The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-07-16
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council convened on Wednesday, July 16, 2025, at 6:01 p.m., with roll call establishing quorum and a brief recess taken during agenda approval to address a disruption in the room. The agenda was amended to refer several items back to committee, remove one item to the Mayor's office, delay two items to future meetings, and reorder items pulled from the consent agenda. Public comment covered street-plaza and zoning policy, a request to declare September Suicide Prevention Month, concerns about a regional bridge/transportation environmental review process, and complaints about railroad crossings, TriMet safety, and traffic speeds. The Committee Referral Report and City Administrator's Report were given, including updates on budget-note reporting, a contracting report in development, and the city administrator hiring timeline. The consent agenda was approved, and several board and commission appointments were confirmed, including to the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing, Home Forward, the Planning Commission, the Parks Board, and the Arts Access Fund Oversight Committee. The council also acted on a system development charge exemption ordinance, a resolution urging the Mayor to sign the Swimmable Cities Charter, and a resolution on alternative transportation funding strategy, which was amended before passage. Votes occurred on multiple items; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting concluded before 8:00 p.m.
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.
Procedural markers in this session
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Procedural episode · turns 0–14
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0 I am calling tonight's Portland city council meeting to order. It is Wednesday. There we go. July 16th at 6:01 p.m. Keelan, could you please call the roll?
1 Good evening clay, online here Morillo. Here Novick. Here. Mark Green here. Zimmerman here. Avalos here. Dunphy. Here. Smith. Canal here. Ryan. Here. Pirtle-guiney here.
2 Could you please read us the rules of order and decorum? Council president. Thank you.
3 Welcome to the Portland city council. To testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at w-w-w. Agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's webpage. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The presiding officer's preserve officer preserves the order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene convene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.
4 Thank you colleagues. The first item on our agenda is agenda approval. I have a couple of updates before we approve the agenda. Agenda items seven and eight have been requested to be referred back to committee by the service area for some technical changes to the language, so I'm removing those from the agenda to send them back to committee. Agenda item 12 has been pulled.
5 From the city council.
6 I'm sorry, but we are in the middle of a meeting right now. We will have time for the public to respond.
7 Respond.
8 We will have time for the public to give comments later. I'm sorry, but we need to move forward with our meeting and I'm asking you to sit back down. We have time for folks to give comments later. I'm sorry, but I need you to sit down so we can continue with our meeting.
9 You do not give us an answer.
10 As we read in the rules of decorum, we need you to sit down. Otherwise we will need to take a recess. Colleagues, I'm going to recess us for two minutes so that we can regain decorum. Councilor, Zimmerman and Avalos, are you still there with us?
11 Yes.
12 Fantastic. That gives us quorum. I am reconvening tonight's city council meeting. Colleagues, we are on approving the agenda, and I was running through items that have been pulled, including items seven, eight and 12. The mayor has requested that item 12 be removed back to his office. Item 17 has been requested to be moved to a future meeting by councilor Clark, and item 23 has been requested to be moved to a future meeting by councilor Koyama Lane. Agenda items ten, 11, 13, 14 and 15 have been pulled off the consent agenda and will be moved to the top of the regular agenda. Colleagues, are there any other requests for amendments to the agenda? Councilor Zimmerman?
13 I would request that anything that got pulled off of the consent agenda be placed at the end or after the remaining regular agenda. Thank you.
14 I believe we have one person here for an appointment, and I am not sure which appointment that is. Councilor Zimmerman, would you be okay if we add item 13 to the top of the agenda and move ten, 11, 14, and 15 to the end of the agenda?
15 I think we have a consent agenda for a reason. I think we should use it. This practice of continuing to pull consent is not helpful.
16 Understood. Councilor greene, do you have any amendments to the agenda?
17 No. I just wanted to make a clarification. I heard you right. Did councilor Clark requested item 17 be pulled from the agenda?
18 Item 1919.
19 Okay. Thank you.
20 Yes.
Procedural episode · turns 21–29
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21 19.
22 Item 19.
23 Though no item 18 is still on the agenda. She, in fact, specifically requested that we continue with that one, despite the fact that she's not here. Okay. Agenda 17 is still on the agenda. Okay, colleagues. I have had a request to move the items from that are pulled from consent to the end of the agenda. I will note that there are some people who were told they would be at the beginning of the agenda. I have offered that we keep item 13 at the beginning, since that individual, we've been told is here tonight and move items ten, 11, 14 and 15 to the end of the agenda. Do I have unanimous consent for that proposal? Councilor Zimmerman, I see your hand raised.
24 That's an old hand.
25 Okay. Any objections? Okay. We have agenda approval. Colleagues, the next item on the agenda is public comment. Keelan, could you please call up the members of the public who are here to share some information with us today?
26 First up, we have andrea haverkamp.
27 Thank you for joining us tonight.
28 Hi. Thank you. Good evening, Portland city council. My name is andrea haverkamp. I'm a resident of the kerns neighborhood in the central east side. I'm here today as a member of the advocacy group strong towns pdx. We advocate for a pattern of development that is financially strong and resilient for roads and streets that are safe and productive, and that the best change is bottom up, low cost with high impact. Lots of groups also stand for safe streets, public transit, zoning, and housing, but we're unique that we lead from the financial reason that all of these are important. Portland just elected a crew of advocates and changemakers to city council. There's a lot of change makers and advocates out here doing the work to. We are okay with things being messy and perfect. That's actually a core tenet of the strong towns approach. What we're not okay with, though, is inaction. Things moving backwards or waiting 5 or 10 years for change. So here's a few things Portland is doing right. We need to keep nudging it to keep going. The PBOT public street plaza program. This is tremendously low cost and generates invaluable human connection space for artists and neighbors, and supports our ecosystem of local small businesses. This low cost, innovative program emerged after the pandemic of 2020. However, it was dangled for potential cuts. The plaza on 13th is having three blocks removed and things feel waffling. The new plaza on Hawthorne is amazing, but it's only seasonal and temporary. Let's make it permanent and let's keep going. So every one of our over 90 neighborhoods has public street access, street dining two. In my neighborhood, street dining is abundant, fun, and thriving. What could be a couple boring parking spots become a lively new korean food dining place, moon polka or elegant italian food at montelupo. My favorite mexican restaurant. Guerrero used to have a big, vibrant, cherished street dining structure for years until after restrictive, ever changing regulations, fees and an order from PBOT, it was removed. Now it's just a parking space. Street dining should be free to permit, and it should be really easy for businesses to make one. There could be pre-approved plans from PBOT so you know exactly what. Two by fours to buy and just go and build it so that we have that space. These are core human needs to be outdoors and to have fun. These are really low cost too. Here's another couple low cost, high impact ways we can keep Portland fun and affordable for everyone. We need to simplify zoning with all the business overlays and zoning codes that we have. There's over 900 different possible zoning combinations for small local developers and startups. That's insurmountable and therefore only large out of state big groups that have the ability to navigate and build here. We need bottom up, not overly prescribed from the top down. With my last few seconds, let us help. Strong towns members across the nation are are painting our own crosswalks rather than waiting years for crosswalks to happen. Advocates in the bay are building benches where there's no benches at bus stops. Let's get code ordinances and programs going so that we bottom up and build the city. There's 600,000 portlanders. Let us help paint and repair our own city. We also do a lot of math. We got graphs, charts, numbers, gis data. Let's find a time to gather and talk. We have ideas. Happy pride. Thank you.
29 Thank you so much for being here today.
30 Next up we have sarah hobbs. Sarah is joining us online.
31 Welcome, sarah. Thank you for being a part of our meeting.
32 Sarah you're muted. Go ahead and unmute.
33 For the record my name is sarah hobbs. I'm a volunteer field advocate with the Oregon state chapter of the American foundation for suicide prevention. I'm sorry, I'm nervous at the way had just added to my nervousness, so please bear with me here.
34 Take your time.
35 So I started in suicide prevention in 2013 as a member of friends of the bridge in. Commissioner Novick. You were our champion on that project and I'm forever grateful for you. I now come before you as our new city commission, asking a ask of you. And that is again for the third year that you declare September international or excuse me, suicide prevention month for the city of Portland. September is national suicide prevention month. My organization's motto is be the voice by. Making September to declare on behalf of the city as suicide prevention month, you amplify my voice that I can go and see. See my city commissioners are taking this seriously. They have declared it for the city and you all can help. Sorry and nerves amplify my voice. One of our national priorities. And we are an organization that works just in a collaborative effort. We believe you don't need to invent the wheel. This weekend is one of our organization's busiest weekends because suicide prevention within the LGBTQ plus youth community especially, sadly, with what we're seeing now with transgender youth, we work very, very closely in partnership with both the trevor project and glisan. So this weekend will be a busy weekend for us. And then the first weekend in October when we have our big annual letter as well, will also be another big weekend. I see that I'm close to being out of time. I appreciate your consideration. Help me to help the city. Thank you.
