The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-03-25
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Arts and Economy Committee convened on March 25, 2025, with roll call establishing member presence and one member noted as excusably absent. The session centered on tax increment financing (TIF) as an economic development tool, with the chair framing the discussion as an opportunity to hear directly from community-based organizations rather than bureaus. Presentations were given by representatives of Unite Oregon, Imagine Black, and APANO, covering the history of urban renewal and TIF in Portland, displacement impacts on Black, immigrant, and working-class communities, the blight-designation and "but-for" test processes, accountability gaps, community benefit agreements, and the Jade District's experience using a smaller TIF allocation alongside other funding sources for housing, small business grants, and placemaking. Topics discussed included potential alternatives to TIF, community stabilization impact reports, land banking, workforce development, cross-bureau coordination, and possible state-level policy changes. Public testimony addressed concerns about oversight of Prosper Portland and historical disinvestment in outer East Portland, including Parkrose and Gateway. Figures describing project costs, funding allocations, and demographic changes were stated inconsistently across speakers. No formal votes were described as occurring during this session.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 Good morning. I call the meeting of the arts and economy committee to order. It is Tuesday, March 25th at 9:30 a.m. Clerk, will you please call the roll?
1 Good morning. Dunphy.
2 Here.
3 Smith.
4 Here. Here.
5 Clark.
6 Here.
7 Ryan. Green.
8 Here. Christopher. Christopher, will you please read the statement of conduct?
9 Welcome to the. Welcome to the meeting of the arts and economy committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance in the committee agenda at. Portland governor slash council agenda. Slash arts. Dash and dash economy committee. Or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person, testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee 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, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying. State your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifier should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
10 Thank you christopher, and thank you to everyone for being here today. Committee members. Guests. Today's meeting of the arts and economy committee will focus on discussing tax increment financing as it pertains to economic development. I have invited three guests here today from community based organizations to share their perspectives and experiences with tifs, or tax increment financing, as a tool for economic development. These groups are unite here, imagine, black and apono. I chose these groups and before I invite them up, I just want to just give a little preamble here and frame our discussion today. I chose these groups because they hold a range of nuanced positions of tifs, and for their history of critical engagement with the topic of anti-displacement, and for their thinking on how to use them to democratically invest in historically underserved communities. So it's not an anti tiff, it's not a pro tiff presentation. It's a discussion on how to use this very important tool for our communities. I want to acknowledge that today's committee meeting represents a departure from historical practice, where the far side of this dais is usually occupied by a bureau or other institution of power that delivers information to city council for consideration. In that model, groups that do not have that same access to institutional power are afforded a few minutes of public testimony to make their voices heard, but are otherwise not invited directly into conversation with city council or committees of that body. To be sure, this committee will continue to provide our bureaus a space to brief and inform policy. But today we're going to uplift some community voices directly by turning the table and bringing experts on the lived experiences of their communities into the center. I hope to demonstrate the potential for participatory democracy building via our new committee system. The last council established six new tif districts that will encumber billions of dollars in property tax revenue starting next fiscal year. I hope that this committee and the public following along, views this conversation as an opportunity to broaden our awareness of how tif is an economic development tool presents both challenges and also opportunities that we can engage with democratically and transparently. So with that clerk, can you please read the first item?
11 Item one tax increment financing.
12 Thank you. May I have unite Oregon approach to the dais, please?
13 Very slowly. Yes.
14 Thank you so much for coming today. And when you get settled, please introduce yourselves. For the record.
15 All right. I don't think I need those.
16 Hi everyone. My name is amanda fam haynes and I am here representing unite Oregon. Should I go ahead and get started or.
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17 All right.
18 Please proceed.
19 So good morning, councilors, fellow presenters and community members present today. My name is amanda haynes. I use she and them pronouns, and I'm here today as a representative of unite Oregon, where I'm the statewide housing justice manager and director of the anti-displacement pdx coalition. But I'm also here as someone who has seen firsthand how policies like tiff shape our neighborhoods, who gets to stay, who gets pushed out, and who benefits. We know that city council has a responsibility to invest in economic development, and we recognize the difficult balance you have to strike. But we also know that without meaningful oversight and accountability, public investments can and will reinforce the same cycles of displacement that portland's urban renewal policies have historically created. In 2013, the city of Portland published a report titled a history of how planning segregated Portland. In that text, the city of Portland claims to take ownership in creating the inequities we see today, and it also commits to creating a different future. I ask you all what's changed? Today, I will argue that the city's actions often fail to align with its commitments due to both deliberate and unintentional decisions that render many of our investments performative at best. Portland claims a reputation of inclusion and equity, yet too often fails to back it up. This disconnect has fostered the illusion that we are a city governed by its people rather than its investors. That illusion is dangerous. That's why we are here today, to urge you to take immediate action, to ensure tiff is accountable to the people it impacts most, and that public funds are reinvested in solutions that truly serve the communities harmed by past policies. So let's get on the same page about a few things just to frame our discussion. For decades, tiff and urban renewal policies have been framed as tools for economic development. But for many communities, these policies have led to rising costs, displacement, and disinvestment in the very people they claim to support. Time and time again, we hear from community members who believed in the good faith of the city. They trusted city employees who told them tiff would be good for them, their families, their businesses, and their neighborhoods. They assumed there was data to back those assurances and contingency plans to address potential harms. Instead, these community members report that they paid for their own displacement. These community members attended meetings, joined advisory groups, and invested time away from their families and lives shaping their neighborhoods only to be ignored, disenfranchized, or worse, have their input co-opted to justify policies they actively opposed. Because unite Oregon serves black, immigrant and refugee communities, we often highlight tiff's impact on them. But let's be very clear. Tiff isn't helping other working class families, either. White working class residents also face rising rents, higher property taxes and displacement not due to natural economic forces, but because public policy has prioritized investor profits over people's abilities to stay in their homes. We are not here to argue against investment or growth. We are here to demand that public money serves the public, especially those most impacted by past and present harms. And again, to be clear, this is a conversation about systems, not individuals. It's easy to personalize critiques of government policy, but the reality is that tiff's failures are structural. Many people working within these systems are also our community members. But today we are here as representatives of institutions with varying degrees of power, and it is our responsibility to wield that power with authenticity, intention, and integrity. Our job is to authentically and passionately represent the interests of our community members who do not feel seen, heard, or prioritized by our local government. And when public institutions fail to serve the people they are meant to, it's not only fair, but necessary to demand change. Now that we've established why this conversation matters, let's break down how tiff actually works and why so many people struggle to understand it in the first place. Well, first, I just want to acknowledge something. Tiff might be one of the least inviting names for a public policy. People's brains have several opportunities to shut down when they hear it. Tax increment financing. None of those words feel particularly accessible. I know that for me, after two years of trying to wrap my head around this subject, I kept facing the same hurdle. Over and over, I told myself what I had heard many others say. I just don't understand tiff, because I'm not technical enough or smart enough. And despite having a legal education, I still struggled to grasp how tiff actually worked. It felt out of reach. This confusion isn't just an inconvenience. It silences people. When policies are inaccessible, communities don't feel qualified to challenge them, and when they do, they're often dismissed as misinformed. Even the law itself is misleading. The relevant statute is still titled urban renewal and only mentions tax increment six times. A resident trying to research tiff may never find the right information because it's buried in outdated and unclear language. You may recall when councilor Dunphy asked prosper Portland, where their tiff authority came from. They cited aws or Oregon revised statute 457 the very statute still labeled urban renewal. This reinforces that lack of transparency. If you google tax increment tiff Oregon taxes, you may never land on the right statute. Prosper Portland claims that the information is available, but in practice it is difficult, if not impossible, for the public to access. Also, it is not the job of community members or even cbos to decode the city's financial tools. We do it every day because we have to. If we don't, who will? But it is the city's responsibility to communicate clearly and make sure that people can access this information. And while this council may have the capacity to fully understand tiff, I ask, could you explain tiff accessibly to your neighbor? If so, I'd really love to hear it. But if not, ask yourself, is it reasonable for a legislative body that has invested and continues to invest millions of our tax dollars into tiff to struggle to explain how it works? If we can't clearly articulate this tool's impact, how can we tell a renter struggling with rising costs, or a homeowner worried about their mortgage that tiff will benefit them? And should we? Are we giving people full information they need to make an informed decision, or just enough to lead them toward a decision already predetermined by city agencies? So again, what is tiff? At its core, tiff is a public financing tool that some cities use to fund development in designated areas. The idea is that by investing in infrastructure and attracting developers, property values within the area will rise over time. As those values increase, so do property taxes. But instead of that added tax revenue going into the city's general fund for essential public services like schools, parks or emergency response, it's redirected back into the designated tiff district to fund more development projects. In theory, tiff promotes growth without raising taxes, but in practice, it's just urban renewal by another name, using the same steps and causing the same harm. What I mean by that is urban renewal and tiff both have steps that you have to go through to designate a certain area as a tiff district. The process starts with declaring an area blighted. That word might sound neutral, but it has been used for decades to justify disinvestment in communities and especially communities of color. It shifts the blame away from systemic underfunding and onto the residents themselves, as if the people living in these neighborhoods are the problem, rather than the city's failure to resource them. Then comes the but for test, a requirement that the city prove that. But for the creation of a tiff district, the area would remain so unattractive to outside investment it would be ultimately destitute. This test doesn't just assess need, it justifies intervention by assuming these communities have no value unless external investors decide that they do. And here's where the racial equity conversation becomes unavoidable. Tiff does not explicitly state that it will displace communities of color or low income residents, because it doesn't have to. Instead, it uses facially