The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-09-17
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (27,293 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
Portland City Council held its September 17, 2025 session, opening amid disruption from attendees protesting an ICE facility and calling for permit revocation; the meeting was briefly recessed, decorum rules were read, and a statement was issued noting a notice of violation would be sent regarding the facility, with council explaining constraints around ex parte communication given a possible future land-use process. Roll call confirmed a quorum, and the agenda was approved with two items pulled from consent. Public communication included testimony on homelessness policy, an anti-idling ordinance proposal, and renters' rights organizing. The committee referral list was read, covering transportation, finance, housing, and land-use items, and the consent agenda passed by vote (outcome recorded in the vote ledger). The regular agenda's main item was a resolution reaffirming commitment to the Vision Zero Action Plan and establishing a cross-bureau task force, discussed extensively through staff summary, questions to transportation staff, and dozens of public testimonies from residents, advocates, survivors of traffic crashes, and county representatives. Two amendments—addressing community engagement and overrepresentation of homelessness in traffic fatalities—were introduced, discussed, and voted on (outcomes in the vote ledger), followed by extended council discussion and a final vote on the amended resolution. Remaining agenda items were carried over to the next day's meeting.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 Good evening. It is 6 p.m. On Wednesday, September 17th. I am calling to council today's city council meeting.
1 While ice continues to terrorize our community.
2 Thank you so much for being here tonight.
3 That you have finally issued a notice of violation for ice's conditional use facility.
4 Thank you so much for being here. As you saw, there's information that will be coming out.
5 Follow through and revoke the ice permit.
6 I'm happy for us to have more conversation about this later, but unfortunately there's not a lot we can do right in this moment, and I'd like us to be able to start this meeting. We have people here for important business.
7 I shall the Portland.
8 Our seattle, Portland.
9 Portland.
10 Seattle, Portland.
11 I sound of Portland.
12 Over this.
13 Roll over this so that we can continue our meeting.
14 That does not care about.
15 Let's try to take roll.
16 Koyama Lane.
17 Are are here business community are LGBTQ Novick.
18 Clark here. Green here. Zimmerman. Here. Avalos.
19 Present.
20 Dunphy.
21 Here.
22 Smith here. No.
23 Here.
24 Here. Ryan.
25 Anthony. Here.
26 Kermit. I'm not.
27 I would love to have a conversation, but we're not able to do that. When you're yelling over our meetings, we have business to do. And there are conversations that we could have if you were able to sit down and wait until we got to a point where we could do that, I.
28 Portland, Portland, Portland.
29 We are not able to have a conversation about this when you are interrupting the meeting. Portland there are things that we could talk about if you were able to be a part of our meeting.
30 Make sure to stay and make sure they get to. Yeah, just a minute, I.
31 So we do have a quorum, but we are going to have to recess the meeting if we're not able to continue our work. Are you interested in a conversation or are you interested in yelling at council and not getting a response? Us we are not able to respond when you are yelling over our meeting. Okay, I do, but I'm not able to read it.
32 He has a statement to read. Do you want to hear it? She has a statement for you.
33 We are going to recess this meeting for 20 minutes. We are going to have to clear council chambers so that we are able to do our work. When we come back. This conduct is disrupting the meeting. This is a warning that if there is continued disruption, we will have to eject people.
34 Can I say something?
35 We are recessing for 20 minutes. We are going to have to clear folks out of the room for people who are here for our later work, including the children who are here to talk about safety in our city. I apologize. Please stay so that we can hear from you in 20 minutes.
36 Children.
37 I. I am glad. Revoked the permit.
38 Our.
39 Can I have a question? Hello? Is this on.
40 Permit? I sound Portland.
41 Permit. Like it's on this non-working permit.
42 Department.
43 I shouted Portland.
44 Permit.
45 The permit!
46 Can you hear me? Okay. I have a question. I have a question for the audience.
47 The permit out of Portland.
48 Here. Do you want to know where we're at in the permit process or no?
49 Portland.
50 I sound Portland.
51 I'm hearing some yeses in the audience. Here's here's the thing. We can give you an update on where we're at in the permit process.
