The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-04-16
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (44,918 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council convened its formal session on April 16, 2025, following a pre-gavel recognition of National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, featuring remarks from Bureau of Emergency Communications leadership and a senior dispatcher. After roll call and adoption of meeting rules, the council heard public comment on topics including housing law compliance, leaf-sweeping equity, cycling infrastructure, and homelessness policy. The council moved an elections commission appointment item to the top of the agenda and approved the consent agenda; votes occurred on these items, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The council then heard extensive public testimony—both supportive and opposed—on a proposed ban on algorithmic rental pricing software, ultimately referring the item back to committee. Discussion followed on a fiscal year technical adjustment ordinance, including a proposed amendment regarding fund carryover for fire training and a police contact survey program; votes occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. After a recess, the council reviewed proposed changes to employee health benefit plans for both the Labor Management Benefits Committee and Portland Police Association groups, with amendments proposed to adjust renewal-rate percentages; votes occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The council also considered an ordinance establishing a Sustainability and Climate Commission, including a proposed amendment on membership numbers; votes occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. Facing a late hour, the council voted to adjourn remaining agenda items to a future special meeting.
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
Literal phrase counts from the official captions — a measurement of procedure, not a judgment of anyone's conduct. Click a marker to highlight its occurrences below. Captions contain errors.
0 Hey, guys, can you hear me? Okay. In zoom. Adam. Christina.
1 John. We're not hearing them.
2 For some reason. We're not hearing you in the room. Don't know if that's anything related to the zoom inch issue.
3 Yeah. It's just.
4 All right. Yeah. Let's try. To prevent this right now. That's what happens when you live in. Yeah, just a couple of them right there. Standard. Okay.
5 Testing. Zoom. Oh, good.
6 You've been moving this table back.
7 Hey, rebecca, I can hear you. Can you hear me?
8 Has he been getting back there for. Any reason?
9 Yes, yes.
10 There's an echo.
11 Yeah. You're unmuted on the council clerk account in zoom. Yeah. There you go.
12 Let's try this again. Yeah, that's a lot better. Okay, great. So much.
13 Sure.
14 Let's do that.
15 Hi.
16 Are you free? Are you hungry? Care about either of us? Are you free? No. Elana. Oh. Thank you.
17 Dela cruz. You're not reading me?
18 I'm too.
19 No. Your council three. Yeah. Third floor. So we've been pushed 15 minutes. Okay. Thank you. You got it, man. Yeah. Campbell's council too. Okay. Thank you. Got it.
20 You see this? No. Right here. So, I'm. Okay. And then we'll have I don't know. Maybe last time. So. Great. Okay. Great. So this. Is the second. Okay. So. Hey, chamber. How's it looking? Did you get that piece you needed? Oh. Okay. What seems to be the trouble? Shall I go? First? Oh. Sorry. Here. You took that picture. Of my dog. Yeah, it. Hangar. Sorry.
21 Opensignal's having a tough time making.
22 The zoom screen.
23 Show up on that feed. So they're trying to figure that out. Yeah, it's just coming up as a Green screen. I have a signal generator. Okay. He seems like he's still.
24 Sometimes juicing. Sorry.
25 About that. You have to be. Here. That's going.
26 To work.
27 Okay, let's. See. Okay. So. People. Just. The dalles. About that. Was that. Was that. Name generator in front of me? Okay. If you want to. Jason. I. Know, and then they'll call it. Yeah. That's what. Okay. I'm just.
28 Around zoom test. Sound test. Hey, christina, can you hear me? I can't hear you for some weird reason. I can't hear christina, but I think she can hear me.
29 Okay. Yeah, we just have. They're finalizing their audio tests as we test their audio configs.
30 Thanks for coming down here.
31 Thank you. Christina.
32 No worries. Okay.
33 This is like the speakers. This is. The first session. Oh, I reclaim that. He's supposed to be the. Okay, so zoom should be working for everyone. If you.
34 Want to try to join the meeting.
35 Okay. We're continuing with. Try christina again. Yeah. Is there any more time? I'm sorry.
36 Well, you.
37 Can thank zoom.
38 Christina, can you hear me? Just testing.
39 Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?
40 Perfect. We can hear you. Thank you so much.
41 Sure.
42 Yeah. To share. Figured it out.
43 Oh, that's a good question. I'm not sure.
44 I think. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. This is. Going to happen. Mute yourself. Maybe this is. That's okay. That's the first time. I think that's pretty good to.
45 Hey, christina, can you hear me?
46 I can, can you hear me?
47 Yes, you said you can.
48 Yes, I can.
49 Okay, okay. Thank you.
50 Sure. No problem.
51 Good to see you.
52 As always.
53 Test test. Back test.
54 Are these yours.
55 No I don't believe so. How you got there.
56 It was like a not unopened but water up with soda and mints.
57 Yeah, those are mine.
58 So I don't know.
59 It might be one of the councilor.
60 I know. I don't want to take it, you know.
61 Yeah.
62 But I believe it. There is some water here, too. Look like somebody left.
63 Yeah.
64 I don't know.
65 They just finished.
66 What I want to do. I'm going to just, you know, I'm going to leave it here. And then tomorrow, if it's still here, I'll pick it up. You know? Sounds good, but, you know, I don't know. I never know because, you know, they may be real thirsty. And I just.
67 Took it. Yeah. I'm not going to be handing over that.
68 One because somebody.
69 Oh. Oh yeah. That might be the security guys.
70 Yeah.
71 I know that.
72 They gotta stay sharp.
73 You know.
74 It's hard. You know you get kind of bored sometimes.
75 Yeah.
76 You gotta be sure right. You gotta be ready. Right. Oh okay. I'll just leave it there for no. I gotta get tissue on the mic.
77 Yeah, you never know.
78 Take.
79 Test. Test. Check check check. Test test.
80 Keep trying.
81 Anyway, right?
82 Yeah.
83 Test test check. One. Two. One two. Test. Check check.
84 One. There's actually.
85 Oh, here we go. Check, check.
86 I just want to say. You. I couldn't even. Understand you when I was.
87 Testing and I couldn't figure out. And they wanted us to leave early. I thought, oh, this sounds serious, you know?
88 Yeah.
89 Captions test. Test. Test. Test. Captions test.
90 In everybody. We are beginning today with a pre gavel from councilor Kanal. It is not part of our formal agenda, but it is part of our live stream and an important part of our evening together tonight. This will be about ten minutes. And after that we will open up our formal meeting. Councilor Kanal. I will pass it off to you.
91 Thank you, madam president. I am proud to sponsor today's pre gavel in celebration and observance of national public safety telecommunicators week. Our 911 call takers and dispatchers are our city's first first responders. They are the lifeline and reassuring voice in an emergency for both our community members and our public safety responders on the scene. Our 911 centers are staffed with hard working, skilled and highly trained people 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. My policy advisor and I recently had the privilege of being hosted for a 911 sit along at the bureau of emergency communications, or boec. I want to thank our host, taylor, courtney and amanda. Thank you for all your valuable work and for patient explanations for my staff and I. Portland's 911 center also answers calls for more than just the city of Portland. We answer for all of Multnomah county, including Gresham, troutdale, fairview, and maywood park. And to anyone listening out there who would like to join the boec team, recruitment is opening in may. I'll save you the time, director. You can go to Portland 911 911 to learn more. 911 is also part of a larger response network. Many know that I'm passionate about that response. Ecosystem. As co-chair of the community and public safety committee. Director cozzie, who we're going to introduce in a moment, famously says that they're the bureau of emergencies, not non-emergencies, and launched the first ever transition to move some of the non-emergency calls to 311. And in the face of limited resources and national staffing shortages, it's essential that we ensure the right response is dispatched at the right time to reduce the burden on 911 and its call takers. And I'm grateful for director cozzie leadership on that. So with that, I'll pass it over to director cozzie and carolyn welch, senior dispatcher and ppa workgroup leader. Following that, we'll have remarks from community and public safety committee co-chair Steve Novick, as well as councilors Loretta Smith and Jamie Dunphy. Welcome, director cozzie and carolyn.
92 Great. Thank you. Councilor Kanal. It's really a privilege being here tonight. Madam president and city council, I'm bob cozzie, director of the bureau of emergency communications, and this week is national public safety telecommunicators appreciation week. That's a mouthful. We call it mtw for short. National telecommunicators week. And we at boec greatly appreciate being recognized for the important lifesaving work that we do every day. Our call takers and dispatchers are the first first responders. They care deeply about our community. They are the calm voice during a caller's worst day, and they have a tremendous impact on our collective welfare. I brought one of our telecommunicators here with me today. I'd like to introduce senior dispatcher carolyn welch.
93 Good evening. My name is carolyn welch. I'm a senior dispatcher at boec. Thank you, councilor Kanal, for inviting me to speak at the pre gavel. I'm here to represent the group of call takers and dispatchers that serve Portland and the greater Multnomah county at the bureau of emergency communications. It is an honor to be here today while we celebrate national public safety telecommunicator week. It is true that we show up 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Regardless of what is happening within our community, our personal lives, or even the weather. It is a calling that requires diligent effort to maintain a positive work life balance. Being exposed to the daily traumas of the community can have an impact on not only us as individuals, but on our families as well as our loved ones. We appreciate councilor Kanal for inviting us today, and all of you, for taking the time to recognize and celebrate the work we do. We're also thankful for the support of our union, the Portland police association, as well as our partnership with boec leadership and city labor relations. Last but not least, we could not successfully do the work that we do without strong working relationships with the other entities we serve alongside police, fire, amr, corrections, road and maintenance workers, and the countless other labor groups within the city and county. Once again, on behalf of our membership, thank you and happy national telecommunicators week.
94 Thank you. Councilor, I believe we are turning to your co-chair next, is that correct? Councilor. Novick.
95 I just wanted to express my amazement at the job you do. I mean, like you said, you're dealing with people in incredible stress, incredibly emotional situations, and it's your job to get them the help they need as quickly as possible and get off the phone as quickly as possible. And most of the time you don't know what happened. So it's always seemed to me like your job requires the technical skill of an air traffic controller and the emotional resilience of, I don't know, meryl streep. It just seems to be just it must be an. It just amazes me that people can do this job day after day, year after year. So just wanted to say thank you so, so much.
96 Thank you.
97 Councilor Smith.
98 Thank you. Thank you, madam. Madam chair. My name is Loretta Smith. I'm from district one. I'm one of the three councilors. And I want to say, it is so good to see you and to know that there are individuals and neighbors who are working at 911. And you are those heroes who wear headsets, and you play a critical role in our emergency response system. And I strongly support the well-paying jobs. Director cozzie. And I believe that telecommunications is a viable career path, especially for those who are brave and committed and dedicated to serving their community. The jobs that you offer are a pathway for young people and those without a college degree to earn a very good wage. Nearly $32 an hour. It's hard. It's hard to look at it as work. But for those who answer the call, you will receive competitive benefits and you will be able to have the knowledge and the professional development that they offer. Director bob cozzie, I want to take a moment to recognize you and your leadership. You oversaw the bureau of emergency communication boec during the height of the pandemic, when there was a hiring freeze in citywide demonstrations, while calls and volumes of calls reached record highs and staffing levels suffered. But you prevailed. This was not just a local issue in Portland. It was part of a national 911 staffing shortage. Yet, bob, you managed to turn things around under your direction. You increased the training division, expanded training academies, and resolved our staffing. So I want to say kudos to you. And as a result, call response times, they have dramatically improved. For 30 years, you have dedicated your career to emergency communications. Your leadership centered on care and compassion. It sets the tone in the stage for exceptional staff that you lead. You have left a lasting impact on oregon's largest 911 system center, and on every life that you have helped to save. So I thank you. It is an honor to know you and to watch you work. Thank you.
99 Councilor Dunphy.
100 Thank you, madam president. Director cozzie to your whole team. Just sincerely. Thank you. The. Anyone who's lived in Portland in the last few years has known that our 911 system has been under serious stress. Serious understaffing. And it's led to some really tough results for our community. People are calling you on the worst days of their lives every single day, all day. And the people who you have answering the phones are dedicated professionals who are doing their absolute best. The thanks to the leadership of your of you and your team. We are seeing that increased call times decrease. We're seeing better call time responses. We're seeing better service for the community. And it is re-instilling that sense of confidence in our system to be able to be there when people call on the worst days of their lives. So thank you to all of your teams for being such an important part of the first responder system, and for really focusing and centering those outcomes for our community members.
101 Thank you. I would like to mention that, you know, our folks like carolyn and so many others at boec, they're the ones doing most of the heavy lifting. So I really want to lift them up because it is telecommunicator week, after all. And I'm so proud of my team. Thank you.
102 Thank you. Director. Councilor Ryan.
103 Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to take a moment, director cozzie to acknowledge your vulnerability earlier today. And I really took your comments to heart. When your staff levels were low and the calls were at a peak and you had to force overtime. That was your reality. And I can only imagine that the shame that you mentioned was real. I remember going out there over two years ago and spending. I don't think you could get rid of me. It was so exciting and I was there for two hours and just really want to hold your team for hanging in there. Those of you that have hung in there, you inspired me on that two hour visit back then, two years ago when it was kind of at the peak, and you continue to inspire me and make me proud today. So thank you and I really appreciate you being vulnerable earlier today. Thank you. Happy week. Happy celebration.
104 Thank you.
105 And carolyn, please do make sure that your colleagues know how much we all appreciate the work that you do. Councilor Kanal would you like to close?
106 Yeah. Thank you so much. And I just want to recognize also that the entire bureau was recognized at the association of public safety communications officials, apco western regional conference, which was hosted here in Portland in March. I had the privilege of hearing your talk director cozzie there. The deputy director of boec, Steve maudsley, is the conference co-chair as well. And I also just want to say I learned more in a couple hours than I could have possibly imagined from from taylor and courtney while we were there. And so I really appreciate that. And with that, I will close out this pre gavel and pass it back to the president. Thanks. Thank you.
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107 Thank you.
108 For being here. Thank you councilor Kanal and I will open our official council meeting for this evening. It is April 16th at 6:11 p.m. Councilors, we have a very full agenda. We have a number of contentious items. We have a number of things on the agenda that your colleagues have brought amendments for. So it is going to be a long evening, possibly at times a heated evening. And I just want to make sure that we all are ready to be as concise as possible and move things through, while also taking the time that we need to have the conversations that are important to move this process forward. And to folks who are here watching and are going to be with us through a long evening, please know that we do this because we were asked to have conversations in public, and we know that sometimes that's hard, but it is really important. It's a critical part of the work. Keelan could you please call the roll canal here?
109 Brian. Here. And elaine here. Morillo here. Here, here, Green. Here. Zimmerman. Here. Avalos. Dunphy here. Smith.
110 Here.
111 Pirtle-guiney here. And, mr. Taylor, could you please read our rules of order and decorum?
112 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. Md.gov slash 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. The microphone will be muted when your time is over, the presiding officer preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, please identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should please unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.
113 Thank you. The first item on our agenda is agenda approval. Are there any requests to amend the agenda? Okay. Do we have unanimous consent to approve the agenda? Great. Next item on the agenda is public comment. Keelan, could you please invite up the folks who are here with us tonight?
114 First up we have addie Smith. Addie is joining us online.
115 Welcome, addie. Please introduce yourself and go right ahead.
116 Hi, my name is adi Smith. And as you guys can see, I'm at your old meeting place. I went to the wrong place. I wanted to be there in person to deliver this message. But I'm at your old office, so whatever. Today's April 16th, 2025. Today I'm speaking before the Portland city council, and I'm speaking about problematic Portland as well as the state of Oregon, and that landlords and attorneys and judges in Multnomah county are violating house bill 2001. Before I begin, I want to address something that has been circulating across this country. I want people to know that democrats in Oregon have done the same thing to african American men and women the trump administration is doing to kill mar alberto garcia, audrey hernandez romero and thousands of others, while innocent african American men and women aren't being sent yet to el salvador, they are being incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit and are spending lengths of time in jail, either awaiting sentencing or being sentenced to jail time. After proving their innocence by racist judges like ricardo menchaca, kathleen proctor, derek boucher, brandon thompson and judge andrew irwin, who gives attorneys and judges probation after they've been convicted of either watching child porn or participating in child porn. These judges are in Washington county circuit court. But the racism and discrimination and violations of the laws of the state of Oregon are being executed by judges throughout the state with impunity. They aren't being held accountable for violating the laws of the state, or the laws and rights of the defendants who come before them, oftentimes, due to absolutely no investigation by police and deputies in this state, african American young men are languishing in jail for years in Oregon for crimes they didn't commit. And governor tina kotek does absolutely nothing about it. I believe nationally, it is time for us african Americans to leave the democratic party, the democrat party. I don't believe I don't mean leave this party to be part of the republican party, but part of the Green party. It is time for us to establish our own party while trump is burning this country down. It's not just Oregon, a democrat led state that innocent african Americans are languishing in jails. It's also Washington state, california, new york, all democrat led states, the same states wherein democrats are outraged that trump has sent innocent people to el salvador, but are silent when judges and police do it in their own states. In Oregon, african Americans make up less than 2% of the demographic. So the politicians don't care about our votes because they don't impact the electorate. But nationally, our votes determines how senate seats, judges and the presidency 31.78% of people voted for trump, 30.84% people voted for kamala harris, 36.33% of people did not vote, 1% of the people voted third party, while the majority of people voted for some someone other than trump. That 30% 36% of people who stayed home did so because kamala harris refused to stop sending bombs and money to Israel to commit genocide. Once again, democrats are hurting black and brown people and still expecting our vote. Why? Because trump is so much worse. It is time for african Americans to leave the democrat party. Our rights under the law, our children, our lives, our neighborhoods.
117 Thank you. I'm so sorry, but we need to make sure to stay on time tonight. Thank you for being here, though with us.
118 Next up we have audrey decoursey.
119 Welcome, audrey. Please introduce yourself.
120 Hello. Good evening. My name is audrey, uncle decoursey and I am speaking tonight. As a private citizen, I am before you to address the leaf day program. Pbot. It's time to turn over a new leaf. I know that's cheesy. Okay. At a moment of tight budgets and at a moment of newly unified administration of city services, this is the moment to reset how our city does fall. Leaf sweeping for some quick background, five years ago, I lived in a house with one street tree that dumped its leaves by labor day. So when our leaf day rolled around around thanksgiving, it was not so helpful. Then, three years ago, we moved all of 11 blocks away to a block not covered by leaf day. I now have five mature maples lining the street and I get to rake the street leaves myself. We live on a greenway so thousands of cyclists ride past every day, contending with slippery, wet leaves. All fall and winter and spring. They're still there. I submitted my written testimony earlier today to you by email, including photos as evidence of what the streets look like along this route, caked with mush, slippery and unsafe. Two elementary school bike busses roll along that very same slippery street, and up in the balcony, you can see two of the wonderful kids who ride their bikes to school along this unswept, leafy bike route. Vice president Tiffany rode with us one of those days. This is unfair and it is unequitable. I also submitted as evidence the map of the leaf day zones, where you can see which neighborhoods are covered and which are not. There is not one in district one. We can do better. So let's have urban forestry talk with PBOT. Can Portland meet our goals of expanding portland's tree canopy? If we're only sweeping the leaves from the trees in some neighborhoods? It was one thing when residents paid for the leaf day $15 a year, I think. But now it's free, which means I am paying taxes to fund someone else getting a service I don't, and this is mostly benefiting wealthier neighborhoods. Every Portland neighborhood deserves to have its streets swept. But if budget cuts mean we can't sweep everywhere, then we should prioritize bike routes and safe routes to schools, or rotate every year. There's different solutions. There's lots of ways we can make our streets safer for bikers, especially our youngest riders I support the 500 is plenty initiative to reduce car traffic on greenways. Street sweeping would be another way to make bike travel safer in every part of our city. Maybe this can be partly funded by PCEF. Even so, I want to thank city workers who clean our streets who might be worrying about their jobs. Their work is important. We have plenty of work for them to do. I will submit my letter also to mr. Jordan in hopes he can direct reconsideration of this program. And I want to thank you for your attention on this. You have so many important things on your plate. We see you. You're working hard. Thank you so much for your service.
121 Thank you for being here.
122 Next up we have jeff weitzel.
123 Welcome, jeff. Please introduce yourself and go right ahead.
124 For the record, my name is jeffrey weitzel. Counselors, president pirtle-guiney. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My friends. If more portlanders were biking around our city instead of driving for their daily trips, it would be to portland's great benefit cleaner air, less congested roads, fewer lives lost in car crashes. We'd also have fewer potholes. Bikes need much less road space than cars, and they do barely any damage to pavement. So our roads budget would go much, much farther. None of this is news to the Portland bureau of transportation. Since 2009, a key planning goal in Portland has been that a full quarter of commute trips be by bike by 2030. Despite this laudable foresight, despite portland's world famous bicycle culture, the number of cyclists in recorded in pbot's annual bicycle count fell almost every year from 2014 to 2022, and we are still 46% down from the peak here in the bicycle capital of north America. Something has gone terribly wrong. Councilors, this is now in your hands. If we want the clean air, safe streets and well-maintained pavement promised by thousands of portlanders trading their cars for bikes, something must change. Our 2035 transportation system plan imagines streets with almost as many bikes on them as cars. If we're serious about that, and we should be, we must make our streets as welcoming for to bikes as they are to cars. Any writer from eight years old to 88 should have the ability to bicycle anywhere in the city without fear. Those are different streets than we have today, and a different city, a better city. This year of budget crisis happens to be the perfect time to get things moving in the right direction. Cyclists feel safer and happier with other cyclists. This offers us a virtuous circle. Tempt a thousand new riders onto their bikes with inexpensive measures like commuter bike busses and flower pots on greenways to slow and divert cars. And the next 1000 bikers will come easier, and the thousand after that easier. Still attend to this virtuous circle and you can build up a lot of forward momentum on the cheap pcf. Pcf grants could buy us even more, my friends. Portland loves bikes. We all know that. I believe that someday Portland will have more, even more bikes on its streets than cars, and those streets will be a party. Vision zero will no longer be a vision. The asphalt will be like silk, and PBOT will have all the money it needs. Councilors, I ask you, keep the virtuous circle of cycling in Portland turning. Keep the bike numbers going up and to the right. It will take attention and courage and creativity, but our city will be the better for it. Thank you.
125 Thank you so much for being here.
126 Next up we have brandon margo.
127 Brandon, please introduce yourself and go right ahead.
128 Can you hear me? Okay, I can hear myself.
129 We can hear you even a few inches back from there. Okay. Welcome to take a seat if you'd like.
130 I feel more comfortable like this. So this is my first time in city council. My name is brandon. I'm here to talk about homelessness and some plans to address it. This is the first day I can get here, and maybe the only day for quite a while. And summer is coming. First off, I'll also thank the first responders that came within like three minutes when I had the narcan someone the other day, and they actually talked me through the process of resuscitating this. So I can attest they do their job well. And as far as the leaves, I mean, maybe in the parks, if they just kind of left some of those leaves by the trees and then transported those workers to the places that need leaves, you know, that'd be good for the trees and probably good for the streets. But as for the homeless. Mayor wilson's plan, I don't believe, is sufficient. I believe he seems good on paper. I'm looking forward to see what he has to offer, but unless the city changes its kind of attitude and approach towards the homeless, it's going to get better. And so here are my points. First off, I think to help the homeless identify who does and who does not want to be on the street. Someone doesn't want to be on the street. Good. Those are the first people should get off. Some people like being on the street as a way of life. I don't advocate for it. But so my second point, and on the first point, the city of Portland can absorb some homelessness. No, homelessness is like authoritarianism. A city that is willing to have some homeless is actually a healthy city. I believe jesus said the poor will always be with you. Okay, number two, come up with a way to enlist more portlanders to work at micro villages or shelters. I'm going to call this. I mean, you have plenty of people working doordash and uber every night, and yet you can't staff a homeless shelter during a winter ice storm. There definitely needs to be more calling out Portland on its general attitude for the homeless. Maybe if you didn't have 20 bike rides running around for LGBTQ, just was there one bike ride for the homeless? No? Then maybe they wouldn't be blocking your trails as much. Honestly. Point number four when people are trying to get their lives together, you might want to check on them a bit. I mean, imagine you're a poor person and you go to like an oxford house and the person running the oxford house is corrupt, which in this day and age can be can quite happen. You'd have some people go there and investigate. You don't want to have a vulnerable person who's gone through all this stuff to try and get their life together, being in a corrupt place, and I've been around, I've been homeless myself for a couple of years, off and on. Thankfully, I have a place now, but I can attest that does go on. These are not empty words either. What I'd like to say is, if one thing that's important, this town needs more of a focus on low on helping there be less low income people and less of a focus on there being more low income housing. And these are not empty words. I just got back from today working to try and create a program for the homeless in another town, not picking up trash, mind you, a program that's actually kind of putting them in a beneficial mindset where they can learn and grow. And I also have a plan to turn lloyd center into a into a hybrid housing for the homeless, as well as a shopping center. And I have a written up plan for that. And I sent all the papers. They didn't publish it or any of my other stuff, which has legitimate legitimacy. And so if I could, if I could pass off either of these.