neutral language like economic development and blight reduction. But in practice, the impacts are historically and disproportionately harming black immigrant and working class communities. Remember, intent is the measure of harm or is not the measure of harm. Impact is. Some may argue that tiff wasn't intended to displace communities of color, but when a policy consistently results in the same racial and economic disparities, ignoring that pattern is a failure of governance. So again, let's be clear. Tiff measures its success by rising property values, but rising property values depend on reshaping who a neighborhood is for. Tiff doesn't just cause displacement, it's betting on it. It relies on shifting the demographic and economic makeup of a community to generate tax revenue. The very metric that defines its success is the same force that drives long term residents and businesses out. And if policies that reinforce racial displacement aren't abolished or transformed, but instead defended as neutral, then governance again is failing to do its job. Tiff must be held accountable for its real world effects, not just stated goals, and the actors implementing tiff must be held accountable. Otherwise the practice can just take form under a new name. So when we talk about tiff as a modern financing tool, let's be honest, it's just urban renewal by a new name, following the same steps that history has shown lead to the very impacts it claims to solve. And if we fail to name that truth, we will never escape the cycle of repeating it. Portland's history with tiff is not a story of economic development. It is a story of erasure. Decades of urban renewal projects, funded in large part through tiff, have repeatedly targeted historically black neighborhoods, displacing families, businesses and cultural hubs under the banner of progress. Albina, for example, once home to the vast majority of portland's black population, has been reshaped by projects that promise revitalization but ultimately pushed out the very communities who lived there. As we continue this conversation, we must also continue to ask who is benefiting from tiff and who is paying the price? Because when public funds are used to engineer growth, the goal cannot simply be increased property values. It must be about ensuring that the people who have built and sustained these neighborhoods can actually afford to stay in them. Otherwise, tiff is just gentrification with public money. So when we talk about portland's housing crisis, we cannot ignore the role that tiff has had in it. It is not just shaped development, it's reshaped the character of our city. Now I want to note. Tiff does have perceived successes, but those do not outweigh the harms. You've heard about projects that have created development infrastructure and even some affordable housing, and we shouldn't ignore those outcomes. However, it is the job of council and the job of any public servant not to just celebrate policy wins, but to confront policy failures head on. When a policy causes harm, the public isn't obligated to accept it, but the city is obligated to take responsibility and address it. The burden isn't on residents to be convinced that tiff is working. It is on the city to prove that it's the best tool available and to offer real alternatives so communities have actual choice. That's what accountability looks like, and that's what our democracy demands. It also raises two critical questions. First, why is tiff been treated as the only option for economic development, despite its well-documented failures? Second, why is it so difficult for the public to access information about tiff's real impacts in Portland? Because when a city invests so heavily in one tool as Portland has in tiff, it creates a high burden of proof for why this tool continues to dominate our economic development strategy. And right now, that proof is lacking. So let's talk about something that we call the accountability gap. Who controls tiff and who gets left out. If I ask the average portlander how much say they have in tiff spending, most would probably say none, and they wouldn't be wrong. Decisions about where tiff money goes, what projects get funded, who benefits, and who gets displaced are made in ways that are complex, opaque, and often inaccessible to the very communities affected by them. Tiff is defined as a public financing tool, yet the public has very little power over how these funds are spent. And that's not by accident. It's built into the way that tiff is structured. That's what we mean by the accountability gap. It's not just that tiff has harmed communities, it's that the people experiencing those harms were never given a real voice in the process to begin with. And that was by design. Take cully, for example. A community benefits agreement was established and many cbos and community members I spoke with were excited about it. But there was a problem it lacked binding authority. That puts organizations, and especially organizations like affordable housing providers that are heavily, heavily funded by tif districts in an impossible position. They can either invest in a massive amount of time and resources engaging in processes controlled by prosper Portland that ask them to fix tiff's failures, or risk losing funding and being told they had an opportunity to contribute, but they didn't take it. That is not real democracy at its best. It's coercive, and at its worst, it's a hostage situation. Either get on board or don't get funded. Your call. Once again, a systemic issue is reframed as an individual failure. And that is not real accountability. To help make this a little more linear, let's focus on four criticisms of portland's use of tifs. First, the decision making process is not transparent or accessible. Second, public meetings and feedback processes are often performative. Community engagement is frequently framed as advisory, but the real decisions are made behind closed doors by the time the public is consulted. Most major funding decisions have already been set in motion. And if understanding tiff how tiff works takes legal, public policy or financial expertise, how can everyday residents meaningfully weigh in? Third, promises of community benefit often go unfulfilled. Over the years, tif districts have promised affordable housing, anti-displacement protections, and economic opportunities for historically marginalized communities. But time and time again, those promises have fallen short. For example, the interstate corridor urban renewal area was supposed to include significant affordable housing investments for black residents displaced by past urban renewal, but many of the promised units never materialized. There's little accountability when tif projects don't deliver. If a developer takes advantage of tif incentives but doesn't follow through on affordability commitments, what's the enforcement mechanism? I implore this body to research that question. Fourth, the public can't directly influence how tif funds are spent. Unlike general tax dollars, tif dollars are locked into specific districts and controlled by urban renewal agencies. This means that even when urgent public needs arise, like a worsening housing crisis, the city has limited flexibility to redirect tif funds toward real community priorities. Instead of a democratic control. We have a system where developers and city agencies hold disproportionate power over public tax dollars, and once a tif district is created, it lives for decades. I believe ours are around 30 years, meaning that the decisions made today will shape portland's landscape for generations, whether or not they serve the public interest. So if you're still with me, you might be asking what would real accountability look like? Well, if the problem is that tif operates without real public accountability, then the solution has to be giving the public real power over how these funds are used. That means enforceable community benefits agreements, with real consequences for developers and agencies that fail to deliver a transparent public decision making process that gives communities real control over tif spending without shifting the blame onto them. An end to tiff is a blank check for developers and ensuring the public funds serve the public good, not private profit and a city council that takes a stand against displacement one that sets clear standards requiring developers to take responsibility for the impacts of their projects. Developers should be required to invest their time, their dollars and their expertise into proactively assessing displacement risks and, more importantly, demonstrating exactly how they will ensure community stability in the areas that they're profiting from. The burden should not be on the public to prove harm. It should be on the developers to prove they are preventing it. In closing, tiff isn't just a policy choice. It's a question of who portland's government is accountable to right now. It defines success as rising property values, the very force driving displacement. So when we celebrate the success of a tiff, are we also celebrating displacement? And if displacement is the outcome, then who exactly is the tool working for? The rationale for tif districts is often based on hypothetical economic growth, on projections, promises, and models that serve investors. But what I've spoken about today is not hypothetical. The harms of displacement are not projections. They are lived realities. The people forced out of their communities are not data points. They're our neighbors. They are the families, workers and small business owners who trusted that public investment would mean stability, not upheaval. This is not just about history. It's about what happens next. The choices made in spaces like this one today will determine whether Portland invests in people, not just property. It's time to set a new standard. When we're serving the people justly is prioritized over speculative economic development. Justice and investment cannot be viewed as competing interests. They must be tied to real, community centered priorities. We cannot pretend not to see what is right in front of us. And while most of us here today do not have the power to make policy, you do. We urge you demand real accountability, real oversight, and real alternatives to tiff. The public looks to you as the city. It's on you to set the standard to hold prosper Portland, or any city agency accountable and to ask the hard questions, push for real answers, and to act not just when it's easy or politically convenient, but when the people you represent say it matters. Our city and people's lives depend on it. So I'll leave you with one question. What will you do with this power that you hold?
20 Thank you.
21 Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the presentation, amanda. And while it's an exciting presentation, I would say our rules of decorum would suggest please don't clap audibly, but please do this. And that's encouraged. So we have time, colleagues, for questions of our presenter and any, any cross committee conversation that we would like. So I'll open the floor up. Go ahead and if you want to.
22 Thank you, councilor Green. Thank you so much for that. Very exciting presentation. And I understand totally exactly what you're saying. So in lieu of the tiff, what would you suggest in terms of economic development that we put in place?
23 So I actually really love this question because I've been trying to figure it out for two years, and it's part of why I structured this as a speech, sort of rather than a powerpoint. And it's because that is a really almost impossible question for community members. And like people who don't have private, you know, money to be able to look into and investigate, I have actually tried to bring in experts from other parts of the us where tif districts are to figure out what alternatives would look like, and it's been very troubling because we run into the same information barrier. So we don't have a lot of data to be able to articulate what the an alternative zero sum trade off would look like. I think that there's a lot of community ideas into what anti-displacement strategies could be, but those are going to be pretty specific to the different districts that they have, largely with tax increment financing. It's complicated to understand. And so that's why it's like I'm not trying to dodge the question. We do have a lot of ideas for ways that this could work, but without being able to then go out to the community and say, here's one presentation that's on tiff, really well done, really well researched, and then here's these other ones. But we don't have data that can really support it because we can't find it online. And we're not really sure.
24 Right. That and so the other issue, I understand totally what you're talking about when you're talking about folks who are going to be displaced. They're generally the most vulnerable people in a neighborhood or a district. And many of those folks don't own property. So that part right there, it's already putting them at a disadvantage. So I would like to be able to research this a little bit more and maybe councilor Green to maybe get a report done from prosper Portland to find out other alternatives to tiff to see. So we have something to balance it against. So right now what we hear is we hear presentations like yours and we've heard them across the board. But I have never heard anybody give me any ideas on what the alternative is, because the alternative is not to do anything. We have to do something to make sure that we're making sure that our economy is moving, and that's the work that we do here. But I am so open to trying to figure out some alternatives to actually decrease the amount of displacement that comes along with putting up a tif district.