36 Thank you very much, miss hobbs. And I'll note that proclamations are done through the mayor's office now. But the mayor is here with us tonight and heard your testimony.
37 Next up, we have sharon nasset. Welcome, sharon.
38 Thank you for being here.
39 Oh, I guess this one's in the center. Mayor, council members. For the record, I'm sharon nasset. I'm with the economic transportation alliance. Last week or so, I spent quite a bit of information having to do with transportation to your office. And then earlier today, I sent a package and I sent a request of city council, and I left the pile of the quest pages at home when we handed those out. So I don't have any of my notes. I'll start with these are two awards. This is a board. Mike abboud is the mayor of saint john's. If anybody doesn't know that and this is a reward from 26 and this is word from 2011 having to do with transportation. I've worked a lot in transportation for over 20, 25 years. So this little package is telling you that we were in the columbia river crossing. They did not follow the nepa process, and they removed us without studying and have made false and inaccurate statements. They are doing a supplemental environmental impact statement called the bridge replacement. Right now in the federal register. It's called crc two, and it is all built on it. And supplement is meant to be opened up. When you find out more information and other things need to be studied. When you look at this last two pages and you see the devastation that would happen with over 600 pieces of property fully or partially removed, 9 to 11 years of construction on I-5, what they would do to jansen beach or hayden island, as we call it. As an elected official, you would say, oh my gosh, isn't there anything else we could do? Anything else before this, especially since we know it will not give us any more time. The corridor is full on both ends and it's not what anybody wants. Well, there is, and they removed those alternatives, have made false statements, have stolen our maps, put false statements on them, and we have been saying that for a long time. It. Oh, this is supposed to be. Are you seeing this map?
40 We do see the map. Yes.
41 Oh. Anyways, I beg your pardon. So anyways, there is no reason not to open up the supplement. In 25 years they have not been able to go forward. What they're going forward with is not going to work. We have our own funding ideas. It will not include tolling. The majority of the land is bare and vacant. It will have a tunnel through through north Portland, so we will not have a second freeway. These awards and hundreds of people have come to our meetings have said it. Every time you go, any place you hear third bridge, why isn't it being studied? We're not talking about construction. We're talking about studying. They removed us. And you see the video that I sent you or the port commissioner Came out and said, I don't think this should be studied right now, and took it off, and they went forward with that. And letters from the signatory agencies over and over said they had violated it. But without a sponsor's counsel, as you know, there was no sponsors counsel because they disband after being bullied, receiving disinformation and all of the data from the sponsors council had to be null and void, which is why it's called the project staff recommendation. Because there was no sorry.
42 There was no beep. But I'm noticing that we're a bit over time now. Thank you for being here though.
43 So what I'm asking for is that you immediately require to the sponsoring agencies that that they have to open the cis to include the projects that they removed that came forward from the community.
44 Yeah, we have the information here from you and appreciate.
45 Oh, that's a minus. I beg your pardon? I thought I had I didn't see the minus sign, thank you kindly.
46 It usually beeps and it didn't tonight.
47 Oh, hey. Well thank you.
48 Next up next up we have joshua trotter. Joshua trotter. All right jeff katie.
49 Welcome jeff. Thank you for being here.
50 My name is jeff. Katie and I live on southeast 12th avenue in a condominium I recently bought which is in district three. I have three transportation related items one, the union pacific trains that block southeast 11th and 12th division. Two how scary it is to ride max and busses around Portland. Three the dangerous speeds on southeast 11th and 12th between Hawthorne and division. The union pacific trains are constantly blocking our neighborhood off to the south and southeast. 11th and 12th division. They can block our neighborhood off for an hour for the bottom line of union pacific railroad to load and unload trains. Our neighborhood is extremely inconvenienced every day. What I really think about are the worst case scenarios of those streets being blocked. The response time for emergency responders into our neighborhood from the south gets impacted. There are a lot of situations where just one minute delay is the difference between life and death. I visited fire station 23, which is just south of the tracks, and they confirmed that response time is affected regularly by those trains being stopped. Southeast 11th and 12th division has to be the worst railroad crossing in the city. Now that man just died under a max train trying to beat the union pacific, because he knew that it can stop for up to an hour, you know, and I'm guilty of it myself when riding my bike. It's human nature. Also, due to these long wait times, the streets become full of angry drivers. People lose their minds and it becomes a road rage zone on 11th in division. The long term goal should be to either take the train under, under or cars, bikes and pedestrians over there. But I think union pacific railroad should be held accountable to keep our streets open. The only way is for the city council to make it painful for their wallet to block our neighborhood. How about $100,000 per minute fine for being stopped? Yes. Please make them pay for the construction project. I need to write TriMet daily, and I would like to talk about how scary it is to ride max and stain it puts on the image of our city. I'm confident people arriving for the first time from the airport are stunned and scared that so many addicts high out of their mind are riding it. Some wheel their whole house and bring large bags of cans along with them. This shouldn't be allowed. Others bring vicious dogs onto the trains. Dogs shouldn't be allowed on TriMet either. As I've heard, bites have been happening. I believe it as I've been barked and viciously growled at on it. As a side note, I personally believe that forcing a dog into homelessness should be considered animal cruelty. I'm a dog person and they need a loving home, proper dog food, and veterinary care. The only time I feel safe on max is when the security is on board. I would like to challenge every council member to go ride max to and from work every day alone with no security. Maybe if you required all city and TriMet employees to ride TriMet to work, things would improve. I mean, don't you all want safe and clean public transportation in our city? I recently witnessed a major a major violent altercation on the two bus at the omni stop between a high addict and another rider. At least make sure people pay before getting on max or busses. Wouldn't that be a novel concept? It shouldn't be a warm place to hang out for hours on a cold and rainy day for free. I TriMet bus driver told me he wasn't allowed to enforce fares. Why do you think the max ridership is so far down? It's unsafe, unsanitary, and downright scary. It's the same reason the whole downtown has been abandoned and that big pink building is empty. Lastly, the cars on southeast 11th and 12th between Hawthorne and division are going way too fast. I see serial traffic enforcement on my street. Thank you.
51 Thank you very much for being here and for squeezing so much into those three minutes. Hearing from you.
52 That completes communications.
53 Thank you. Keelan colleagues. The next item on the agenda is the committee referral report. I will try to do this quickly. I referred to accepting the 2024 Portland police bureau annual report to community and public safety appointments to the home forward board, to how homelessness and housing appointments to the arts access fund oversight committee to arts and economy. Urging the public works and budget and finance areas to develop a comprehensive strategy for alternative funding for transportation and infrastructure to the transportation and infrastructure committee. Appointments to the planning commission, to the climate resilience and land use committee. Appointments to the Portland committee on community engaged policing to the community and public safety committee. Appointments to the civil service board. To the governance committee. Declaration of property at north midway and north columbia as surplus to the finance committee. Declaration of property at northeast 33rd to the finance committee. Vacation of property at northeast 33rd and marine drive to the finance committee. Vacation of property at southeast oak and 37th to the transportation committee. The 82nd avenue project. Property rights to transportation and infrastructure. Approving findings to approve alternate contracting measure for the bridge project to transportation and infrastructure appointments to the Portland utility board, to transportation and infrastructure. Declaration of property as surplus and approval of a property swap from PBOT to ODOT to transportation and infrastructure and appointment of members to PCEF to climate resilience and land use. Since our last meeting, the next item on our agenda is the city administrators report. Mr. Jordan, would you like to give us an overview of anything you have in there?
54 Thank you, madam president. I will keep it very brief. Just a couple of things. One, early in the report under service area highlights, we note that we'd like to use this report in the coming months to regularly report to council regarding all the budget notes that we have and report progress. We used to do that just at fall and spring bumps with what we used to call those. So now I think we will be able to give you a more real time update on budget notes. That won't preclude us from having contacts with you on specific notes for other reasons. Some of them are pretty complex, and we need to have some interaction on getting those done, but we'll do some regular updates there. I wanted to thank whoever mailed emailed us from a gmail address that let us know that our our risk report didn't have enough column width to accommodate the numbers. So it was reissued. And I appreciate somebody giving bringing us to that. And then lastly, we are very close to being able to bring council. This is coming attractions a report on contracting. We're developing a prototype report that we'd like to bring you in in the coming months that will report on all contracts, not just the ones of a certain size. So look forward to that. And with that, I'd be happy to try and answer any questions. Madam president.
55 I believe councilor Avalos has a question.
56 Oh, okay.
57 And for folks in the room, I'll just note there are only six of us at the dais. But we do have two colleagues who are online. So we are still we do still have a quorum. Go ahead, councilor Avalos.
58 Thank you. I was wondering, city administrator jordan, if you could give an update on the hiring process for the city administrator?