131 I'm sorry.
132 Can I help you, ma'am? I was going to finish one more point, saying I would like to pass off to the city councilors. As I wrote on turning lloyd center into affordable housing as well as general plan, I have, I call it the morgan proposal, for lack of a better term.
133 If you go ahead and send that to us, I'm sure folks will take a look at it. I know that I will. Thank you so much for being here with us tonight.
134 So here is a.
135 Plan. The morgan proposal, combined with my plan for lloyd center into affordable housing. Thank you. Shopping center.
136 Next up we have alan combs. Alan combs. It doesn't look like they've joined us.
137 Okay, well, thank you so much to our four speakers. We appreciate you being here with us, sharing important messages. This is an important time for us to hear about things that aren't otherwise on our agenda. The next item on our agenda, item three is the committee referral list. And right now our committee referral list are all things that have actually been heard already. This list, as we councilors file things earlier and as the administration gets things filed earlier, we'll hopefully contain more things before they are before committee so that we can use this opportunity to give people notice about what might be coming on our agendas, but you will see that we put forward a few items that I won't read through because they are on today's agenda, as well as an amendment to the Portland permitting and development fee schedule that has gone through the finance committee revised transportation fee schedule that went to the finance committee, adopting rates and charges for water and water related services that went through the finance committee, revised sewer and stormwater charges that went through the finance committee, fees and charges for water system development and water related services to the finance committee. I apologize, I'm skipping the things that are on the agenda tonight, amending the code to consolidate noise enforcement and improve fairness and consistency in noise regulation that went to community and public safety. Repeal the authorization of the city attorney. I'm sorry. Repeal the authorization of the city attorney to appeal the judgment in the kelly jones as personal representative for the estate of michael townsend versus the city of Portland, case went to community and public safety. And I believe the rest of these I o and direct funding for the workforce pre apprenticeship program and summer works youth employment initiative went to labor and workforce development. The next item on our agenda are on the consent agenda. Keelan I believe we've had an item pulled from the consent agenda. Is that correct?
138 One item was pulled. Item seven 2020 5-1 38.
139 Thank you. And counselors. Items pulled from the consent agenda go to the end of our agenda. Unless anybody would like to make a motion to put this item elsewhere on the agenda. This is the confirmation of the appointment and reappointment of members to the Portland elections commission. Councilor Koyama Lane.
140 I would like to make a motion to add this to the top of.
141 The agenda.
142 To the top of the regular agenda.
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143 Second.
144 Counselors, there's been a motion to move this to the top of the regular agenda.
145 Keelan councilor Koyama Lane motioned. And I'm sorry, who seconded. Counselor Clark. Any discussion? Okay. Keelan can we do this by unanimous consent or do we need to call the roll?
146 I think unanimous consent.
147 Are there any objections or do we have unanimous consent object? We have an objection. Okay, then let's call the roll.
148 Okay. Canal. Ryan.
149 Sorry, I.
150 Koyama Lane I Morillo. I Novick. I Clark,
151 I. Ryan.
152 I Zimmerman I.
153 Avalos I.
154 Dunphy I Smith. I pirtle-guiney. I the item is moved to the top of the regular agenda with 11 yes votes and one no vote.
155 Thank you. So we are on the consent agenda. And I apologize. There's nothing else that has been pulled from the consent agenda, correct?
156 That's correct.
157 Okay. Keelan, can you please call the roll on the consent remainder of the consent agenda?
158 I. Ryan.
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159 I Koyama Lane I Morillo. I Novick I Clark, I Green. I Zimmerman I Dunphy I Smith. I pirtle-guiney. I the consent agenda is approved with 12 yes votes.
160 Thank you. So we are now moving on counselors to the regular agenda. And the first item on the regular agenda now is agenda item seven. Keelan. Could you please call the agenda item.
161 Item seven confirm appointment and reappointment of members to the Portland elections commission for terms to end April 30th, 2029.
162 Thank you, keelan and counselors, because we don't generally have committee staff summaries on appointment agenda items, I am going to turn to councilor Koyama Lane, who was the presiding chair over the meeting when this agenda item was heard in the governance committee.
163 All right. Thank you, madam president. So the four Portland elections commission volunteers at the governance committee that the governance committee has recommended for confirmation today are part of a nine member volunteer commission which implements and evaluates the small donor election program. At our April 7th governance committee meeting, we had the opportunity to hear from these passionate volunteers one a reappointment and three new appointments, and the committee voted unanimously to recommend their appointment. For those of you that are not steeped in city hall business and robert's rules of order, I want to explain a little bit about consent agenda. Each council meeting we have what is called a consent agenda, which allows us to approve several items with one vote. We include the opportunity to unanimously approve volunteer committee appointments as a council using the consent, the consent agenda. So when these volunteers come to us, they've gone through a thorough vetting process. First, they're vetted on the executive staff side, the executive side by staff. Those names are brought forward to the mayor, and then the mayor's office recommends them for appointment. Then these names go before a city council policy committee that relates to their volunteer volunteer work, their at least in the case of my committee. I think this is happening in other committees as well. We hear from the volunteers all about their interests in the work and relevant experience. These committee meetings are public meetings. Councilors do not have to be on that policy. Committee to vet a nominee. Any one of us can come testify. You can ask committee members to ask a question on your behalf. You can watch the hearing live or after the fact. You can submit written comment. You can see who's been nominated. You can do your own research. So once that policy committee has heard all of the questions and comments signed off on the volunteers, that list of volunteer names then comes before us here on the full on the consent agenda. The hope is that after all this vetting and acknowledging the extensive work of the committee and the volunteers, they can be unanimously approved by the consent agenda process. Now, if needed, a councilor Can pull these committee volunteer appointments from the consent agenda and say, no, we need more discussion. And if you've been to the last few meetings, you'll see that my colleague councilor Kanal is pulling all of these off of the consent agenda as a matter of principle. And I want to acknowledge that I do truly appreciate how passionate and principled my colleague is. We've spoken at length about his reasoning for this, and I do understand it. And at the same time, I'm tasked as the chair of the governance committee to streamline things for these roughly 80 different volunteer bodies so that all of us can get down to policy work. Our governance committee has worked hard on a forthcoming resolution to formalize the process that I just described for you today. You'll be seeing it soon. And because of what I've heard from dozens of past and prospective volunteers, it's what I'm hearing is that adding another layer of bureaucracy is making it harder for volunteers to feel like they can participate. So these are people that are already donating their time to do really valuable and important work for our city. Anyone who comes to these Wednesday city council meetings know that we have very packed agendas. And our constituents, our constituents are begging all of us to get to work. We have many people here who I think are are ready to give public testimony on other agenda items that we have on our list. We have a long meeting ahead of us. I feel strongly that it does not serve our volunteers or our constituents to go over things that have already been discussed publicly and on the record. So, with love and respect to my colleague councilor Kanal, I would ask that we respect our volunteers and constituents time by reserving discussion on appointments for when it's truly needed, and not in order to make a point at every single council meeting and all that in mind, madam president, I call the question second.
164 Okay, we have called the question and have a second. Keelan. I believe we move straight into a vote when a question is called. We don't have discussion on that motion.
165 That's correct. And because this is a report, we may need a motion to accept the report in a second before we can take the vote.
166 I think this is a vote to call the question.
167 Okay. Yes.
168 Are we are we doing a vote to vote right now?
169 This is calling the question. Yes. I'm sorry. I usually state what these are I apologize calling the question is a vote to vote. And I vote on whether or not to vote.
170 Okay.
171 So this is the vote on the motion to call the question canal.
172 On the motion I vote no.
173 Ryan. I Koyama Lane I maria.
174 Hi. No, I.
175 Clark Green. I Zimmerman I.
176 Avalos no. Dunphy I.
177 Smith I.
178 Pirtle-guiney I.
179 With ten yes votes. The motion is approved.
180 Counselors that moves us past discussion and to the vote on this agenda item I will need a motion and a second to adopt the report. And then we will move into.
181 A.
182 Move to adopt the report.
183 I think I heard a movement from councilor Zimmerman and a second from councilor Ryan, though I also heard councilor Kanal say a second after that. I believe we have Zimmerman and Ryan first. For the official record, I just wanted to acknowledge my colleague. Sorry for the confusion. Keelan can you.
184 Call the roll?
185 And we are now voting to adopt the report and confirm the recommended appointments from the mayor.
186 No.
187 I will keep this streamlined. Madam president, if we are to have fewer, better supported, more empowered and therefore more meaningful volunteer bodies, we need to ensure that council engages with the topics, the bodies themselves and the appointees. We also need to guarantee public participation in this process. I support the appointees I have this entire time, and I wish that we had a process that better reflected that going forward, and I look forward to working with my colleagues who are on the governance committee to ensure that I vote.
188 I Ryan. I Koyama Lane I Morillo. I Novick.
189 I.
190 Clark, I Green. I Zimmerman,
191 I.
192 Albornoz I agree with councilor Canal. I am concerned about what this process is setting up, because I do think that us vetting volunteers who have very big roles and make a lot of big decisions too, and I don't agree that that process going just through committee and us having to do our own due diligence to watch committee meetings or participate, I barely have enough time to do my own committee. I expect to come to this meeting and be able to make a vote and have the ability to have an informed vote, and that requires some further vetting. So I disagree with that premise. I agree with councilor Kanal that I'm going to I'm going to vote for this because it's not about those people. And I, as somebody who has put hundreds and hundreds of hours, no, very much the burden that we put on community members. But for that same reason, I also know the responsibility that I that community members have and our responsibility to properly vet them. So I'm voting I but I want to continue the discussion about this process in the future.
193 I Smith.
194 I.
195 I with 12 I votes the appointments are confirmed.
196 Thank you keelan counselors. Our next agenda item is an item that we've heard a few times before. The ordinance to ban a. I'm sorry to ban price setting through I in housing keelan. Could you please call the agenda item.
197 Item nine amend affordable housing code to add prohibition of anti-competitive rental practices, including the sale and use of algorithmic devices.
198 Thank you and counselors. You'll remember that we had to cut testimony short when we first heard this agenda item, and offered the public two additional times to come forward and complete the testimony list. This is the second of those times, so we will move right now into picking up on public testimony where we left off after the last meeting. Keelan could you please call up folks to testify?
199 First, we have jenna knoblach, amy walsh, and christine orlandi.
200 Thank you for joining us tonight.
201 All right. Hi. My name is jenna knoblauch. I'm a renter in southeast Portland, and I'm also someone who has experienced housing precarity too many times in my life. And I'm here to call on you to pass this ban on algorithmic algorithmic price fixing. First, it's clear that it's a real problem. I learned from real page's own testimony here that they are already setting prices for 18% of units in Portland. That's almost 1 in 5 units, far too many. And according to real page's own materials, they are, and I quote, driving every possible opportunity to increase price, even in the most downward trending conditions. That is not a fair market. And this is further distorting what is already a losing, a losing market for renters. Secondly, I really am failing to see any downsides here for landlords. For all the bluster about unintended unintended consequences, I have not heard a single real world example from the doj investigation or the other cities with this on the books. For all the discussion about barriers to building new market rate units, I've never heard price setting come up as a barrier. The fact is, landlords have been setting prices just fine for a long time without colluding in. In fact, it was just in the news. I was just reading just now. That real page lost and is settling in north carolina, where they're agreeing to stop using the practice. There are real consequences for tenants. The Oregon community foundation found that for every 10% increase in homelessness, there's an associated 13.6 increase in or 10% increase in rent is associated with 13.6% increase in homelessness. Trump's department of justice is not going to protect us from price colluding. We are all depending on you, so please vote yes on this sensible policy.
202 Thank you. I'll remind folks.
203 That we can't have clapping and other interruptions. You're welcome to do jazz hands. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Other silent indications of support or opposition.
204 Amy walsh, christine orlandi, sarah fisher is joining us online.
205 Welcome, sarah. Please go right ahead.
206 Sarah you're muted. Sarah if you're on the phone try star six to unmute. Okay. We'll come back to sarah. Next up we have michael park. Spencer trump. Eric hogstedt.
207 And I believe one of those guests is making their way downstairs right now. Keelan while we wait, is sarah ready?
208 It looks like sarah is still muted.
209 We want to call the next couple of people.
210 Let's see. Next up we have marion drake. Greg frick. Keeley coke. Next we have leah belton.
211 Cost.
212 Is spencer.
213 Go right ahead. Thank you I'll.
214 Introduce yourself and jump right in.
215 Good evening. Council president pirtle-guiney and members of the Portland city council. My name is spencer trum, and I'm here today on behalf of state representative zach hudson, representative hudson's district represents oregon's 49th house district. This includes parts of east Portland and Gresham, as well as troutdale, fairview, and wood village. I'm here to urge you to pass the ordinance prohibiting algorithmic rental price fixing. Nearly half the households in representative hudson's district are rentals between 2019 and 2023, over 60% of those renter households were forced to spend more than 30% of their income on housing. In other words, the majority of east county residents are forced to pay too much in rent. One way to limit the damage caused by out-of-control rent is to ban the use of ai algorithms to set rents. Propublica's reporting reveals how software companies help landlords and property managers coordinate rent increases. Their algorithms aggregate nonpublic data from landlords and supply them all with the same analysis to maximize rent yields. The result spiraling rent inflation, community displacement and harder lives for working families. Our senior u.s. Senator, ron wyden, used a good word to describe the arrangement by which companies use algorithms to raise prices and control housing as a commodity. That word is cartel. Jurisdictions across America have recognized the threat posed to consumers by predatory rent setting algorithms. City councils in philadelphia and san francisco have passed ordinances like the one proposed here in Portland, and I'm pleased to say that Oregon has joined a federal antitrust suit against realpage. But housing unaffordability is an emergency across the state, and our city governments must play their part to protect Oregonians. This ordinance has attracted a great deal of attention and support. I urge you to listen to the voices of rent burdened portlanders and prioritize their need for shelter and dignity over landlords profits, the degree to which Oregonians are burdened by rents is unfair, unsustainable and unacceptable, and it must stop. Please pass this ordinance without delay and thank you for your time and consideration.
216 Thank you.
217 Please go ahead and introduce yourself and then jump right in. Hi.
218 My name is leah belton. I support the ban on algorithmic rent pricing. I am here for myself, my fellow renters and east county rising, which serves district one and east Multnomah county. We are deeply concerned about the housing and eviction crisis. A 2018 city of Portland assessment on gentrification and displacement highlighted east portland's unique vulnerability. East Portland has had the most rapid increase in housing costs citywide since zero eight, the year I graduated from reynolds high. Over 14,000 low income cost burden renter households live in east Portland, and they're being pushed out in parkrose and rosewood. Black and brown portlanders are being displaced. The fastest. Institutional racism and historical redlining laid the foundation, and today, the use of algorithmic price fixing tools continues this displacement. You have the power to slow this displacement. Please do not give in to misinformation and scare tactics. Help us pay reasonable rents instead. Vote yes on this ordinance. Do not water it down. Banning price fixing algorithms to close a collusion loophole will not tank the housing market. Algorithmic price fixing tools enable our capital to be mined out of our community with ease. Help us keep our money in our local economy. East county rising, and I urge you all to vote yes on this ordinance and protect the people who actually live in this city. Thank you for your time.
219 Thank you for being here.
220 Next up we have colin font. Lorena guyot. Natalie hutchinson joining us online.
221 Natalie, go right ahead.
222 I'm here. All right. Good evening. My name is natalie hutchinson. I am a grad student in the architecture program at PSU, and I'm here to speak in support of the ordinance banning I of I price fixing of rents. Portland's soul is defined by its people. The artists, the families, the small businesses and the neighbors who make our city unique. But the use of algorithmic devices in the rental housing market threatens to push neighbors out. As a tenant, I live in an affordable housing building where I based price fixing software like yardi is used. In the 11 months that I've lived in this building I've witnessed, it was 22 evictions on the first day, on the original day of this testimony. But today it's 24 evictions in this building. This is a clear example of the harm these practices cause, and it is unacceptable. Renters deserve grace, not exploitation, especially in today's economic economic climate. To the tech companies behind these algorithms, these practices of manipulating prices and destabilizing our housing market are just not just unethical. They're harmful. We won't allow you to turn our city into a market for profit at the expense of its residents, the small landlords. You are an essential part of keeping Portland weird and special. By setting rents reasonably, you ensure that our city remains diverse, inclusive and vibrant. Supporting fair and affordable pricing benefits everyone, your tenants, your neighborhoods, and our city as a whole. Furthermore, I urge all renters to join renters unions and stand up for your rights. We need to hold landlords and developers accountable for their actions. This ordinance is just the first step in ensuring that our city remains a place where residents can thrive. Today, I want to lend our community's bravery to the city council and facing these current issues head on. I'm confident in the leadership of the city council to make the right decision for portland's future. I urge the council and greater Portland to support this bill, to protect our community from the harmful effects of ai price fixing. Thank you.
223 Thank you. Go right ahead.
224 Hi.
225 My name is lorena guyette. I am speaking in favor of this ordinance. I did have previous testimony, but I decided to scrap it in order to rebuttal some of the misinformation that was presented at the previous council meeting. First, in response to the claim that the software is not price fixing or like realpage. It was reported in 2022 that realpage executives have been quoted as taking credit for a 14% increase in rent and referring to landlords who refuse to increase rent as idiots. Employees. State landlords who want to charge reasonable rates, have an empathy problem and have admitted to disincentivizing landlords from doing so, even kicking some landlords off of the software. As a latina, I took offense to the idea that this ordinance would prevent generational wealth from developing in black and brown communities when demographics for this city show that more than 60% of black and hispanic rent are renters in Portland, meaning that the biggest hurdle for our communities is being rent burdened and first time home buying. What percentage of them do you think are landlords? We need to ensure that all of our community is protected, not just those who are able to invest in property, and you are being presented with a false dichotomy that we must either focus on building homes or regulating costs. It is important to state that not only can we do both, but we must do both. Under normal conditions, more housing will bring prices down. But realpage and software like it are built for the purpose of disrupting these types of market forces. All the housing in the world means nothing. If we allow software to run rampant and remove any incentive to lower prices. This ordinance is a necessary preventative measure that needs to be applied. Yesterday, also as a request councilor Zimmerman, you have asked the same questions in the housing and homelessness committee as you have in general. In the general meeting, I would like to request that you maybe write down some of the things so we don't have repeat answers in order to be respectful of our time. In regards to the necessity of testimony, thank you very much.
226 Thank you for being here.
227 We'll go back to sarah fisher.
228 Sarah, welcome. Please introduce yourself and you can start your testimony.
229 Thank you. Good evening. Councilor. Council president pirtle-guiney, vice president Koyama Lane and councilors. Do I need to do something to turn my camera on?
230 Yeah.
231 Sarah, if you accept the promote, I am. Yep.
232 All right. Are you ready?
233 Go right ahead, sarah. And even if you can't get your camera on, we've got a picture of you on screen.
234 Okay. My name is sarah fisher, and I'm an episcopal priest serving hope and bread street church and saint aidan's episcopal church, both in east Portland. I'm testifying for myself today. While much of my work is with people currently living on the street, I know, as you know, that our housing crisis is about much more than homelessness. I've lived in Portland for almost 40 years, and I've lived in every quadrant, quadrant of the city. I've been a homeowner, a renter, and a landlord. About 30 years ago, a family member was visiting and she said something I have never forgotten. She said Portland feels like a city that really cares about the people who live here, and does things for the enjoyment of all of its residents. When we talk about a boom loop, reviving Portland and making Portland a better city, I think this is what we're talking about. Giving the impression to all who come here that we care. This anti algorithmic price fixing ordinance does that. The simple truth is that this is about putting people before profit. If this is not a moment in history to put people before profit, I do not know what is. My husband and I own a small apartment complex in southeast Portland. We do not participate in real page, so I guess we're one of these stupid landlords or any other algorithmic price fixing service. Our apartment complex matters to us, especially as we consider retirement, but I am here to say that it is possible to have a healthy investment property without making it impossible for everyday people to live in our city. I urge you to pass this ordinance. Thank you.
235 Thank you sarah.
236 Next up we have zach voss. Tessa cole. Meg. Bender. Stefanski. J m. Riley. Martz. Haley nissen. Will spalding. Heather. Heather riggs. Hanna. Brooks. Olsen. Jeremy. Baird. Okay.
237 Go ahead and introduce yourself, and you can begin your testimony.
238 Good evening, madam president. Councilors. Hard working administrators. Thank you for letting me come back to testify. I am reverend heather riggs, pastor of Montavilla united methodist church in southeast Portland. I'm here to speak in favor. I want robots to clean my house, not to raise my parishioners rent. Many members of my congregation are either elderly and struggling to survive on a fixed income, or are young adults struggling to find jobs that pay enough to cover the rising costs of living. My church includes a queer young adult group for whom affordable housing is literally life saving because they cannot depend on their families for the kind of support that most parents give their young adult children when they are starting out in life. This ordinance will not impact small, local landlords who can't even afford to pay for these algorithmic programs. As has been already stated during the discussion of social housing, this ordinance will also not stop developers from building affordable housing, since for profit developers have no intentions of building affordable housing because it just doesn't pencil out to build for lower rents. When we have higher building costs. This ordinance will help to prevent the large corporate landlords from using ai to collude to raise rents in an already stressed housing system. Let's do the right thing. For the majority of portlanders, not the right thing for the minority of those who are already making enough money. Thank you.
239 Thank you.
240 Go right ahead.
241 For the record, my name is jeremy barrett. I'll give a little bit more of.
242 A personal testimony.
243 I'm a resident of.
244 Portland city district four.
245 I'm a research.
246 And development chemist.
247 Who is. Employed in the building industry, specializing.
248 In.
249 The science of.
250 Developing housing materials.
251 My partner is a medical student going to OHSU pursuant of an md. We moved here in the last few years in the pursuit of a better life from idaho, where I price fixing has caused the price of rent to far exceed the price of labor. The lack of regulations in that state have allowed this inequity to grow considerably throughout my life while growing up there. Before coming here, we only heard rumors of Portland being something that it isn't, and we don't regret coming here at all. The city has been amazing. We've decided that we'd like to stay here permanently and add another scientist and a doctor to the community, but the rent increases have been making it impossible to save money and even think about being able to save up to afford buying a house in this area. Even with the higher paying job that I have right now, we have already had to move once due to rent being exacerbated by the price fixing since we've come here. I know this is a part of why it has gone up, because all of my slightly older coworkers who make the same amount, same salary as me, are able to do what I am not. And that's because of a steep increase in rent since they bought houses, which conveniently happened after software companies like realpage started existing. So we have a decision to make once my partner graduates on whether or not we can afford to live here, or even in this country when she becomes a medical resident. We have been putting off having a family or even getting married until we have the money to do either correctly. Our main expense is rent and it's not even close competition. We look for the cheapest place to live and it doesn't exist. I hope everyone will vote to prevent us from being priced out of our favorite city, before we can even start to build a life here. Thank you.