52 What are we? What?
53 Not we are. We are not in the process. It is not at our table right now for us to do that.
54 Shut it down.
55 You, susan, for your assistance. But the problem is that the permit decision is not at city council's table right now.
Procedural episode · turns 56–64
Parliamentary activity detected in this stretch (see the markers above). An editor-reviewed analysis has not been published for this episode yet.
56 Permit? Shut it down.
57 Anyone? If anyone is actually interested in hearing where we're at in the process, I am happy to meet you in the hall and talk to you and tell you where we're at and what we're doing. Thank you.
58 Shut it down. Close the doors. Stop the kidnaping. Stop what?
59 Yeah, that's wild, man.
60 Thank you all for that short break. I am reconvening tonight's council meeting, and could we please get the rules of order and decorum read?
61 Yes, sir. Thank you.
62 Welcome to the Portland city council. To testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at ww dot dot gov slash council agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's web page. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over, the presiding officer preserves order disruptive conduct, such as shouting. Refuse to include your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others. Testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council calls your name. Thank you.
63 Thank you colleagues. The next item on the agenda is agenda approval. Two items have been pulled off the consent agenda. One, the administration and the mayor asked to pull back and one has been moved to the regular agenda. Otherwise, there have not been any requests to reorder or amend the agenda. Does anybody have.
64 Can you clarify which items were pulled, please?
65 Yes, I can do that.
66 Let me scroll down here.
67 Sorry.
68 The. Agenda item number five declare a property located at southeast 21st and southeast powell boulevard boulevard has been pulled off consent and is now on the regular agenda. There was an item previously on consent that I am not seeing here right now.
69 Number.
70 Oh, that's not true. Agenda item four on the consent agenda has been pulled back to the mayor's office and will not be heard today.
71 Thank you. Are there.
72 Any other requests to amend, reorder or add items to today's agenda? Seeing none, do I have unanimous consent to approve the agenda? Okay, I see no objections. Colleagues. The next item on the agenda is public communication. Keelan, could you please call up our first guest for public communication?
73 First up we have richard elmire.
74 Mr. Elmire, welcome.
75 My name is richard elmire. There is not enough money nor political will to provide permanent homeless public housing and preventative homeless funding and temporary homeless accommodations and clear and clean all illegal campsites for all the currently unhoused population of Portland. Recent federal and state actions will soon exacerbate the problem by guaranteeing an increase in the number of homeless. A majority of voters in Portland and statewide have repeatedly listed their top priority as removing illegal camping from public property. The moment the Portland city council adopted their budget, it officially took on the burden, responsibility and accountability for a policy that would resolve portland's homeless crisis while satisfying public demands. These are the spending priorities to achieve public goals, remove all persons and their property from illegally camping on public property, and then clean those sites. Provide temporary housing of any type, including tents with platforms on sanctioned public property, along with all humanitarian necessities. Provide a detention facility. To date, all members of the council support allowing illegal camping on public property. This is in direct contravention of the will of the majority of Portland voters, and who will do the counting on December 1st, 2025, to determine if all illegal camping on public property has ended in Portland, the mayor's office, city councilors office, police. To date, all members of the council have no idea what the makeup of the three classes of housing inventory are in their districts, nor how much they want to add in each category, nor what it will cost, nor how much of our public funds they are willing to spend to achieve their goals. So the question arises which of the councilors up for reelection in November 3rd, 2026? That is Olivia Clark, mitchell Green, Tiffany Koyama Lane, angelina Morillo, Steve Novick and Eric Zimmerman will campaign on a platform of supporting illegal camping on public property and a platform of self-inflicted ignorance, incompetence and fear with regard to their knowledge and decision credibility on housing matters. It's time for your constituents and contributors to know where you stand on these issues. Well, before the ballots reach their mailboxes. Thank you.
76 Thank you very much for being here tonight.
77 Next up we have lucas carper. Lucas.
78 Yeah, I just go down there.
79 Up there. Okay, great.
80 We'll wait for just a minute.
81 Then as the next person on the list online or in the room.
82 I believe lucas is in the room.
83 I'm wondering if the next person down, if we want to, while we're giving lucas time to come down, if we want to move to the next.