59 Thank you for the question. I believe there has a packet of information that is coming to council. If you don't already have it. Regarding the work that we did last year in developing a successful candidate profile, it has a lot of information in there about the focus groups and the survey work that was done last year in preparation for getting ready to go out. We have a consultant on board, a headhunter that will be we will give you, I would say within the next week, you will have a draft process of how we will go through the review for the city administrator position and the engagement of council and stakeholders in that. In that review process, I am hopeful to be on the street, if you will, with that recruitment by the end of the month or early August. Hopeful also to close that around labor day. September will be quote unquote review month, where we will go through a process of reviewing candidates multiple layers for all candidates. I like to call it hell week. They are very strenuous. But but I know that this is the first hiring process for a city administrator. And it's going to be a very important issue for everyone in the community and certainly for council and the mayor. And then looking hopefully through that process to make an offer to a candidate sometime in October. And my hope is that somebody in the chair by thanksgiving, that may be a little optimistic, but that's that's our schedule and that's our hope. Does that help councilor Avalos?
60 Yes it does. Sorry. Yes. Sorry y'all. It does help. I also was wondering if you could give us more updates in the future about the process to involve the community in that search. I would love to be a part of that. I think the council should be a part of, especially promoting to our constituents opportunities for people to weigh in on that search. So I just wanted to flag that. I would love to hear more, and I'd like to participate more in that discussion.
61 Absolutely. Thank you. Councilor.
62 Thank you, councilor and colleagues, I'll note that there is a survey that went out to all of us to as a first take at our opinions on this, that I believe is due by the end of the week. Colleagues, are there any more questions for mr. Jordan? Okay. The next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. And I believe we have two items left on the consent agenda. Is that correct? Keelan.
63 That's correct.
64 Okay. And I'll note that we have a new type of agenda item that is on consent. We get a lot of agenda items around property, dispose of a piece of property, declare a piece of property, surplus things that could take a lot of time, that get vetted in committee, that get vetted by the councilors who represent the district that the property is in. And I am starting to put those on consent. If you have thoughts about this as we move forward, please let me know after this meeting. But my intention is to put agenda items like that on consent moving forward, knowing that if there's a specific agenda item somebody has concerns with that can be pulled off. I'll note that I am not adding eminent domain items to the consent agenda, because I know that those can sometimes have additional complications. But those other property related items I'll be putting on consent moving forward, unless I hear from anybody after tonight that they have concerns with that. Keelan could you please move us forward with consent?
65 Yes. Koyama Lane I Morillo. Novick I.
66 Green a.
67 Zimmerman. Avalos I Dunphy I. Canal Ryan. I pirtle-guiney I with 7 or 8 yes votes. The consent agenda is approved.
68 Okay, colleagues, we moved one item from that was pulled from consent to the top of the agenda agenda item 13. So we are going to jump to agenda item 13 now. And. I don't have a full script because it's on consent, because this was on consent. We don't have plans for a report of the committee staff. Summary. You do have that committee staff summary posted online, though I believe this came out of public safety and councilor Novick. I'm not sure if you or councilor Kanal had the gavel this day, but you are here and he is not. So would you like to give us an overview?
69 I think I actually did have the gavel. We had two candidates come before us for the community on the committee on community engaged policing, and we moved forward. The nomination of gabrielle poccia, who has a background as a policy analyst, a performance auditor and a community clinic administrator, definitely has a background in mental health, and we're very impressed with her. There was another candidate, dion salazar, who did not move forward because we had five people and it was a 2 to 1 vote with one vote against him. So that means that we are going to be one short, I think, on the pccep board.
70 Thank you. Councilor Kanal did you have anything to add to that overview?
71 Yeah, just that it was presented as one document and then divided and voted on separately. But I agree with councilor Novick's comments that we're very impressed with with the candidate who is before us today in the committee, and we're excited to have the have the vote to formally confirm her.
72 Great colleagues.
73 Any comments or questions?
74 I have a question.
75 Councilor Ryan.
76 Yeah, I'm just co-chairs. When there's a vote, it's 2 to 1. What's the protocol when you look at that? Again, since there were two people that were absent?
77 Well, I mean, the rule is in order for something to move forward, you have to have a majority. Actually, I don't know if that means I don't know if there's a provision for bringing somebody back.
78 I think we could we could theoretically vote to move, to rescind the vote, I believe, would be the official motion to, to reopen it in committee, that that would be a possibility. I'll note that the councilor who voted no, there were two councilors absent. So I don't know how they would have voted, but the councilor Voted no, not present now to talk about that side of it. But it is theoretically possible that at a later date we could bring it that other nomination back up. I also know from, and I believe the staff could answer if we needed to confirm it, but that they're doing interviews because there was, I believe, one additional vacancy beyond it. So there'd be two vacancies to fill. Now that they're doing interviews for potential candidates to fill, we expect that in a few months. We'll probably get that next. Round of nominations.
79 Got it.
80 Colleagues, are there any additional questions about this appointment? Okay. Keelan, could you please call the roll.
81 Council president for this? I think we may need a motion to accept the report.
82 So moved.
83 Second.
84 There we go. I apologize because it came off of consent. I was moving a little too quickly there. I realized that I didn't actually have you read the title either, which we should probably do.
85 Sounds great. Thanks a point, gabrielle, to the Portland committee on community-engaged policing for term to expire June 26th, 2027.
86 Okay, let's move forward with the vote.
87 Koyama Lane I.
88 Novick I.
89 Green I.
90 Zimmerman. I.
91 Avalos. I Dunphy I.
92 Canal I.
93 Ryan I.
94 Pirtle-guiney I.
95 With nine yes votes. The appointment is confirmed.
96 Thank you. Keelan. Could you please read our next agenda item, which I believe is agenda item 16? Is that right?
97 That's correct. Item 16 amend system development charge exemptions code to add a temporary exemption for residential housing projects.
98 Thank you. And I believe we do have a. Oh, no. This is a second reading isn't it? Okay colleagues, this is a second reading on this item. This was the. Sdc measure that we heard at our last meeting. Are there any comments or is there any discussion? Councilor Avalos, agenda item 16. Councilor Avalos go right ahead.
99 All right. Thank you. Yes. I have a couple of thoughts that I wanted to just share. I do plan to vote yes on this sdc waiver, but because at the last meeting I had to leave early before I could hear the end result of my amendment. I just wanted to talk about that real quick and say, first, I'm disappointed that it didn't pass because I'm worried that I and I don't believe we have strong guardrails to protect the city from losing more infrastructure than we can afford to lose. Especially concerned now that, you know, there's just so many dollars for infrastructure that are at threat, whether it's federal, whether it's the state's lack of passing a transportation bill, just worried about, you know, how much infrastructure funding we're we can afford to lose. I totally understand and understood the oppositional argument that it could have added an uncertainty that would have made it hard for developers. I think we could have had an honest discussion about how to accomplish both outcomes thoughtfully. But the other things that I heard were around folks not feeling worried about potential additional money lost other than the 63 million proposed because they believe that, you know, exceeding the goal simply means that we will have more housing. But if we don't have that same energy to ensure that the housing that we build is actually affordable to the people who need it, then we're simply deepening our housing crisis while adding more money into the pockets of wealthy developers at the cost of this vital, life saving infrastructure. And I have to speak up about that, especially as a councilor for east Portland. I've also heard people say, you know, that they don't believe that sdc should be the way that we fund infrastructure. I agree, but I remain interested in hearing ideas that people have about how we do that infrastructure. If we don't have that, I think both can be true, that it's not the best tool, and that it's one of the few tools that we have to build infrastructure that will just continue to be under grave threat during this trump administration. Should we lobby the state to adjust this way that we spend for sccs? Absolutely. But should we forego millions in sdc just on principle because it does doesn't fund everything that we want or need it to do? No, I think the sdc is an important lever that we can pull, and absolutely we need to continue to work on other strategies to increase housing production and drive down housing costs. But one thing is for sure, I promise that trickle down urbanism is not going to save us. Abundance is not going to save us. We need actual housing for all wages, stages and ages. And that takes intentionality, not growth, just for growth's sake. So I just felt that I had to put those thoughts on the record. At the end of the day, I will be voting I. But I remain concerned about how we will continue to fund infrastructure that our entire city seeds our entire city needs, but especially my district. Thank you.
100 Thank you, councilor, councilor Ryan.
101 Yes, thank you, council president. Thank you, mayor wilson. And thank you, dca, oliveira and your team for bringing this innovative legislation forward. I just want you to know, my staff attended a tour of a district two multifamily property being built now in. The developer did confirm that they have multiple projects, that this waiver will allow them to break ground on much sooner than they ever would have. This is a type of incentive we need to let the housing industry know we are ready to partner with them to reach our housing goals. I'm really excited about.
102 I thank you, councilor, councilor Green.
103 Thank you. I just want to briefly note that, I mean, I've been a big champion of this approach for a long time, I think. I think it's exactly the right signal we need to be sending. I just want to express my full support behind the other kind of code and zoning reforms that I know that that are that dca olivera is working on with his team. Because you got to make hay while the sun shines. While we do this to have the maximum effect. And I had made the argument, I think, to councilor Avalos concerns that I'm comfortable with this because we will grow our tax base with this. And I and I think I'm I'm looking forward to that alternative finance conversation. I tipped out a little bit of my idea ideas at the pedestrian advisory committee last night. So this is beginning of a discussion. But I'm so excited to support this and I really hope I hope we do some more stuff like this.