252 Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
253 Next up we have rowan spillman. Michael shanks. Richard borkovich. Brant hoffman. Jordan lewis. Tyler fellini is joining us online.
254 Tyler, you're welcome to come off mute and begin your testimony.
255 All right. Good evening. Councilors. I, I want to say that I think it's incredibly telling that the most ardent opposition to this eye ban has come from, you know, multi-unit property owners. I think that's incredibly telling. I hope that the council feels the same. It's also a shame that so many people were not able to be here tonight. I recognize, you know, the bureaucratic process being what it is. It's slow and steady. And I do hope that you will do your due diligence to capture those people's statements because, you know, I believe that they had something worth saying, and I hope it gets heard. With that, I should have said this at the beginning. I am a registered lobbyist for and the executive director of Portland jobs with justice. And I am just here to express my support for the ban on I price fixing. And with that, I'll yield the rest of my time.
256 Thank you, tyler, and thank you for remembering that that lobbyist disclosure. I know folks sometimes have a hard time remembering it. Go right ahead. Please introduce yourself and begin your testimony.
257 Oh. Oh, me? Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, me.
258 Hello? City council. My name is jordan lewis, and I'm a renter in Portland stadium. Hood. I'm testifying here in support of councilor Maria's algorithmic price fixing ban. Something that frustrates me about this conversation is that every turn, we have to consider the plight of the precarious landlord. It's not that I don't believe a landlord can be in financial precarity, but this is a rhetorical technique that hijacks the conversation and decenters the precarious tenant. The most precarious landlord necessarily owns a house which puts them above the average tenant financially. I want to talk about how popular this policy is. I talk a lot about city politics and a lot of apolitical group chats. You will not imagine the excitement I got when I brought up this policy in there. I have landlord friends, friends who own their place and rent out rooms. This policy does numbers in those group chats. No one gets more excited by this policy than my landlord friends, because policies like this alleviate a lot of the guilt that they might feel as landlords. They almost want this more than I do. And while I'm not sure if I can get my friends to care about climate policy or transportation like I do when I tell them who voted no on this, they will remember it. This is meat and potatoes and gentrification policy. It shouldn't be that hard. Let's pass this very first step so we can move on to some more interesting stuff. The housing crisis is a multifactorial situation, and a lot of regular Americans bear some responsibility in it. I echo the concept of a housing cartel mentioned in previous testimonies, but people love a simple villain like realpage. This is the lowest hanging fruit there is. It's practically on the ground. If we can't pass an algorithmic rent fixing ban, which really just brings software in line with 100 year old antitrust law, how are we supposed to challenge the housing cartel and build the housing supply that we need if we can't even do that? Thank you.
259 For being here.
260 Next up we have adam shippey. Followed by lee shelton. And claire knutson.
261 Adam, go right ahead and introduce yourself.
262 My name is adam shippey. District four. You know, my 20s, I was homeless. I think there's only one person on this council that has, like, personal experience with how humiliating, dehumanizing and violent that can be. The people that were homeless alongside me. Are not here to speak to this council right now because they are dead. Suffice it to say, my circumstances improved. Not through some stupid bootstrap ideology, but just through sheer luck, right? A couple of years later, I was lucky enough to marry a beautiful woman, and in 2011, we rented an apartment in southwest Portland that had two bedrooms. It was 1300ft■!s, hada balcony, in-unit laundry, two parking spaces, and a freaking storage unit for less than $1,000 a month. Less than $1,000 a month. It was so affordable we were able to save money. We saved money. And with the assistance of her family a couple years later, we put a down payment on a house that we bought for $265,000. No, no, no, $257,000. Right. I love my house. I still live in my house. But like that story. That story about someone who rose out of circumstances that could have killed them and got to the level of comfort that I have right now, that doesn't get told anymore. That's not possible. And these price fixing algorithms are a huge part of that. And I think everybody at this council knows that. And if you don't know that, I question who you're listening to. I've heard a lot of disingenuous arguments two weeks ago. I really did by people who were paid to be here, but I didn't get to speak. But I'm speaking now, and I just want to say the landlords are going to be okay. They are. They really are. And most of your constituents aren't landlords, and they're desperate and they're angry. So please pass this. We need it.
263 Thank you for.
264 Being here and for sharing your story.
265 Next up. Well, lee shelton. Claire munson, jesse dylan.
266 Welcome. Go right ahead and introduce yourself, and you can begin your testimony.
267 Hi, I'm jesse dylan.
268 City council members. Thank you for being here. Staff, thank you for being here. I really have great admiration and respect for anybody who volunteers to engage in this process. So thank you very much. My name is jesse dylan, and let me be clear, I absolutely do not support price fixing. I don't support monopolistic ideals, but I also do not support this amendment. There are flaws to the amendment, and I am very concerned that it will cost me as a housing provider. To increase rents, to cover the costs, because I'm going to be sued for frivolous lawsuits based on the way that it's written right now. I'm a mother, a u.s. Army veteran, a business owner, and a housing provider. I take great pride in all of the roles that I fulfill, and I have a strong set of personal values that guide me in my decision making. I hold those values near to my heart and encourage those around me, as well as expect my staff, my colleagues, and my children to reflect on their personal values and live them each day with each decision they make. My favorite personal value is integrity. Do the right thing even when no one is looking. Today, I urge you each to exercise integrity in your position as Portland city council members. You are elected by the citizens of Portland to do what they cannot do for themselves, to collectively ensure the local government does the right thing. If you vote yes for this amendment to the affordable housing code, it will have an unintended consequence of increasing the cost of housing, and it will entice frivolous lawsuits to be filed, resulting in housing providers in the city of Portland to be uninsurable. I've lived in Portland for 18 years. I've been a housing provider for the same amount of time, and I'm very proud of the work that I do as a housing provider. It's tough, though, because I have to balance running a business with making really hard decisions related to the employees that I care about and work hard for me, as well as the decisions that residents rely on me and my staff to provide them with safe, warm and habitable, habitable homes. I wish I had 20 more minutes, but I appreciate your time. I'll submit the rest of my comments online.
269 Thank you. Thank you very much for being here.
270 Next up we have christina dirks. Mike simko joining us online.
271 Mike, go right ahead.
272 Thank you very much. Council president and members of the Portland city council, I really appreciate you allowing us to testify this evening. I do represent realpage. I'm a vice president and associate general counsel there. There's a lot of misinformation about pricing software in general. All we do is market analysis with a pricing suggestion. We do not set the rents. In most of the sunbelt, in fact, all of the sunbelt right now, where we have our largest market penetration, our software is recommending lower rents. That's from arizona all the way across the south. We can count maybe denver, colorado as part of the sunbelt. They'll be happy to know all the way up through virginia. Our software is recommending, in a lot of cases, double digit rent decreases. And that's not because of the software. It's because of the market dynamics at play in the sunbelt right now. And that is they've built a lot of new housing. That is the only way to lower rents. And I feel for people who are having to deal with high rents, I really do. But the only way to lower rent is to build more product. That's it. You know, our software really just applies math to data. And what this draft ordinance does at the present moment, it doesn't ban price fixing. It bans the use of data sets and applied math. Essentially what you're doing is you're you're banning a math tool that's not going to help anybody. It certainly won't help housing providers. And by the way, it won't help your residents either. If we're a cartel, we're the worst cartel in, in, in history, because where we have the highest market penetration, rents are falling. And when we have very little market penetration, rents are rising. Thank you.
273 Thank you for being here today.
274 Next up we have colin brown. Joe harvey. Rajesh venkatachalapathy. Lina maya poole, holly hamilton. Antonia januzzi. Thomas. Jordan byers. Catherine catherine king.
275 Welcome. Go ahead and introduce yourself, and you can begin your testimony. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is catherine king. My name is catherine king. And I'm.
276 A rental owner since 1997, and I have had rentals in districts three, two and one. My company, cjjc properties pc, is located in district one. We have managed rentals since 2003, in all four districts. Our company needs rental data software in order to be to best serve our clients who own 220 rental doors in the Portland metro area. As a rental owner for 29 years and the manager of many rentals before clients since 2003, I wholeheartedly oppose this policy. Housing providers are your existing clients and voters. Without housing providers and housing willingness rentals, you lose vitally needed housing stock. We simply cannot encourage our owners to continue selling out their rentals. We have lost significant housing stock since 2015, when the first rent control ordinance went into effect in Portland. Small owners and professionals that house Oregonians cannot work without data. We are not colluding to price fix. A housing provider cannot provide housing without relevant data, and appraiser cannot accurately value homes without relevant data. How can fred meyer price eggs without being able to see the data on their inventory and suppliers, and the demand in the market? They cannot. The easiest housing stock for renters is the housing stock you already have. The easiest housing stock for renters is the housing stock you already have. We have driven out the majority of investment in Portland already and we have been bleeding rental units. I currently have eight listings for sale in total that are all rentals that owners are selling, because they no longer support having rentals. In this policy environment, that fails to see that biting the hand that feeds the housing stock is not the right answer. Supply and demand drive pricing. You are adding to the lack of supply issue.
277 Thank you. I'm sorry, we just have two minutes per person, but I appreciate you sharing your testimony with us.
278 Alicia. Alicia. Morseth. Eamonn. Rutherford. Yolanda allen is joining us online.
279 Please go ahead and unmute yourself and begin your testimony.
280 Hi. Can everyone hear me?
281 We can. Yes.
282 Yes. Hello, council first and foremost. Thank you so much for taking time out tonight to hear me. My name is andre allen. I am the director of community engagement and advocacy at the community alliance of tenants. I am encouraging the passing of the prohibition of ai being used to. Increase rent. Excuse me. In the community and lots of tenants. We get calls every day. We are interacting every day with tenants across the state who are struggling to stay within their housing, who are struggling to afford the thought of even moving much more, resigning a lease that is being increased. Or please forgive me. So sorry. Who are struggling with the thought of being able to stay in their homes much more what their lease renewal will look like. And I'm just encouraging this council to please take the considerations as proposed by other people who have come before me and people after me into consideration and hopes of passing this ordinance to make sure that we are keeping people housed and we are not exacerbating the already ongoing crisis within the state of people becoming houseless. Thank you.
283 Thank you for joining us tonight.
284 That completes testimony.
285 Okay. Well, thank you for everybody who showed up multiple times to wait for your turn to share your testimony with us. I know that the scheduling of this has been hard, but I am glad that you were able to be here tonight and that we were able to hear from you. I believe councilor Morillo has a motion to make on this agenda item.
286 Thank you, council president.
287 I just want to start off by thanking everyone so.
288 Much, who has come multiple times to city hall to testify. It means a lot to us how engaged you are in the process that you've come to committee, that you've come to full council, and it's just immense how much you guys care about your community and what's going on in it. And I'm extremely grateful for that. I also wanted to say that just this past week, an article came out that said that in the five hours since opening the waitlist on Tuesday, home forward received nearly 7000 applications, and our 2024 Portland insight survey just came out, and it showed that 72.4% of portlanders told us that affordable housing was their top issue. It's kind of with a heavy heart that I have to say this, that there is some new litigation elsewhere that touches on similar issues with the algorithmic price fixing ordinance, and I want to assert that the litigation is not determinative of what's going to happen here, but it's worth us keeping an eye on and being responsible stewards of policy and maintaining good conversations with stakeholders. As we look into it. So while the council is facing other immediate priorities like the upcoming budget, it makes sense to me to keep this item in the committee for further discussion. So with that, I move to refer item nine back to the homelessness and housing committee.
289 Second.
290 Is there any discussion on the motion before us to move this agenda item back to the committee on homelessness and housing? Seeing no one in the queue. Keelan could you please call the roll.
291 Just to verify that was moved by councilor Morillo and seconded by Koyama Lane councilor Koyama Lane. Thank you. Canal.
292 This is on the motion to refer back to committee, correct? Yeah. I can't say I'm an expert on the litigation, but I think on this particular thing I'm very happy to follow my, my colleague, my renter colleagues lead on it. So I will vote. Aye.
293 Ryan. I Koyama Lane I.
294 Morillo I.
295 Novick really appreciated the testimony tonight and look forward to seeing this item again when it comes back to us.
296 I. A Green.
297 I also appreciate the testimony.
298 Tonight, and I'll just.
299 Acknowledge that the chief sponsor of this has done an incredible amount of homework, and I'm just going to take her lead on something like this. I vote I.
300 Zimmerman, I Avalos.
301 Thank you so much to all of the folks that come out to really express what is clearly a need in our city. And as chair of the homelessness and housing committee, I really want this bill to work. And so I'm eager to bring it back to committee to make sure that it can succeed. And I'm looking forward to it coming back to council. I vote aye, Dunphy.
302 I'm disappointed that we don't get the resolution tonight, but I look forward to working on it with my colleagues in the housing and homelessness committee.
303 I vote yea Smith.
304 I.
305 Pirtle-guiney thank you to everybody who is here tonight and the folks who have shared their stories and their both support and concerns over the last few times that we've heard this. We know that housing costs too much in Portland. We know that that's a challenge up and down the west coast, but it's one that we feel particularly acutely in our city here. I appreciate the sponsor working with all of us to ensure that we can address this issue in the best way possible, and look forward to continuing to work on this ordinance, and also on the many other steps that I know we need to take to address housing affordability broadly in our city.
306 I 12 yes votes. The item is referred back to the committee.
307 Councilors, we are moving on to agenda item ten. Keelan. Could you please read the agenda item?
308 Amend the fy 20 2425 technical adjustment ordinance and make other budget related changes.
309 Thank you. And we do have a committee staff summary for the technical adjustment ordinance. I see christopher hare is here to share that with us. Christopher, go right ahead.
310 Good evening, madam president. Madam vice president, councilors. For the record, my name is christopher hare, council policy analyst with counsel operations. And I serve as staff to the finance committee. The emergency ordinance before you document number 2025120, was first discussed in the finance committee on March 24th as a presentation. It was later considered in the finance committee on April 1st as an emergency ordinance, where it was referred to council with a recommendation to pass the emergency ordinance. Amends the fy 20 2425 appropriation schedule for certain expenditures across various budgets, across various funds, and amends the number of authorized positions in the fy 20 2425 revised budget. The amendments to the fy 20 2425 appropriation schedule allocates resources from a general fund policy, set aside reserve to draw down $3.5 million from the projected police overtime buy down set aside. It reduces $6,078,879 from fy 20 2425 bureau budgets to be carried into the respective fy 20 2526 budgets and returns 5,078,514 to the general fund. There are additional adjustments representing internal transfers, realignments and other adjustments that do not impact the general fund. Discretionary or contingency balances. The amendments to the fy 20 2425 revised budgets reduce one fte from Portland fire and rescue and one fte from Portland police bureau, which are then realigned as an additional two fte under the office of public safety. Deputy city administrator. Additionally, one fte is being removed from the Portland police bureau to fund the conversion of a limited term position into a regular permanent position within the bureau. The ordinance will change the appropriation 47 funds by a net reduction of 1,000,007 $777,925, primarily as a result of balancing the beginning fy 20 2526 fund and other resources. There is also a net increase of $3.46 million to the general fund. The net change in fte from this ordinance is the reduction of one limited duration fte. An emergency clause has been added to this ordinance to enable the implementation of the adjustments without delay. The full impact statement on this item includes a financial and budgets impact and analysis, and information on potential community impact and community involvement. There was no verbal or written testimony on this ordinance prior to committee action. This concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.
311 Thank you. Christopher.
312 Counselor Zimmerman, is there anything that you would like to add as the chair who presided over this meeting?
313 No.
314 Okay. This is an agenda item that came from the mayor's office from the administrative side. So we don't have a council presenter on it, but city administrator jordan, is there anything else that your team would like to add or should we move into discussion?
315 I think moving to discussion is great. Thank you.
316 Keelan is there any public testimony? Signed up?
317 No one signed up.
318 Okay. Councilor Kanal, you are first in the queue.
319 I have a question and then a comment, if that's all right, madam president.
320 Yes. And we do have budget office staff here with us today. If anybody has questions that they need answered from our budget office staff.
321 My question. Yeah, it may go to either of you. My comment definitely will require budget office staff. So my question is if you could just give a little bit more clarity. We use the phrase drawdown. Christopher. The amendments to the appropriations schedule allocates resources from a general fund policy, set aside reserve to draw down $3.5 million from the projected police overtime. Can you just clarify for the public what that exactly means? And then I'll make my comment after that.
322 Sure, yeah.
323 Yeah. For the record, my name is ruth levine. I'm the director of the city budget office. So the drawdown term. So just for general background, the 3.5 million was put into policy set aside by the previous council in the fall. Bump in 2024. And excuse me, it was put there to sort of as a pot of money essentially that would be available to the council based on updated projections around overtime in the police bureau. In the spring, which is now. And so essentially the idea behind it was to sort of be able to wait and see and provide flexibility based on how, you know, certain events, specific events, including like the election panned out. And how their overtime generally was trending. And so this ordinance would draw it down, meaning it would take it out of the policy set aside, which is contingency, and put it into the police bureau's budget. You can't nobody can spend out of contingency, which means that it requires a council action to move funding out of contingency into a bureau's budget in order for them to be able to spend it. And so that's what that drawdown term refers to, is just moving it from contingency into the bureau's budget.
324 Thank you for.
325 Thank you for clarifying, I. Madam president, I would like to propose an amendment, and I will send this over to I think I have sent it over to the clerk, but if there's more information I need to give, it's a motion to make the following adjustments to the supplemental budget as proposed to change general fund return decision packages to general fund carryover decision packages within the public safety service area. It would reallocate the policy set aside in the general fund by $737,427 to change a general fund return. Portland fire and rescue carryover for firefighters as general fund. Return to a general fund program. Carryover for the Portland fire and rescue program. Carryover for firefighters and reallocate the policy set aside in the general fund by $100,000 to change the general fund return. That's marked pdx contact survey general fund return to a general fund program. Carryover for pdx contact survey program carryover. And the amendment would also include updating exhibits one through five as needed to reflect this change. I don't think it touches all of those so I can speak to it, but I wanted to put that forward. And what this can I clarify one thing. This is allowing Portland fire and rescue and the public safety service area to use money that is already allocated to their budget this year, next fiscal year, because they have been unable to spend that money in this fiscal year for reasons that are particular to each of those two things, it's allowing them to use their existing money for that purpose across the fiscal year line. Does that make sense? And you can clarify, ruth, if I didn't say that fairly enough. Okay.
326 Thank you.
327 So essentially, counselors, right now this money is coming back to the general fund. It would become part of the funds available as we begin our budgeting. In some cases, we allow bureaus to carry funds over into the next fiscal year, rather than having the money come back to the general fund for future allocation, which could be to the same thing or to something else. This would carry that over and ensure that it was reallocated for these same purposes and councilor Kanal, can you just restate what the two purposes are, what the two lines are, that you are making this change to?
328 Thank you. And for those who want to follow along, the best place to look at this is exhibit four. In the middle of the first page there's a big table and can I share a screen or have you do so? Keelan either way is good.
329 Yeah. Let me see if we can pull it up.
330 And for folks who are following along, this is linked. If you look at our agenda which is posted online, you're going to agenda item number ten. And then when you get to that agenda item, you're scrolling down to the exhibits to exhibit four.
331 Keelan. Let me know what you prefer.
332 Yeah, we're pulling it up. Thank you. Give us just a second.
333 So for those who have it up and when you see it, you're going to see a table that has a row. Sorry, a column with a lot of money that's being removed from this fiscal year's money allocations. And then a second column that has the same amount for many of those things. And that's money that's being carried over or rolling over from this year to next year. There are several lines, however, that do not roll over. They have a zero in that second column. And this is in the middle, the middle big table. There's those four that you see kind of together that have a zero in the right column. It's the middle two of those. And my amendment would basically be to put the $100,000 in the left column, also into the right column for contact survey carryover. And the seven 37,000 there for in the next line for Portland fire and rescue. Over this would allow and I'll explain each one of them. There are two together. It's money that would be used for one time training costs for firefighters, which would do two things. It would allow them to pay the cost of training firefighters, which takes ten months, roughly from recruitment to being able to be in the traveler pool, picking up shifts and reducing overtime. And it would also give certainty to Portland fire and rescue today, not in June, which would mean that it is more likely that they could get that recruitment done very early in the fiscal year, which is really critical because ten months from the beginning of this fiscal year, in may of next year, we have a 27 pay period, which will lead to a retirement wave. So having recruits ready to go when the retirements hit, as opposed to two months after the retirement hit, is the main benefit of doing this now as opposed to later. Also, we don't know if it would be done later, but assuming even if it was, it's better to do it now. That's the 737. The $100,000 one is a contact survey program which would implement a customer service post incident event when a community member interacts with the police. This is something that was recommended by the community. Sorry. Compliance officer, community liaison for the settlement agreement for Portland police. It was then recommended by the Portland committee on community-engaged policing. That recommendation was endorsed by chief day and mayor wheeler. It was a workshop or a work table was set up to create an RFP, a request for proposal to find a vendor to implement this. That work was done including labor, including a lot of partners, which we can speak to. Some of them are in the room. And then it went to procurement and there was a delay at procurement. And as a result, the RFP would not get done in time for them to use the money this year. So this would allow them to continue using that money into next year and avoid the entire project getting shut down. And that, I think, is a succinct I can speak more if anyone has questions.
334 Thank you. Councilor ruth, are you able to share with us whether these are requests that were made by the dca and then zeroed out in a decision by folks in the administrator or the mayor's office, or whether these are requests that the service area did not make.
335 Yeah, I can they were they were requests that were made by the service area. The reason they were zeroed out was simply that we were trying to apply a pretty strict lens on carryover. So we were looking at things that had actually begun this fiscal year and just didn't, wouldn't be completed this fiscal year. So, you know, that that was the rationale behind it. But yeah.
336 Thank you, councilor Smith. You're in the queue.
337 You have a second before we move to discussion. Okay.
338 Sorry.
339 You're right.
340 Councilor.
341 Councilor, thank you for catching.
342 Me this second.
343 Okay. We have a second from councilor Avalos. Councilor Smith.
344 Thank you. A couple things I want to get some clarity on. So these other dollars, they also put the spring bump in here right as a part of this money councilor.
345 I'm sorry. I believe we're doing discussion to the proposed amendment right now to.
346 The proposal.
347 I should have asked.
348 Okay. I'm sorry. So again, my answer is still the same. We should not be working on budget 2526 before we have a chance to look at the entire budget and the dca's, the mayor, the city manager, whoever brought this forward, the city budget office, I was going to say the same thing. So no, we should not until we find out what the mayor's budget is we can't be acting on. There may be something more important than this Sameer that we have to do for money pieces. I don't have a problem with policy, but money pieces? You have to wait until the budget is dropped. And so that's where it begins and end. And the other piece is if the if the department wanted this, they've had more than enough chance to ask for a budget modification to ask for this money. But doing it in this way, it's a real sneaky kind of way to do things.
349 Councilor this is the regular technical adjustment. It's equivalent to what was the bump before. And the question at hand is whether we should carry over funds that had been allocated last year, or whether we should allow those funds that weren't spent.
350 And that's what I'm saying, and that's what I'm saying. Madam president, we should not because it is causing us to make a decision about 2526 early. We're taking that money because ordinarily that money would be pushed over as one time only money or ongoing money for the next budget, so that the mayor could do what he needed to do with it. And until the mayor drops his budget, I don't know that this is an emergency right now.