84 Right. Yeah. Next up, joshua trotter. Is in the room. Maybe.
85 Sorry. Crowded in here. My name is brian.
86 Store, and I'm from jackson county, Oregon, home of the most unlawful genesis long range.
87 Have mr. Cooper coming up to speak right now. I'm sure that you have something very important to say, but mr. Cooper does as well.
88 About being auto tracked and having a psyop campaign ran on me with use of the.
89 We'd love to hear from you at another time, but right now you're disrupting the meeting. This is a warning. And if you continue to disrupt the meeting, we will have to have you removed from the room.
90 To my two year old son, my two, eight and nine year old daughters, as well.
91 As have something important to say. But unfortunately, we need to give mr. Cooper his time. Could our security team please help us to remove this gentleman so that we can hear from mr. Cooper.
92 In Portland, as well as Salem, brooking, medford, ashland? I've also been assaulted by genesis over in martinez, california, at the hospital and in medford at the rogue valley hospital. I've captured a lot of this.
93 Thank you for your patience, mr. Cooper. We'd like to hear from you. Go right ahead.
94 Okay. Great. Thank you. So thank you for giving us a forum to speak. And thank you for making it easy for us to just sign up and do this. I think there's a right way of making a point or making a comment in a wrong way of doing it. But. So I'm here today. I emailed you all about Portland non idling futures ordinance recently. And basically it's a very simple ordinance that I think we as a city should have on the books. We should have had it on the books, you know, maybe 30 years ago or but we should still have it on the books today. So, you know, I mean, imagine, for example, like grade school where kids are playing at recess, you know, they're trying to develop as small human beings. And there's a long queue of parents in their cars with the car on just idling, waiting to, to pick their kids up. I just don't think this is a safe, breathing environment for the parents in the car, for the children playing at recess or inside, or even for the neighbors living in the house. So idling the vehicle produces. Obviously, as we all know, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir. Pollution, you know, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and particulate matter as well. And, you know, if you're sitting in a car and you have a really good air filter in your car, maybe you don't notice it that much. But, you know, for a lot of us, especially in Portland, in an urban environment, especially as density increases, this is becoming more relevant. More people are choosing micromobility to walk places, to bike places. And so I think us curbing automobile idling is is a smart thing. It's an ethical thing. And it's it's a safe thing for us to do. I do think it should be a no brainer. So basically we would model it off after something like the vermont law idling your vehicle more than five minutes would be a ticketable offense. You could get a million of these and your insurance would never go up. You'd never go to jail because it's a nonmoving violation, class of parking violation ticket. So. Then there would be like, temperature exemptions built into it just to make the law palatable so we could pass it. If it's hotter than 95 degrees outside, then you could idle your car all day long because you need the air conditioning on. Or if it's less than, I don't know, 40 degrees. You could modify these numbers, obviously, again, to make it palatable for us to just get on the books. If it's colder than 45, you could you need the heater on or something like that. So and then of course, there's other exemptions like, you know, if you're waiting, you know, to go through the drive through or whatever. But I have never done this before. This is my first time here. And if any of you know how we can get this law on the books, this ordinance on the books, I would be I would love to meet with you. I did speak with a gentleman over here a couple of hours ago at the waterfront. I'll send him an email. Mitch. So anyway, thank you for your time giving us a platform to speak. I appreciate what you do.
95 Thank you so much. And this is a good way to get a conversation like this started. Just in answer to your question, if there are councilors who are interested in working with you to bring this forward, they can now reach out and follow up. And we do have your information posted online as well. Thank you.
96 Next up we have joshua trotter. Joshua trotter. You can go on to the next person and come back lauren porter. Lauren porter. Christopher olsen.