25 I guess I did think of one thing to offer, which is one idea is in the same way that environmental impact reports happened. And then they started to require that if a company, if they want to do business in the city, they need to explain and they need to have insurance for the harm that they could potentially do, I think that there's room to investigate community stabilization, impact reports, and to try to shift that onus back onto the folks that are profiting from that investment and receiving incentives to invest, right. That they would need to demonstrate what resources, what form of actions are they taking to make sure that the community that's there today is the community that's there tomorrow.
26 If they get some tif dollars? Because if you do that across the board, as you see, we have a lot of folks who have moved out of the city because of the taxation, because of, you know, protesting and homelessness and a number of other things. And so what we want to do is make sure that we're also not displacing business people as well, because they're the ones who are paying the bills for the social services that we need so desperately here in, in the city of Portland. So there has to be a happy medium. It's not either or. It's in addition to okay.
27 And I would not want us to like we've already invested millions into this. Stopping it now, it would mean affordable housing doesn't get funded. It would mean all sorts of things. And so I'm very much on the same page of we need something and yes.
28 And so let's, let's talk to the chair and see what he thinks about doing, getting a report done. And we can come back together on this. Thank you so much for your presentation.
29 And before I go to councilor Clark, I just want to respond directly. I think that that's the appropriate use of this committee is to sort of do that type of fact finding that's impartial so we can invite prosper Portland to, you know, deliver, deliver their assessment. But we can also bring in expert witness testimony for folks that are experts in this field that don't have stake in Portland and can be disinterested. So that's something that I think we could work on maybe post budget season. But but I will I will give it to councilor Clark to ask her questions.
30 Well, thank you, mr. Chair, and I agree. I think we have some progressive policy institute's that might be able to offer that. Excuse my voice. I think I'm losing it, councilor Smith really took my question, but I just want to make a couple of comments. I was on the vulcan mind meld here. I really appreciate your presentation. I think for you put words to a lot of things that I just have felt and seen. So I appreciate your analysis. And coming from district four, I think, which is often mischaracterized, we have also suffered from urban renewal, which I'm sure you know, displaced the immigrant community in lair hill, the italian immigrants, the Jewish population. So I'm aware of that, and I'm painfully aware of what happened on interstate because I worked on the light rail line. That's when I first came to TriMet, and I was shocked by the lack of tools to prevent displacement. I, I watched that happen, so I'm glad that you mentioned it. I also just want to say I really appreciate that you ended up with recommendations, because it's always it's always easy to, you know, analyze the faults of the past, but to think about where we go from here is the most important thing for us as a committee today. So your enforceable benefits, I heard you say transparent process, no blank check, public good and anti-displacement. I think those are all doable. Mr. Chairman, I, I think that we can work on this. I'm excited to work on it and to really as what you said, set a new standard and to ensure accountability. So I really appreciate your testimony today. I don't really have any other questions other than the one that my colleague stole.
31 Councilor Dunphy.
32 Thank you chair. Thank you, amanda, for being here today. You are articulating a lot of the thoughts that I have been having for the last ten years. I Portland I learned in this job that Portland is the last city on the west coast to continue to use tif, that the state of california stopped entirely using tif, and yet they still have economic development happening. I don't inherently think the idea of bonding against future property tax values is a bad idea in order to try and get economic development, especially in areas that the market is not reacting to, but outcomes matter. And I cannot point to a single tif district in this city that I could, I would call a success. Cully comes close, but cully is still not the walkable community neighborhood that we were promised. Lents is not the walkable community neighborhood gateway interstate. South waterfront is not even like a particularly vibrant community at this moment. And I think that at this moment where we are, we are we should have conversations about what comes next if not tif. But we did just stand up six tif districts and we're sort of stuck with them in a lot of ways. And so I think that we need to have a conversation about the relationship between the city and prosper Portland. I think that some of the biggest challenges we've had with the implementation of tif is the arm's length relationship that the city has between billions of dollars being spent in the community by an organization that is not the city of Portland, the capital, c city of Portland. I'm also just deeply disturbed that we've had this. The city council has had this conversation before. In 2018, 2017, prosper Portland was beginning to recognize that their tif districts were all coming to a close, and they needed to change their business model, and they were moving towards becoming a landlord and owning the land underneath a lot of their developments. And that was supposed to fund how these how the agency operated. I come back to this building five years later. Obviously, COVID changed things and the office space market is no longer viable, but suddenly there are six more tif districts and prosper Portland is receiving 25% of all of the funds from each of those tif districts. Prosper and the housing bureau for the next 30 years. That's that's indefensible to me. It is a failure to have moved to pivot the business market. And now to be able to just accept that a an outgoing city council will approve funding for the next 30 years. So I want to call the bigger question at some point here, and I want to have a conversation about the unaccountable nature of our economic development agency. I think that we need to be able to have greater control over how these projects are approved. I've heard that these community listening sessions are often check boxes that someone said that become performative in nature. I've heard feedback from some of these. The I heard specific feedback from the. I think they're calling it space. I'm calling it spec tiff that somebody, a neighbor, was calling about making a comment saying that the need for more affordable housing and that someone's staffing it actually said, don't you mean market rate? No, we don't mean market rate. We mean affordable housing. So I'm I'm absolutely skeptical of this as a tool, but it is the tool we have right now. So I want to figure out specifically how do we make this tool work in a way that is accountable to the voters. So I really appreciate you articulating the thoughts that I have been thinking.
33 Thank you. That's all.
34 I'm up next in the stack, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my colleague and co-chair, Dan Ryan, had an excused absence. He wanted to be here for the discussion, so I don't want anyone to think that he he chose not to come for any other good reason. But but I just have a few remarks and, and, you know, perhaps a question, but you know, I think, you know, in your presentation, amanda, you really you laid something out that I felt very strongly, which is this idea that like, despite a lot of training and like years of experience trying to understand this, it's still hard to communicate what a tax increment financing strategy, just how that works mechanically. And so I'll do my best to try to do that right now with the doctor Mitch hat on. You know, basically the idea is when you create a tif district and it's an urban renewal district, you're saying that in the boundaries of this district, if you create that in 2016 or 2026, then the property taxes from that district that would otherwise flow to the general fund are frozen at the 2026 levels through the duration of the term. So any growth that we have in that district doesn't come back to the city's general fund or the other municipalities, the school board, you know, the school district, I should say, and the county. But it goes to this district, and that may be good, that may be bad or neutral. But the point is, is, I don't know that a lot of people really understand that they continue to pay the increasing property tax, but it doesn't flow back to the general fund for broad uses, the increment. And so I think because that is a big opportunity cost, it's really important to have these frank discussions about what our tradeoffs are. And I just, you know, I do want to acknowledge and complicate this a little bit by saying that I think for a lot of communities, there is a tense relationship here, because on the one hand, there is displacement associated with tif districts historically, but on the other hand, in Portland, it's the only way you've ever gotten any kind of money for your community. And the only the only way you're able to earmark any kind of investment for the part of the city that you live in. Because we have not had a robust democratic process through the general budgeting process. And that's one of the reasons why I'm very interested in exploring how we can bring participatory budgeting to the city of Portland, to provide another alternative for that democratic process, and to just kind of speak more broadly about alternatives to tif. Because I agree with councilor Smith, we must do economic development. We do have to grow in order to fund the all the city services that we need. And for this to be a place that people who are looking for a place to land and flee hostile parts of the world can come to Portland and find true sanctuary. We do need to grow. But you know, tif is just a revenue financing option. It's just it's issuing bonds against future anticipated revenues. And we can do that in many different ways. In fact, we have limited tax revenue bonds that we can issue for general purpose. And so, you know, we can do things like social housing. We can do things like community land trusts and co-ops on the housing side and be very direct about it. I imagine a world where we can have like, you know, sort of like a, like a baby bonds type of approach to sort of cure generational inequalities and wealth building that are rooted in racism. And so there's just a whole world of visioning that we can do. And I would like this committee to be a space to do that. We should we should be deliberate about it and not ad hoc. But I think the conversation is really starting right here. So I thank you for this. I have I guess I don't have a question, but it looks like you do.
35 Well, I don't have a question. I just want to riff off of what you've just said in the earlier conversation is that local governments hands have been tied, and we don't have a lot of tools. I think we've said that. And property tax is really right now a gordian knot, you know, after measure five and measure 50. And peeling that apart is going to be really hard. But my point is that we don't have a lot of other tools. And the legislature really has preempted local government from using a variety of tools, and that's something we need to explore also. And just I want to say something that nobody likes is that we also don't have that third leg of the stool. We don't have a sales tax. And we know that a sales tax is also regressive, right? It really is regressive. It hurts lower income people more than anybody else. But, you know, we may want to tiptoe into a conversation about that. Is there a way to capture some sort of value somewhere? What what tools can we actually develop at the same time that we're taking these recommendations to, to try to, you know, wrap around urban renewal or tif? I think your explanation was excellent. It's just that increment that gets frozen and everybody still pays. But thank you. I'm all for us working on those recommendations. And somehow to pull this back in potentially I'm interested in that concept from councilor Dunphy as well. But thank you, mr. Chairman.
36 Thank you, councilor. And I do have a question I almost forgot. In your view, do any of the tif districts that were created last October or last fall are those characterized as blighted areas?
37 They have to be. If you look at ours for 57, what the legal steps are that are required by statute is that first, an area has to be designated as blighte. And blighted means typically that there's a lot of vacant property rundown, lack of resources, usually higher crime rates. But those can also be tied back to deliberate overpolicing of areas. So for my knowledge and understanding, for us to even have a tif district, you have to first go through those steps.
38 Thank you for that. I guess my question is, is so I know what the statute says. And blight has a very specific meaning. But I guess in and this is in some sense speculative and I'm just asking for your opinion, but do you think that those areas were suffering from blight?