351 Thank you, councilor. Councilor zimmermann.
352 Thanks. Well, it took a minute to follow along. I think I'm there. I think I know what lines were referencing. Councilor, as the chair of the finance committee, this is the very first minute that I'm hearing of this Portland fire and rescue. The dca, mr. Myers of public safety have not brought this up to me. This is not something that that I've heard of. And they I do not remember any testimony from them at the finance committee regarding this technical adjustment, what used to be called a spring bump. So I, I am. I would like to highlight this moment as to underline what councilor Smith has said. I look at this page and I say, yes, some things are carried over. Those are not always my most preferred method, but what I see from that is that that indicates to me that the executive branch of this government has said they see some reason why it needs to be carried over, either because the work is already started. It's very likely that they're going to be proposing it as part of the, of the upcoming budget. But it is stark to me when the executive branch pulls back something that isn't going to be spent, that is representative of a previous council, and now we're getting something zeroed out. And so having not heard this case, having not heard from the executive branch, and why this would be an important amendment and addition and recognizing what $837,000 is, is, is in terms of opportunity for our upcoming work in the coming weeks. I would really encourage my colleagues not to support this amendment. This type of work is a very robust and important conversation, and I think that the committee structure continues to be tested about whether or not we're going to do the real work in committees so that we bring products to this council for consideration that have worked through some of the details instead of I see no chief of fire here, I would like to understand what the chief of fire would do with this money. If I put it in her pocket tomorrow. I can't do that from this position, and I won't be supporting the amendment because of it. As fun as it is to talk numbers with our budget team, they are not our operational team. And so I think that this amendment also looks like putting money into a pocket of a department who's not asked for it, for a mayor who's not asked for it. And I think it sets a precedent that while we haven't set a ton of precedents yet, I think it's important to think about, and I hope that you will all give these programs the right time, the right conversation, and an operational look at a different day. But today's amendment is and this this technical adjustment is not the time for this. And so I would urge everybody strongly to vote this amendment down and pass the technical adjustment. Thank you.
353 Thank you. And if there are questions for the department, while we don't have the bureau directors online, we do have stephanie howard who will be joining us in just a few minutes if needed. Councilor, canal and Smith, you've both spoken, so I'm going to jump to councilor Green councilor Green to the.
354 My hand.
355 On the table.
356 But that's.
357 Fine.
358 Thank you, madam president. Just to understand your intent a little bit more clearly, is your thinking that yes, these programs may not have been started yet and that's why they're moved out of one bucket into the other, but that if we don't do this adjustment, we risk, well, introducing a risk that the whole town will fall apart. Is that the idea in your thinking? It's like a continuity argument.
359 May I respond?
360 Go right ahead, councilor.
361 Thank you. Yeah, I'm. I'll just clarify for the $100,000 portion of this. Yes. So the, the $100,000 is to spend on the pilot project, the initiation of the survey itself. The planning has been going on and it has involved people, including, let's see, included staffer from the mayor's office, representatives from the ppa and the ppc, Portland police bureau leadership, community safety division leadership, which is now the public safety service area, dca's office, the city attorney's office, a representative from the Portland committee on community-engaged policing, and a representative from the training advisory council. They were working through that. They're coming up with the RFP and then procurement was delayed, which has to do with the ongoing labor conversations we had earlier this year. And as a result, the RFP never got out in time for money to be actually spent by June 30th. Okay. And just to clarify, and I'm I'm concerned that evidently people might not be aware that actually the only reason that it exists in this table at all is because it was, in fact, requested. If the bureau director had never asked for it, it would never have been in this table. So that is just factually incorrect. And I want to make sure that's clarified. There are a million things that that are not put in, but if you want to see why it's in the left column, it says bureau requested adjustment. That is the header for the column.
362 Thank you councilor. So with that in mind.
363 Can we pause for one minute? I just I want to clarify that with ruth.
364 Because that's.
365 Not true.
366 My understanding was that any dollars that are returned or that that are not going to be spent, are returned in this way.
367 In the later table.
368 Whether or not they're requested. So and then councilor will get back to your question, I apologize.
369 So. I think maybe both things are true. Let me see if I track. But the it is true that the bureaus did initially request this. We went through a process and again the lens was really strict on focusing on true carryover. This we're trying to transition from sort of the former spring bump where we had a pretty, I would say, expansive conception of what carryover was intended to be and to a much more slimmed down version of that. And that was kind of the lens that was applied. So that's why and I think the idea is, yes, this can still be considered in, in the 2526 budget process. The money will would, would be essentially returned to the general fund. If this amendment is not adopted, and then it can be considered by the mayor and then by you all in the 2526 budget process. So that was the idea with the carryover was to keep it really was to keep it really narrow. So it was requested. It was not put forward by the mayor and the city administrator in the version that came, that was filed and was brought to the finance committee. Hopefully that clarifies.
370 Thank you. Thank you counselor.
371 Go ahead. Thanks.
372 Let me just finish my question comment here. So I understand the finance chair's argumentation. But what I'll say here is like whatever we do have the power to do this. We can make decisions to change this document that is within the scope of city council's power. If let's suppose we voted yes on your amendment, there's nothing to prevent the mayor from issuing something that reverses that, and there's nothing to prevent this council from reversing that, too, during the budget committee. So in six and one, half a dozen, another in the other, as far as I'm concerned. So it's a statement of, as I understand it, councilor Kanal intention to champion a program, which I'm going to be doing throughout my tenure on this council at every, every month of the year. So I'm prepared to support the amendment.
373 Madam president.
374 Councilor, I want to make sure we hear from folks who haven't spoken yet, but I promise we will get back.
375 To you.
376 Okay, I thought I was next in the queue.
377 Councilor Avalos hasn't had a chance to speak yet.
378 So first I'll say that I said this in the finance committee that in general, I was not a big fan of the fact that I felt we were being given a document that needed a rubber stamp and didn't really have the opportunity to discuss why these changes are requested, how they fit into larger bureau directives, etc. I said also in the finance committee, I recognize the just, you know, patch year that we're in and that some processes were going to need to continue to refine. But I'm stating that because it's relevant to me, to what I'm about to say, which is that I think that this amendment raises some foundational questions, kind of building off of what councilor Green is saying. On if a bureau makes a request. Right. Let's just put it that way, because they want to discontinue a program, let's say. But the council decides that that's a program that is a priority to the community. Do we get to direct the bureau via a budget allocation to reprioritize that program? I believe the answer is yes. I also don't think that our only measurement of making budget decisions should be, does the bureau want or not want it? Because it is our job as the electeds to combine both the expertise of our hard working staff and consider their recommendations, and to represent our constituents and their priorities. So in general, I just want to challenge this concept that this isn't the place to have this discussion, that we don't get to make this decision and that we don't with our bureau or I'm sorry, with our budget decisions, get to redirect bureau priorities based on what we believe we're representing for our constituents. All that being said, based on the arguments that councilor Canal has mentioned, I am definitely inclined to support approving this. And I think on the back end, I want to follow up with the administrative side or and the mayor and the bureaus to just understand what happens in a situation like this where we again, we say we need we want this direction with these dollars. And there is there a negotiation process. I don't know what that looks like yet, but my larger point is I do believe we have the power to do this. I think councilor Kanal has made an argument that is compelling to me about why those programs should be prioritized and funded, and I think I'm leaving on the table this broader question about how we're going to be using our authority as electeds when making budget decisions, to direct bureaus, to do work that we believe represents our constituents. Thank you.
379 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Clark.
380 Thank you.
381 Madam chair. Did we did you discuss this in the public safety committee, commissioner.
382 No.
383 Councilor did you councilor.
384 This came to the finance committee. It's a technical adjustment ordinance that touches a number of different policy areas.
385 I understand that I meant this whole issue that you're talking about where this. We weren't know and we weren't aware of it at the time that the agenda was set for the finance committee. Sorry for the for the community and public safety committee. Okay. The most recent meeting, it was not given to us. We had no ability to react in the time frame necessary to get it on the agenda.
386 But we will have a chance to work on this when the budget comes to us after may 5th.
387 We will have a chance to look at how we spend fy 2526 revenue at that time. This is fy 2425 revenue, right?
388 I understand that, but we will have another chance at this when the next when the mayor provides a budget.
389 This could be part of the mayor's budget. We don't know yet if these programs will be included in the mayor's budget.
390 But we'll have an opportunity to make that change should we decide to.
391 So absolutely.
392 This is beginning to feel, to me, like the former commissioner Style of government, that we're in a different form of government now. And I just I think this is really inappropriate at this time. I understand where you're coming from. I understand you want to do this. I understand the rationale, but it seems to me it opens up the door for the different bureaus to come to us anytime and ask us for things outside the process of a city manager form of government and a and a legislative body. We're going to have our opportunity to do this. This just doesn't seem like the right place or time to make this kind of change. Thank you for listening to me.
393 Councilor Novick.
394 Question for councilor Kanal. What would you like? Just to make sure I understand this, do you think that it's reasonable to draw a distinction between the survey and the. Program carryover? Are you more worried about the survey never being completed than you're worrying about the budget?
395 I think they're both valuable and I put them up together. I don't draw a distinction in terms of the importance.
396 Okay.
397 I just I was wondering if you might think that the survey might be more at risk.
398 I mean, I can speak to what. Well, I can't the, the, the request from the bureau is actually does say what they believe the impact would be of not doing this. And I think they they could probably those words speak for themselves in many ways. I also know that we have elizabeth gallagher from Portland fire and rescue online who can speak to that and who has her hand raised, as well as stephanie, who's sorry, your name showing as as stephanie howard as well. So at any point we could reach to that. But I did send keelan the request from Portland fire and rescue, which speaks to that. I can also send the other one.
399 So I want to respond to the idea that we can deal with this in the context of the overall 2526 budget discussions. The fact is that when the mayor proposes a budget, then if we propose adding something in, we're going to have to say, let's take something else out. So that will put us in a more difficult position in terms of arguing for something than arguing for it now. So although I understand chair zimmerman's process point, I sympathize with councilor Kanal point that this is. Well, I don't know if you even said this, but I think that we put these dollars more at risk if we don't deal with it now and deal with it later. So, frankly, I'm not sure actually how I'm going to vote, but I just wanted to make that general point that, you know, the mayor has enormous power in this system, despite the fact that he doesn't have a vote because he writes the document first. And if we vote to change his document, we're going to make somebody mad and somebody else happy. But as machiavelli said, the people who lose are always angrier than the people who win whenever there's any change. So I just wanted to put that philosophical thought on the table.
400 Thank you councilor. I am next in the queue. I agree, councilor Avalos. We have the budget authority. We can make these changes and I will just say, when this came before the finance committee, I had the opportunity to see it for the first time there. My initial thought was why on earth are we carrying all of this over? Is there anything that we could actually not carry over so that we have more flexibility, more opportunity to think about our priorities as we begin the budget process and more money in our general fund that we have gotten back through the technical adjustment ordinance. I didn't make an amendment to do that because I didn't want to take funding away from programs that were already in progress, in process. I think these are both important things, and we do have the authority to make the change if we want to. I do want to share, though, that I will be leaning. No, my mind could be changed, but certainly leaning that direction, because I think it's important right now to give ourselves as much flexibility as possible as we move into our budget work. Councilor Ryan, I believe you are next in the queue, but your hand is now down. Did you have something you wanted to add to the discussion?
401 Yeah, I'm just trying to track it here at home. I did notice that the chief jackson was on, so that intrigued me. I thought it would be helpful to hear from her. Since her name was brought up.
402 Rightly so.
403 Thank you councilor, and I believe we have both folks from the dca's office. I'm not sure if dca myers is on or not, but I know that stephanie howard is and also the chief mike or stephanie. Would either of you like to say something or invite your bureau staff to say anything?
404 No they don't.
405 Well, council president, this is dc myers. I'm the deputy city administrator for public safety. With regard to the context survey, and I'm a bit reserved to have discussion with the council here without the mayor present. There's been a lot of discussion around the mayor's proposed, but the context survey discussion, we had talked at length about it not being what we call shovel ready, and proposing that we would defer to putting that in. The mayor's proposed. Now, I cannot speak for the mayor. I will just tell you what we conversations that I have discussed. The intent is to at some point fund the contact survey. It is important to us and, stephanie, if you want to add context to that. I know the doj settlement is important. Can you add context to that? And I would like to talk a little bit about the additional funds for extra firefighters.
406 Yeah, I can just speak to the contact survey. I think councilor Kanal did a great job of overviewing kind of the history and where we are in that process. And as many of us know, procurement is incredibly, incredibly busy and has a very small staff, but it is still very much in progress. I think what I mostly want to say is that I don't think this is reflective of any intent of whether the context survey program moves forward. I think, you know, in the dca's office, certainly I think with the mayor's team and I think with other public safety leaders, I think there's absolute unity in wanting to move that forward, whether it comes from the mayor's proposed or if we retain the budget and carry it over. But I think that's just to be as clear as I can. I think there's support either way. However this happens, it would just be a matter of the timing of it.
407 And, stephanie, I don't know if you know this or not. And council president, I think this is important as we make decisions collectively as a group. There's a group not represented here, and that is the labor group. And, you know, there is some interest in making sure that we have conversation with labor, even around a contact survey, as benign as it may seem to all of us here about bargaining, that and I think the union president might suggest that he is not done bargaining this issue. And something for you all to be aware of. This is a very we just need to be very careful as we go forward and make decisions.
408 And just to be clear, we do have our labor representatives in the work group that's been working on this, so we're keeping them very much involved in the progression.
409 Thank you. And I should flag for you both that your your firefighters president is in the room with us watching this discussion.
410 Okay.
411 Madam president.
412 Going back to the queue, I have councilor Canal, then councilor Smith, then councilor Zimmerman. Councilor canal. I promise we'll get back to you, councilor Smith.
413 Actually could. So I'd actually like to hear from fire first. But while we're doing that, keelan, could you put up the request that they put up that I sent you? Yeah, I'm happy to go after them because dcmr.
414 Said, madam president, there's a there's a process issue here right now that I need to talk about before we have everybody give testimony that they're walking on eggshells.
415 About councilor. We are in discussion on the amendment. Right. I believe if you have a process question.
416 About the amendment,
417 Okay, go.
418 Right ahead. First of all, if the d.c. Dca wanted this, he would have put it up. He didn't. He's being nice. The mayor put this up. So unless we pass the original his can't pass. He can't supersede it. I mean, the mayor put this on so that he could use those dollars for him to make plans and do his budget, period. And yes, we can do this. We can actually do what you're saying. But we have said as a council that we were not. You told me, Eric told me that I couldn't put money issues in before the mayor dropped his budget. And it's just simple. It's a process you can't put put money stuff in before the mayor drops his budget, because all he's going to do, if he don't like what he sees, he's just going to take it out. So what's the purpose?
419 Councilor what is the process question.
420 That's the process. There is a process that goes along with this.
421 There is a process. The technical adjustment ordinance is part of the new regular process.
422 So yes, and we were not given an opportunity to know that this was the spring bump money. This went through finance. We should have had a work session to explain what this was. And that's the process question why didn't you do that?
423 Councilor I'm happy to talk about having more work sessions I had.
424 This on.
425 This that we were having too many work sessions early on. We have committees to hold conversations about things and there are many committees I'm not in that I'd like to be engaged in conversation on, and I have to trust my colleagues or show up to those committees or watch them.
426 So I know I disagree because that was about spring bump. We needed to know about the spring bump. It was hidden in the finance committee. We should have had a two hour, three hour conversation, just like we had to say, here's the money that has come in to the to the city since we last did our budget. And that is the process issue. And this is the reason why we're in this argument right now, because nobody had the 30,000 foot level to say, give us some more information, don't slide it through finance and try to get it through here like nobody's paying attention.
427 Thank you councilor. Councilor Kanal. You'd like to hear from our folks from fire before you speak.
428 Is that correct? I can.
429 Just say if a chief would like to jump on. Sorry that I read the name instead of actually looking at the picture there. This what's on the screen on zoom is the request from fire. So again this was requested by Portland fire and rescue, as was the other thing by the office of the dca. So I just wanted to make sure that that was flagged. I don't know if there's anything chief you'd like to add, but I would like to hear I. Yeah.
430 Chief, go right ahead. If you have any comments to add, I.
431 Good.
432 Good evening. And I'm sorry I could not be there in person. My name is aj jackson. I'm the interim fire chief for Portland fire and rescue. And this was a carryover request that we made because this training was started. This is our January hire. And so as many of you have heard along the way, our training pipeline is nine and a half to ten months long. So the idea was to carry over these funding to complete this class's training into the next fiscal year. So our hires are in January and July. So this would move that continue to pay for those ten fte until they were ready to fill a vacancy and then reduced continue to reduce overtime for our bureau.
433 And the other thing I should mention, you're going to hear this in a couple things, and I'll be very brief, is everything I've amended proposed amending today is something that will have positive financial effects in the long term. And the long term is not the next month, but it's also not ten years away. Right? We're we're talking about continuing the progress that fire has made, which is, you know, really, really strong at reducing overtime. We just heard about that in the preceding work session. And so ensuring that that we're able to do that progress and continue that progress towards it will prevent us from backsliding on the progress we've already made. I'll conclude there.
434 Thank you. Councilor.
435 Councilor Smith, are you in the queue or were you in the queue for the comments that you made earlier?
436 No, no, no, I was in the queue for the comments later, but I just wanted to say, I think we need to ensure that our budget related changes are communicated clearly and the money that we're dealing with, that we should have a clear understanding where they came from and how they got here. And I think the council deserves the opportunity to assess the entire budget so we can ask some important questions and get answers to those questions, like how much money? Because I can't tell from these all these different tables how much money was allocated reallocated in the bump. What was the bump? I don't even know.
437 This is the bump.
438 I know how much was the bump?
439 Ruth, are you able to give a quick answer to the question? How much was the total bump or technical adjustment ordinance?
440 Now I are you asking specific to the fire amount?
441 Well, no, I'm asking for the entire thing, ruth, because what happens is we got 47 funds that we're taking money from 47, and there's money that come in from bit-I since we last did our fall bump. I want to know what that number is. Not the numbers that have been intermingled between these 47 funds.
442 So I, I think I understand the question that this ordinance does not add any funding. And anthony can speak to the, the net numbers for, for the total, but that we're not adding any funding in this ordinance. Again, sort of as a departure from how we used to do spring bumps. The only things that were allowed in this ordinance were to return general fund to carry over funding for those specific sort of short list of items that had been begun, and then to do technical adjustments between between funds and to allow for funds like water and sewer that have a lot of technical changes they need to make. So those were the only actions. So there's no added funding at all in this ordinance.
443 And so we'll find that out in the general fund forecast with that.
444 Yes. Right. The so the any the general fund forecast update that will come out in April will will be reflected in the mayor's proposed budget. This doesn't this does is disconnected from that.
445 The reason why this is so difficult is because generally the general fund forecast comes out first, and then you put these out to say where you want to save stuff or not save stuff. And then the mayor puts their budget out. And so that's some of this stuff is the process that I was trying to talk about earlier. It's not in the right order. And so it's and then we don't have the mayor here to be able to say what he, what his intention was on this.
446 So just on the process point. So we've we've historically done the spring bump around this same time. And we historically have not used the general fund forecast change in that same year. It always rolls into the next fiscal year. What we have done in the past is reallocated underspending, sometimes within the same fiscal year. We're not doing that anymore.
447 Right. That's that's what I'm talking about. So it's giving. And particularly for people like me and Eric who have done this before, we're trying to figure out why is this process not feeling right. And so when we're sitting here having to have an impact on the 2526, and we don't even have the mayor's budget yet, I don't know if this is the most important thing that we need to be doing, especially if the dca did not bring it forward. The mayor already figured out what he wanted to do, so I don't know.
448 I councilor Zimmerman, we're going to move to councilor Morillo since she hasn't spoken yet. We'll come right back to you. Councilor Morillo.
449 Thank you, council president. I think I'm having a hard time with this because I think that this is a kind of another discussion around our process. And I agree with councilor Smith that this should have been maybe a work session, because while I understand, I worked here when we had the spring bump and now it's been renamed to something else. So I kind of understand that process and what it's supposed to mirror. But this is it feels like it was very sudden. It was posted on Friday. We're reviewing it now. Most of us who are on committees have already discussed that. Realistically, we don't have time to watch other committees, and this is just a recurring issue that I see happening over and over again. I'm inclined to support councilor Canales amendment, because I think it's important to continue to ensure that our programs feel secure and that they have the support that they need over time. But I'm just kind of concerned about this process moving forward, and I would like to see some more delineation between what is going to be heard only in the finance committee and when we're going to get a briefing overall, because the mayor also has check ins with all of us on budget semi-regularly, and this was not brought up during our check in whatsoever. So I have concerns about that.
450 Councilor Zimmerman.
451 So whoever wants to answer this, go for it. The ten firefighters in question, are we laying them off tomorrow if we don't pass this.
452 I, I.
453 Good I'd like them to just figure out who's going to answer it.
454 Well, if I can, councilor, I'll defer to the chief. Thank you. Chief.
455 No, we will not be laying any of the ten firefighters off if this isn't approved.
456 Okay. Thank you. The way I'm looking at 737,000, is that. The funding for them exists through the 30th of June, which is how we fund city programs. And I'm getting a nod from the city administrator, so I at least got that check mark. All right. And in that, then that means that this program is fully funded for the current year. And we recognize from what I'm hearing from the chief, we recognize that their training program is going to go into the next fiscal year. What I guess I would expect is that any bureau who has employee costs, who are going to move into the next fiscal year, that their next fiscal budget would account for those costs. This seems to me to be a way to plump up. A bureau's budget without without going through the regular budget process. And that seems strange to me because this group of employees will still be accounted for. And so I am going to reject this idea that because they started a ten year, ten month training program, that tomorrow, if we don't pass this, they're going to be on a on a bus ticket somewhere else. That's just simply not the case. We just heard that. So let's not let's not get too fired up on what could happen if we don't pass this. I will say I'm more in favor of having a policy in this city who does not allow carryovers. And I say that knowing that it could be damning to certain programs. But when we evaluate a new budget, we evaluate every dollar and to plus it up or not, plus it up a few months before we pass it, that is that there's some historical stuff happening here. And I think it's good to recognize that. I think this is probably one of the last technical adjustment ordinances we'll probably ever see, because the finance committee this summer will be looking at a more monthly or quarterly or, excuse me, monthly or even more often of budget modifications the way other governments do to be a little bit more transparent about these changes. But carry over this late in a in a fiscal year to go further into the next fiscal year, when we're about to enter into a budget, is a way to get a whole lot of numbers into a budget outside of the process that councilor Smith is noting. And I agree to everybody who said we do have the authority, we 100% have the authority. I question none of that for my colleagues who brought that up. The point, I guess, I'm trying to make is that if this was so important, if this was the fact that we have folks who are not going to work tomorrow because we don't pass it today, I, I, I think we would have heard that we would have heard it ahead of time. And I'm not hearing that from today's information from staff. I'm not hearing that from the people who are proposing it. And so this looks like an end run on something that does not seem clear. And so again, I'll encourage folks and I think the budget office, if you have the ability to provide an answer for what would happen if we do not pass a technical adjustment today.
457 I mean, I think I can't speak for every single line item in it exactly, but I think the biggest problem would would show up because of those technical changes across funds and from contingency into funds. The main reason we, you know, as as some folks may have heard, we weren't planning to bring this forward. This spring. The main reason we did bring it forward was for those technical adjustments. They would probably have to come as standalone ordinances, because there are some where we heard people need to do them just to keep paying bills. So those are those are the sort of meat of this ordinance is for that purpose to be perfectly frank, the carryover is not required. It's not a required portion of this ordinance at all. But the technical changes are and the general fund return gives us a better sense of what we're looking at for 24 for excuse me for 25, 26 in terms of available fund balance, it allows the mayor and you all to count that with more confidence. I think if we didn't know that number, we would be a little bit more conservative in sort of what we're assuming in terms of fund balance. That's going to show up at the end of the fiscal year, just because we wouldn't have that level of certainty. So just.