97 Welcome mr. Olsen.
98 Hi. Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you too. Well hello councilors. My name is chris olsen. For the record, I live in district two, and I'm a member of the Portland chapter of the democratic socialists of America and one of the leaders of the housing working group. I was not planning to speak today, but I signed up for council communications back in January and September. Got a jump on it when it happens. So it should come as no surprise that my topic for today is the housing crisis. And as a member of the housing working group, I've been canvasing renters across the city and tabling at major events in support of our renters bill of rights campaign this year. I've talked to we've talked to thousands of people and knocked over 2000 doors and gotten over a thousand signatures from everyday portlanders endorsing the renters bill of rights. So far, we've held two renters town halls, one in district three and another in district two, where I've heard stories about the increasing cost of rent in the city. But not just that, but the failures of landlords to meet even basic requirements for human dignity. For example, I remember a story of a landlord who failed to make the required ADA changes to a disabled person's apartment. For them to use the restroom, the tenant must leave their wheelchair outside the bathroom and is forced to scoot themselves across the floor to use the toilet. This kind of inhumane negligence is unacceptable. There are many more stories where that came from, and as much as these stories break my heart, this is not the hardest part of the work. The hardest part of the work is getting people to believe that our city government can make a difference, that our city government in particular can work for them, and not just the billionaires and the Portland business elite. Over the past 60 years, the neoliberal agenda has told American people that we cannot rely on the government for help, that we must put our trust in private corporations and the so-called free market to meet our needs. But the system has failed to provide enough housing for everyone. Case in point is this photo that I took, you can see displayed on the screen that northeast 21st and pacific. This is a brand new seven story apartment building with dozens of empty units, and right across the street from it are two tents for our unsheltered neighbors to live in. This is the example of our broken housing system, and it must be remedied. No matter what caucus or group you find yourself in on this council, you were elected to serve the people of Portland, and that means pushing back against the landlords and the business class who whose insatiable greed has created the crisis that we find ourselves in today. You need to take seriously the proposals of councilors Avalos, Dunphy and Green and what they learned about social housing from their recent work trip to vienna. At the end of the day, it is up to all of you to solve this problem, and if you are unable to do so, we will elect individuals who will. To that end, I'd like to invite the council to our third renters town hall this Saturday at pcc southeast over in district four, districts one and three, from 2 to 4 p.m. To hear from their constituents directly, directly about the struggles they are facing. I know due to quorum rules, not all of you are able to attend, and I understand that, but I would at least ask that you send a representative in your stead. Thank you for your time and I hope you join us.
99 Thank you very much for being here.
100 Council president, we can check to see if the other two are here and then yes, please joshua trotter. Lauren carter. That completes communications.
101 Thank you very much. And thank you to the folks who are here tonight to speak to us, who signed up colleagues. The next item on the agenda is the committee referral list. We have a long, long list tonight. It is posted online. Adopt public street plaza program was referred to transportation and infrastructure structure authorizing exception to title 17. Underground wiring was referred to transportation and infrastructure. I'm sorry, but we have times to speak to you about this.
102 They have been violating the.
103 Permit I would love to make, but I'm not able to do so. When you keep interrupting. Your conduct right now is disrupting our meeting. We have people who are here to do the business of the city tonight. This is a warning that if there is continued or further disruption, we will have to remove you from the meeting.
104 Permit.
105 I'm going to ask our security team to please remove the two individuals who are standing leading chants from the meeting, so that we can continue doing the business of the city.
106 I have fallen for plan and maybe you will have so much time. To revoke the permit. Permit I. Fear for my future. I am scared for my community's future.