39 Not all of them, no. And yeah, I think that it's there's I think it's technically for tif districts and two micro tif districts, which I thought was kind of funny because that made it even more complicated. Right. Like what is a microchip and why is it different? But no, I think that blight has become a very subjective analysis. And when you look at the eye of the beholder, the beholder is the agency in charge and the developers that they're trying to bring to the table.
40 Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your time. And we're going to move on to our next presenter. So at this moment, I'd like to invite up elise davis with the block.
41 Councilor as as elise is taking her seat, I'd just like to note that by the definitions of blight, looking at the maps right now of the new urban renewal areas that we have just approved for tif districts, that is calling roughly half of district one as blight. That is not my experience. And it's also worth noting that the new tif district wraps very closely around the currently expiring tif districts in Lents and gateway, which I would not really argue are particularly better after billions of dollars have been spent. So I think it is worth having a broader conversation about what that definition really means.
42 Yes.
43 Thank you elise. You may introduce yourself for the record and proceed with your presentation.
44 Thank you so much. My name is julie davis. I currently serve as the president and executive director of imagine black and our sibling organization, imagine black futures. We are black led and black serving civic engagement organization that's been serving the Portland area for over 16 years. I want to quickly share a little bit about my background so that you can understand my framing for my presentation, both my academic and professional background, both as consulting with the city for many years and through this nonprofit, is really focused on community participation and collaboration. In fact, I used to teach that at pnca not too far down the street. And I say that is that it has taught me that participation alone is not enough. What matters is how communities participate and whether their participation leads to real influence in shared decision making. For my presentation, I'm going to focus on three things. I'm going to talk a little bit about the historical impacts and what has actually changed in tiff and the misinformation that we have a new community led system. I also want to talk about the myth of, I want to talk about the myth of what we can do next, and some recommendations. I want to talk about decision making. And then lastly, I want to talk about the limits of tiff and what it can be used on and what it cannot be used on. So through that lens, I'll hopefully can keep us on track. But feel free to interject if you need to. I also want to say I think there is something you mentioned earlier about continuing this conversation, and I want to recommend two professors who are locally. There are amazing consultants that you all mentioned, but doctor lisa bates, who authored the gentrification displacement study commissioned by the city of Portland in 2013. She is still a professor at Portland state university, as well as doctor marisa zapata, who is a leader in housing, houselessness and housing and speaks directly to the real life impacts of tiff. So if you are going to bring some folks in, I would recommend those two folks. Today I want to talk about the reality that, not that the reality that too many portlanders know too well urban renewal, particularly through the tools of tax increment financing or tif, has called lasting, measurable harm to the black, african and african-american communities in Portland, as well as nearly every major city in this country. Let's not dance around the language. Tiff is displacement and devastation for black portlanders, while enriching developers and transforming our historic neighborhoods into playgrounds of greed. We have heard over and over again from prosper Portland that there is a new rebrand, that tiff is different now and that is more equitably focused and community led. I will let you know that the law has not changed. Those are good faith efforts that actually need to be codified into law. Until those intentions are codified into law, they remain fragile, subject to the values and the whims of whoever holds office or whoever is the bureau director. And we've seen how quickly values can change. There was a great commissioned report from prosper Portland from econorthwest called understanding Portland tax increment finance district investment impacts from 2000 to 2022. I'm going to read some quotes for you. So they mentioned that albina neighborhood in particular, with a concentration of black residents, disproportionately felt the effects of interstate ura tiff investments. This neighborhood saw an outmigration of black population. So let's be clear. This is not a community investment. It is displacement. And it will happen under your watch. If we don't actually take steps to actually quantify this into law and to change it, we are still recovering from this harm. I mean, in, in during the civil rights movement, the renowned james baldwin called urban renewal removal for a reason. I say that because it holds weight in our community, and we are still dealing with the trauma associated with it. We lost our homes, we lost our wealth, we lost parts of our culture, and we lost a place in our neighborhood that was deeply ours. Let me ask you this report I mentioned from eco northwest. They talked about the value of 25 times, 25 times more high density development, or about 24,000 new jobs. As a report and highlighting its success, I ask you if black people are no longer here to benefit, how successful is it? Who is this for? Growth means nothing if it comes at the cost of our existence. Let's be clear we had imagined black. We are not here to argue against development. We are demanding that we have just, equitable and community governed development. Let me ground this in even more historical truth. So I mentioned that doctor lisa bates had a study commissioned by the city of Portland in 2013. She shared that the key distinction between revitalization and gentrification is the negative consequences of involuntary residential displacement. So it is really difficult when I hear statements about how successful cully is. Cully was only adopted in 20 2022. If I'm not mistaken. That is not enough time to actually do a case study. That's not enough time for us to see the impacts of this new community centered development strategy. Again, if the law is the same and it's just based off of good faith efforts from you, I'm sure you know all the data from from 1990 to 2010, the black population in inner north and northeast Portland declined over 40%, while the white population nearly doubled. That is not an organic change. It is the result of development policies that ignored our humanity. Until we are gone. And yet, despite all of this, we are still debating whether or not community participation is enough. I want to note that urban the interstate urban renewal area, had community advisory groups. There is a really big difference between advisory groups and actually having the power to make decisions, make budgetary decisions. And right now, a lot of that power is concentrated in prosper Portland. Even if we get the structure right, even if we move to decision making power at the hands of elected officials, rather than, you know, the appointees that the mayor gets to do, we still have to talk about the fundamental question is this even the right tool? Because tiff is not flexible, it is bound by law to fund only physical improvements, what some have called bricks and sticks approach so streets, parks, buildings. And yes, we do need those things, but communities need more than infrastructure. Tiff cannot be used to stabilize renters and to do renters protections. They can't be used to support job trainings. And again, we talk about business in the city, but we don't talk about the workers that are actually driving business. We are nothing without the workers. It can't be used to respond to the human needs that actually help people stay in place, like eviction protection. Again, supporting, supporting workers. It is a design flaw. It is not not a leadership issue. Tiff takes future public revenue money that would otherwise go to schools like mentioned otherwise, go to libraries, the county services and locks it into a capital project within this boundary for 20 and 30 years. Even if community says we need services, not buildings, tech tiff can't answer that cal. Even if they get the decision making structure right, you still have a tool that is inherently narrow, a tool that is limited use no matter how visionary leadership is. And in a community that is already under-resourced, already carrying the burden of past disinvestment, serial disinvestment, that is not just limiting. It's dangerous. This is a dangerous policy. And because we can't afford to have our last shot of economic development tied up in this program, we can't meet the need where it is. So my question I, like I posed to you all today is to every elected official. I think listening and community members. Is tiff still the right tool for the work we're being asked to do in this moment? Because the needs are broader, the stakes are higher, and the opportunity to truly build an anti-displacement framework rooted in justice won't come again for another generation. I want to be really, really clear. I've consulted with the government on on public involvement and community engagement for a very long time, and a focus group is not. Ownership and advisory committee is not a protection, a promise from a well-meaning bureau director or a council today does not shield us from the decisions for tomorrow. We know this as black people, and we know that we deserve more than promises. We deserve policy. We deserve to know that without question that the regardless of who is in charge, the rules governing tiff will prioritize anti-displacement permanent affordability and community ownership. If prosper Portland is truly serious about equity, they need to legally change the binding framework, one that outlives the current staff, the current council and the current politics. I've been taught to be soft on people and hard on issues. I'm pointing at prosper Portland because again, I we are tired of good faith efforts in my community. We're tired of promises and rhetoric. We need this to be policy and law. And the only way to do that is at the state level. So I ask you, will you finally move from aspirational language to accountability policy? Will you act on what we already know? Do we need another report to tell us what we know? Tiff is not is not, is not an effective policy the way that it currently is. And imagine black. Our demands in this moment are very clear. We need to codify anti-displacement strategies into state law and local participatory budgeting policy, including protections for all current and future tiff districts. Again, you are limited if you do not do that work at the state level. We need to require community led governance of tif dollars with real power, not symbolic participation. Again, that is a state law change that you need to do. We need to enforce affordability and cultural preservation through regulation, not just rhetoric. We need to mandate equitable metrics, community benefit agreements that are legal, that have legal consequences, and not just aspirational targets. It was mentioned a little bit earlier about the power process for Portland. I was very disappointed that our last charter change did not include a change in how Portland is function, particularly, I would say, around its board. That board is not an elected board by people. It is appointed by the mayor, and they have quite a lot of power for us to really do that. It also needs to be a code change, because this isn't just about buildings, it really is about belonging. Black portlanders are displaced and we just we can't afford to lose more. We lost our churches. I mentioned before our businesses, our gathering spaces, our intergenerational wisdom. We lost trust in a system that continues to harm us. And I don't know how much more we can take. I hear people tell us over and over again that the tool is not broken. We just didn't know how to use it correctly. That is rooted in quite a lot of anti-black racism. To assume that we weren't there, to assume that black folks weren't there in these advisory groups showing up to community engagement opportunities in the interstate. And the results were still the same. Doctor lisa bates again reminds us in her report on page ten that revitalization becomes gentrification when the very people who are supposed to benefit are pushed out by the change. And that is exactly what continues to happen here in Portland. I'm almost done, but I, I want us to also think a little bit about what we talk when we say inclusive development, what that means. I know y'all's charge is also focusing on art and culture, and I want to be mindful those things aren't separate from from housing justice, because when you displace people, you displace their creativity. We don't just lose our homes, we lose our murals, our stories, our traditions, our music and creative heartbeat of this city. You can't build an equitable, creative economy without protecting the people who create it. The workers. We talk again a lot about the businesses, but again, I want us to center the most vulnerable, the workers. And you cannot protect those people without the laws that bind it to justice, not just the intentions that disappear with new leadership. So today, I'm calling on all of you to think very critically of calling the full council to act with courage in this moment, the moment that demands it. We can't just reform urban renewal. We need to transform it. We don't say, I don't want to hear another like we hear you. Just show us the policy that you want to do. I want to go into action. I want to make sure that tiff and every economic tool in Portland is subjected to permanent anti-displacement protections, community ownership standards that have real, real power, not just decisions that are made in a vacuum. A different table I don't want a kid table, I want an adult table. And I want us to codify racial justice principles within this. Black planners deserve more than protections from harm. We deserve a rightful place in shaping the future of the city. We deserve policy. We deserve protection, and we deserve to stay in our homes. And it hurts me again to have us be told over and over again that we just didn't know how to use it. The tool is deeply flawed and it was designed to do what it's doing. It's not for us. I will I will yield my time.