458 To put a finer point, I want to make sure that we're and some of this is me too. All right. I've done a few of these, but it's a new government. And I want to make sure I'm answering, learning or asking learning questions for the carryover column. If we do not authorize carryover, that money then goes into the beginning fund balance for the development of the upcoming budget that starts on July 1st. Is that a correct? No? You're pausing.
459 No. It's correct. It's I mean, sort of. Either way, it goes into beginning fund balance. Honestly, there's no actual change right from this amendment. It goes into begin beginning fund balance. Either way. It's just are we sort of pre counting it towards that specific line item or are you leaving it into the pool of, of general fund that becomes allocated through the mayor's proposed budget and then through your budget.
Procedural episode · turns 460–485
Parliamentary activity detected in this stretch (see the markers above). An editor-reviewed analysis has not been published for this episode yet.
460 So I say that, madam president, just to highlight the point that it. If there is heartburn about this, might my great ask here is I would still say I would ask you please do not pass this amendment. But if you do, if we go forward with that, I would ask that we carve out the carryover. I would be happy to make an amendment that we drop all the carryovers from this, but we make the technical adjustments tonight and drop the carryover so we can just include it as part of the regular budget. But this one off here and there, I don't know that these are coherent thoughts yet. And so what is listed here is a way in which the executive branch has signaled some direction that we think, I think will probably be reflected on the may 7th release. Those are all things we can talk about throughout that process. I think that those are healthy discussions, but carryover policy is an appropriate we should have that. We owe it as a finance and as a council to the staff, like how do we want to approach carryover next year? But I don't think we should one off it tonight. And if we if we can take all the carryover out and just pass the technical, I'd be fine with that too. But this, this one off right now I think this is sending. What this is sending this down a direction where I'm not sure that there's a lot of confidence around the dais about exactly where things came from, exactly where things are going, exactly how it affects the proposed budget coming forward. And I'm hearing that loud and clear. And I want to be cautious of down trace effects. If we make changes tonight and then other things that are just programmatic direction setting and those are different items tonight, that's all.
461 Thank you. Counselor. Counselors, we are ten minutes, 18 minutes over time and still on an amendment here. So we do have two people left in the queue. I would just ask that we keep comments to new issues so that we can get to a vote. Councilor canal.
462 Thank you, madam president. I have no problem with the idea that we should be considering carryovers broadly. I think that that is an important point, but the question before us is whether or not, if we're doing these other 17 carryovers, we should have two that are for these particular programs and whether those are meaningful and things that we would like to see not only carried over, but that that certainty is given today or whenever we pass the document, not June 20th or whenever we pass the full budget. And that allows that money to be more shovel ready on July 1st to get out the door. That's a really important part of this process, is having that certainty. And that's maybe less relevant for some programs and others. I get that, but certainty is valuable. It conveys a message to the people managing these programs, and we're being asked to be deferential to the administration. I recognize that, and I think, generally speaking, if, if, if there's if the people that are we're asked to be deferential for deferential to words represent a status quo that suits us. I can see why that would be appealing. We're being asked to be deferential to committees that were not necessarily on, but only some of the time. That hasn't been enforced consistently here. Seven of us have a responsibility to manage the we have we have a financial fiduciary responsibility to the city, the same as the five who are on the finance committee. That's that's an important thing to keep in mind here. And so this is where the final decision is going to be made, not at the committee level. We've always known that the question is how deferential are we going to be on it? Again, we didn't have the time. We didn't have a work session. I completely agree with counselor Smith on that. But council is the budget committee and not any of the subcommittees of the council. So with that, I would ask for a vote in favor to signal the use of the money, but also to earmark that money effectively into this. Again, this fiscal year's money to continue allocating it the way it's already been allocated. That's what this amendment would do for these two particular projects. Thank you.
463 Counselor Green.
464 Madam president, I call the question.
465 Is there a second second? Keelan, could you please call the roll? This is a vote on whether to end discussion and vote on the emergency ordinance before us.
466 Canal I.
467 Ryan.
468 Are you going to vote? No, but I want to make a comment that I think that I would suggest we pull this and bring it to the finance committee meeting and bring it to our may 7th meeting. I would like to ask, I just want to put that out there. I'm sure it'll still be timely enough to get through the process of the spring bump, but I vote no on this question.
469 Counselor. I'm going to jump in while we have a pause to say I misstated that this is a vote on whether to move to the vote on the amendment, not on the emergency ordinance. And councilor, I think you asked a question on whether there was timing to refer this back. Which I think is out of order while we are in the middle of this vote. But I think we should.
470 It is, but I want to. I had my hand up before counselor Green put that there and I would. I was suggesting it to you, council president. I think you have the authority to pull something back and move it to a committee, and then we can bring it to the next council meeting, because this is clear as mud.
471 I say.
472 Let's move. Let's we are in the middle of a vote. Let's finish this vote.
473 All right. I just want to let you know that's why my hand was up. Thanks.
474 Koyama Lane.
475 Okay.
476 So we're.
477 Voting on counselor connell's amendment.
478 We are not. We are voting to end debate and take the vote on the amendment. Yeah. Counselor, was that an I.
479 I yes.
480 Morillo I Novick.
481 For the record, I'm disappointed that counselor Ryan didn't quite al pacino and say out of order, out of order. This whole council is out of order, I.
482 Mark a.
483 Green. I Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Dunphy.
484 I. Smith I. Pirtle-guiney I.
485 With 11 I votes. The question is called.
486 Okay we now move into a vote on the amendment to the emergency ordinance.
487 Canal fairly obviously I.
488 Ryan. No.
489 Koyama Lane. So as.
490 We're thinking about the upcoming budget, something that I've been hearing is that thought about efficiency and making sure that our departments are running well, and also this need for stability. And so that is compelling to me that this is a step towards that, that this action shows that we're trying to provide some stability for these bureaus here. And so I recognize this is a little uncomfortable, but I think it takes us closer to where we want to be.
491 I vote yea Morillo. I Novick.
492 So I agree with counselor Zimmerman that we need to have a discussion about carryovers as a council for next year, and I okay, I'm going to waste everybody's time by pointing out that there is an argument for carryovers to in in that if you don't have some carryover, then bureaus might feel like they need to spend all their money by the end of the year, because otherwise they'll lose it. And I think there should be some incentive to keep it. In fact, when gary locke was governor of Washington, he adopted a policy that you don't automatically lose all your money if you don't spend it by the end of the year, you get to keep half of it. So I suspect I will be arguing for a change in policy to that effect. I am going to oppose the amendment, largely because the administration has come up with a carryover policy. I don't know if I agree with it, but I haven't heard it explained in great detail, and I'm reluctant to change the policy without having a replacement. And also, frankly, I see that another chunk of money that's not being carried over is something called sims for pbem. And given that a pbem is in desperate need of money, if they voted for councilor Kanal amendment, I'd feel compelled to offer an amendment for pbem to keep that money too. And I don't want to keep us here till midnight, so I'm conflicted on this. But sort of as a matter of process, I'm going to vote no. Clark.
493 No.
494 Green.
495 A Zimmerman.
496 No. Avalos. I.
497 Dunphy. I Smith.
498 No.
499 Pirtle-guiney.
500 As I stated before, I truly am worried about us having the flexibility that we need when the budget comes to us, I vote no.
501 The amendment has six yes votes and six no votes. It's tied and the amendment fails.
502 Thank you. Where's the mayor?
503 So I'm going to invite up robert taylor to clarify what happens in a split vote on an amendment. And counselors predicting that this might happen. I did check in with both robert taylor to make sure he was here, and could explain to us the process. And also on the mayor's whereabouts. The mayor is not in the building and not reachable.
504 Robert.
505 Please introduce yourself.
506 Thank you for the record, robert taylor, city attorney. As it stands now, under the charter, it gives the mayor the responsibility to break a tie vote on a matter before council. We read that to mean the tie vote on final passage. In the absence of any council rule to the contrary, council has its own authority under the charter to adopt its rules of procedure. If council wants to adopt a rule that allows the mayor to vote on procedural matters like motion to table, motion to refer, motion to amend, they can do so. But as it stands now, the procedural motion on the motion to amend tied six six, it fails.
507 Are there any.
508 Questions about that explanation?
509 Yes.
510 Counselor.
511 I'm concerned and I'm troubled with that explanation, because the same thing happened when we were trying to vote in our president. And they said, except for that vote, he can break every other tie. So here we are with every other tie. So now you're saying he can't break this in?
512 When that issue came up in January 2nd, the advice was there was a question about whether council could adopt a rule to give the mayor the tie breaking vote on the election for president.
513 That's not what I said. I said, you can do it based on the current charter.
514 I understand this issue has come up before and I and it's unfortunate it has come up again. I don't think I anticipated this issue coming up at this venue right now, but we have thought about this in our office. We do believe that charter provision contemplates the mayor breaking a tie on final passage. And if you want, the council does have their authority to adopt their own rules. They can adopt a rule giving the mayor the ability to break a tie on procedural matters. That is council's prerogative to do that.
515 Can we pull up the language on the charter so we can read the language, pull it up on the screen?
516 We can pull it up. This is our attorney's legal advice.
517 And again.
518 Counselor I it is one line in charter. Let's pull it up so that everybody.
519 He's adding more lines to the charter. And that's what I'm saying. Let's look at what exactly the charter says.
520 He's interpreting and giving us advice. There have been conversations about bringing forward a conversation around. Expanding on the one line.
521 In charter.
522 Because there clearly is not a lot of meat to this. There's not direction on what we do. If the mayor is not able to be present on a final vote when this does come into effect. So there are conversations that governance will need to have around this.
523 I would like Candace Avalos, who is the chair of the charter committee, to say what was the intent. That's what I want to know.
524 I am not sure if that is in order.
525 She needs to tell us what the intent was because I know what it says. He settles the tie.
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526 Councilor I don't know that that is in order, and I don't see councilor Avalos leaning in to do that. Let's get the charter up very quickly. We are at 830. We need to finish this agenda item so that we can take a break and move on to other meaty items.
527 Madam president.
528 Point of clarification. Are we now back to the original motion?
529 We are.
530 Call the question.
531 We are back to the original motion.
532 Second.
533 Okay.
534 We have called the question and we have a second. To councilor Points of order.
535 There were my understanding is that there were motions that were floated a moment ago to table this item or to refer it back. It would preclude those motions which were suggested by the person who just moved to call the question.
536 There were no motions given. There was an ask for me to consider sending this back to committee from councilor Ryan, which I'm not inclined to do, since committee already had a robust discussion about this ordinance.
537 Well, wouldn't be. It would be our decision as a council, not yours individually, as I recall.
538 But either way.
539 And yes, council could vote to do that. But right now we have a motion to call the question which supersedes debate. That would be something that could be raised in debate.
540 Point of order, though to call any motion you have to have the floor. And I see there are people in queue and so are we accepting a motion that's randomly thrown out before looking at the queue. I don't think that's robert's.
541 If folks are in the queue for discussion on this, then yes, we would move to them. I thought that those were hands left over that hadn't been lowered from the last discussion.
542 In general, though, I don't think if somebody shouts out an order that we, you know, you should at least say you have the floor before you accept it. I don't think that's robert's rules, that anybody can just say that and you move on it.
543 Councilor canal are you in the queue on the main ordinance?
544 Yes, but I'm happy to let you finish this conversation if that's helpful.
545 Okay.
546 So I don't know.
547 Do we have the charter language pulled up?
548 Yep.
549 Still calling the question. Robert's rules does not ask for a zoom call. We have called the question. Madam president, it's time for.
550 The vote.
551 Robert's rules does not state what order we do things in. You are right. And robert's rules doesn't say that somebody can't jump in to call the question. Our procedures do say that this is how we take items. We have had folks work a little more casually before, but right now we have an objection to that. So I'm going to defer to what our procedures are, which is that we take things in the order that is in zoom. Councilor. We take things in the order in zoom, with the exception which we've discussed before, that if somebody has not yet spoken, they move to the front of the line, which is what happened earlier. So we are still on the discussion that you have raised councilor Around the charter, and we do have the charter section up. It is under the duties of the mayor. It is not written in the council, part of the charter, but under the duties of the mayor. One of them is listed here. E vote on matters before the council in case of a tie. When the mayor casts the deciding vote. Councilor. Did you want to comment on that?
552 I can, I can talk, okay.
553 We are still on your comment.
554 Yes. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. So the legal in in robert I, I. Trust your legal experience in this. I'm not trying to disagree with you, but I am disagreeing with your legal assessment because what I don't know how you get to where you're at from just that line because it's very clear what it says. And I hate that I didn't ask that question to bring it up when I asked you it originally, and we could have solved all this, but to me, I don't accept it. I respect your your your legal knowledge, but I don't accept what what you're telling us, because the mayor probably knew that this was going to be an issue and he should have been here.
555 Councilor first, I want to thank you for the reasonable disagreement. I really do thank you for that. And then secondly, the when we read that, we think the phrase when the mayor casts the deciding vote, that means the final vote on passage or adoption, not a procedural motion to amend or to table or to refer. So that's how we that's how we get to that conclusion. But I understand folks can read that differently. And again, if council wants to give the mayor the authority to cast that type of vote on procedural motions, I do believe council has that authority to make a rule like that.
556 He's not here, though, and so it wouldn't matter. And it's his budget item.
557 Councilor anything else?
558 No, ma'am.
559 Thank you. They called the question.
560 Well.
561 In the order in the queue. Councilor Kanal.
562 Madam president, not to not to complicate things further, I don't believe councilor Novick has has spoken yet on the main motion.
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563 We are back to the main motion. Councilor Green, have you spoken to the main motion?
564 I have.
565 Not spoken to the main motion.
566 Councilor Green councilor Kanal. Thank you.
567 I'm going to call the question second.
568 Okay.
569 The question has been called and seconded. This is a vote on whether or not to end discussion and move to a vote on the passage of the emergency ordinance. Keelan, can you please call the roll?
570 We need to get out of the habit of using calling the question. We are in a.
571 Vote to speak to my vote. That's my reason for voting no. We need to get out of the habit of using the idea of calling the question to cut off our colleagues. It's not a good way of doing things, and that is my reason for voting. No thank you.
572 Ryan.
573 Yes.
574 Koyama Lane.
575 Yes.
576 Morillo.
577 Wait. I'm sorry. I think there's a few of us confused on exactly what we're voting on at.
578 This time.
579 We are calling the question. We are voting on whether to end debate and vote on the passage of the emergency ordinance.
580 Okay. Hi, Novick.
581 The overall emergency ordinance. So we passing it without the amendment correct.
582 The amendment was voted down. But this is the vote on calling the question. This is the vote on ending debate.
583 To end debate.
584 Regretfully, I.
585 Clark a.
586 Green.
587 Zimmerman.
588 A Avalos.
589 No. Dunphy.
590 I would have liked to have heard what councilor Novick had to say I vote no.
591 Smith. I pirtle-guiney.
592 I.
593 With nine yes votes. The question is called.
594 Okay.
595 Do we need a motion and a second? Okay. So we are just moving into a vote on the emergency ordinance. Councilors this is a vote on agenda item number ten, which is an emergency ordinance. This vote would lead to failure or final passage. This emergency ordinance is not amended. It is here before us in its introduced form.
596 Thank you. It's a very difficult one. And it's difficult because the process that's led us to this point has been very challenging. We had seen a committee get to hear it, but with limited even advance notice for them, let alone the other seven of us. And now it's also being proposed as an emergency ordinance, when even from the information we've heard from our staff says that there would not actually be any impact to waiting until may 7th to do it, as it is an emergency ordinance. And I have brought this up several times from from this dais. It needs to fulfill the criteria of an emergency. It doesn't do that. Based on what we're hearing from the staff today, avoiding future delay is not a reason for cutting off the ability of the public to see this for longer than five days. From the posting to the consideration. Secondly, I mean, yeah, it wouldn't have affected my vote, but I do think it's worth saying that it's important to convey to our public safety partners in the administration what we stand on. We stand for receiving data not only from the loudest voices in the room, but from everybody who has had an interaction good, bad or neutral with the police. And we stand on ensuring that firefighters are funded for the training program so that we are able to reduce overtime while retaining the levels of service that we have been trying to maintain in very difficult times for, for that bureau and frankly, for the entirety of the public safety service area. And so as a co-chair of the public safety service, sorry, community and public safety committee, I was very happy to try and convey that. I am disappointed in that. That's not going to affect my vote. The emergency ordinance reasoning and, frankly, councilor Zimmerman's argument earlier and councilor Ryan's argument earlier on why we don't necessarily need to do this today is why I'm voting no. Thank you Ryan.
597 I Koyama Lane I Morillo. Know Novick.
598 I'd like to take this opportunity to tell the council president that this is one of those nights that makes me think that there's not enough money in the world to make me take her job.
599 I mark.
600 I just want to say that we're really fledgling legislators, and we have a lot to learn. We have a lot to practice. We have procedures to understand and to implement. We have a long way to go. It's a great start. A little bit of sausage making here. I vote yea.
601 Green. I Zimmerman.
602 I Avalos.
603 Regrettably I vote I because I do I wish the amendment passed but I vote I.
604 I Smith. I pirtle-guiney councilors.
605 There was a lot of conversation through this debate about process and who had an opportunity to weigh in and where we have committees for a reason. We all agreed early on in this process that we wanted to have committees as part of our work. The folks who gave us this form of government did so writing committees into the work. Many of us have missed opportunities to bring things to committees that we don't sit on, myself included. And that will happen from time to time. And we have council, full council as a place to bring things where we missed and didn't get them in in time and to have robust conversation. That's important. But to suggest that something was rushed because it went through a committee you were not on feels highly disingenuous to me. I don't sit on policy committees. I sit on two committees, but not our policy committees. And I trust you all to do the work. Sometimes I don't agree. Sometimes I want to bring an amendment and I miss doing it before things come here. I'm working to get better at that. I hope we all are. I hope we are all working at bringing things earlier so that there is more time. We have created a referral list so that items can be public before they are put on agendas. And I hope we all work to bring our agenda items sooner, so they have time on that referral list where we and the public can see them. And I will continue to encourage our administration to do the same so that we and the public have time to see there agenda items before they are placed on agendas. But again, using that as an excuse to not do your homework and look at what's coming, and to suggest that we didn't have process because we used the process we created feels highly disingenuous. And I think that that needs to be called out, I vote I.
606 The ordinance is passed with ten yes votes and two no votes.
607 Thank you. Councilors are next to agenda. Items will come together. They may take a significant amount of time. I hate to do this because I know that we have guests here for those two agenda items, but we need to give our staff a short break. So we are going to take a ten minute recess now, and we will come back at 853. Thank you. We're going to bring everybody back. I hope that brief recess gave everyone enough of a break to get what they needed. We have almost everyone back. I'll check in with our vice president. In the meantime, councilors, we are on agenda item numbers 11 and 12. We are going to hear these agenda items together. Keelan, can you please read the titles?
608 Item 11 amend the city employee benefits program for the plan offerings for fy 20 2526. Item 12 amend the Portland police association city employee benefits program for fy 20 2526.
609 Thank you and counselors, because we discussed these agenda items extensively in executive committee, they did not go through one of our committees. So we do not have a committee staff summary. So we are going to have a brief presentation which we don't usually have in full council meetings.
610 Madam president, if it's all right, I'll, I'll kick it off with just a couple of remarks and introductions and we'll hear I'm going to be very brief. The council knows that every year the city's labor management benefits committee, the lmc and the Portland police association board reviews their employee benefits programs and provides recommendations for necessary changes. I thank everyone involved in these processes, recognizes the shared responsibility of ensuring employees and their covered dependents have access to health care plan options that meet their needs, while protecting the long term financial stability and solvency of these plans. Beginning last year in June, the Portland police association board, lmc and city management have held collaborative conversations in preparation for this renewal. Bureau of human resources and labor partners have analyzed many options, many choices about balancing budget impacts and changes to the health care plans in order to meet rising renewal rates before you today. Item 11. The first ordinance would approve the fiscal year 2526 benefit plan document and adopt proposed changes for those employees covered under the labor management benefits committee. Lmc, which includes non-represented city staff as well as all unions other than the Portland police association. Item 12. The second ordinance would approve the same changes for fiscal 2526 plan benefit document and adopt the proposed changes for the Portland police association. The council, of course, will take up these ordinances separately, but we're presenting them together in, in in an attempt to be more brief and cohesive. With us tonight is ron zito, bureau of human resources deputy director, michelle taylor, city benefits manager, to walk us through these ordinances along with them, aaron schmitz, who is here to represent Portland police bureau board, and rachel whiteside, representing as a co-chair of the lmc. So, ron, I don't know who's going to kick off, but you're up.
611 Thank you, city administrator jordan, good evening, councilors. I'm going to immediately turn it over to our expert benefit manager, michelle taylor.
612 Hi. Good evening council. My name is michelle taylor. I'm the city's benefit manager.
613 You may have to get closer.
614 Scooch closer. All right. I'm here to talk to you about two ordinances which are being presented together. But you will vote on those separately. Both of these are being presented as emergency ordinances. Given the urgency to move changes forward so the benefit team can kick off our open enrollment on may 9th and allow folks to go online and make their elections for the upcoming year. If we move to slide two, just briefly, here's our agenda. It consists of the background as to why we're here and the journey that's gotten us to this point. We'll then move into ordinance 2025159, which is related to the plan design changes for the labor management benefit committee. And throughout this presentation, we'll likely refer to it as lmc. And then we'll move on to 2025160, which are the plan design changes for the Portland police association, represented within Portland police bureau. And we'll refer to them as ppa or ppa. Ppb, if we move to slide four, we'll dive into a little bit of the background. So today we'll be talking about two specific groups, the lmc and the ppa. Lmc is comprised of 22 voting members. And that is split evenly between labor appointed and non-represented folks. The two co-chairs, rachel and leslie, are here today to share more with you as we move into other portions of the presentation. Then we have aaron here as well, and his team make up the other group, and aaron will be sharing more with you as well. So recommendations for both of these groups that receive an appropriate number of votes within the group get brought forth to council. Who has the authority to make changes to our medical dental vision benefit plan design for our employees and their dependents. Bhr does not make changes on plan design unless administratively required, but we do get consulted and we provide guidance throughout the process. To give you some context as to how we got here. If we rewind to last year, we were facing 13% increases in our plans for lmc and 18% for ppa. Both groups worked for months on recommendations for council, but ultimately we couldn't get to a place where those recommendations met the budget constraints. Parties worked on ordinance amendments to bridge the gap between the recommended changes that were brought forth by these committees and the budgeted amount for the benefits council then decided on one time funding that was valued at approximately 607,000 for ppa, and 1.278 million for the lmc group. Additionally, a $25 monthly surcharge, which is estimated at $1.8 million, has been charged to employees covered under the lmc group throughout this current fiscal year. The surcharge also required a letter of agreement signed by all of the unions impacted with impacted employees, and it expires at the end of this fiscal year. This temporary solution provided the lmc and ppa groups another year, and what was quoted last year is a longer runway to kind of get back to the table and really address the double digit increases, they were asked to jump back in and then think about what could reduce the renewal increases that we were expecting for the 20 2526 fiscal year, because we believed it was going to be another rough year, given the one time funds and the expiration of that surcharge. Both groups immediately jumped into action before getting into the details of their work. I really just want to absolutely commend the committee members for their hard work. We had thoughtful conversations, values based discussions, participation in various exercises with sticky notes all over the room, packaging together, multiple options to present for council consideration. These committee members are some of the most passionate folks when it comes to employee benefits. They want to ensure that core services are covered. They're vested in protecting the health and well-being of the city's most important infrastructure, which is our employees and also their family members. I am proud of this work, and I hope that everybody is as well. I feel like these folks should be commended for their commitment to this work. We are in a much better place this year than we were in the past. We know that healthcare is changed and this directly impacts employee benefit plans. We experienced a global pandemic which delayed care. We're seeing this care come back and in some cases it's more expensive as conditions are discovered in later stages, costs of services have increased due to labor shortages, inflationary factors, advances in technology, new extremely expensive medications hitting the market. Medical trend is at the highest we've seen in over ten years. The renewals for this upcoming 2526 fiscal year aren't too different from what we saw last year. We're looking at 13.4% for the lmc and 16% for ppa. Each of the committees convened monthly, sometimes more, sometimes for upwards of three hours, sometimes before or after homework. In between. They jumped into this challenging work of reviewing benefit coverage levels, trends, reasons for increased claims, and considered the impacts on our employees and their dependents during times of uncertainty across the nation. Putting packages together can take months. They require coordinated efforts with our vendor partners. We need to ensure that benefits can be figured configured into their system, and that claims can be paid accordingly. So it's not just something we can do off the cuff. We also need to ensure that analysis is done so that we can be compliant with local, state and federal rules. Throughout my time serving the city, all 18 years within the benefit team in various roles, these committees counsel guidance of past and current hr folks. They've made meaningful changes to our plans that align with the city's core values. For example, under former mayor sam adams, it was around 2012. The city added gender affirming care to our medical plans as a joint effort under former mayor ted wheeler. Co-pays for mental health visits were waived beginning in 2019 and remain at no cost on many of our medical plans. And that remains today. Shortly after we expanded eap benefits to further reduce critical access to services in 2021, the committee and the city and council added fertility and family expanding resources, and that was under the direction of former commissioner Amanda fritz, leading the effort prior to her departure from city service. These committees, council and bhr continue to collaborate on meaningful changes. We want to ensure our employees and their families are supported throughout their healthcare journeys. In this nation's political climate, it's imperative that we continue protecting our access to care, and the city remains committed to our employees who serve this community. With that being said, we're going to jump into lmc, and these slides will reference lab specific, lmc specific changes. And they're captured under the first ordinance. I will go ahead and turn it over to rachel if you're okay with that.