104 Thank you councilor Colleagues, I do support sdcs, and I do think that they are a really important tool, and I don't take lightly the fact that we're forgoing tens of millions of dollars of revenue for public infrastructure at a time when we have so many infrastructure needs. But I also know that right now, with the tools in our toolbox, this is the single most impactful thing that we can do this year to support housing development. And right now, kickstarting our housing pipeline, getting folks back to work, getting more housing open so that we can start to address the affordability crisis in our city and the growing numbers of folks who are homeless in our community needs to be a top priority. This may actually be significant enough. This single piece of legislation to move the needle on housing in our community, to get eyes back on Portland, to get permits coming in the door, to get housing here for our community members. That's why I am supportive of the measure. Despite the funding we will forgo. It's why I am grateful to the mayor and the governor for bringing this forward to us, to champion. It's why I emphatically support what's before us today. I hope that our community sees this as a commitment to building more housing, that the development community sees this as a call to get back to work, and that this is the start of real solutions for our housing crisis. Councilor Dunphy.
105 Thank you, madam president. Colleagues, I'm also looking forward to supporting this. I'm under no delusions that this policy will will lower rents citywide. I don't believe that we will ever build our way to a place of affordability at this point. I don't believe that that's how development works. That said, I'm really worried about our workforce. I'm really worried about our qualified builders who are out there right now struggling to make a living to pay their rents. And if we don't get cranes in the sky, if we don't get shovels in the dirt and we don't start getting things built, then they will move. They will move on to new communities, they will find work. And if we don't demonstrate to the development community some form of carrot, then they simply will invest in other communities. They will buy up foreclosed homes rather than purchasing or building new ones. I don't believe that this will make things cheaper. I don't think that's the intention, and we need to have a bigger conversation about how to get things cheaper and how to get better wages into our communities so that people can afford the rents we have here. But this is the right step right now. I'm looking forward to the broader conversation about the future of sdcs. I agree with everything that councilor Green has been saying about this, and he has some credibility that I don't have since he's a doctor. But this is the right policy right now for Portland, and we will come back and take a look at it after we get those 5000 units built very quickly. So thank you, mayor, for leading on this. Thank you, council, and thank you, community, for trusting us to try and do something good in the right direction.
106 Thank you. Councilor, colleagues, is there any other discussion? Councilor Koyama Lane.
107 Thank you. I'd like to say thank you to the mayor.
108 And dca oliveira for bringing this idea forward. I am supportive of creative, innovative ideas and to address our most challenging issues. I will say at the front that I plan to support this today. I also believe there's no one action that will fix our housing challenges. We need many tools in the toolbox. This is one of them. Homelessness and the lack of affordable housing is so important and is fundamentally connected to economic injustice. And so I'm always very sensitive to any action that could exacerbate exacerbate economic inequity, even if it's addressing short term needs. I would say waiving sdcs is in that short term solution category. I will say that I appreciate there's a clear end date to the testing of this idea. And I also want to name there are possibly some potential long term impacts that may not be sustainable. And in my 16 years as teaching, I've seen firsthand the impacts on students and their families who have to move frequently because they lack access to safe, stable housing. And I am wondering how this could work in also in conflict with what we were just talking in our previous discussion about parks, the parks levy, and how much we care about parks. By waiving these fees, we do have to be clear that parks will get less. I also want to make sure that every development project started as a result of this is held accountable to sharing in the responsibility of supporting all the things that we all up here really love in our city the infrastructure, the parks. So I will look forward to hopefully some regular reporting to council. And this being a conversation and also to the community that can show us that this short term action is being effective. And as a nod to kind of the more long term outlook, I look forward to the council deliberation of councilor Avalos unified housing strategy. Thank you.
109 Thank you. Councilor, councilors. Is there any other discussion before we move on to a vote? Okay. Keelan, could you please call the roll?
110 Koyama Lane.
111 Hi.
112 Novick.
113 Hi.
114 Greene. I Zimmerman.
115 Very proud of the finance committee for sending this forward to the council. I vote aye.
116 Avalos. Hi, Dunphy.
117 Portland is open for business. I.
118 Ryan I.
119 Pirtle-guiney I.
120 With eight yes votes. The ordinance is passed.
121 Thank you. And mayor you brought this forward. Do you have anything you want to add before we move on?
122 Thank you. Council president. First of all, thank you to the governor for stepping up. Council president, councilor Avalos, councilor Dunphy for joining the multifamily task force. This a big, bold move that is really designed to bring housing fast to the market. But also it's a jobs act where our city is in need of that boom loop. This is for plumbers and framers and painters and delivery drivers to get people working right now with good family wage jobs to keep families, we have to bring new families to our city to create income tax going north, property taxes going north, business license, taxes, everything that we've talked to our communities while we were campaigning about the renaissance, we see and I I'm grateful to work with each and every one of you. And thank you for giving us this shot in the arm and getting Portland moving. Thank you.
123 Thank you, mr. Mayor. Keelan, could you please read our next agenda item.
124 Item 17 urge the mayor to make the city a signatory to the swimmable cities charter.
125 Thank you. And I believe we have a committee staff summary.
126 Madam president and councilors, for the record, my name is craig cook, council policy analyst, and I serve as staff to the arts and economy committee. The resolution before you document number 2025 219 was considered in the arts and economy committee on June 3rd, where it was referred to council, as amended, with a recommendation to be adopted. It declares council support for joining the international urban swimming movement, and urges the mayor to make the city a signatory to the swimmable city's charter. The committee adopted an amendment prior to moving the item to full council. The amendment is summarized in the staff summary. The full impact statement on this item includes information on potential community impacts and community involvement. There was no verbal testimony prior to committee action. One person submitted written testimony prior to committee action, of which general themes included the importance of integrating urban public spaces with waterways for residents and visitors to enjoy benefits to the economy, environment and health of better connections between the city and the Willamette river. This concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.
127 Thank you. And councilor Green. I believe you both have our presiding officer additions and also carrier comments tonight. Is that the case?
128 It certainly is. Right ahead, briefly, just as as the presiding officer of the committee, I just recall it being a very fun. People were excited. We have a hot summer, we have a beautiful river, and people were proud of the work they did. So that was an easy one for me, and I'm glad that we can use the arts and economy committee for that type of, that type of, of joyful activity. So that's all I'll add to this. I think, you know, if you'll if you'll indulge me, I'll go right into the, the motivation here.
129 Go right ahead.
130 Thank you. So councilor Clark Clark brought this forward. But she can't be here tonight. So I've I'm just going to kind of provide some remarks that are motivated on her behalf. So I'm honored to introduce this resolution as a co-sponsor. And on behalf of councilor Clark, who cannot be here today, many of us advocated for parks and programs to preserve swimming pools and swimming lessons during the budget season, and just today referred levy to the ballot to repair and restore our parks. The swimmable cities resolution, which passed out of our committee, elevates portland's commitment to joining the swimmable cities charter, an international alliance that prioritizes safe and swimmable waterways, a fundamental part of our communities for people and wildlife. And the Willamette river is our biggest park, right? I want to recognize our community members and organizations like the human access project, black swimming initiative, Willamette riverkeepers, columbia river inter-tribal fish commission, and lower columbia estuary partnership for your grassroots work and advocacy to prioritize people and the environment you guys have. I grew up in this city, and I remember when you couldn't swim in there. I used to get infections in my feet when I tried anyway, because I'm stubborn. You guys all made this a swimmable river. And so I'm happy. I'm happy to, to, to do this. And so let's, let's also acknowledge the environmental services for, for czech rec their Willamette river water quality testing program. Nowhere to swim when it's safe especially on hot days like today. So colleagues I would I would love if we would urge the mayor. We obviously cannot compel the mayor, but this should be an easy sell for you, mayor.
131 Colleagues, are there any technical questions of either councilor Green or. Craig before we move to public comment? Councilor Avalos, do you have a technical question?
132 No, I'll come back after public comment.
133 Okay. Keelan do we have anybody signed up for public comment?
134 We have two people signed up, willie levinson and morgan spriggs. Let me see if. Willie levinson, morgan spriggs oh, hi. You signed up for this item? Okay. All right, I think. Yeah. Go ahead and come on up. Will you please introduce yourself?