45 Thank you so much for that presentation. Committee members, the floor is open for comment. Question. Counselor Clark.
46 Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you so much for your testimony. I really appreciate it. And pressing again, the recommendations to codify anti-displacement. I think I think we're all there and we can do that. But I wanted to ask you a question that hasn't come up. One of the issues in the city of Portland that concerns me is the lack of care, lack of investment in all of our assets, our streets, our parks, our water, our sewer infrastructure. How would you feel about using tif assets to actually care for some of our our neglected assets in these districts? How do you feel about that?
47 Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you so much, councilor. You know, I, I keep and I'm going to sound like a broken record. I would feel better if I knew we had the flexibility to use those tools and those resources for an additional things in addition to that. So we do need to care for our assets. We need to care for our streets. We need to care for our parks. And we need the services to keep people in place. So for me, I would love to see a policy at the state level that allowed for each county to build it out in the way that they need to build it out, to allow for us to be able to do both, and not at the expense of people.
48 Thank you. Thank you, mr. President. Mr. Chair.
49 Thank you, councilor. Seeing no one or councilor Smith. Go ahead.
50 Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. I enjoyed it and it's good to see you, joy. And. I, I hear you and I say ditto, ditto, ditto to everything that you said. And I would like to work with you in terms of the policy, because I know good policy is a way that we can institute lasting change. You're totally right. Right now, prosper Portland is at the. They're serving at the will of the mayor. And when those mayors change and the administrations change, priorities change. And so when you're dealing with issues that have been institutional, systemic. Displacement of people, you have to put in policies in place to rectify that. And as you see on the federal level, all of those protections that we thought we had, we are being thrown into a constitutional crisis. And so here on the local level, I think we have a little bit more opportunity to change some of the things that you're talking about. And even if we couldn't change tiff, but to change it in a way that's meaningful, that it doesn't hurt specific folks in our city, particularly black and brown folks. And I'm going to ask you the question that I asked the previous, if not tiff, what and what is the what?
51 Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for your comments and your questions. You know, I and I'm not ignorant to the fact that changing state laws is hard work. I do think we have the right folks in place. We have the right counsel. We have the right community to make this happen. To me, I think if not tiff, I think we would build an economic framework that allows us to do more than just infrastructure. I keep saying this, but we do need to think about economic development differently and not separate community from that. We need to have a community development approach to our work. I would I would strongly recommend changing the laws of tiff first. And if you cannot do that, changing the process for portland's power to make sure that elected officials are able to actually govern those, those dollars. So there are some things at the local that we can do without having to go to state legislature. But to me, I would start by trying to transform tiff. If I'm quite honest, I would start by trying to at least trying to see if we can make this change, to open it up, to be able to allow for more than physical improvements, to allow for more community ownership. That, again, is not by symbolic. And if that doesn't work, I think your council and district one also mentioned that other other cities and states have figured this out, and I think we need to actually just learn from them.
52 Well, I think we should be looking at I think it goes back to what I had asked the chair to do is to get a report done so that we can understand what are the best practices from, I don't know, three months into this job, I don't know off the top of my head, but it's very interesting. And I've always said, you know, I used to do a lot of work with, with kids and, and summer employment and year long employment for youth, but I've never seen a kid doing a drive by on their way to work. And so if we can find ways in which to train, educate and to place folks in jobs in a way that's meaningful, because in the next 5 to 7 years, we're going to have a silver tsunami. A lot of baby boomers are going to be retiring, and we're going to need to replace folks. And so that is the conversation that I've been having. I'm the chair of the labor and workforce development committee, along with chair, vice chair Green. And so we're trying to figure out how do we put, you know, local resources into workforce development to make sure that we're we're propping up the next generation of workers. And how do we make sure that those underserved and underrepresented workers who have not historically and traditionally worked in positions like the city of Portland, or been had the opportunity to be trained with the trades, to be able to work on projects like the I-5 rose quarter, the ivr, the bull run, and all of these bridges that have been slated to be repaired as a result of the biden administration's infrastructure project, because we are missing right now folks of color and particularly african American folks we are missing, there is a whole generation of folks that chose not to go into apprenticeships and to be journeymen that we don't have. And so we have a hole right now, and I'm trying to figure out ways to deal with that hole and to build coalitions with people like you and all of our presenters to make sure that we get it right, because, you know, sometimes it's hard to reinvent the wheel, but we can create another will that will do some of the things that we want to do. And, you know, tiff, they have their Lane and we can create another Lane. And, you know, I've always been that way. If I can't get in your Lane, I try to create another Lane for myself and others to make sure that it's meaningful for whatever it is that we need to do. So I appreciate your comments and I do want to work with you going forward to see if there's something that we can do, because sometimes this stuff takes a long time. We're in a we're in a long session in the state legislature. Yesterday was the last day to put bills in and everything that didn't get a work session. It's dead. Those 3400. If you didn't get a work session, it's dead. So we got to wait for another two years for a long session. Short sessions are harder to get stuff through, but it doesn't mean that we can't. So that's a that's a heavy lift that you've asked us to do, but it's not one that that is lost on us. So thank you very much.
53 Thank you.
54 Thank you, councilor Smith, and thank you. I just I'm just so grateful for this conversation both at the dais and with you folks out here. It's overdue. And so I will I'll just note that we do have tools to change how we do economic development in the city of Portland. Prosper Portland didn't always exist. It used to be the Portland development commission. And there was a reform that happened, you know, a little over a decade ago that created the Portland housing bureau and prosper Portland. And so, you know, in the spirit of we're soft on people, but tough on institutions. I feel that because I think that we can say, look, these are public dollars with human lives and generations impacted. It's not about any personal individual's contribution to x, y, and z. It's about what are we going to do with the charge that we have? We changed our form of government. We have district representation. We were voted in with proportional ranked choice voting. We are responsive to the people who are the people. Right. And so I think we have an opportunity to come to the table and say, this is why we were elected to look at things at a different way with a new lens and see if we can do better with our economic development dollars. So I hear your call for action, not just more statements of support without anything behind it. And I will be. My office is going to be looking at what we can do through this committee to make some transformational changes. It looks like you want to get another word.
55 In and chair Green. And just so we didn't talk about this, but we passed a sidewalk bill that that I authored. And chair Green was a co-sponsor of in in addition to that, councilor Clark was a co-chair of and it passed yesterday in the transportation and infrastructure to I mean, this is going to be a once in a generation opportunity to build sidewalks in east Portland. The language was clear. I don't know if you saw that, but we're making some changes here that, you know, should have been made many, many years ago. And we identified district one and district four where councilor Green is. We have the least number of sidewalks. And that's going to be an economic driver that is going to put some of our small businesses to work, and it's going to create opportunities for people to get their journeymen for cement workers, and in all, a number of things. And it has a climate resiliency and active transportation component to it. So we're trying to figure out how to do all things, but just understand we have a bandwidth and that bandwidth. I mean, we want to do everything. And that's the that's the issue with the 12 of us. We want to do everything limited pot of money, but we're working to change some of those things where we have made investments. And if this passes at the big council level and we pass the finance package, it is going to put an investment in district one like we have never seen before. So just know that we're trying.
56 Can I respond to that really quickly?
57 Please do. Yes.
58 I both am very appreciative of both uplifting that and the workers piece that you mentioned before. There is a question that my colleague amanda was asked around, how do you define blight and the healthiest communities have the most resources? I think about when I worked on vision zero, I think about we were trying to figure out how to get to be safer, how do we make it safer? And the biggest thing that came up was infrastructure. We were doing all these behavior things. We were policing folks. We were criminalizing them for actually a failed infrastructure. So I look forward to reading a little bit more about about that policy that you all just passed locally and would continue to say that, you know, being able to have healthy communities, both that are well rounded really does add to our economy. But I know we have some questions. I can probably keep going on.
59 Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your perspective and giving us a call to action. At this point, I'd like to invite duncan wong up of aparna.
60 Did you?
61 Oh yeah. Sorry.
62 I just wanted to first uplift what councilor Smith was saying about the need for jobs, the need for real investment that I have never seen a drive by while somebody was on their way to work. I have never seen a drive by happen as a result of urban renewal gone bad, where folks who are a gang affiliated can no longer afford to live in the areas of their territory and live out in Gresham and rockwood, and then commute to areas that causes conflict. I have watched this happen. I have lost students to violence like that. We have real world. You know, these these decisions have real world consequences that that continue for 30 years. There is a difference between urban renewal and economic development. And I think that we need to recognize that those are not synonyms. They are different things. And while prosper Portland has a very specific role to play in urban renewal, they are not the only tool that we can have for economic development. And lastly, I'll just say that we need to change the state law. We need to start working on that now. We need to think about this for the short session, knowing that it probably won't happen in the short session, but set ourselves up for success in the next long session. It's never satisfying to say we'll get to it in two years. That's just the tools we have, and I'm eager to help make that a reality. I'm ready to work with community folks in this room and anybody listening at home. On figuring out what that package might look like. And I'm I will drive down to Salem and testify for it. So thank you.