615 Yeah. Thank you michelle again.
616 My name is rachel whiteside.
617 I'm union representative for protect 17 members at the city, and I also co-chair the labor half of the lmc. And just adding a little bit to the context that michelle provided. There have been complaints in past years from committee members that sometimes we feel like we don't have enough levers to pull in order to. Make the cost savings that are necessary, while also making sure that we are providing a quality benefits package to our employees. And this year, we might have swung a little bit far in the opposite direction. The lab lmc started with over 30 items to consider. Some of these were had very small impact, and then some of them had extremely significant impact, such as, you know, dropping providence from our from our network in order to help the committee really focus in on where we were in alignment and where the committee as a whole had the most interest. And we felt like the options aligned with the values based discussion that we worked with a facilitator to curate. Before we started studying options, I helped facilitate an interactive exercise, as michelle mentioned, where yes, we put up all of the options up in a conference room and everybody was walking around using reds and blues and purples and it really helped us visually see where our values aligned and, and where things like what you see here on slide six made. And we could move forward with those options and where things really did not make sense. And we chose to not consider those. The longer period of time is spent on those items in the middle. Obviously, the other thing that was unique to this year was the direction from the council that preceded you to come up with multiple packages at different renewal rates, and this helped us fulfill that exercise. So. What you see here are the recommended changes that will not have a financial impact on savings, but where the committee had full alignment and agreement. And if we could move forward to slide seven. These are the additional changes that were included in all levels of the eight, ten and 12% packages that the committee prepared, the one exception is the garner. Garner is a new service that would be added. Actually, all of these are new services that would be added on top of our existing mode of healthcare plan and create steerage services, which can help provide folks to the most cost effective health care. But there will be a learning curve that is associated with these for our members. Slide eight please. So this slide summarizes the culmination of the three packages that were presented, I'm sorry, that were voted on by the labor management benefits committee. I do want to call your attention in terms of the 10% package and the 8% package, the those are the two with significant kaiser changes. And these were really a challenge for the committee to land at. This represents a significant change in healthcare access for folks that have been on the kaiser plan, which previously had no deductible and a very low out of pocket maximum even at the family level. So in addition to the information that's on these slides, the. Deductible at the 10% package level is increased to $450 at the family level and $2,500 out of pocket maximum plus new coinsurance that applies to emergency room visits, outpatient and inpatient surgeries, which those are all new things that our members on the kaiser plan have not experienced. And when you move to the 8% renewal package, those numbers are further increased. So the family deductible is $750 and the out-of-pocket maximum is $6,000. And it also again includes a new coinsurance for inpatient and outpatient procedures as well as some other services. So these represent significant changes in practice for our members. Additionally, at the 8% level, you see a doubling of the deductible from $250 to $500 and an increase in the out-of-pocket maximum by $250 as well. And there is the potential for members to regain some of that through the garner health reimbursement incentives. But this is a new program to the city and a new program to all of our members that none of us are experienced with. And there's a significant amount of concern that there's going to be a learning curve associated with that. And I think that's why you see it added into all of our packages. But at a level where it feels more approachable for members. Michelle. Or is leslie going to talk about the executive branch recommendation?
618 Yeah, I would like to I believe leslie is on the line if she would like to speak to the management side as the co-chair. Thank you.
619 Well, I'm here and I just I'm I'm going to let the folks that are in the room cover the slides. I just want to say that this has been a great process for both the management and the labor side. We really worked hard to try to get to a decision. We were not able to get to a recommendation, but I think that the packages that were put together, that everybody were comfortable with are what you're seeing. And so I won't take up any more time and let folks finish presenting the slides because my eyes are tired and it's hard to read on the screen. So thank you, michelle, for giving me the opportunity.
620 Thank you leslie. So is it okay to jump in? All right. So jumping into the next slide going into this one I want to reiterate and kind of go back to rachel and leslie. These were incredibly hard conversations that were had between labor and management. What is coming in front of you today is not something that is supported by the committee. It is not supported by labor. What it is the executive branch recommendation. While the committee was able to talk about things that build up the packages, we were not able to get enough votes to actually bring forth a single recommendation to this committee. So we are bringing forth the executive branch recommendation. That's on your slide here. It further changes the city core plan deductible and out of pocket maximum, which rachel talked a little bit about on the previous slide increases pretty significant increases to kaiser. That brought us to about a 7.3% overall renewal and 8% is budgeted. So the additional recommendation is to round up essentially from the 7.3 to the 8%. So it aligns with budget and add $670,000 into the reserves for self-funded plan because it currently is underfunded and we want to develop a long term solution to start bringing that back up to a level that we need. So that's what you're seeing today. And part of the ordinance is the executive branch recommendation. All right. And here on this slide you'll see the costs. It is the various options that were presented. The far left column is the 8% which is budgeted for 2526. Then you'll see the 10%, which leaves a gap of about 2.6, almost $2.7 million. And then on the far right is the difference between the 8% and the 11.6, which would remove some of the other recommendations. And that's well, it would change the executive branch recommendation. I want to make sure I choose my wording correctly to about 4.6 million over budget. All right. We're going to jump into ppa. And I will turn it over to aaron if that's okay with you.
621 Sure. So just as an introduction again, as michelle has said, and I also want to note, michelle has been incredible in this process. This is not an easy job. These are all pretty emotional conversations. I'm a husband of a wife whose life was saved by genetic testing and more surgeries than I care to count, and I'm the father to a daughter who's had more pokes and prods. And we are a maximum family user of our health benefits. And so the reality is, when we're when we're talking about who the maximum expenditures are, they're the families who need the most. And so very often we're having conversations with a lot of people who don't use their medical benefits a ton. And this seems less scary. But as someone with a lot of experience, again, we're looking to balance. And it sounds awful, but we're looking to balance the budget on the backs of people who need these these services the most. And so, you know, for me coming, the ppa, our health benefits are what they are. 25 years ago, we had an arbitration in our contract and they moved some of our benefits into our contract. And so that's why we have two groups being on our board. I only ever saw these things once a year, and this was not an interesting conversation. For a long time. Our board would look at it, we'd vote on a few things that weren't that interesting, and on we would go. The last couple years have been just very, very difficult. And also working with my other labor partners. And, you know, we have dispatch who is within the lmc now, and just seeing how complicated this is, you know, we had a really strong motivation. The executive board for the ppa, in looking for ways to balance this so that, you know, things moving forward were aligning together, if we could, that we were being, you know, in alignment with our labor partners, but also providing services that nod to the future. We had a lot of conversations with the last council. Former commissioner and councilor. Ryan is the was one of the ones who was there. But these were not easy conversations if you want to. So most of these things are the same as far as the introductory changes. Kind of ironically, you know, we went through a separate process, but the things that the ppa executive board for the ppa police side approved just ended up being the exact same things, basically. And I think a lot of that has to do with aon working for both groups. Garner, I do want to note, you know, on the moda side, the thing that's difficult is choose your own adventure. There's a lot of services that are available, but nobody knows what doctor to go to. My wife's doctor just moved out of state and literally we were like looking at websites, looking at which doctor looked nice. It's not very effective. Garner provides a potential help there, the concern being the way that it's sold is it is basically it is. They're the best providers. There's a little bit of a trust balance there of what does that mean, you know, what does it mean when a doctor is a preferred provider? Does it mean they're providing better service? Does it mean they're just cheaper? We don't, you know, they say that they're the better providers, that they get you to the right things. The further down the road garner options. If people choose to use these services, well, could be good, but we just don't know yet. So to rachel's point, we view this as kind of a longitudinal move. Let's start with the lower level. Let's see how people like it. Let's see how it works. Let's make sure we're not getting doctors who are refusing to do service. And that's why they're preferred. And let's not make people lose their doctors this first year, because you can under this initial garner plan, there's some benefits, but you don't have to use those doctors and still get the savings. And so garner hinge all the other things you see on the screen here. These are the things that we all agreed to and we thought looked logical. As it relates to kaiser. Kaiser is a plan for many families who are introductory, kind of the running joke that I like, or that I hear from people is a good place to be born, and it's a good place to die because they have really good elder care services in the middle. It's a little bit debatable. And so a lot of our newer members use kaiser because it is cheaper. Both my kids were born there. The challenge becomes none of our our high level users are really on the moda plan, which makes it a little bit more expensive. We were looking for equity. We were looking for ways to again, not destroy kaiser, but also allow for a plan that would balance. And so these changes to kaiser aligned our kaiser plan with the moda plan. As far as the member impact for out of pocket costs for our members. And so for us, our board was comfortable with those changes for the ppa last year when we were talking, a lot of the changes that aon recommended were on to moda. We're experiencing a significant shortage of providers in in Portland, just across the board this year. Aon did not push forward anything as far as those changes because they would they were concerned that it would lead to members not being able to get into the doctor, basically, which would lead to wellness issues, which would lead to people not getting diagnosed early and potentially leading to people being more sick. And so the changes that were proposed only got us to 11.9%. That was as far as we could go without eviscerating kaiser, and there was nothing in motive that was provided that would do anything that, frankly, wouldn't require us to go to a member vote as well, because it would be a service change. So to be super clear, what the board voted for and approved is an 11.9% change. We got about just over halfway. It changes our deductibles for kaiser from what is currently 1000. I'm sorry. Going back a slide on my little phone here. It currently is 600 for an individual and 1200 for a family for out of pocket max switching to 1000 and 2500. This is in the actual ordinance. Paragraph three. We agree to those. What we did not agree to is paragraph four, which in our opinion is more than a bridge. It's a mountain too far. Most importantly, the out of pocket max would switch to 3000 for an individual and 9000 for a family. It's a $7,000 a month or $7,000 pay cut. And so again. Totally understand the financial picture we're in stand in alignment with the lembke from the standpoint that we did look and effectively accidentally landed in the same spot, which for them was the 10%. That is as far as as we are able to go in a way that still provides quality health care. Definitely support our friends in landing in that same spot.
622 Yeah. Thanks, aaron. I was just going to provide a little bit of additional clarity that the 10% package recommended from the lmc does align with what the ppa has. Board has voted for. The 10% package is also supported by the labor side, and several members on the non labor side as well. So while we didn't get to, we have a 75% threshold in order to move something forward to the council. It did receive more than 50% of the votes.
623 Did I cover everything? Okay. Great.
624 Yeah. Thank you. So moving on to the next slide. Similar to what we did with the labor management benefit committee, is that we are showing you what the executive branch recommendation is to bridge the gap between the 11.9% that the ppa board voted versus the 8% that is budgeted for the upcoming year. To reiterate what aaron shared, you'll see the increase in the deductibles, the out-of-pocket maximums, and also the day to day services that are provided by kaiser to our folks. On, I believe, our final slide here, you will see the difference in the 8% that was budgeted for fiscal year 2526 and the 11.9% that the ppa board is recommending. The difference between that is $638,000. So with that being said.
625 Maybe just one order of clarification, councilors, before we came up, aaron was kind enough to point out that for item 12 160, just full transparency as you consider these items before you the out of pocket max for the family. For kaiser, $9,000 was not referenced on that ordinance. So I just wanted to be clear. So you saw that fully and you could consider it.
626 I if I can, I also will be kind enough to point out that the ordinance as it relates to the lmc says that that that there were recommendations that came from the lmc and that is as a term of legal art is incorrect. They did not recommend what is recommended.
627 All right. With that being said, thank you so much for your time this evening. Thank you to rachel and to aaron, to leslie, to all of the committee members, to ron, the support of bhr. We'll open it up to any questions and discussions you might all have. Thank you.
628 Thank you. And counselors, we do have people signed up for testimony on at least one of these issues, but I see some folks in the queue. We often start with clarifying questions before moving to public testimony. I also know that there are some folks who are going to.
629 At some.
630 Point propose amendments. So, councilor Smith, do you have questions for this point in our discussion while we have our guests up here before we move to public comment?
631 Yeah.
632 A couple of things. I thought that I was looking at the kaiser going from 3000 to 9000, that that was. Egregious, particularly for kaiser members. I do want to move to amend the text of the ordinance for this. And I don't.
633 Know where.
634 Item 11 or item 12.
635 Item 11 I'd like to move to amend the text of the ordinance to budget for a 10% increase for employees health insurance, rather than the eight 8% increase.
Procedural episode · turns 636–644
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636 I think what we should do, because we do have public testimony coming, is let folks know that that motion has been made, but not second and discussed until we hear from the public.
637 Okay, perfect.
638 Feel comfortable to you, councilor.
639 Okay.
640 Actually, point of order. I think if it's second and then the public will know when they're testifying that this will be part of the package. Now that will be discussing. If it's not seconded, they would know that.
641 Councilor are you comfortable with this? Receiving a second but pausing our debate until we hear from the public?
642 Yes.
643 I second it.
644 Okay. Councilor Smith, anything else?
645 Well, for me, city employees are are or are our book of business and they're the most valuable asset in the city government and ensuring they have access to quality and affordable health care is a priority for retaining their excellence while they're here. The involvement of the lmc in this process is so vital, and I appreciate you all's work, and we should acknowledge their work in finding solutions to these challenges and cost increases. I believe this emergency ordinance is an example of nbc's effort to cooperatively strike a balance between managing rising health care costs responsibly and also providing comprehensive benefits that meet the needs of our diverse workforce. But I believe we should follow the nbc's recommendation, and I was told as well that this emergency ordinance as currently drafted, drafted, falsely claims that the lmc recommended the 8% package, when in fact the 10% package, while not receiving enough support to recommend to council, did get the most support from the lmc. For this and many other reasons, I believe the 10% package is the one the council should approve.
646 Thank you councilor. Councilor canal, are you in the queue for this point in our conversation?
647 I believe so. Speaking to the amendment, but clarifying questions or other things that we need to get cleared up or on the record before we hear from our public testimony?
648 Yes, I.
649 Have a question and then a comment. My question. Michelle, the you mentioned that co-pays for mental health visits were waived in 2019 and that for most but not all that is retained. There is a slide that shows on the ppa side the creation of or perhaps change to primary and specialty care. Can you speak to if mental health care is included in either of those lines effectively it would there now be a co-pay for mental health care for ppa members?
650 So the co-pays for mental health were not waived under the ppa plan. And that was an lmc change that was moved forward. What we see on the ppa and a lot of times on the PFA side and pcoa and other public safety folks, we're proposing increases to the employee assistance plan. The employee assistance plan is outside of the medical plan it provides. What we're recommending is 13 confidential counseling visits at no cost for our members and their eligible dependents. But the co-pays under the kaiser proposed option would change.
651 It would.
652 Change, yes.
653 From what to what?
654 I have that right here. So currently primary care under the ppa kaiser plan is currently at $10. It would go to 15. Specialty care would go from 20 to 25.
655 And mental health is in the 20 to 25 part generally.
656 Yes.
657 Thank you. That's my question. I would like to also propose and I'm comfortable waiting until after the testimony. An amendment to let me make sure I have the ordinance number correctly. 2025 160. This is the restoration of the 11.9% option that was agreed to by ppa.
658 Is there a second to this amendment?
659 Second. Okay.
660 Councilor Novick, are you in the queue not to speak to any amendments, but for clarifying questions or other things that need to be put on the table before we hear public testimony?
661 Yes. I just want to address an issue that was raised. Ask a question about an issue raised by mr. Schmitz and councilor Smith, which is that the whereas that the language currently says the lmc recommends the following plan design changes if required to reduce the renewal rate to 8%, and it's been stated that the lmc didn't actually recommend this. I wonder if so. Actually, michelle, can you explain what that language refers to and whether what it means?
662 Frankly, it was poor word choice. It was not intended to misconstrue that there was an lmc recommendation when we originally had conversations, there was opportunities to bring forth 8%, 10% and 12%. We thought we were going to be able to bring forth three options and make that decision. And so when we had originally started drafting the language, that's what we were intending to do. And as we got through, we didn't edit it correctly. I didn't edit it correctly.
663 Thank you.
664 Apologize.
665 Thank you for that candid explanation. We've all been there.
666 I truly.
667 Apologize for any of the pain that this has caused. I don't want it to discredit the hard work that these folks have done.
668 Councilor Avalos.
669 I'll wait until after.
670 Okay.
671 I believe that's everybody in the queue. So keelan, could we please move to public testimony?
672 First up, we have isaac mcclymont want.
673 To.
674 Do the. 8%. They've got to amend that ordinance to the 9000 to alleviate this is. I don't like me doing it, but somebody needs to do it.
675 Good evening.
676 All right. Good evening. Council madam president, my name is isaac mcclymont, and I'm the president of the Portland firefighters association. Also resident of roseway neighborhood, district three. I'm I'm here to. I personally I would appreciate the floated amendments prior to the public testimony. That makes my job a little easier. I definitely want to support both amendments openly. I was struck because when we started this council meeting several hours ago now, we started by talking about telecommunicators and how wonderful they are, the great work they do, and we all, and I share every one of your guys's comments that you made about them. They are most deserving of all of those. They're also deserving of quality health care benefits. And even though this package, this 10% package is an increase was currently floated in this resolution, I want to remind everybody that it's a decrease in their health care. It's an increase to their costs, and it's a decrease to their health care benefits. All of these packages will be those versions of that. So, you know, it's my in my mind. And I spoke about this at the lmc, I should have mentioned that I'm also a member of the lmc. One of the things people choose when they become a public employee is they they know these jobs are not necessarily the most lucrative. They're looking for something stable, and they're looking for a job that has quality benefits. That's what draws people to these jobs. One of the things that draws people to these jobs is that stability, but also the benefit packages and getting these benefit packages has been proposed by the lowest level option. Here, the 8% is really taking a sledgehammer approach to making decisions. So I appreciate the time and I fully support these both these amendments. And I really appreciate all the time and dedication you guys have given to this issue. And with that, I yield.
677 Thank you. Keelan.
678 Next up we have mark hinkle.
679 Thank you.
680 For those of you who don't.
681 Know me, my name is mark hinkle.
682 I've been employed.
683 From the.
684 City of Portland. In January 1st.
685 Of 1999. In the.
686 In may of.
687 2021.
688 I went from being a city employee.
689 To.
690 Being a business rep for ibew local 48. And now I'm the current president of the district council of trade unions, which recently ratified a contract. Thank you very much for that. I do want to echo I had a whole things written, but some things have changed. So I'm going to kind of go with my gut here. I want to echo partly what isaac said. Right. It's coming here as a city employee. Those are the things that were important to me as I was a family, you know, at a family of five kids. So, you know, stability, health insurance, kids do the dumbest of things, right? We all know that those that have children. So those are important things. Right. And then also being a public servant, I worked in bhs in the wastewater treatment. It's not really under the umbrella of public safety, but I really, truly believe it also is public safety, right. If the brown water doesn't go away, people get really cranky. So what I wanted to say is I'm in support of the two, the two amendments that have been put forward. It is a compromise in the particular environment we are in, in a very troubling time. Financially it does maintain it, but it also is a sacrifice on labor side. Right. And it was brought up before last year. We agreed on a low at $25 a month, and that was a $1.8 million contribution by the members. This change lets them bring some to the table, but still maintains the majority of their health benefit. So I encourage you to approve both of these amendments. Thank you.
691 Thank you.
692 Next up we have chris flannery.
693 Chris.
694 Are you online? I don't see chris in the room.
695 Yeah, chris is online.
696 Chris there's the button.
697 I think I've joined as a panelist now.
698 Yes, we can hear you.
699 Thank you so much to.
700 The council. This is chris flannery. I am the afscme local 189 representative on the lmc. Unfortunately, we weren't able to vote on all of the packages because of the delay of our ratification vote by council. But I also want to speak in support of the amendments that have been authored. Frankly, looking at the 8% package, it feels like a clawback from our bargaining in a way that makes me reconsider next time we're at the bargaining table, if we're going to commit to the labor management benefits committee. So I just want to be frank about that. Like, as as a union activist, as someone who believes strongly in our right to bargain, when we were at the table, we had reservations about returning to the lmc after last year and the way that the recommendation was put forward, as from the committee when it wasn't. So I'm glad to hear the understanding this time around that this is an executive branch recommendation and that the lmc did not settle on one. But still, the 10% compromise, I think, shows that that shared sacrifice without creating enough of a burden on specifically kaiser members, although there are also some changes to moda, there's some pretty significant impacts to kaiser members just from the pharmaceutical changes. So the additional plan changes are going to add a lot of people in their pockets. And some people, it's going to impact them more than any race that we were able to get them at bargaining. So please consider what you would like for your own family when you take this vote. Thank you.
701 Thank you.
702 Next up we have carrie co. Carrie. Carolyn welch.
703 Hello again counselors. For the record, I'm carolyn welch. I'm a member of the labor management benefits committee and represent boec emergency telecommunicators as a member of the Portland police association executive board. Over the last year, the labor management benefits committee has been engaged in a difficult conversation about how to provide the medical benefits that keep city employees and their families healthy, strong and available to do the vital work that turns. That, in turn, keeps our communities thriving. This discussion has been centered around an understanding that costs are rising, and we need to adapt in new ways to meet this goal. In a matter that still affirms our shared values equity, access to care choice and providers, and affordability. While we voted on three packages in the lmc meeting different percentages of renewal cost, there is only one package that meets these values in addition to that of fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility is important, but it should serve our values, not override them. The 10% package reflects that balance by augmenting our existing benefits in a way that is thoughtful and sustainable, without introducing uncertainty or hidden costs. The 8% package, on the other hand, risks undermining new programs before they can take hold. It raises costs too soon, before allowing members to acclimate to the overlay services that are meant to blunt the impact of rising costs that our families are feeling in every area of their budgets already, when facing illness or injury, no employee should have to pause and question whether taking their child or partner to the doctor during an emergency is the right financial decision. For this reason, I urge you to affirm the amendments as presented and vote for the 10% package that labor benefits management committee has forwarded. We need to provide benefits that are dependable, and the 10% package does that. It's a values based choice that supports our workforce and their families, and it is the only option that moves us forward. Thank you.