135 Hi.
136 Members of the council and our mayor. My name is jacob griffith, a citizen in district four. And I'm here personally and to represent the sunrise movement in Portland. One of our biggest issues today is climate change and pollution. In recent history, city projects like the big pipe project have acknowledged the problem to keep sewage out of the river. Regrettably, and pretty bare minimum thing to have accomplished. As you all might and should know, we are experiencing the sixth mass mass extinction event. What the city has not done well is properly addressing how terrible of a habitat the Willamette river is. Ultimately, pollutants like mercury harm both humans and the ecosystem, so joining the swimmable cities charter would be a worthwhile step towards bettering Portland and its third places. Climate change is an unarguably disastrous and real problem that is largely, largely fronted by the poorest Americans. The fish and majority of portlanders don't put copper and mercury into our river. River pollution is the peak symbol of capitalism's disregard for our ecosystems. So let's keep whittling away at the pollution in our rivers by urgently. By urging mayor keith wilson to become a signatory of the swimmable city's charter. Why should we let up when it comes to stopping climate change and stopping its environmental impact and social impact, especially when those polluting do not? I yield my time.
137 Thank you very much.
138 And that completes testimony for this item.
139 Okay, colleagues, I suspect that at least one of those individuals would like to testify and maybe joining us a little bit later. So we may, although I think we should move forward with this, we may want to give them some time when they get here. Councilor Avalos, go right ahead.
140 Yes. Hi. Thank you so much to councilor Clark for bringing this forward. I think that, you know, safe, swimmable, natural waterways are obviously part of thriving communities and just our environmental bounty. I'm really looking forward to checking out the Willamette river now that it is swimmable. Swimmable. So that's great. I'm going to vote. Aye. I just wanted to take an opportunity to emphasize that making our city a swimmable city should also mean that we're expanding water safety and skills education courses. Right now, Portland parks and rec only offers swim lessons at a single location east of the 205. We know that's not enough, and research shows that, you know, black and latino parents are parents, and children are much less likely to know how to swim and have access to swim lessons. And those gaps just grow even further when you take into account family income. So this is a public safety concern that I want to bring up, because every year when we experience a heat wave like the one we're in this week, we tragically see drowning deaths in our community. So I just want to raise that and hope that this resolution and this directive to our mayor can bring attention to this overlooked issue. As we continue to expand our city, let's make sure that we're building in the right infrastructure to protect our kids and families from drowning. Drowning unnecessarily. So thank you.
141 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Ryan.
142 I'm sorry I missed the meeting that day. I think I was at a lovely emergency dental appointment, but I have to tell you that this is exciting. Every time willie levinson and the river huggers come to council, they always get everyone uplifted. I will say that I actually, the docs went in in 1986, just south of the Hawthorne bridge, the ones we use for the dragon boat races, and I used to go swimming with my friends down there, and my mother was still alive at that time and she didn't like it. But here I am many years later. And so please, people, swim in the water already. All right. Thanks.
143 Thank you. Councilor, colleagues, any other discussion? Okay. Oh, councilor Koyama Lane.
144 I just want to say, I think it's one thing to think about something as an idea and go, yeah, I want someone studies. And it's another thing to have that hands on experience when we're dragon boat racing or when with my third graders, I worked with the tribes and also worked with osu to raise salmon in my class and then bring the kids down there, and they get to release the salmon into the river. Being able to have that access is so it just takes things to another level and helps folks really feel that connection and own that part of nature as something that they want to take care of, they love and want to take care of. And I also appreciate just happened to yesterday with human access project. Got to swim in the Willamette river every Tuesday. They're doing these splashdowns and I was excited to go. But like there was something about showing up and seeing all these people just enjoying Portland and being so excited and just reminding me, reminding me how much I love our city and access to the river is a big part of that. So I'm excited to vote for this.
145 Thank you councilor. Perhaps if the mayor chooses to take us up on this suggestion, we should all go to one of those together. Colleagues, is there any other discussion? Councilor Kanal we are in discussion on agenda item 17, the resolution to urge the mayor to sign the swimmable cities charter. Go right ahead.
146 Yeah, I.
147 Just wanted to say this before the vote. I definitely support this. And I think one of the things that we don't always do a good job of at the city is join the coalition, the international coalitions that can advance the things we all believe in. And so this is a good first step to changing that under a new form of government. I look forward to getting involved in this on the international side, because there's so many different partnerships we could be involved in, and cities are at the forefront of a lot of this. In my work at the united nations and the international system, it's been an a thing that I've observed for a long time, and I'm excited to get Portland started on getting back into those networks. Thanks.
148 Thank you councilor. Councilor Morillo, we are in discussion on agenda item 17, urging the mayor to sign this city's charter. Would you like to jump in the queue or should we keep moving?
149 I got nothing, okay.
150 Seeing no additional discussion. Keelan, could you please call the roll?
151 Koyama Lane I.
152 Maria.
153 Novick I.
154 Green.
155 Hi, Zimmerman.
156 I believe he may have had to drop off.
157 Avalos I.
158 Dunphy I.
159 Canal I.
160 Ryan hi pirtle-guiney. I with nine yes votes, the resolution is adopted.
161 Thank you.
162 Keelan. Could you please read our next agenda item?
163 Item 18 urge the public works and budget and finance service areas to develop a comprehensive strategy for alternative funding for transportation and infrastructure.
164 Thank you and colleagues. We have a committee staff summary from claire adamski. Claire, go right ahead.
165 Madam president and councilors for the record. Claire adamson, council policy analyst and staff to the transportation and infrastructure committee. The resolution before you document 2025 265 was heard in the transportation and infrastructure committee on July 7th, where it was referred to council with a recommendation to be adopted. The resolution urges the public works and budget and finance service areas to work collaboratively in developing a comprehensive strategy for identifying and evaluating alternative sources of transportation funding, and emphasizes the importance of inclusive community engagement throughout the process and requests a detailed report be submitted to appropriate committees by December 1st, 2025. The report should outline potential funding scenarios, summarize stakeholder input, and address key considerations for implementation. Additionally, the resolution urges the governor to convene a special legislative session to pass a statewide transportation funding package aimed at preventing further cuts to both local and statewide transportation budgets. The committee adopted an amendment prior to moving the item to full council. The effects of the amendment on the original resolution are summarized in the full committee staff summary posted online. The full impact statement on this item includes information on financial and budgetary impacts and community impacts, and community involvement regarding public testimony in the committee, one person provided verbal testimony and one person submitted written testimony on the resolution prior to committee action. General themes included impacts of the legislative session, outcome on transportation funding, and the resulting need for the city to identify and pursue alternative funding sources. A request for a special legislative session to consider and enact a comprehensive statewide transportation funding package, and prioritizing the maintenance and preservation of existing transportation and infrastructure systems. That concludes the committee. Staff summary.
166 Thank you very much. Councilor Morillo. I believe you have our carrier and the both the committee and the carrier report. Since councilor Clark is absent today, is that correct?
167 That's correct. Thank you.
168 Go right ahead.
169 Well, claire did such a fabulous job on the summary. I don't have much more to add. I will say this was brought by chair Clark. So I'm just doing this in her place as vice chair of the transportation infrastructure committee. I think we all know that portland's transportation system is facing a critical funding crisis, and that this funding decline has been compounding for year after year, and it has created a lot of budget cuts within the transportation bureau that are now impacting our infrastructure, our staff, and just the general functionality of the bureau. Our system has been funded through a lot of unsustainable sources that are heavily reliant on fossil fuel generated revenue and parking fees. And with the rise in fuel efficient and zero emission vehicles, our traditional funding sources no longer keep up with the needs. Our dire situation was further exacerbated by the failure of the Oregon legislature to pass a statewide transportation package in 2025, which was quite literally their only job this legislative session. And that will require further cuts to the Portland bureau of transportation. Portlanders deserve a stable transportation system that supports them and provides critical maintenance and safety measures for our infrastructure, and without that additional funding, we are going to continue to lose ground. This will mean weight restricted bridges, streets riddled with potholes, snow covered roads uncleared in winter and an increasing number of failing street lights and signals. This resolution is a call to reimagine how we fund the system, and asking the public works and budget and finance services areas to work in coordination to develop a comprehensive and sustainable funding strategy. A key step in this plan includes a broad community engagement to explore funding alternatives, and this is crucial to ensure that we can build a more connected and equitable transportation system. Public works and budget and finance will be tasked with presenting a detailed report by December 1st, 2025, and this report will outline funding scenarios, stakeholder input and implementation recommendations. The other key piece to this resolution is adding our collective voice to urge governor kotek to call a special session to pass a comprehensive statewide transportation funding package. This resolution passed out of the transportation and infrastructure committee with unanimous support. And I urge all of you to support this resolution to get this essential work started. Thank you so much.
170 Thank you. Councilor. Colleagues, are there any technical questions before we move to public testimony? Councilor Novick.