63 Thank you, councilors.
64 Thank you, councilor, and sorry for cutting you off shortly. Thank you so much.
65 Thank you councilor.
66 Thank you for coming today, duncan. And please introduce yourself for the record.
67 Thank you. Thanks for having me. Duncan hwang, community development director with aparna. Good morning, chair Green and members of the committee. I do have a presentation. Do I share my. Okay. Okay, here we go. Perfect. Okay. Let me see if I can move my slide here. Okay. Let's see. Well I am here to provide kind of a yes and perspective. You know obviously everything my co-presenters have said is true. And I agree. But I also want to speak about the experience that that, you know, our community has had in the jade district along 82nd avenue. So about over over a decade ago, the jade district was designated as an npn neighborhood prosperity network designation, and it was a micro tiff district approximately one square mile since then. Since last year, we've enrolled into this 82nd avenue tiff districts, and we kind of view our service area now as a home for 82nd and Burnside, the hong fair at eastport plaza. So kind of stretching along that corridor. Vijay district was is home to about a quarter of portland's asian American community and is actually the only ethnic enclave in the city. So that's that's where we're headquartered and that's where we do our work. Holistic approach to community development. We started with a community vision in 2013, and the community really wanted to see affordable housing, safer streets, economic development. And we've been kind of chipping away at that vision for over a decade. You know, right now we want to see, you know, east portland's most transit rich, most affordable and most climate resilient part of town. And we're working on that. So we have a couple hundred units of affordable housing and development. We're doing home weatherization workforce training. We have a community solar project that's funded by the clean energy fund. We have the two on division. And if all things work out, we'll have pf line and 82nd avenue. So that's come up substantial public investments, $185 million for a jurisdictional transfer of 82nd, potentially a $300 million investment on the on the on the bus transit line. So there's just a lot of public investment coming. So anti-displacement is top of mind. So yeah, we're a micro tif district. It's about $1 million over ten years, not a ton of resources. So we were able to do things a little bit differently. We view it as, as duncan.
68 Sorry to interrupt. Is it possible for you to go into presenter mode? Because I think.
69 Oh.
70 The slides are not filling up the available resource. Real estate on the screen. Sorry to interrupt you.
71 No.
72 No, that's easier to see.
73 For folks. Okay. No, sorry. So when we took on the j district, you know, with the city, we were really clear anti-displacement was number one, building community power and improving health outcomes were the goals that we wanted to approach our work, and that we wanted to be as independent as possible as a community so that we didn't have that direct oversight from the city or prosper. So when we structured our our steering committee is that community governance piece is absolutely critical. We have representation from a neighborhood, from small businesses, residents, local experts in the schools. So pcc and harrison park of that that body is in charge of a work plan in improving all the tif allocations. So, you know, those that set of community members actually live in the neighborhood and decide who gets what kind of tif allocations. So we have a small business improvement program. Thus far, we've given out 27 tif grants of $10,000 or more to the local business community. Only three of them are not in business currently. So community members and small businesses actually self-selected. Who would get these grants? They included things like new signage, new paint, security fences and, you know, whatever. Businesses need to be successful. So here's a picture of leeming bakery on division. You know, we had a rash of break ins. One of their tiff grants was to get security fencing so that their business would be safe. This also provides a level of responsiveness and customer service for the j district. That is much better than the rest of the city. Like oftentimes, a business owner will have a window broken and the district manager will be there the next morning before the business owner knows. And being like, hey, we have a repair fund, can we help you? And you know that that is a program that is much faster than prosper portland's because we focus on this one neighborhood. In anti-displacement with our small business community is critical because for our our community, I think if our small businesses, if our noodle shops, if our dim sum restaurants leave, the community will leave too. So maintaining that business community is absolutely vital. So this is just a flier from from that program talking about kind of the storefront improvement grant grants and the rapid repair fund. You can see in this picture there's van horn, which is a buddhist vegetarian restaurant, and they received a storefront improvement grant to redo the exterior, their exterior. And they've been they're in business for over a decade now. We also want to bring vibrancy to the corridor. So tiff has also helped supported placemaking and community spaces. So we have our community space at the orchards of 82nd. Many of you have visited that was partially supported by tiff. And then there's, you know, arts and murals all around the district done by neighborhood youth and local artists to bring vibrancy to, you know, sometimes a drab corner of our city. Affordable housing. So none of our tif dollars went to affordable housing. There wasn't enough, you know, that million dollars, but it did catalyze a lot of housing production. So, you know, right now, we just started construction on the jade apartments, and then legion commons also broke ground earlier this year. Fun fact 865 multi-family permits were issued by the city last year. 164 of them are in the jade district, so about 20% of permits issued last year are happening in our neighborhood. This is done without tif, but we had to get very creative. The departments also didn't have light tech, so we were able to creatively design and get creative about funding to build affordable housing. Our signature event is the jade international night market, happening every year in August at pcc. I think that speaks to kind of the broad investment that the city makes, not just in bricks and stick sticks, but in activating the neighborhood. And, you know, the city has been a great partner. Actually, all bureaus of the city have really contributed from a water bureau to the planning bureau. And, you know, it's just a great community event that, you know, highlights the community. So, yeah, for a potential of affordable housing for the 82nd tiff district, prosper Portland, for about $460 million tif districts, they anticipate about 190, 91 million will be spent on affordable housing, 64 million for infrastructure and 170 million for economic and urban development. Of $109 million dedicated to affordable housing at fb, and the average subsidy per door of about 150,000, we could see up to 1273 units of affordable housing. Something of that scale. As we worked on, you know, anti-displacement along the 82nd corridor with a transit line. I, I think we need about 1000 to 1200 units of affordable housing right now. We probably have less than 100. So I think this this helps get us there. It also provides opportunity for homeownership programs for down payment assistance, home repairs and councilor. You and I have both supported social housing, and that's also a possibility as well. So when we approach community economic development, the tif is just one small tool. And I think a lot of our presidents were saying we need a holistic strategy. But I think this is this is part of that, that housing piece. Some of the lessons that we've learned, you know, since we didn't have access to very much tiff, we had to get really creative about financing and fundraising and leverage and, you know, working to bring that community vision to life. So the steering committee, the jade steering committee, invested about $200,000 into that community space, where they raised over $2.5 million from other public and private sources. The city capacity building through housing bureau and other agencies have led to 212 units of affordable housing in the district, soon to be 300. That's a million, or about a $90 million investment in affordable housing, all non tiff $0 from our tif district actually went to private developers or infrastructure investments. I think that could be an interesting data point where if you use that tif for community driven needs rather than private developments, you get some strong outcomes. And yeah, I think we have a window of opportunity right now. I put I put this this chart up, census tract 801. That's the prime j district census tract. If you look at it, it's actually now I think, one of portland's only majority minority census tracts over the last ten years, our district has become more diverse. So the asian American community has grown, the latino community has grown, and the black community has grown. That tells me that we're a net exporter, and I think there's displacement happening in other parts of town. But people are coming out here to 82nd. So we have a window of opportunity right now where if we can get this right, we have a real opportunity to do land banking, to do social housing, to really protect and invest in our community. That's the hope that I have. I don't know if we'll get there. I think that's up to us working together, but that that is a distinct possibility where if we have the tools in place, we can bend that curve on displacement. So I have some asks, you know, my co-presenter is really highlighted the harm that tiff has done. And that is all true. These are done in the large districts up in north Portland on the west side. And those are real. And I think we have to really think about that legacy and how to adapt and change for current times, and that we really need to trust our community. We trusted our community, and they made some really wise investments with the limited dollars they had. We also need to build community capacity for all these districts and build capacity for community partners to really begin to engage. I think we heard about how arcane and technical this work can be. So I think you really need to empower community to make smart decisions through capacity building and show, you know, long term commitment. The j district was a ten year commitment to this, this experiment, and that's really what it took for the community to begin to understand what it took to effectively use that tiff also as just a tool in the toolbox, along with everything else. I think it'd be really nice to have a timeout mechanism in the larger tiff districts. You know, we've seen projects in various places, especially in Lents, where I'm just like, why did why did we do that? And there wasn't any mechanism where the community could be like, hold up, let's, let's have a conversation about this. And it might be, you know, 20, $30 million investment. And it just kind of moves forward. So oftentimes we just don't know. And if there is that like transparency in a way to be like timeout, let's have this conversation and really examine, you know is this values aligned. Is this going to bring value to the community or is this just, you know, a handout for developers? I think that would be really valuable. You know, I think we talked about everyone here, kind of an all hands on deck approach. There's no magic bullet for anti-displacement tiff, isn't it? But it's part of that. It could be part of that toolbox, but we really need to be thoughtful about how we layer that bricks and stick sticks with workforce development, with supporting our small business community, with providing affordable commercial spaces. How do we have childcare facilities? How do we do utility assistance? How do we do down down payment assistance and home repairs? So we have to have kind of that like baseline funding, but we have to layer on a lot of things at the city, in the county and other jurisdictions, too. We ought to work together because, you know, there is no one path. There is no one magic formula. Like it takes all of that. It takes coordination and it requires commitment. I think this is also a time to be flexible and adaptable, like land banking could be really valuable. You know, we know there's hundreds of millions of investment coming to the 82nd corridor. Those auto lots are going to turn over pretty quickly when the time comes. So, you know, land banking and being thoughtful about future development could be really valuable. And just, you know, being able to coordinate across the city bureaus so that everyone is rowing, rowing in the same direction. I think that's been the missing piece. We talk a lot about prosper 100%. You know, we need to have that conversation, but also the conversation needs to be had about how does the transportation bureau, you know, public safety, the housing bureau, how are we all on the same page to deliver expectations for a community? So, yeah, I think it's about coordination and efficiency. We all got to work together as governments and as community to really kind of get these visions in place. I think that's it. The. Yeah. So I guess just to end. We have a real opportunity here to really get things right and to plan ahead. You know, I think on 82nd, we have a lot of empty storefronts right now. And before the pandemic, you could see, like in my neighborhood, we have you can buy a banh mi sandwich for like 350, but just a couple of blocks down the street on division, you can buy a $14 banh mi. And that's a that's a real indicator of like how displacement is moving down that corridor. So if we can get, you know, the framework and the decision making, right, I think we can really kind of preserve the community that we have. And that's really what I think the community is asking of us. So thank you for your time.