704 That completes testimony.
705 Okay.
706 Councilors, we have two ordinances with amendments on the table. And some discussion in the queue. I think we are going to leave both open because I suspect the discussion will be similar, but then we'll take votes on emergency ordinance 159, agenda item number 11 first. Separately, councilor Avalos, go right ahead.
707 I'm going to start by saying I have a very visceral reaction to this vote. And I want to signal to you all that I am really leaning towards a no on the entire ordinance. I love the amendments. I think the amendments are a great step, but I think what I hate about the amendments and just the things that we presented to our employees is we never gave them the option of, hey, the city should cover your health care. I completely agree that people come to work in a government because healthcare is a huge benefit. I will tell you too, as somebody who went from a job at Portland state that had really great health benefits, that I am grateful that my labor union bargained for. And then I went to go run a nonprofit. And nonprofits obviously don't have a lot of money and was immediately faced personally with the drastic change in healthcare. And that deeply affected me in very bad ways. And I had to pay the price for that. But then as a leader, when I was faced with making these kinds of decisions and looking at my budget and what are what are we going to do with the fact that I had no control over the inflationary costs of health care? But what I could control was where my values were and how I was going to allocate my budget for my employees. So every single year it didn't matter. We always budgeted, you know, ten, 12, whatever percent. And then it's like, oh, it's 14%, it's 16%. It didn't matter. We absorbed that cost because that is a critical, literally life saving resource to our employees. And when in this economy really like that, the last thing I want to do is put this burden on the backs of our frontline workers. We make so many choices in this city for how to fund for things. There's always money, we always find money, and yet we are presenting our employees who work so hard to make this city work with bad options and saying these, this is it. There's no other money. I do not agree. I feel very strongly about this, because I'm also concerned that one of the testifiers said, think about or chris flannery said, think about what your family needs. I do not have children, but many of my staff, for example, have several children, and this is going to deeply affect them. It's going to affect me as somebody who lives with chronic illnesses, and I'm constantly in and out of the doctor and being able because I had health care at Portland state, that gave me the ability to do preventative care and to be consistent about getting care so that I could prevent further illnesses that really affected my life, literally. And I know what it felt like to go from something high quality health care and having to go down to health care. That was not enough. And I'm here at the city now thinking, yay, I have better health care again. And then look at this decision that I have to make. That's going to affect me too. But it's also going to affect so many employees that work so freaking hard. And I'm upset. I'm clearly upset because I do not think that we should have even put these options on the table. I think it's unacceptable. I had a train of thought that I lost because I'm angry, but I think my point is clear that I believe that the city needs to do better to bear this brunt of these changes and not put it on the back of our hard working employees. So I want to signal for you all that I am probably going to vote no. And I hope you all consider my comments as you as we continue to discuss this, because I do believe that we have a choice that we can make, we do not have to just accept an option that's presented to us. We are legislators. We can decide to go back to the drawing board and that's what I would personally recommend. Thank you.
708 Councilor Novick.
709 Really dumb question for somebody are the parks workers? Leona 483, part of the lmc group?
710 Yes.
711 Is leona 483 here?
712 I don't see anybody from their union and nobody who was signed up is part of that union. Councilor.
713 Okay, the reason I was asking is that if we're going to lay a lot of people off this year in this budget, and the mayor has made it quite clear that mostly he's going to cut parks. So I think that I would like to hear from the union most likely to be affected and ask them if they would rather, I mean, just ask them, do they would do they support going to 10%, even though it means more layoffs? So if I wouldn't ask anybody else to speak for them, but would trouble me to make this vote without asking that question.
714 I do have the results of.
715 The can. I'm sorry, can you reintroduce yourself for folks who are online?
716 Thank you. Rachel whiteside co-chair, labor management benefits co-chair. I do have the results of the vote if you're interested in how they voted on the packages.
717 Yes, please.
718 Okay. I can tell you that there's a pcl representative and there's a parks rec representative. And hold one second. Let me get to my motions. Let's see. Both units voted in favor of the 10% package.
719 And does that mean they voted against the 8% package?
720 They did vote against the 8% package.
721 Thank you very much. I really appreciate that.
722 You're welcome. Councilor Green.
723 Thank you, madam president. You know, I just need to name that we're in this mess because we use self-funded reserves as a way to stabilize our self-funded health care plans, which are which which are a reason why we draw people in. Right. But that is those reserves are funds that the city can always fund. So let's keep that in mind. But we're also in this we're in this situation because, you know, we've got this unmitigated disaster that is a us health care system, the for profit health care system, which is designed to extract the maximum amount of money from working class families as possible. And so the city has been absorbing that for years, and it's depleted its reserves. And so now we're presented with a terrible choice. We do need to find a way to balance avoiding an unacceptable budget cuts. And I think you see that in the votes from the bargaining units at the lmc that they're willing to sort of recognize that that that fiscal challenge that we're in. I'm prepared to support both of the proposed amendments, because I think it does create a qualitative balance. That's the least of the bad, I should say, in this situation. I've just displeased that we could not come to a place that our labor partners could agree on a unified package. So I hope we do better next time. And that's that's our work, by the way. So and I fully expect our next legislative agenda to prioritize lobbying for a universal, single payer health care system at both the state and the federal levels, because that's we're going to be dealing with this problem year after year after year after year for the rest of our lives until we get straight on the upstream cost pressure. So that's where I'm at, folks.
724 Thank you, councilor, councilor Smith.
725 Thank you, madam president. I want to say ditto. Ditto, ditto to you, councilor Avalos, because I actually felt like saying that we need to be paying that $4 million. We figure out ways in which to pay things. And like you, I've had some chronic illnesses that that require. But it's not necessarily about me. It's about the people who have to pay this big jump. When I look at going from what was it, 2000 to 5000in kaiser to 9000 for a family that that is not sustainable for our families. And I think that we need to do better and we need to find, you know, designated funds that we that we can meet the increase every year. And it's going to it's going to increase every year. And I do agree with you, councilor Green. We need to be talking to our legislators and trying to figure out ways in which to cut off these health care companies who are gouging us every year. They're gouging us, and they know we need this stuff. And so the employee, the employers are left to the mercy, mercy of these, these health care groups. And that part right there is something that we need to really get a handle of. So I appreciate your words and I felt it. Thank you so much. Councilor Zimmerman.
726 Thanks. I have a question to the two amendments that were made. They were different amounts, I think. Right. But were they at first, councilor Smith, did you make an amendment only to one of these packages.
727 For 10%.
728 But not for the police one.
729 Councilor councilor Canal did the ppa.
730 But at a different rate.
731 At a different rate.
732 The two amendments on the table are an amendment to agenda item 11 to move to the 10% recommendation, which we saw in the slides. And on agenda item 12, move to the 11.9% recommendation that we saw on the slides. When I say recommendation, to be.
733 Clear, I.
734 Recommended packages at different levels.
735 I guess councilor Canal then, as I've heard a lot of it, sounds like some testimony is somewhat agreeable to the ten. I was just curious why you're recommending above that one versus making the same thing for lembke, or vice versa, or whomever.
736 Yeah.
737 I'll give the brief answer and then we might need. But effectively there were only two options that were presented in our recommendation. There was the 8%, which is actually a little lower than funding the reserves with the rollover, and then 11.9%. That does represent a 4.1% cut to the expected inflation of 16%. Notably, I don't know if there's anything.
738 Yeah.
739 I just.
740 If I can aaron schmaltz president, Portland police association just to clarify, the starting point for the police was 16, and the starting point for the nbk was 13.4 and just obviously 6500 employees against like 800 or so. And so the move from 16 to 11.9 and the move from 13.4 to 10 is a different number. But it is in fact imperative as it relates to the actual structural changes to the plans. And so that actually was accidental but serendipitous.
741 Thanks for that clarification for everybody. I I've said this to a few members, and I have said this to some of the advocates in the room, I, I am nervous about a significant change to a kaiser plan. And I say that as a person who. Was hired by Multnomah county and was a member of asked me the year before the great recession, right. And I know sometimes and we just went through our own negotiations with our own unions this time. But unions make choices in terms of how they how they approach healthcare, how they approach their employees. And I and I benefited from that. And the greater good took a hit because of it. But they preserved some, some jobs and some some impacts. And. And I am also an employee who, you know, when you're when you're young and you're making $38,000 for a government and even $50,000 for a government, those first line employees first jobs out health care, is that stability? And kaiser, is that stability. You give up some choice. And I think that we make choices that are appropriate, but we give up some choice to have predictable bills. And that's where I've really valued kaiser at one point in my life. Right. I don't make that choice anymore, and I'm privileged to be able to move off of that. So I'm cautious. But I also heard throughout the presentations, in other conversations that there was a desire or at least a willingness by the, the, the folks who sat on that decision making or that negotiating board that some give on the kaiser plan could be appropriate this time, because previously, maybe the moda plan had given up a lot. And so I'll be supportive of this. I think I'll be supportive of these amendments and recognizing that kaiser is not going to meet a need for our most, for our employees, most in need of the of the lowest cost, of the most predictable. I think some really important points have been made across the table, and I hope we just monitor that and that impact on our youngest employees, our newest employees, our lowest wage employees who still are going to have access to great health care even in this new plan, these new plans that are proposed. But. But that access to a predictable health care is going to be a little bit less after this proposal. And I just want to make sure and I hope that for all of our city administrators and others and our union presidents that are out there, is that we monitor that, because I think that predictability in your first five years in employee helps send a signal. If you become an employee with ten, 15 and 20 years under your belt. So I appreciate just the efforts there. I'll be supportive of these amendments as they come forward. And cautiously supporting this proposal. Overall.
742 Councilor Kanal can.
743 I ask a question before I go in? What is the order? We're going to take these votes in between the two amendments and the two.
744 So once debate is done, we will vote on the amendment that councilor Smith has put forward to agenda item number 11. Since that is the next thing on our agenda, then we will vote on once we're done with amendments there, the underlying emergency ordinance, then we'll vote on the amendment. You have proposed to agenda item number 12 and then vote. Once we're through all of the amendments on the underlying emergency ordinance.
745 Thank you. Yeah, I guess I'll I'll save some of this for the vote. But the really big picture, I think one of the things we talked about is maybe we need to have a narrower set of things that we do as a city, but that we're doing fully and that we're doing as well as we can. We've talked about this in a lot of different contexts, you know, over the course of the last few months. But basically, if we don't have the time to do it right, we don't have the time to do it. We don't have the people to do it right. We don't have the people to do it. And if we don't have the money to do it right, we don't have the money to do it. And I think that's a really important thing to look at. I'm very sympathetic to the argument here, and that that councilor Avalos made about ensuring that we're not doing this on the back of our workers as it relates to the amendment. I think finding the place where there was some agreement is, at minimum, a positive step. It may not be sufficient. And I think that's that's perfectly valid. If not, but ensuring that what we what we do, we do well to me is really important. And that's where I'm kind of framing my thoughts on this. Thank you.
746 Councilor. Seeing no one else in the queue. We do have a first and a second on the amendment to agenda item number 11, which is to replace the current 8% proposal with the 10% proposal that we have seen. Keelan do you need anything more specific for us to move this amendment, or does that give you enough to get the right thing in the underlying ordinance?
747 Yeah, I think we have enough. And we can confirm with the sponsor of the amendment to make sure we have everything.
748 Okay.
749 Could you please call the roll canal?
750 I Ryan.
751 I thank you.
752 Sorry, there's a delay.
753 Koyama Lane I maria. I Novick. I Clark.
754 I just want to say I really appreciate the testimony that we heard tonight, particularly about the impact on families. And I would just special appreciation to aaron schmitz for actually sharing information about your family. You know, I was what was once known as a childless cat lady. So I really I really appreciate hearing about your experience and really thinking through this. And we don't have a health care system at all. We don't have a system. In fact, we're paying probably 20% of our gdp is going to this nightmare. So we do need to work on that. Councilor Green, I appreciate that and I thank you.
755 Green Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Dunphy. I Smith. I pirtle-guiney. I the amendment is approved with 12 yes votes. Councilor Kanal. Are you in the queue to discuss the amended ordinance?
756 Legacy hand sorry.
757 Okay.
758 Seeing no one in the queue, do we need a motion? Okay, then can you please call the roll canal.
759 Just to be clear, this is on the actual ordinance for the lmc.
760 This is a vote on agenda item number 11. The ordinance on the lmc side, which has now been amended to the 10% proposal.
761 Thank you. Yeah, I was uninsured or had insurance that I could not access for six years in my 20s. It's not something that I would wish on anyone, literally, because I also support universal health care and hope that ogre is listening when they develop the legislative agenda. I because of that, it's visceral for me too. I appreciate that term. Councilor Avalos. Our city's core values include fiscal responsibility and also collaboration. And so given that collaboration occurred, I'm grateful to the labor partners on the lmc for coming to compromise at 10%. Grateful to bhr for doing the hard work and getting to that point. So I vote yes.
762 Ryan.
763 Yes. First of all, I just want to start off by saying I'm going to read my comments on this item and it'll be the same for both, so I won't make any comments on the next one. I will add to the fact that I have context. I think we all do. Healthcare is personal. At age 24, I found out I had hiv that was back in the dark ages. I was a working artist and it's really shaped my life and I become quite a health care advocate and activist ever since. And that was a few years ago. So I want to thank both councilor Smith and councilor Canal. These amendments got us to the sweet spot. After a year of building trust. The testimony by our labor leaders affirmed that point, and I appreciate hearing from all of you. This is a much better process than the one we that came before us last year. Some of you probably know that, and I'm very proud to sit here and see that through with you. Here's to shared responsibility and shared sacrifice together. We are one city team serving this very beautiful city. So in that in that spirit, on this lovely spring evening, I vote yea.
764 Koyama Lane.
765 I'm really grateful for this amendment. And. While I'm glad we have come to found a compromise, I'm acknowledging that this is still tough and there going to be some changes to all of our health care that we will feel I vote yea.
766 Mario.
767 I want to thank all the folks that came and testified today and shared their experiences with us, and I am really grateful for councilor Kanal and Smith as well for bringing these amendments forward. I think they have really improved what we had in the negotiations and what we're ending up with, and we know that it's still a cost to city workers as far as not having the same level of care that they used to. And our workers are completely invaluable and irreplaceable. We know that health care costs are rising across the country, and now with tariffs and everything else going on, people are really struggling to afford to live in our city. The fact that 72.4% of people said that affordable housing is their top priority, these issues are just hitting people across the board. And so I really care about sustainability and equity, and I want to make sure that we create benefits and design systems across all bureaus that reflect fiscal responsibility and address the human and health needs of those serving our city. So with that, I vote.
768 I Novick.
769 Although I join in the denunciation of health care companies, I also have to point out that in this country, a lot of doctors make too much money to particularly specialists. Radiologists make 488,000 a year, anesthesiologist makes 472,000 a year. So don't forget that I.
770 Mark.
771 I want to give a special shout out to michelle taylor and the team and everyone on the bcc. Great job. Thank you for all your work and I vote yea Green.
772 I just want to echo the appreciation for councilor Smith and canal for bringing these amendments. I don't like the amended ordinance myself. I'm much closer to councilor Avalos and I thank you for raising that sentiment. I think it puts us on notice. I think the work that we have ahead of us is to figure out how we build a city and a budget that takes care of our workers, and that's this is not going to go away. And I don't want I don't want this to be the first of many small cuts that bleed us out as a city, but I.
773 Zimmerman, thanks.
774 I'm just going to acknowledge that there is an aspect of shared sacrifice. That's not a term I love to say, but the workforce stepped up in a way that I want to acknowledge, and I appreciate that. We also that we did make a compromise here, because I think that more kids are likely to have access to sports next year because we have minimized in this a little bit of the budget gap, and there are thousands of employees who are giving up a little bit in this. And I am acknowledging that for the benefit also of our 600 plus thousand residents. So to everybody that participated in this shared sacrifice, I appreciate it. And I vote I.
775 Avalos I will be voting no on this ordinance, not because I disagree with the health and wellness benefits being added, but because I believe the city should be covering the full cost of health care increases, not shifting that burden onto our employees. From the start, we should have offered the labor management benefits committee a real option where the city absorbs the full increase. Instead, we gave them a set of constrained choices that assumed workers would have to carry some of the load. That, to me is not a values neutral process. It is a policy decision and I believe it was the wrong one. We are talking about an increase in cost that is absorbable in the scale of our overall budget. We find money for a lot of things in the city. We could have found money to protect our workers from rising health care costs. This proposal hits our frontline workers the hardest. The same people who are already underpaid, overextended and critical to the functioning of this city. Higher deductibles, increase out of pocket costs and coinsurance all add up. And those increases don't hit executives or higher wage employees the same way they hit a janitor, a 911 dispatcher, or a park ranger. To me, employee health and wellness isn't something that we should compromise on, especially in times like this. Our workers are stretched thin, they're doing more with less, and the last thing they need is to be asked to pay more for essential care. So while I appreciate the work of the lmc and the improvements to mental health and virtual access, all of that, I just cannot support a plan that shifts more costs to the very people who keep Portland running. I vote no.
776 Dunphy.
777 I just I hate that only in America are we able to have this conversation. There was literally a one of the best tv shows that ever existed, was about a man who had cancer and couldn't afford his health insurance, and turned to selling meth in the new mexico desert. So our American health care system is fundamentally broken. I spent the last five years working for the American cancer society, begging for incremental changes to cancer treatment to save lives and my own and health insurance didn't cover the policies that we were advocating for. I when I got this new job, I literally danced around because of the cost savings for my health insurance. I am an adult who is living with a well treated chronic illness. I am so lucky to have an incredibly healthy spouse and a healthy 13 year old daughter. And I know that that is luck more than anything else. These companies are not only gouging us, they are actively making the quality of our our health care worse, and it is leading to bad outcomes. And we are stuck in this same narrative, and it is heartbreaking and wrong. And this is the best of a bad situation. I'm glad we are avoiding having to bargain by making bad choices. I am glad that this still makes us a competitive employer, but we need to acknowledge that this is making our health insurance worse. This is making it worse to be an employee in the city, and I appreciate the employees standing up and recognizing the moment of needed shared sacrifice. I hope that we don't have to continue this, and I just wanted to make sure to call that out, I vote I.
778 Smith.
779 I want to thank everybody who testified tonight. I want to thank our hr, lmc and the families that have to endure some of these these health emergencies. I was elected to Multnomah county commission in 2010, 11 months into my first year, I had a medical emergency and I had kaiser. I had a tumor, a grapefruit sized tumor in my head, had a brain tumor, and I was hemorrhaging. I was in seattle driving home from my son's game at university of Washington. Didn't know. I just thought I had a headache. But ultimately I had something that was much, much more severe. And had I not had that, we had great health insurance at Multnomah county, and I had the ability to have two surgeons. Two anesthesiologists for three, what was supposed to be a two and a half to three hour surgery. I was in there for 6.5 hours and piece by piece by piece by piece, they took the tumor out of my head. Had I not had that, I would have been. That is just a an incident that will take you into bankruptcy. But because I worked for the public sector and fortunately for Multnomah county, my family didn't have to endure that. My son was on the health insurance as well. But I know what it's like when you have those kinds of health emergencies. The doctor said that it was a miracle, and so if I have a sense of urgency when I'm trying to do things, it's because I know that life is so, so precious. You can go just like this. Why god saved me to be here to save this lmc. But he did. And so that's why my sense of urgency is always urgent. Because I know what it's like. And for folks who don't have what we have. I wish they did. I really wish they did. So I'm going to say, yes, I support this.
780 Pirtle-guiney.
781 There's a lot I could say, but there's also a lot that's been said and it's after 10:00. So I just want to thank the folks who are here on behalf of our city employees. You took the time to be here very late with us, to paint for us a broader picture of where our employees are, what the tradeoffs are for our employees, and what the balance is. That folks felt was as fair as we could get. I really appreciate your time, and I appreciate your members time in allowing you to generously be here on their behalf, I vote yes.
782 The ordinance is passed as amended, with 11 yes votes and one no vote.
783 Thank you. Keelan councilors, we have another agenda item open on the table with an open amendment agenda item 12 the Portland police association city employee benefits program. We have an amendment pro provided by councilor Kanal and seconded by councilor Smith to replace that agenda item with the 11.9% recommendations that were in the presentation. Keelan I'm assuming you're okay with that much information. Councilor Smith, are you in the queue to discuss this amendment?
784 No, ma'am.
785 Seeing no one. Oh, councilor Kanal, are you getting in the queue?
786 Okay, I.
787 Just vote first.
788 Seeing no one in the queue now or keelan. Can you call the roll.
789 Canal?
790 To clarify, we're voting on the amendment.
791 We are voting. We are voting on the amendment that you presented. Yes.
792 Yeah. I'm obviously going to vote. Yes. I want to say that it may be surprising that this amendment came from me. I want to speak to why I did, since I didn't speak to this before the public testimony. This amendment ensures that the city's police officers have a more comprehensive health plan than the 8% level, which is good for those officers as well as the broader public and our long term budgetary health. Speaking first to the officers, all these changes would restore the plan to that agreed to by the ppa. So as compared to the 8% one, at least we know that the ppa supports that to the to the health of the broader public, ensuring that pb sworn officers are more likely to pursue physical and mental health care and just be in better shape, physically and mentally, ensures that those officers are more well when they're out in community. Anytime an unwell city employee interacts with a community member, the community members experience is going to be worse than if that city employee was well at the time of the interaction. That disparity is particularly stark with police officers, where a bad interaction or a good one has a larger impact than with most other city employees. As long as the city is going to send armed employees out into the community, the city's obligation is to ensure those employees are best able to interact safely with members of the community. One fewer negative interactions speaking to the budgetary health would save the city the cost of the claim, lawsuit, award or settlement associated with that interaction. City council has just dealt with two payouts related to police conduct of over $1 million each. If paying 6000 $638,650 avoids even a single wrongful death violation of rights, et cetera claim it will pay for itself. And we do need to figure out later where the money comes from. Those those who agree with me on the amendment, this ordinance may disagree as to where the money comes from, and that's okay. This doesn't necessarily have an impact on our overall budgetary priorities, but I don't want to dwell on potential future disagreements, though, at the expense of focusing on an agreement in front of us today. So with that, I vote yes.
793 Ryan. I am elaine.
794 I.
795 I just want to say that if I'd heard from councilor Dunphy before the last vote, I might have voted to hold to the 8%, because he reminded me that if you can't afford your medical bills, you can show some initiative, like walter white, and sell meth. However, this might be particularly inappropriate to ask the police to sell meth. I'm going to vote.
796 I.
797 Clark,
798 I.
799 Green. I Zimmerman.
800 Right I.
801 Avalos I.
802 Dunphy. I.
803 Smith I.
804 Pirtle-guiney I.
805 12 yes votes. The amendment is approved.
806 Seeing no one in the queue for comment. Going once, going twice. Keelan can you please call the roll on the amended emergency ordinance agenda item number 12?
807 No.
808 Yes.
809 Ryan.
810 Hi. Koyama Lane I. Morillo I.
811 Novick I.
812 Clark.
813 I hi Zimmerman.
814 I'm just going to say, well, I reject the idea that all first responders are in deep need of mental health. And I think the comments that were made a minute ago are deeply inappropriate in many ways. I am supportive of this, I vote I.
815 The comments I made on the last resolution are the same for this one, and so I vote no.
816 Dunphy.
817 Thank you colleagues, for all your hard work on getting to the defensible space. Thanks, I vote aye Smith.
818 I pirtle-guiney.
819 I same comments aaron, to you as I made to our other labor representatives who are here tonight.
820 I the ordinances passed as amended with 11 yes votes and one no vote.
821 Thank you.
822 Councilors, we are over time at 1020, but we checked with staff and can keep going for a little bit longer. If folks have the stamina to do so. We have three, four, four more agenda items. I don't believe we can get through all of them, but I'm hoping we can get through a little bit more. Our folks open to continuing.