171 Not technical.
172 Okay, okay. Keelan, I believe we have some folks signed up to testify. Thank you. Claire.
173 We have three people signed up for this item. Sharon nasset, ernie munch, and jordan lewis.
174 Welcome back.
175 Thank you, mayor and council. Thank you for having this. At the same night. I would like to just three or 4 or 5 funding ideas that we are not doing right now. And I've thought about them a lot. So I'm going to go over and briefly, but if you got questions asked, first thing is you've probably noticed on your electric bill that they know how to tax you, how to take the money, where to send it, how to do it. Well, in 2005, I was at jpac and they were talking about smart meters, were capable of telling you exactly how much energy was used and exactly by what equipment in your house, and they could easily tax people and wanted to put it on your bill in 2005, at which point elected officials in our area and federal wide said, well, we want to hold off knowing, get mile tax, get into their pocket further. That's almost 20 years ago. They get rebates, they're harder on our roads and they're riding free tax. Oregon was the first to do a gas tax, and now we need to be the first to an electric tax. Everything's in place and they're able to do it. Also every every place that has electric of 220 is an incomplete charging station. All they need is a receptacle to be a charging station. Asking the electric companies to put out a bond and put those on private property, they will make the money back. We would immediately have it all over, not have to spend any of our own money on that infrastructure, and be able to require people to not use electric fueled items in areas where you don't want it. They can also form a way where you can connect to it, charge it yourself, and be able to use anybody's electrical service. This has already been done for 20 some years. We need to be doing it. It came in in the 1980s. That's a funding source we don't have. The other thing is, is we have a deposit on pop bottles, a non deposit refund on that was done to solve suburban litter and vandalism for individual bottles of beer and pop, because they're all over the roads. Great idea. But we didn't do it for bottles of wine. We didn't do it for other things. And hard liquor. Think about a liquor store. Think of $0.10 on every one of those, but not refunded back. Nobody's going to whine when they spend 12 or $15 on tequila and spend $0.20 more on a tax and have it nonrefundable. So if you did that on all bottles of wine and you did it all liquor bottles, you would have a funding source for forever. And anybody that didn't want to pay that tax just didn't have to buy into that. And. It's high. It's a new bill. The next thing is, is bonding infrastructure. We have several ports in our area, port of saint helens I know that's not in their area. Is deepwater port doing infrastructure bonds with other things is something that we should be looking at. And once we move all this freight and everything off of our city streets and on to the third bridge freeway corridor, think how much it's not going to be ruining your streets. Thank you very much and have a lovely evening.
176 Thank you very much.
177 Hello. I don't I don't even know why I signed up for this. I just think it's really important to pass the funding plan. I really want that. And when you go to the state and ask them to pass new transportation package, substantial stiff improvement funding for great streets statewide transportation improvement fund, stiff. I'm I'm pretty tired. I don't much else to say it. Just please pass it. That's what I'm here for.
178 Thank you very much.
179 Ernie munch. That completes testimony.
180 Thank you. Keelan colleagues, is there any discussion to the resolution? Councilor Novick, are you getting back in the queue?
181 Yes.
182 Go right ahead.
183 So I have a concern that it seems to me that we're sort of asking bureaucrats to do a political evaluation. We're asking the staff to identify viable options for funding, and it's going to be up to the council to decide what we think is politically viable, what we'd be willing to support, what we would think that the voters were sending something to, the voters would tolerate. Staff can obviously like look at various funding mechanisms and say, using these mechanisms, here's what we would need in order to generate the revenue to do x. But I really think that it needs to be a collaborative process between us and the service areas. And I'd like to before voting for this, I would like to see some language changes to reflect that, rather than making it sound like it's just up to the executive to figure out what's politically viable for us. And let me see if I can get my computer unslept it says now, be it resolved, the council urges the public works service area, in collaboration with the budget and finance service area, to develop a comprehensive strategy to identify and evaluate viable alternative funding sources. What I feel comfortable with, I realize it's quite a departure, would be the council resolves to work with the public works service area. Et cetera, et cetera. And then be it further resolved that the relevant committee and the service areas shall prepare and submit a comprehensive report to the council no later than December 2025.
184 Councilor was that an ask for a change?
185 That actually, it's something that I would suggest to the carriers that they consider ask if they would consider those friendly amendments or unfriendly amendments.
186 Okay.
187 I believe this came from councilor Clark, who's not here tonight. So we'll need to make a decision on whether we want to amend this without her or not.
188 I can remember with councilor Clark was the only carrier.
189 I believe. So why don't we move on to additional discussion, and we'll give you some time to think about whether you want to move that or not, okay. Councilor Green.
190 Thank you, madam president. You know, I got in the queue to talk about other things, but I'm just going to I just want to address that. I think I would be happy to support an amendment tonight. I was in the committee. I, I amended the original one that called on the governor to call the special session. I don't I don't read viable in the same way. Maybe you do. I think my, my understanding of this is like, here's a good example. The gas tax, if we want to replace reliance on the gas tax, which is a diminishing source, a forward looking strategy would not consider that a viable source. So that's how I'm interpreting that. But I don't I'm not opposed to your thing. And in fact it's actually it's actually closer to the spirit on how I envision this government to work a little bit. These committees should be partners when we go do big policy changes, because there are politics in it. And I said this, you know, I've said this elsewhere that our job is to provide political leadership for good bureaucratic work. Right. And so I don't know if you want to draft it or if any of us wants to draft it, but as we do this discussion, if that gets you along, I'm fully in support of that. The things I wanted to say, though, when I went in the queue was just that if we pass this and I hope we will, I think I would like to take up the question of bonding in conjunction with what this revenue produces, because we do have capacity to bond against a defined revenue source, and that that is how we accelerate our investment in infrastructure. In my view, that's not something we want to define in, in, in dry ink tonight. But that's I'm just teasing the conversation here and sharing a little bit on how I think about this and how I will think about it. As a member of the tni committee, a member of the finance committee, and it just connects a little bit to the sdc discussion. So let's draft it. I support it.
191 Thank you. Councilor. I trust that the two of you are working on that right now. Okay. Councilor Kanal go right ahead.
192 Thank you. I'm open to the conversation as well. When that feverishly paced working session is concluded, I yeah, I'm very supportive of this broadly. I think that doesn't mean it couldn't be improved through that. But I am very supportive of this broadly. And I think it's important that we say in no uncertain terms to the state to get their stuff together because, as councilor Morillo put it, they they had one job and this was a really big deal for us. And I think, you know, we had our budget is reliant upon as part of the budget is for PBOT is reliant upon this. But but also there's some conversations that need to happen at the state about their priorities. And I think that that a special session might actually have the silver lining of being able to allow for some of the conversations around transit and around public streets to be accelerated when there's a singular focus, instead of the 50 other topics that are being discussed at once. And I hope that that happens because, you know, an approach that prioritizes freeway expansion exclusively, isn't it? Thanks.
193 Thank you. Councilor. Colleagues, I'm going to very slowly ask if anybody else has any discussion while our our colleagues, councilors, Novick and Green work on some amendment language. Councilor Ryan, you're going to save us.
194 Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. And the risk of filibustering, I just want to say, with the current state of our roads and everything that we're looking at and experiencing right now, it's pretty much a no brainer. And I'm just really grateful that the committee led by councilor Clark in this circumstance acted so quickly. It's too bad she's not here tonight. There's a lot of councilor Clark work coming forward, so I just wanted to honor her good work, and I look forward to voting yes on this, but it's going to be even more exciting to vote yes when you two tell us what you landed on. I'll stop.
195 Councilor Green.
196 Thanks. Madam president, I would like to introduce an amendment coauthored with councilor Novick that reads. So it takes the. Now therefore, be it resolved. That council, it adds, commits to work with strikes, urges the public works service area. And I'm going to email this comma through relevant council committees, comma, because there may be more than one committee in collaboration. So the rest of it stands so that the only addition is that we're saying that council commits to work with these service areas through our committees and the budget and finance, and then it extends that on the be it further resolved that says that and the insertion is be it further resolves that the relevant council committees and the service areas and then the rest of it continues. So it just sort of completes the circle on saying we're going to work with these service areas and the parts of the of the city administration that that would benefit from that partnership.
197 Can you email that?
198 Oh, I'm going to email it. Yeah.
199 Can you make sure that you send that to keelan as well, please.
200 Seems funny to have the committees then report to the appropriate committees. So could we make.
201 That.
202 While our colleagues are looking at that? Councilor Kanal are you in the queue?
203 Just a question. So the where it says committees, it is clarifying that to council committees.
204 Yes.
205 Okay. That's great. Thanks.
206 And I'm sending this out now.
207 Colleagues, while that's being sent, I will note that I heard from councilor Clark's team that while they can't speak for her and she is not in reception and able to watch the meeting, they do believe that this aligns with the intent of the measure as she brought it forward.
208 Trying to find our distro. Don't say it out loud, please.
209 Are we getting that out to everyone? Councilor? Okay, colleagues, are there any other comments or questions? Actually, we are now in discussion on an amendment. So is there any are there any comments or questions to the amendment before us?
210 Okay.
211 We're going to pause for about a minute and a half for everybody to look at that as it comes in. And for the public watching, I apologize that we can't get it up online quite as quickly, but hopefully councilor Green, having read it a couple of times, allows you to follow along. I think we're okay. It's not hugely substantive. Okay. Colleagues, is there any other discussion to the amendment seeing none keelan could you please call the roll on the amendment before us, which includes council committees in the work with the public works service area in both the first and the last, therefore, clause or the first in the second, I believe, I'm sorry, the first and the second, therefore. Clauses.