74 Thank you so much. Duncan. And I just I really like the way you left it with bringing us back to this statement of fact, which is that we have opportunities ahead of us. The six new tif districts haven't really started yet, and which means that we have pretty much a blank canvas. And I just really appreciate the kind of nuance and critical piece. The yes and aspect, I think is helpful because I see it as opportunities to kind of layer on social housing, layer on rental assistance, renter protections, you know, things like no pet rent, you know, all that kind of stuff. We can be very we can be very creative and flexible in making sure that our our community members don't don't get pushed out. So thank you for that. And I think I'll open it up to councilor Clark first and then we'll take questions from there.
75 Thank you, mr. Chair.
76 I that's exactly it. The holistic approach. It's not just one lever. It's all of those things that have to work together. So I really appreciate in. Hi duncan, I great to see you. I really appreciate your statement about all hands on deck and that it is a holistic approach if we're going to really make this thing work. I have a couple of questions for you just to maybe tease out a little bit. And I want to make a statement too, about land banking. You're singing my song. You know, I was a I started my career as an affordable housing advocate, and I've been talking about land banking for about 40 years. And finally, it seems to have caught fire. And I'm hoping that in the tif districts that we're able to identify where those opportunities are, that we can, that we can do that. And maybe you can help identify where those opportunities are, also. Sure. But I wanted to ask you a question. Could you just tease out a little bit more about the community strengthening? How did that happen? How did you do that? How how did this work in in strengthening the community? And secondly, how do we best build capacity? Where where does that come from? Is it hands on? Is it teaching? What's your perspective on that as well? That would be helpful.
77 Yeah. Thanks for those questions. You know I think community strengthening means a lot of things right. It means having safe, affordable housing. It means getting people to get their job. It means parks and nature. But I think fundamentally what we are missing in our neighborhood and probably all of east Portland was like political representation. So that really came from kind of grassroots organizing, right? This, this data around the disparities that exist has been around forever. So we all know the challenges. But like it took political will to make those differences. So I think we were like, people should run for office. You know, the entire 82nd corridor right now is now represented by by vietnamese American women. That representation matters, right? So I think that that was a really intentional, you know, action on behalf of the community was like, how do we get that jurisdictional transfer done? Well, it takes political will because we've tried for decades. So, yeah, I think that that community organizing aspect cannot be downplayed. That's something not that that tiff can't pay for. But, you know, the city has a civic leadership program. You know, foundations are investing in that. So it is really finding kind of like the funding sources from, from all around to, to actually invest in some deep community organizing. I'm sorry. What was your second question.
78 About capacity building? What's the best way. Capacity building? Nonprofits are having a hard time right now. There's a smaller, smaller pie for everyone in the federal government. As you know, is axing contracts left and right. So I think what, you know, nonprofits could really use is both that technical assistance, but also longer term, unrestricted funding. I think that's how a lot of money came into the district was like trust in that community, trust in those organizations. And kind of provide the resources that we need to be successful and scale up over time. Right. So our first project in the district was actually just a community garden, not just a community garden. That was a big undertaking. In 2013, but that that kind of trust building and. Experience allowed us to do a community center and then affordable housing. And, you know, it takes intentionality t, to grow that that tactical ability.
79 It would seem.
80 To me that all of your projects have really built capacity by all the hands on work that people have done.
81 Yeah, it's been a real community effort.
82 In the district, exactly.
83 Like business owners, residents, you know, they they want to feel that that connection and identity for a place that, you know, doesn't have the best rap sometimes like a second avenue. But it's about changing that narrative and building that, that buy in. And when people see, you know, their vision coming to life, I think there's a belief that this could happen.
84 Definitely. Just back to the holistic approach, I would really hope that our new form of government will create more synergy between the bureaus so that they actually work together and come together, whether it's in a tif district or not. But we're working across bureau that there's more synergy to do exactly what you're talking about and the holistic approach.
85 I think that's 100% true. And I think for the past decade or so, it's really been up to the community partners along with the second, to be like, well, we want this. So we have to go talk to the transportation bureau. We have to go work with the housing bureau. We have to go work with prosper. And it's really been like, does that community organization along the corridor have that ability to, like, navigate and basically corral all the bureaus? And it's our hope now that the bureaus themselves actually talk to each other and help the community implement the vision rather than and we see this in like amc district or albina vision. If you don't have that human social capital at your organization, your your vision falls flat because the bureaus and the governments don't work well together. So anything you can do to like, increase coordination at the government level is a real boon for community partners.
86 You're just.
87 Making me think of something, duncan. I will raise this with the our chair and the committee. Is that long ago, when I worked in governor kitzhaber's office, we came up with the idea of a community solutions team. And what that meant was that you brought in the major bureaus. In that case, it was the state department's, you know, housing, transportation, environmental protection. And we could do something like that here in conjunction with the tif districts. We could actually create some sort of a city community solutions team. I mean, I know we borrowed the Portland solutions moniker, but that's not exactly what they're doing. But maybe in conjunction with the tifs, we could look at a mechanism to ensure that all the bureaus are really pulling together when it comes to a tif district. It's just a concept we might want to explore. Thank you so much, duncan.
88 Thank you.
89 Thank you. Councilors. Any anyone want to jump on to councilor Smith?
90 Thank you, duncan, for the presentation. It was bringing everything together and I am so a supporter of land banking. I think that we haven't done enough land banking. If you look at what it costs to build affordable housing, we're at $400,000 a door. And this is for affordable housing. And so that kind of, you know, makes your head go back. And then you think about, well, how can we do this a little bit better? I think we have to we have to make sure that we're using all the resources that we have at our fingertips. And I think that there are there are multiplexes that we can buy out there and that we can actually build up, and it will be less expensive. I know a lot of builders and the trades probably don't want to hear that, but we're on limited dollars and as you seen, we have a $93 million deficit. I think that that is an opportunity. And like councilor Clark said, we do have Portland solutions. But Portland solutions deals with homelessness and housing specifically. And there is a Portland solutions and prosper Portland that identifies different things that that's there. I think we just need to build it out a bit because, you know, like they say, if you build it, they will come and come. I hope that they do in terms of giving us great ideas on how to make sure that the jade district and others around the city, that that they're just not surviving, that they're thriving. And we have to put the resources and the infrastructure to make sure of that. I was talking to someone about the sidewalk bill to make sure that there's connectivity with the 82nd street project, and with this new cip, because it was brought to my attention that the sidewalks leading into 82nd, we don't have those. And so that is a that's something that here we go. We have to make sure that we are intentional and deliberate in making sure that we get the most out of the resources that we have. So thank you very much. I didn't have a question because you answered the questions, and you've given us a call to action, and I appreciate you taking the time because you could be somewhere else right now, but you're taking the time to educate us on what we can do to be helpful in, in a meaningful way. Thank you, thank you.
91 Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Dunphy.
92 Thank you.
93 Chair duncan. You know, I really appreciated specifically the call out for flexibility. Our systems that we've built are so inflexible and the types of things that we can spend our dollars are so prescribed that we're ending up with building things that nobody wants. I'm thinking about the untenanted commercial spaces in lens town center that have never been tenanted and without direct intervention, probably never will be. And I think part of that is because our zoning code no longer actually serves us well. I think that the old retail model is, is different, and that we need to think about whether the, the three over one or the four over one building model of residential over commercial mixed use makes sense anymore. And maybe we need to have conversations about walk up units or other flexibilities. I also really want to be thinking about ways we can be flexible with regard to helping existing building owners convert their spaces into residential or hired more intensive uses. I also think I want to talk about having some additional flexibility with some of these buildings go into foreclosure. I keep coming back to montgomery park selling for over $300 million back in 2019, and just over $30 million earlier this year, last late last year. I don't understand why the housing bureau wasn't one of the bidders on that, or why prosper Portland wasn't trying to buy that space. So I think that there is going to be some opportunities to work with building owners and community focused neighbors who are able to use their assets in a in a more intensive way. And I also think we need to empower our public agencies to think about those open market solutions to certain situations that we are facing right now. But I think combining flexibility with urgency will lead us to some really interesting outcomes.
94 Thank you.
95 Thank you, councilor. A lot of my grandstanding comments my colleagues have already issued. So I'll I'll just ask. And that's not a dig. That's a compliment guys. I'm curious I'm curious how you did did those projects without light tech. I'm just really fascinated that you guys were able to pull off those 212 units without traditional affordable housing pathways. So could you say a little bit more about that?
96 Sure. Yeah. I mean, this is mainly for j departments for the 40 units at 89th and brooklyn was done about light tech. The state did have a small projects and veterans allocation. So that was a part of it. And then Portland clean energy fund was was part of that capital stack. And we also just got creative in the design. These are family sized walkups. So, you know, we didn't have like the elevators and things like that. So it was really designed for families and kind of really had this like courtyard space that was open for, you know, kids to come play and things like that. So it was just creatively designed. And yeah, took advantage of other, other funding sources. But, you know, there was like a revolving loan fund or something. I think that would have been extremely valuable as well.
97 Thank you. And thanks for mentioning the revolving loan fund. I hope that passes out of session and enables all this good work that we intend to do. And my last question is, you know, I appreciate your slide and comments on getting the governance structure right, community governance and control. I'm curious how, in your experience, that has worked with prosper, like how how does that relationship play out in practice?