823 Does a little bit more mean. Like what's the timing.
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824 To table to the next council meeting?
825 I think I have the floor right now and I'm what my question is, is did you allocate a specific amount of time, or did the staff tell us a specific amount of time we have left?
826 Staff have not given us a hard stop for tonight. No. And I have not allocated a specific amount of time. My intent would be to ask this same question about our willingness to keep moving before each of the upcoming agenda items, and take them one at a time and see how folks are doing.
827 Okay.
828 Do we have it? Sounds like we have an objection to continuing moving.
829 Yes.
830 Take a councilor Kanal you are in the queue. I'm sorry. I thought that was a legacy hand.
831 Oh, that was a new one. My question for you, madam president, is if we were to not be able to get whatever number of items we can't get through tonight, are they, by necessity, going to the next council meeting, or is there the recess opportunity?
832 Our normal recess time is Thursday afternoons, but we have a land use hearing scheduled for tomorrow that will take at least the entire three hours. It is possible the way we have committees scheduled, we do have Wednesday mornings and Thursday afternoons free on committee weeks. What I don't know, sitting here right now is whether our support staff can add another meeting to our busy committee weeks. But what I would do if we recess was work with staff to figure out if there is an available time to recess to between now and the next council meeting, and if not, they would go to the top of the next council meeting agenda, which I will note is also a very, very full agenda.
833 Yeah. Then I would be supportive of pursuing a potential recess if for whatever we can't get to tonight, which would leave you the opportunity to find other time if it is available.
834 See a sidebar happening with the folks who do have the next agenda item and the next two things on the agenda. We have been told it's important to do today if we can. Mike jordan, do you have councilor? Koyama Lane?
835 I was going.
836 To say that I'm under the impression that for the next, I'm under the impression that for the next agenda item, there's a sense of urgency because of a timeline. But maybe that's for this, this commission.
837 The excuse.
838 Me.
839 The change in the code is necessary as we move forward with appointments soon for the commission. And I know that that's been in the works for a long time. However, I do not think there's a drop dead date on this councilor.
840 My suspicion is that the next agenda item won't be terribly controversial, but that there may be a lot of conversation about the three. After that, I would suggest that we at least get through the next agenda item, and then perhaps reevaluate and seeing nods from the vast majority of people. Okay, keelan, could you please call agenda item 13.
841 And sustainability and climate commission code?
842 I believe we have a committee staff summary for this agenda item. And vivian, we generally don't do presentations at council. So we're going to do the committee staff summary. And then if you want to stay up there in case we have questions for you, that's great. But we'll let our committee staff take it away. And ashley, welcome. I think this is your first time doing a committee staff summary for us. Thank you for being here. If you could introduce yourself and then go right ahead.
843 Thank you.
844 Madam president.
845 And councilors.
846 For the record, my name is ashley hernandez and I serve as a staff to the governance committee. The ordinance before you document number 2025 118 was considered in the governance committee on April 7th, whereas what it was referred to the city council, as amended, with a recommendation for the ordinance is passed and the ordinance adds city code chapter 3.136 related to the new sustainable sustainability and climate commission. Chapter 3.136. This describes the purpose, membership and terms, duties and procedures for the commission. The ordinance also amends city code chapter 3.3 to remove the sustainability and climate commission from the preview preview of the bureau of planning and sustainability. The committee adopted adopted amendments prior to prior to the moving to the full council. The effects of amendments on the original ordinance drafts are summarized in the committee staff summary. The full impact statement of this items includes a financial and budgetary impacts, an analysis, community impacts, and community involvement. One person testified during the committee meeting on March 31st, and the same individual individual submitted a written testimony. The testimony focused on alignment and aligning the new commission with the recommendation made by the government transition advisory committee regarding the clarify of scope of purpose of city advisory bodies.
847 Thank you very much. Councilor Koyama Lane. You were the presiding chair for this meeting. Is there anything you'd like to add to the staff summary?
848 Just that these hard working staff members have been have spent two years researching and engaging community to design the sustainability and climate commission. Thank you for your hard work. This item before us is to codify this commission in our new form of government. The governance committee saw this item twice. Committee and public comment led to multiple amendments. Thank you for your work on those and their current recruitment process has been underway since November 2020. For the mayor's appointments will be seen by climate resilience and land use committee. After a robust recruitment and vetting process.
849 Thank you councilors, I see some hands up and we do have a number of folks here who can answer questions. But first, keelan is there any public testimony signed up for this agenda item? I don't believe there is. No.
850 That's okay.
851 I'm sorry. Will you repeat the question?
852 Was there any public testimony signed up?
853 No. Okay.
854 Thank you. I'm sorry. Councilor Zimmerman.
855 Thanks. I think my question is probably to the committee chair. There's an amendment or a strikethrough, if you will, exhibit a, and it looks like the powers and duties paragraph originally had. It said the commission may and then listed a lot of duties. And it looks like you all changed it to the commission's powers and duties include, but are not limited to. And I'm wondering if you can speak to the purpose of that change. And I ask that question from a position of. I think that some commissions and advisory councils and you name it, type of committees have at times grown their own set of legs and run in a way that is a little bit rambunctious. And I'm curious about your thoughts here. And I say that also because there is another point where this commission will establish their own bylaws. So I was hoping you might be able to, if there was any discussion at committee about that amendment that was made to the document.
856 I'm going to see. Would either of you like to respond? I know that a lot of the amendments were made based on the robust discussion had, and you all were part of that.
857 Good evening.
858 For the record. Vivian satterfield chief sustainability. Officer pardon this is usually not my best for my finest thinking to recall, to recall. The commission's.
859 Powers and duties will be.
860 The.
861 Commission advises.
862 The.
863 Mayor, city council and city administrator, but the agenda. Is ultimately.
864 Set by. In working.
865 With.
866 Me.
867 And so.
868 To the question of the striking of the may.
869 It's more to the point of adding but not limited to that is giving me concern, because I think that the best practice would be to define the role of the committees and not write a blank check. And so I'm trying to understand if there was a reason to this or if it was a politeness. In in our current form of english.
870 I, I.
871 Cannot recall precisely.
872 Without looking at further notes from that time, I apologize.
873 That's okay. I, I appreciate it because it kind of sounds like something we say, but we don't necessarily understand always what the meaning of it is, but it is giving me a little bit of pause chair. And I'm just if there are strong feelings about it, I would welcome hearing those. But given the other one, and I'm not sure if this question will go to robert taylor and I'm saying his name so he knows I'm about to ask him a question. But do most of our commission's committees, advisory panels, etc. Write their own bylaws as members, or do we provide those to those organizations when we create them?
874 Thank you, councilor, for the record, robert taylor, it's 1030 at night. It's past my bedtime. I agree. So it's going to I'm going to do my best to answer that question. They, they they do. The office of community and civic life has template bylaws that we give to them to try to help guide, but they have the ability, I think, usually to make adjustments to that to help guide their work.
875 Okay.
876 Thanks for that clarification. That was helpful.
877 Councilor, if I may, vivian satterfield cso looking back at the notes, this was a direct suggestion as a result of public comment, a member of the committee did offer public comment and suggested that the original language the commission may was a rather narrow reading, that that was all they could do and suggested that we add this additional language so it could reflect that the other duties could be vested by, and in this case it would be myself, since the commission would be directly attached to my position. So that's from a member of the public's.
878 That's helpful. Thanks for looking it up on the fly. Not knowing that question was coming. You know, I think that this council is who best duties. And so I'm not particularly comfortable with that train of thought. And I think I understand where it looks like this kind of came from a tech side of things. But I just I do have a lot of concerns and how we use our volunteer commissions and keeping the scope of work within the scope of work, and not in a in a world where I think mission creep has, has really defined so much of Portland civic engagement. And so I, I'm not a big fan of that first sentence. Powers and duties. And I think it would be good for us to actually ensure that only this body gives duties and powers to the to the groups who advise us and not not individual staff members. But that's it for my comments. Thank you.
879 Councilor Smith.
880 I just want to say ditto, ditto, ditto to what councilor Zimmerman just said. And let's take a vote.
881 Councilor Smith, are you calling the question or shall we continue with the discussion in the queue?
882 We can finish with discussion people have.
883 Okay.
884 Councilor canal.
885 First, I'd like to point out that in a previous agenda item, we were told that the people who weren't on the committee can't ask the questions. And evidently that's not going to be applied equally. And that's something concerning to me, because that that was told in an earlier item. Having said that, I actually agree with councilor Zimmerman. I think we should be evaluating things here. I completely agree with all of your points, actually, on the on the question around the powers and duties, and I'm glad that we're having this conversation here. So with that said, I did propose an amendment to this and I will formally propose it here. It strikes three words a maximum of under 3.1360 to 0 members and terms part a first line. So we'll change it from the commission consists of a maximum of 20 active members to. The commission consists of 20 active members. And although I am proposing that one amendment, I'm very open. If there's any others that anyone would like to, I'm very happy to hear them and discuss them. That's our job and I'm very happy to do it.
886 I believe that was a proposed amendment. Is there a second? Second? Okay. That moves us into discussion on the amendment? There are a number of hands in the queue. Councilor. Councilor Smith, is your hand up from your previous comment? Okay. Councilor Green, are you in the queue to speak to this amendment or for when we come back to the underlying ordinance?
887 My point.
888 Can straddle both of the items.
889 Go right ahead.
890 So I'll just I'll just speak to the amendment. I don't have an issue with the amendment. I think it's good to strike. Maximum makes it clear that we should try to target having a set number of active members. I want to speak to councilor Zimmermann's concern. I actually think I actually think a committee is an extension of the administrative side of our government. And it this this committee report to the chief sustainability officer. And while we legislate by creating code changes and ordinances, what's left is to be established through administrative rule setting. And so I see this as a sort of this, this relationship between saying, here are the powers enumerated, duties enumerated, but they are not limited to provides discretion for the bylaws to be adaptable in relation to the chief sustainability officer. And I think that's entirely appropriate with the delegation of powers in our government. Thank you.
891 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane.
892 Yeah, I would like to speak to the amendment. I would also like to point everyone to number nine in the. Proposed ordinance. So it is clear that we need to work on these advisory bodies. You all know this is something that we're talking about in governance, and that is why we added as number nine that on March 31st, 2025, we actually had folks from the office of community and civic life come and present to us about their the plan that we're working on with them. They're working on it, and they will be including us to align and streamline, modernize all of these bodies. Part of why I feel comfortable not having it say exactly 20 or they're being a little, it being a little bit squishy. And I hear what you're saying, councilor Zimmermann, is because this specifically outlines that this commission will be subject to this project, which the point of it is to have some streamlining. And I've actually talked to these two people quite a bit and know that having 20 might be a stretch, that there's also a plan to have a lot of youth seats on here. And so there is some worry about having it say exactly 20, in case, you know, youth might be a little have have their lives in flux a little bit. And the desire to not be out of compliance just because a couple people are not on this commission is something that I heard from them about wanting to be realistic, so I will not be supporting this amendment.
893 Thank you.
894 Councilor. Councilor Novick, are you in the queue to speak to the amendment?
895 Yes, I actually was just going to say basically what the vice president just said, that I'd be worried that if we say exactly 20, that might be suggest that the commission can't meet unless it have exactly 20 people. But maybe I'm just being paranoid.
896 Councilor Ryan, are you in the queue to speak to the amendment?
897 Yes, I will, ditto being paranoid and that's why I supported the suggestion from gtac to make sure that we gave enough flexibility so they could start operating and move forward. And I'm really proud of how well they're doing on their recruitment, and it's going to be a great commission. I will not support the amendment.
898 Councilor Kanal, we are back to you.
899 Thank you.
900 So a couple things. First off, there are I found at least ten other groups that have volunteers on them in city code. This is required, by the way, we the city council previous in 2017 passed resolution 37328, which says that the category of advisory groups that include all those required by city code, charter or state law have a set number of seats slash members. When I looked in the code, the citizen review committee, it says the committee will consist of 11 citizens. The code that creates the community board for police accountability. The cba shall consist of 21 members. Water quality advisory committee committee consists of nine members. Public utility board board will have 11 permanent members. The urban forestry commission consists of 11 members. The new Portland new portlanders policy commission will consist of 25 voting members. There are vast majority of them have a set number. In none of those cases have they ever said, oh, it says 11 people on the citizen review committee. One seat is vacant. They can't meet. That has never been the interpretation, I think, robert, or actually, sorry, heidi, if you're still here to put you on the spot from the city attorney's office, but having read the entire public meetings manual and having brought 20 plus appointments to city of Portland advisory groups to this dais on that side, I know that it does not actually create that that concern. What I noticed when I read the notes and heard the conversation at governance is that originally this was proposed as setting the number between 10 and 20, and that the conversation there was to that that was too broad of a range. By removing the lower end that ten and saying a maximum of, although it does not say a minimum number in any way. There is actually, if you read the rest of that section, a minimum of eight, because it says for a reserve for youth that can overlap with the membership must include at least two individuals from each of the city's four council districts. So it actually has created a broader range, changing from 10 to 20 to a maximum of 20. I can also say that recruiting youth if one focuses on it. And by the way, we're not talking about the resolution that's going to come forward, but I'll just preview my statement that they did such a fantastic job at recruitment for this. It rivals only the charter commission in terms of how well they did recruiting it. And as long as we are doing our job, there's 630,000 portlanders out there. We can find 20, we can find a hell of a lot more than 20. And so I am not concerned that they will fail to meet this. I'm not concerned that anybody that actually has the necessary support to do this work would ever fail to meet a number as small as 20. And so that's that's the sort of clarification no other city code defined volunteer group has a maximum clause without a minimum clause. They either have a range they they have or they have a number. And the ranges there are only two that do. And they're very narrow ranges. I mentioned the resolution that that requires this, which is part of what establishes best practices for advisory committees. It allows for staff to predict the size and nature of their conversations. As we all know, a group of five is very different than a group of 12, and how the dynamics of that conversation go. As you can imagine, eight and 20 are very different from each other. And finally, it gives certainty to the public that there will be a dynamic representative scc because it shows that the city will commit to trying to achieve 20 and if it person resigns and there's 19, it can keep going. While we strive to achieve 20. And this is something we've done for hundreds of advisory groups. There are only the ones mentioned in city code that I went through, and I won't bore you with the rest, so I will stop here. Thanks.
901 Councilor Zimmerman.
902 Minus four. After the amendment is voted on.
903 Seeing no one else in the queue. Keelan could you please call the roll on the amendment?
904 I.
905 Brian no.
906 Koyama Lane.
907 No.
908 Morillo. No.
909 Novick I appreciate counselor connell's knowledge and his solving my paranoia. I also have made a personal commitment that I will strive to vote with councilor Kanal and against councilor Zimmerman as often as they vote with councilor Zimmerman and against councilor Kanal, since they've already done the opposite. Today I vote yes.
910 Clark.
911 No.
912 Green.
913 Yes.
914 Zimmerman.
915 No.
916 Avalos.
917 My vote is yes. I'm actually kind of surprised. This seems pretty obvious of a change that we should make. So yeah.
918 Dunphy.
919 Yes.
920 Smith.
921 Yes.
922 Pirtle-guiney.
923 No.
924 The amendment is a split vote and the motion fails.
925 I was.
926 Worried that's what was happening there again. Councilor Zimmerman, you are in the queue for the underlying ordinance.
927 So I was looking at the financial impact. Are you able to describe. So it looks like PCEF funding is being used for staffing here and some commission work. What is that? What are you envisioning there? It looks like $450,000. A piece of funds will be used for this program, I guess inside civic life or inside sustainability.
928 Thank you for the question, counselor Zimmerman. My position as a result of an ordinance that was passed by the prior city council, moved me from the bureau of planning and sustainability to the city administrator's office myself. And this is elaine livingstone, the sustainability and climate commission coordinator. Those resources are for the two of our positions and our associated resources. The for the sustainability and for the, I'm sorry, sustainability climate commission. We have been proactive and actually secured some outside resources through some grant funding through my memorial trust for the first year of its operations. But the piece of funding specifically is for our two positions.
929 Thanks. That's helpful. Mr. Jordan, off the top of your head, do you know how much of the city administrator's team is supported by psa funds?
930 I don't off the top of my head, but I would.
931 Say, is it more than just those two?
932 I would suspect that it's not much more than just those two, if it's any more.
933 Okay.
934 Thanks. Yeah.
935 Councilor Kanal.
936 I guess.
937 My question I guess to two part and it's sort of rhetorical to all colleagues. One is there anything that we're trying to do with relation to clarifying around the powers and duties? And the second thing is, are we comfortable with it still being 8 to 20, even if it's not a hard number? Just to ask the question if anyone wants to comment on it. If not, I understand.
938 Councilor Smith, I saw that you were in the queue, but you're not now. Did you have comments to make?
939 Well, yeah. I do.
940 And I feel like we're in a constitutional crisis once again. And we really need to settle this because this is not going to this is not going to go away.
941 Councilor Smith, I briefly mentioned before that there had been some conversations about expanding upon what's written around the duties of the mayor to break tie votes. I think this could be an opportunity for us to look to the chair of our governance committee and ask that that be added to the list of things that governance takes up in the coming weeks. Is that a thumbs up?
942 Two thumbs up.
943 Okay.
944 Councilor Green.
945 Thank you, madam president. I'm going to entertain the rhetorical question offered presented by councilor Kanal. You know, I supported the amendment because I think it's better to specify the number and I think it's more consistent. The amendment failed. So in this situation, what I'm going to hope to lean on is that this did go through a pretty robust public process, that the bylaws section of this is an opportunity to clarify how we deal with our. You know, prioritizing the work of the committee and also the chief sustainability officer and ensuring that we're always seeking to be as close as 20 as possible. So that's I don't know if that's satisfactory, but that's how I'm thinking about it right now.
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946 Councilor Kanal would you like to respond?
947 Yeah. Thank you. The latter is definitely satisfactory. There is a lot of research that's been done around and conversations, including at this dais, about why it's not a good idea to have it be clarified in the bylaws. Most notably, you fill it to 20 people. They amend the bylaws to make it 19 for someone to get kicked out. That has happened. So I'm not suggesting that would happen here. But I do think that having it be clarified outside of it and this kind of goes back to, I think, councilor Zimmerman's original question around the sort of distinction between a committee charter, which can be the code and the bylaws. The distinction is effectively what what we think should be within the realm of the members, the volunteers authority to change on their own versus not. And so I, I that's not a I definitely agree with the second part of that. And I know that in our conversations around this particular briefing that the cso and team are which, by the way, is this is the team, as I understand it, and we should fix that at some point. But the cso team wanting to and committing to achieving that number is something I do think is worth relying on, at least until we can figure this out in code. I will say that the advisory bodies restructuring project is something I served on last year. We're in a, I think the fifth iteration of it at this point, and it cannot change code. Only council can change code. So at some point we will be deciding on this again. And that's just an important thing for us all to keep in mind. Thank you.
948 Councilors I don't see anybody else in the queue. We did have a few people hint at other changes they might want to make, so I'm just giving us a few seconds here in case anybody else wants to get in the queue to propose additional amendments. Otherwise, keelan, I think we could call the roll on the ordinance as introduced.
949 Canal.
950 Point of order.
951 Is this a this is not a first reading.
952 No reading.
953 I you know what? We just went through so many emergency ordinances that I was just on a roll. I apologize.
954 That is.
955 My mistake.
956 No problem.
957 Thank you. Councilor canal. I got caught up in our roll with emergency ordinances. This is not an emergency ordinance. So this will move to the second reading calendar at our next council meeting. Councilors, we are nearing 11:00. Next agenda item, I suspect, is going to take a little bit more time. It was originally scheduled as a short agenda item, but since then we've had some folks raise concerns. Do you all want to keep going or should we let our staff go home?
958 Let's go.
959 Let's keep going.
960 Hold on, councilor Smith. I'm looking at some faces saying different things.
961 Even spinal tap only went to 11.
962 Can I? Can I get a thumbs? Well, actually, let me say this first. We can choose to continue our conversation at a special meeting. To schedule a special meeting, we need seven councilors to sign a request to the auditor for a date that has not been previously scheduled. I want to have time if we're going to move things, to talk to the clerk about the best time to do that. So I would suggest that if we don't get through our whole agenda today, folks, allow me until Friday to get you a proposal for a special meeting for sometime next week. But that Friday, I would ask for an additional six of you to sign on to something with me to schedule that. So we do have a means to schedule something next week. Councilor Clark.
963 Don't we have an extra week some time on the week of the is the 28th.
964 We do. We have an extra week this month, so we could do that as well. And that might be easier for staff.
965 Yes, but councilor Clark, don't forget that week. A lot of us are going to be at that conference. The league of cities conference. So just fyi, because I.
966 Know I'll check.
967 With I'll check with people's schedules and check with the clerk if we need to do that. Our folks in the queue to discuss this. Councilor Zimmerman.
968 Madam president, I would move to suspend the remainder of this of this agenda to a future date. I would also move that this body start seriously considering meeting weekly. This is the fourth month in a row where we have something we're going to. These are important items that are coming up, very important items they deserve people who are engaged. It is 11:00. This is becoming deeply unserious. We continue to do this. This is the largest city in the city in the state of Oregon. We should be meeting. I do not care what gtac or anybody said we should be meeting as a council every week, and nighttime meetings should be minimized to items that do not get protracted into long debates as this has. So again, I will move that we suspend the remainder of this agenda until a future meeting. So they get the time they deserve.
969 Is there a second to that motion or not?
970 I'll second it though. I don't agree with all the analysis, but I agree with all the proposals.
971 Whereas is in there for us. Councilors. Any discussion or should we move to. Discussion? Councilor Green.
972 Are we going to take a vote?
973 I will ask for unanimous consent once we get through discussion.
974 Yes.
975 Councilor Green.
976 Briefly, I'm going to agree that there is no way we can take up these items in any reasonable measure at this hour and beyond, but I and I agree that we need to have weekly council meetings. We just need to do what it takes to figure that out. And then finally, this this bonding ordinance. I'll just say this. This is probably going to create the need for an emergency ordinance that by by kicking this down the road. And I only say that because it's, it's a strategy for freeing up general fund resources that we're going to need to fund our, our programs in the next fiscal year. So that's what I'll say. I'm going to support tabling this councilor.
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977 I believe if we have an interim meeting, this would still be second read at the same meeting that it would be if we did it today. So we wouldn't need to move to an emergency ordinance. But if instead we bump things to the next agenda, you're right. We likely would. Councilor Smith, are you in the queue there?
978 Yeah, I am in the queue. I agree that we need to be in a. In a more in a more coherent kind of state. I mean, I can go as long as, as people can go, but I want people to be I think people have made their decisions on what they want to do to in that part. But I think that other folks want to have a conversation, a longer conversation, and I am for that longer conversation. But if we start this, we're we're probably not going to get finished until about 1:00 in the morning.
979 Councilor that's.
980 And I want to be assured that we're going to get this done within the next week, because this has been hanging for far too long.
981 Thank you, councilor, I assure you that between the next two weeks, I will find us a time the next two weeks, because that still allows us to put things on the next council agenda for second reading. It won't slow down the final work on these councilors. We have a motion and a second, and I think we can do this by unanimous consent. Sure. What do our attorneys think? Are there any objections to I believe this would be. This is not are we ending the meeting and then scheduling a special meeting? I think it is. I think we would be adjourning the meeting to schedule a special meeting. Are there any objections? Okay, without objection, I will adjourn the meeting. And councilors, I will get you a proposal by Friday on an additional date to add a special meeting so that we can continue this work.