212 Koyama Lane for the amendment I.
213 Maria I.
214 Novick I.
215 Green.
216 I.
217 I Zimmerman as councilor Zimmerman gone for the meeting. Do you know.
218 I.
219 Believe so. He said he couldn't stay the whole time.
220 Okay. Thank you.
221 Unless I.
222 Dunphy I.
223 I Ryan. I pirtle-guiney. I with nine yes votes. The amendment is approved.
224 Very good colleagues.
225 Is there any other discussion to the now amended resolution? Okay. Seeing none keelan, could you please call the roll?
226 Koyama Lane I. Morillo I.
227 Novick I.
228 Green I.
229 Avalos.
230 Hi, Dunphy.
231 I canal.
232 Thanks councilor Clark for your work on this.
233 I Ryan. I pirtle-guiney.
234 I.
235 With nine yes votes. The resolution is adopted as amended.
236 Thank you.
237 I'm looking to see if our guests are here yet. Who? We had said we would let testify, but I don't see them in the room. So why don't we move on to the next agenda item? Keelan.
238 Item 19.
239 Believe agenda item 19 was pulled.
240 Oh, okay.
241 Okay.
242 I think we're back to our consent agenda items. Is that right?
243 Okay. Yeah. Did you want me to read the title for 19 or just move on to the.
244 We took it off the agenda in agenda approval.
245 Okay.
246 All right. Okay. So next up. Item ten appoint kathy keithley to the home forward board of commissioners for a term to expire July 15th, 2029.
247 Thank you. And I believe this came out of the homelessness and housing committee. Councilor Avalos, is there anything that you'd like to share with us?
248 Councilor Dunphy actually presided.
249 Councilor Dunphy, go right ahead.
250 Absolutely.
251 So, colleagues, as you may know, kathy keithley is a serves currently as a Gresham city councilor. She's being appointed to the city of Gresham spot on the home forward board. For those of you who don't know, home forward is our housing authority. The city of Portland has the authority to appoint the. We heard from councilor Keith keith lee at our city, at our housing and homelessness committee meeting, and unanimously supported her candidacy. So looking forward to supporting her again.
252 Thank you. Colleagues. Are there any questions or comments about cathy keighley's appointment? Okay. Seeing none keelan could you please call the roll?
253 For this item? Sorry, just. Yes. Great. Thanks. Koyama Lane I Morillo. I Novick I.
254 Green I.
255 Avalos I.
256 Dunphy I.
257 I Ryan. I pirtle-guiney. I with nine yes votes. The resolution is adopted.
258 Thank you.
259 And could you read our next agenda item please.
260 Item 11 appoint and reappoint members to the Portland parks and recreation board.
261 Thank you.
262 And I need my mic on councilor, Novick and Morillo. I believe this came from your committee and I'm not sure who presided that day.
263 I think that I did okay.
264 Councilor Novick take it away.
265 We consider the nominations of six people to the Portland parks and rec board from a variety of backgrounds and industries. The goal was to have board members that represented a variety of ages and professional experience. This group achieves those goals and more with folks representing architecture, farming, horticulture and just good old regular volunteering. The committee recommended this group unanimously, and we hope that the full council will seat them.
266 Thank you. Colleagues, is there any discussion on agenda item 11? Councilor Kanal.
267 Thank you. I'm in the unusual position of appointing or voting on appointment of my own replacement on the parks board, because my partial seat is here. I wanted to mention, just for this, that one of the conversations we've had around the bureau, and we referenced it earlier in the parks levy conversation, was the need to prioritize recreation as highly as parks. And I just wanted to take the opportunity to commend michelle and everyone involved in the recruitment for actually working on that, because this is a conversation we've had in the past, and we often are in the position of lovingly, gently criticizing when the bureaucracy isn't doing everything the exact same way. And I want to make sure we're also recognizing when they when they do. I was really impressed with the candidates and their backgrounds on the whole, and there are a few particular members that you'll read the bios of here who talked about ensuring that not only recreation is prioritized, but another key priority for me, which is ensuring that we are not merely creating equity in our programs, but actually seeing those metrics realized in who's actually utilizing parks and recreations programing or just visiting the parks. And that was another item that came up in this conversation in committee. So thank you so much for that. To the parks.
268 Thank you, councilor.
269 Colleagues, any other discussion on the appointments to the parks board? Okay. Seeing none keelan, could you please call the roll?
270 Yes. And council president for this item I believe it is a report. So we'll want to.
271 So moved.
272 Second.
273 There we go.
274 Moved by canal. Seconded by Novick.
275 Great. Thank you. Koyama Lane I maria.
276 Very grateful to everyone serving.
277 I Novick.
278 Likewise a Green.
279 Thanks for your service I.
280 Councilor did you not hear me? I said I yeah, can you hear me?
281 Thank you Dunphy. I know. I Ryan pirtle-guiney. I with nine yes votes. The appointment is confirmed.
282 Colleagues when we were on agenda item 17, urging the mayor to make the city a signatory to the swimmable cities charter, the folks who are signed up to testify weren't here. We had reordered the agenda some, and they thought that that agenda item would come later in the meeting and had had a conflict earlier. And I had noted at the time that I'd like for us to make space when they did arrive, to allow them to testify on that resolution, even though we had already concluded our work and voted there. I see that mr. Levinson just entered the room, and I would ask that we pause now to make space to move back to agenda item 17 briefly before we move on with our appointments. Keelan would you mind calling up the folks who are signed up to testify on that agenda item?
283 Sure. We have willie levinson and morgan spriggs.
284 Welcome.
285 Mr. Levinson, and I apologize for the timing shake up there.
286 No.
287 Thank you very much.
288 My name is willie levinson. I am the ringleader of human access project. One word with a capital r. That's my legal iris title. And it's unusual to be referred to as mr. Levinson. Makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I do prefer willie due to migo or bro, or as my preferred pronouns. It's really exciting to be here. It's been a journey. It's great to see michael jordan here. When he was director of biz, we did a lot of work together. You know, 100 years ago. Last July, Portland closed the Willamette for swimming in 1924 due to pollution. It took us 100 years later to start bringing the culture back after we completed the big pipe in 2011. So there's all this talk about paris, france, and the massive achievement that they had where they didn't give up on their river and made an investment to create a swimmable city. It's lifted all ships and it's a very exciting thing. I just came from duckworth dock, where there was 500 plus people hanging out on the dock. My new favorite thing is greeting people with hug after they get out of the river and feeling the temperature of their skin, which is super cool. The Willamette is a natural cooling center, so moving ahead. Human access project got a $250,000 capital grant from metro. It's going to require some very interesting negotiations of who owns that property, which I will really need some help from city hall on Portland metro chamber. It sounds like we'll be able to potentially put in some additional money to help support that. And when we are in a time of a short budget and we're looking to bring hope and future to Portland, I think it's more important than ever to look for the high roi items, particularly. I know a lot of you people on council receive calls from the public of people about how they want to change things, and they bring no solutions or money to the table. Well, we've been doing this for 15 years, and hopefully everyone has seen of the miracles that we've been able to do, but ultimately, it's the power of the river. I mean, I can't really take any responsibility for the work that we've done other than creating positive platforms for people to experience the Willamette river and people responding. It's great to have be able to have the nice thing. I saw the video, Dan, when we were able to jump in at cathedral park last summer, we removed 150 tons of concrete from that beach and fundraised to replace the dock. Commissioner Green and commissioner Clark, thank you so much for championing this. And council president pirtle-guiney, many thanks for figuring out how to get us on the schedule. But it's just, you know, super exciting. You know, when we started our work 15 years ago, 99% of Portland thought this idea was totally nuts. Now, I think probably only 90% does. But that is massive change. We're getting somewhere and ultimately a livable city to me is one that you can ride your bike to in the summertime. Take a dip in the river. It is our liquids public space that brings out the best in people. So many thanks y'all. And this is just kind of the platform for everything we have moving ahead. A lot of everything that's exciting and imaginative, that's happening in Portland right now seems to be touching the river, and it's great to just be right in the mix and have all of you guys as partners.
289 Thank you very much.
290 We have morgan spriggs online.
291 Good evening, council, and thank you again for passing. My name is morgan spriggs and I'm the co-founder of the black swimming initiative. And just wanted to share just some thoughts. Kind of moved the prepared statement away. It's it is electrifying to see the bipoc community when they first enact first interact with the rivers. So on the 26th of this month, we're going to be doing yet another set of lessons in the Willamette. We've also been very successful over the last couple of years of doing lessons out, out at swan island, on lindbergh beach, and we've also have done lessons on brighton beach. What this resolution really communicates to the community is, is that the water is open. It's available to all. When you go into Portland state, if you happen to get an opportunity to go take a look at the archives there, where they've preserved many of the legacy black newspapers that don't exist anymore, but they were able to do that. It's striking to see at the turn of the last century, african Americans swimming in the waters out at cannon beach in through there, when it was available to us to be able to swim. And now that we have this public declaration that this is something that the city wants to continue to do, we have people that are willing to take that leap, to walk into the water, get their feet into the mud, get their feel the, the, the flow of the river on them. I think this is exciting to changing the changing the relationship of a historic community that's been removed from aquatic opportunities towards it. So again, I think, you know, on behalf of the bsi and our families, thank you so much for passing this resolution. And again, thank you for this opportunity to speak to you tonight.