98 I, I think to be honest and prosperous view. This was $1 million over ten years. So it was relatively small potatoes. Right. And this is an experiment to see if community could get their act together and really deploy these, that small amount of dollars effectively. And I would argue they were deployed very effectively in terms of small business grants and small investments. So prosper was very hands off to their credit. They allowed the community to make those decisions. And I, I think it turned out quite well. I can't say the same necessarily for the large urban renewal districts. I think there's a lot more stakeholders at play, and there's also developers looking for, you know, their subsidy. So I think it's just more politicized and many, many more pressures on the large scale. So I think the challenge before us and you all is to really design a governance structure where the community is in the driver's seat with accountability over, over the whole period of time. And that's not, you know, as beholden to external pressures, but really as part of that community making investments in the community they live and work in.
99 That's enlightening. And thank you for that. And thank you for your presentation. And to all of you for coming in today. I really benefited from this greatly. And I think this is going to inform policy development that's going to come out of this committee. So thanks.
100 I could.
101 Just say one.
102 Oh yes.
103 I just want to thank you and, and counselor Smith for your sidewalks work. That's transformative. That's, you know, something that east Portland has been talking about for also decades. So I think if you all could bring that sense of urgency and ambition to community, academic, community, economic development as well, we'd be well served. Thank you very much.
104 You're very welcome. Thanks, christopher. Can you. I'm sorry. Clerk. Can you read the next agenda item?
105 Item two public comment on tax increment financing.
106 Can you.
107 Please call up the first person to give testimony, please?
108 First person is tyler fellini.
109 All right. That's right. At this time, how much time do I have?
110 Yeah. So I'm glad you asked. You've got a little, you know, you've got more than two minutes. Not more than five.
111 Cool. I don't I think I can do it in two and a half. Excuse me. So for the record, my name is tyler fellini, and I'm a registered lobbyist for and the executive director of Portland jobs with justice. Good morning. Great testimony. Thanks for inviting those folks to speak here. So I attended the district three community budget session last week, where I heard dozens of residents pleading for essential programs that directly benefit the most economically disadvantaged residents in the city. They asked you to protect libraries, parks and community centers, critical spaces that build resilience in a city facing crisis. So that brings me to my concern about tif districts. Tif dollars represent tax revenue that isn't flowing into libraries or after school programs, but is instead controlled by prosper Portland, a body that increasingly resembles a slush fund for the city's business elite. The lack of meaningful public oversight leaves unelected commissioners deciding how millions of dollars are spent, while the rest of us brace for austerity there. August 28th, 2024 report paints a troubling picture. Hundreds of millions have historically been funneled into projects that enrich developers while displacing residents. Their own report notes that the bipoc population around their interstate corridor investments decreased by over 10% from 2000 to 2020, and black residents were displaced at an even higher percentage, with tif projects driving up rents and land prices, many communities are forced to borrow against themselves today for a more gentrified tomorrow. Who does that serve? And without oversight, how can we trust that prosper dollars won't be funneled to favored developers? How can renters trust they won't be priced out? How can small business owners trust they won't be sidelined in favor of bigger players? Councilors? It's a budget year, and you'll be making hard choices about essential services, while prosper Portland continues to fund prosperity for the few at the expense of the many. Portlanders deserve better. I urge the committee to take a critical look at prosper portland's use of tif dollars. Let's introduce stronger public oversight and accountability. Ensure funds are directed towards equitable community investments, and make it clear that portlanders deserve transparency, not backroom deals. It's time to ask who truly benefits from prosper prosperity? And what kind of Portland are we building with these funds? The answers must center our communities, not just developers and business interests that I'll yield my time. Thanks so much.
112 Thank you. Tyler. At this time, can we bring up the next presenter or person giving testimony?
113 Next we have lynn felton.
114 Thank you. Lynn, please state your name for the record.
115 Lynn felton, rj terrace neighborhood association and the parkrose rj opportunity coalition. Hello, councilors, spac or space? Tiff was one of the six tifs passed by council in the fall with this passage. Those in sumner park rose are gay and columbia corridor area. Know that change is coming. Since this is a new council, I want to tell you an old story. You might have already heard this before. Once upon a time, 1983 parkrose, rj and much of outer east Portland was annexed by the city of Portland. The zoning stayed pretty much the same, except for parkrose rj wilks. As noted in the 1989 columbia corridor rezoning project, the city commissioner in charge of the bureau of planning and sustainability at the time, earl blumenauer, noted substantial changes were made from zoning, farm to industrial choices were made. Those choices allowed the former industrial zoned land that was in the pearl, the south waterfront, to be moved out to a little known area of Portland. After all, by state law, a city has to have a certain amount of industrial zoning for job growth. Our area of town has made numbers work for portland's economic opportunity analysis for years, development dollars reigned downtown, political careers were made, prosperity didn't extend to parkrose. Instead, the airport way ura was formed, creating millions for the city. For parkrose, our historic district cratered, the gateway ura was formed while neighborhoods like omsi district, montgomery park area plan were developed, gateway languished. The lowest performing tif according to echo northwest. Once again, while I appreciate the cip policy movement, it feels like we are an afterthought. Zidell yards, james beard marketplace, darcelle plaza reconnecting albina old town incubator project whereas outer east Portland in the conversation gateway tif outcome clearly shows tif districts alone will not bring economic vibrancy to outer east Portland focus private capital expertise and support for community voices are needed. I hope this new council will recognize the tremendous wealth and opportunity we have created for this city at a high livability and opportunity cost to our neighborhoods. We might not be the well-known Portland, but we are the Portland that has made modern Portland possible. The 40 year old bill is due. I look forward to this council's energy, creativity and focus as we move into a new era in outer east Portland. Thank you.
116 Thank you lynn, and I'd like to offer my district one councilors an opportunity to give any remarks if they so choose, because this is in that district.
117 Thank you. Come back up. Come back up. I want to thank you for bringing that forward. And I've listened to you throughout the summer times. Yes, throughout the summer. And to date about the needs of our gay park, rose wilks I do live in wilks and we have to come up with something that we can, we can do to spur development. I hate to be a broken record about sidewalk improvement, but we have a few issues in that area that that we can try to address from an economic standpoint. I think that's workforce. We need a trained workforce for the future. And I believe that we can get that workforce from outer east Portland. I met with the superintendent from, from parkrose and david douglas about a month ago and talked to them about how can we work on projects that would utilize david douglas cte and utilize students and former students at parkrose, and see if we can help to get them into apprenticeship programs that will either put you in a track for city jobs, because we currently have 855 vacant ftes, and which leads to this huge $50 million overtime bill, and then to also put them on a track to do work in the trades. And as I talked about. So that's what, you know, I think would be helpful. The kmart building that is, you know, troubling, very troubling. We don't have time to pull that back. But I would like to see us do something with the old sheriff's office. It's not in in parkrose, but it is a big pot of land that we can do some economic development on 122nd in glisan that could serve folks in the area and bring bring about some sort of change. It's just sitting there. And so, you know, some some neighbors have told me we don't want any more affordable housing. Well, you know, people are, you know, rent burdened in outer southeast. So what do we do with that? I want to have some public meetings on how do we. Multnomah county owns it, but how do we figure out ways in which we can spur our economy with that big footprint out there? I don't know what you think about that.
118 I 100%.
119 Can briefly respond.
120 Okay, 100% agree on job creation and training being fundamental to stimulating the economy. And district one. I would encourage. Cole's closing as an opportunity. We have many mystery borders out in district one. One of those is between Portland community college and mount hood community college. To me, cole's represents an opportunity that mount hood community college could move into. You'd get training, education, and you'd have a economic stimulus for that area. I would encourage when members of city of Portland workforce speak to you, and they mention internship programs that they have at pcc to see if they have those internship programs at mount hood community college, because those are where the kids in district one are going to write. And I would encourage that continuity. I agree, sheriff's office would love to see that repurposed in a way that would benefit the community.
121 Thank you.
122 Thank you. Councilor Dunphy. Do you want to offer any comments?
123 You know, lynn, I have really come to appreciate your council and your insistence you have. You've highlighted a lot of the potential in east Portland, and I'm trying to be as optimistic as I can as having worked in public service for 20 years. I'm not naturally an optimist anymore, but at this point, I'm I'm desperate to be optimistic about the future of east Portland because there is so much potential, there's so much land, there's so much opportunity to use that land in ways that now that we have actual representation for east Portland, maybe those developers will feel the confidence to invest. But we can build 20 stories of mixed use in gateway that that cole's site as it stands now, and the lot south of the fred meyer are blights on the community because they have been disinvested, but they could be so much more. And the opportunity there is real. I'm dedicated to trying to push as hard as I can for any of those opportunities to be done in a thoughtful and intentional way that actually brings more activity. So I'm really just I appreciate you continuing to beat the drum and be the voice for, for our community and, and to hold us accountable to this. So I just thank you for continuing to be that.
124 Thank you.
125 Thank you so much. And thank you for indulging my instinct to want to do a little two way conversation from here, which is really what these committees are supposed to be about. I believe that concludes public testimony. So at this point, I'm going to close this out by saying, expect more of this type of engagement from this committee in the future. We will hear from prosper Portland, we will hear from our community and economic development service area and all the other bureaus. But the goal is to take what is pro forma comment and turn it into collaboration. And that's, that's that's what I hope we're going to do here today. And that's where this conversation starts. So thank you so much, councilors, for your thoughtful engagement on this. And I look forward to working with you. Future meetings, I think through the budget season, will will likely be focused on holding space and keeping space for budget issues that any of us need to take up in this committee. So look forward to that. And with that, I thank you for your time and attendance. And I close this out.
126 I guess we'll see. Adjourned. But I think everyone got the got the point. Yes, sir.