly turning into climate advocacy groups, even though they weren't before. I actually think it's great if we have an incentive that is encouraging more community organizations to think about climate in all of the work that they do and integrate that. But on top of that, I've heard other colleagues bring up, like during the climate committee, councilor Ryan asked if we could use PCEF dollars to subsidize cannabis industry because they grow cannabis, and somehow that would be tied to carbon? I'm not really sure, but the point is that it seems like we're also picking and choosing without being led by community, when these dollars should go to different organizations, or if they should go to the private sector and for what reason. And so I would have major questions about that moving forward. I, I think that more metrics on carbon emissions in the future will be great. I appreciate you outlining why we haven't gotten some of those yet, or why we'll get them in more detail later. And as someone who also worked in nonprofits and had to focus on our grants for snap advocacy before, I also know that it was really painful to get grants awarded to us that only came annually, and having to plan our work through a very short window that didn't really allow us to have a bigger vision for the community and what we were trying to do. So I actually think it's a big asset that PCEF has a long term vision so that we can plan decades in advance, rather than scrambling every single year. And and I don't know, I just I really appreciate the work that's been done into this. I certainly have some of the same questions that I think councilor Novick raised at the very beginning around. And I think councilor Pirtle-guiney did as well about if something is an add on versus just paying for an existing program. But I also think that if these organizations are taking the time to actually create climate infrastructure in the work that they're doing, whatever that work may be, that that is a net good and that, I don't know, a single organization, government, anyone who is not financially struggling right now. And those dollars, if the community has vetted them, that seems applicable. I think that we really need to trust our community when they are leading us as the budget committee about what they want. And I I'm just very grateful that you guys have emphasized that, and I will push on that front on city council. So, yeah, thank you so much for your time today.
207 Thank you. Councilor councilor Novick. We have about five.
208 Minutes left.
209 Yeah. I just wanted to take this opportunity to say something which a former member of the PCEF committee told me about a year ago, which is that. And this is something that staff, I'm sure couldn't say even if they agreed with it. So what what what he said was that PCEF has generally been a reactive entity. The committee is first, they were reacting to grant requests from nonprofits, and what they could do was sort of limited by what grant requests they happen to get. And then they were reacting to demands from the city council. When the city council realized, hey, there's a ton of money here. And what he said that has not existed is the council interacting with the committee on to sort of strategically figure out what are our biggest priorities in terms of reducing carbon emissions and helping low income communities and other vulnerable communities adjust to climate change? And how should we, you know, what is our big plan there? And early on, I think that the some of the community grants were silly, like was a small grant to build a garden on the rooftop of a yoga studio. I think actually, since then, the criteria for for looking at community grants became really refined. And one of the things is reduction in carbon emissions. I think that the city has done some things that you would not do if you were really looking at maximizing both reduction of carbon and help to low income communities, and this is something I brought up before, but we have a five year plan to start taking over the cost of street tree maintenance with PCEF funds, which fortunately starts with low income areas. The sort of thought is, well, we can just expand that to do it forever for everybody. I think before you make that decision, you have to have an answer. The question is helping people in Eastmoreland and the west hills pay to maintain their street trees. A bigger bang for the buck in terms of carbon emissions and assistance to low income communities than improving transit in east Portland. So what? I doubt that we're going to go in and drastically change the allocations that have already been made for the last five years because, as machiavelli said, when you change anything, the people who lose or scream a lot louder than the people who win. But I look forward to having a robust conversation about the next cip, where we are much more deliberate and we're really focused on those goals of helping low income communities deal with the ravages of climate change and reducing carbon emissions. And we're doing that, and we're doing that in a measured way. And we're constantly whenever we're spending some money, somebody suggests spending money in x. The question is, is that really a better use to meeting those two goals than y.
210 Thank you.
211 Councilor councilor Zimmerman, was your hand back up okay? Thank you all for being here. I know this has been a lot, and we've moved in a lot of different directions today. And the the main thing that we needed to get today was just some of that background information so that we know what questions to be asking you as we move toward the opportunity to officially take action on the changes that you'll bring forward to us in the next couple of months, I appreciate the opportunity for us to dive a little deeper than that as well, though. Is there anything else you all want to close with?
212 Just my appreciation. Thank you, council president. Thank you councilors. This is wonderful.
213 Great.
214 We look forward to the continuing conversation. With that, I will close our work session and colleagues, a reminder that we are back here at 2:00 for a council meeting.