292 Thank you very much. And thank you for your flexibility, both of you, at the timing this evening. We appreciate hearing from you. And I know it's a little anticlimactic that we don't have an action right afterwards, but we thought it was important to make sure to have your voices as part of the conversation.
293 Yes. Many thanks, and I would like to add that I am testifying in a wet swimsuit, so I don't know if that's happened in city hall before, but I'm proudly here in a wet swimsuit.
294 We are so glad to have accomplished that first tonight.
295 That's awesome.
296 Okay. Thanks, y'all.
297 Thank you. Colleagues. With that, I think we are returning to appointments that had been pulled from the consent agenda. Keelan would you mind reading the next agenda item for us?
298 Item 14 appoint members to the planning commission.
299 Okay. And I believe this came out of climate resilience and land use. Councilor Novick. You're smiling as though you were presiding at that meeting.
300 It did indeed. And again, the committee saw this great slate of potential appointees, including a youth member. Lucas pollock represents the group represents a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and geographic representation, with the committee, passed them on to the full council unanimously, and we hope that the full council will take a recommendation and appoint this incredible group of people to a filter.
301 Thank you very much, colleagues. Are there any questions about these appointees? Any discussion? Okay. Then I will just add a thank you to the folks who stepped up to be appointed today. And keelan, could you please call the roll?
302 Yeah. And for this item also.
303 Is this a report? This is a report.
304 I would take a motion.
305 So moved second.
306 Okay I think we're going to go with Novick Ryan there.
307 Thank you.
308 Koyama Lane thank you for your service I vote aye maria.
309 I Novick.
310 Thank you for stepping up. Hi.
311 Green.
312 Hi, Avalos.
313 Hi.
314 Dunphy.
315 Hi. Hi, Ryan.
316 I pirtle-guiney. I with nine yes votes, the appointments are confirmed.
317 Thank you.
318 Can you read our next agenda item, please?
319 Item 15, appoint matt donahue to the arts access fund oversight committee for term to expire December 31st, 2028.
320 Thank you. And councilor Green councilor Ryan, were one of you presiding over this meeting?
321 I was I was.
322 Okay, councilor. Ryan, please.
323 Yeah, we were fortunate to have someone with so much experience that wants to be a part of this committee. Some of you might know matt, because he was on the tax oversight board that comes to this council once a year and just very passionate about the arts. In fact, I saw him at the Portland, the metropolitan youth symphony concert like the week before. So he's just really active out in the community and he's ready to serve. And we all know he has great expertise as a volunteer. And so I'm delighted to bring him forward.
324 Thank you so much, colleagues. Are there any questions or comments about this appointee councilor Kanal.
325 Just wanted to ask, has there been a. Have we seen this committee actually really take up the conversation around the tax itself and its mechanism, not merely reviewing expenditures, tracking progress, assessing outcomes, but the conversation about how we collect it and those sorts of maybe chronologically, earlier in the process, conversations.
326 That came up. I recall in the committee, I do recall charity montez saying that was something that is that they need to bring back to the actual arts office, but it's not something that's put into the role, clarity of the people on this commission. So the answer is no. They haven't taken that up. Their job is to ensure that the dollars get to the school districts as as specified by the legislation.
327 Yeah.
328 I'm so I would suggest that you would reach out to the arts office and have some more dialog about that.
329 Yeah. I guess. There are few places where I see a good thing, which this is, that has nonetheless a large disconnect between the broader public and the bureaucracy, at least the way it's portrayed as is. I get complaints about the arts tax much more than I would imagine for a $35 tax, and I think it's largely mechanism based, but it's not exclusively that. So I'm always curious about committees. It is an oversight committee, but I it's in the name. Right. So we're clear on what it does. But as a vehicle or as a conduit to broader community engagement around potential changes to the structure. And I know there's an appetite to at least explore that from everybody. I don't think anyone's sitting here being dogmatic about it, and I don't mean to imply that, but I am curious about not from the perspective of mr. Donahue, but from the perspective of the broader committee as an institution, whether or not that is a place for that type of conversation, or if it could be, or rather, a conduit to broader community conversations around the tax itself, as opposed to exclusively the arts office. Does that make sense? I'm not sure if I'm explaining that question correctly.
330 I think you're in your legislative role right now, and I think it's something that we would take up in dialog at the committee. But to put it on this specific committee with this specific charge goes beyond their charter. So your systemic questions are, of course, valid. And if you're saying that you councilor Kanal want to look into that deeply, then I think that that that's what you're trying to do right now. But I think doing it in the confines of this person on this committee is, is not what you're trying to do, but it's happening right now in this conversation.
331 My question is less about I think it's I think it's appropriate when we do this to ask what is the role of a committee broadly in the context of its area of work? That's what I'm asking. Not it's not about.
332 Councilor Dunphy, were you the one that actually had this dialog with the with the candidate?
333 Absolutely.
334 And yeah.
335 I am I'm, I similarly hear a lot of complaints about the arts tax and I'm actively working on exploring proposals for what a replacement would look like. And at this hearing, I actually asked about that. I asked about whether or not the arts oversight committee would be a resource in order to help us be a thought partner about that, because I do think that more than anybody else in the community, they are currently positioned to understand how the program is working and how it isn't. They are not proactively looking for those options, but I will be personally going to them and asking for input on that. One area that this committee really does especially need to do, and they have done a lot better in the last few years, is holding the seven different school districts accountable. Historically, people think, oh, it's Portland public schools because it's a Portland arts tax. But we know that there are six additional school districts that receive funding, five of which are in my district. And the way that david douglas presents arts is very different than how parkrose very different than how centennial does and way different than how Portland public schools are. And so also river view. And what's the other one? Rand reynolds thank you. They are all yeah, right. Thank you. And so my urging to them specifically was to look at cross the districts and make sure that even the small districts are being equal in how they're administering these things, that the kids are getting the right amount of education, and that when we set terms for these school districts to receive these dollars, that those terms are being met, because we know that in past years they have not been certain school districts have not been meeting their matching funds. Certain school districts have been using these funds to supplement. And so that is really what I was particularly excited about, about this candidate, matt donahue, because of his experience at the tcc, on making sure that the letter of the law is being followed, and I think they will be great partners on what comes next for the arts tax.
336 Thank you. That satisfies my concerns.
337 Thank you. I'm glad we were able to bring in the other part of the discussion there. Councilor Dunphy, is that what your hand was raised for? Okay, colleagues, are there any other questions about this nominee for appointment? Okay. Keelan, could you please call the roll? Wait, it's a report. Could we get.
338 I move second?
339 Okay. We're going. Ryan Koyama Lane on that one.
340 Great. Thank you. Koyama Lane. Hi, maria.
341 Hi, Novick.
342 Hi.
343 Green.
344 Hi, Avalos.
Procedural episode · turns 345–356
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345 Hi, Dunphy. I know.
346 I.
347 Pirtle-guiney I.
348 With nine yes votes. The appointments are confirmed.
349 Thank you. And colleagues. I know we jumped around on that agenda a fair amount because of the things that were pulled and then placed at different times, but I do believe that was the last item on our agenda. Fantastic. I'll note that it is not even 8:00. Good work. We do have a meeting tomorrow. We had thought that this meeting was going to run a little bit later, so we moved a few things on the agenda to tomorrow afternoon. So please, I know that some folks have conflicts, but we are just at the number we need for that meeting, so please let me know if you have any conflicts I don't know about or that you haven't filed. Councilor Kanal are you in the queue for a point of order?
350 I am.
351 I colleagues. I would ask for unanimous consent to be allowed to change my vote on an item that is already closed, which is item 16, amending system development charges from an to a yes vote. I was not present for that. I was running back in, and I know that after the fact we're allowed to do that. If no colleague objects, I would like it to be on the record how I voted on that, so that my constituents know where I stood on it.
352 And colleagues, without objection, we can actually allow this through unanimous consent. Are you making a request for the same agenda item? Okay. Is there are there any objections? Okay. Go ahead then. Keelan, could you please take councilor Kanal and councilor Morillo votes?
353 Yes.
354 Morillo I canal.
355 Yes.
356 That's ten yes votes. And the ordinance is passed as amended.
357 Okay.
358 Ten zero on that one. Mr. Jordan, maybe you want to update the mayor that he got a few more votes. Thank you colleagues. With that, I will close our meeting and see you all tomorrow.