107 Colleagues, I have a brief statement I'm going to read so that people who are here and are not disrupting our meeting have a sense of the conversation that is happening. Portland permitting and development has been investigating complaints that were made surrounding the ice facility. A notice of violation will be sent tomorrow. I understand the urgency here, but I anticipate that this could result in a land use process that will come before council and under Portland city code prior to rendering a decision, this council must refrain from ex parte communication or any communication that shows bias. Ex parte communication occurs when we engage with when we engage in communication regarding a pending matter outside of the land. Use, hearing and bias is when we do so in a way that shows that we would be unable to make a fair and impartial decision based on the evidence before us, in order to protect our ability to participate in a potential future. Land use hearing. In order for members of this council to be a part of that process, we are not able to review all of the evidence right now, and we are not able to express opinions on this matter, because if we do so, we will not be able to participate in the important decisions that may come before us in the future. We understand the urgency. But there are limitations to what we can do today in order to be able to continue moving this process along over the next few months, I'm going to return now to reading our committee referral list. Amend transportation fee schedule for fiscal year 2526 to reflect changes in the plaza use permit program referred to transportation and infrastructure. Establish a charge to fund city payment of flood safety benefit fee and the urban flood safety and water quality district to the finance committee. Authorize the bureau of transportation to require temporary rights necessary for construction at northeast 122nd and beach street to the finance committee. Require the city administrator to develop a plan to establish a storefront support program to arts and economy, amend sidewalk vendors, code to arts and economy, reappoint serena stoudemire wesley to the prosper Portland board to arts and economy. Amend city code to adopt state of Oregon building code. Changes to homelessness and housing committee reappointments to the river community. Advisory committee to homelessness and housing research. Disparities in public contracting, workforce and employment to the labor and workforce development committee. Approve the comprehensive plan map, zoning map, and title 33 amendments to climate resilience and land use. Direct the city administrator to approve the Portland Gresham services. Iga to climate resilience and land use. Adopt the Portland urban forest plan to climate resilience and land use. Authorize bureau of transportation to acquire temporary rights for construction at northeast shaver between 102nd and 115th to finance initiate foreclosures. A number of initiate foreclosures to the finance committee. I am not going to read each address individually. They are posted online. Declare property located at southeast 21st and powell as surplus, and authorize its disposal to finance colleagues. The next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. I will remind you that agenda item four has been sent back to the mayor, and agenda item five has been taken off consent and placed at the end of the agenda. I will note that under the rules that we have considered and adopted, agenda items are not started after 9:00 at night unless it is an emergency or a 9/12 agenda item. If we do not get to this item that has been placed at the end of the agenda, we will carry it over to tomorrow's recess meeting. Keelan, could you please take the roll on the consent agenda?
108 Koyama Lane I Morillo. I Novick. I Clark, I Green, I Zimmerman.
109 I.
110 Avalos I Dunphy. I Smith. I know I pirtle-guiney I the consent agenda is approved with 12 yes votes.
111 Thank you colleagues, we're now moving on to the regular agenda. Keelan, could you please call the first item on the agenda.
112 Item number seven, reaffirm council commitment to the vision zero action plan and convene a cross bureau vision zero task force.
113 Thank you. And we do have a committee staff. Staff summary from claire. Claire, please go ahead.
114 Councilor for the record.
115 Claire and staff to the transportation and infrastructure committee. The resolution before you document number 2025, dash 204 was heard in the transportation and infrastructure committee on may 19th, where it was referred to council with the recommendation to be adopted. The resolution directs the deputy city administrator of public works, public safety and community and economic development to convene by September 2025. A vision zero task force focused on identifying actions to meet the city's goals and eliminating traffic deaths. The task force is to be comprised of city bureau, program and technical staff, and its work must include collaboration with external public agencies and community based subject matter experts. Where appropriate, the deputy city administrators identified in the resolution shall provide city council with quarterly reports on the work of the task force and progress toward meeting vision zero action plan goals. The resolution directs the bureau of transportation, or PBOT, to update vision zero action plan goals as guided by the task force, and it also directs PBOT to develop and implement data informed traffic safety infrastructure that is guided by PBOT equity matrix. The full impact statement on this item includes information on community impacts and community involvement. Eight people testified during the committee meeting on may 19th. Two people submitted written testimony on this item prior to committee action, and 12 people submitted written testimony prior to this council's agenda posting. The general themes of the testimony the committee heard included investment in investment and political leadership needed to support PBOT and completing this work, prioritizing safe bike and transit infrastructure and safe routes to schools, traumatic experience and ongoing advocacy of families who have lost loved ones to traffic crashes. Urging PBOT to focus current work on speed enforcement, traffic cameras and road design. Modeling the work after cities outside the u.s. That have successfully reduced traffic deaths, dedicating state funding needed to support local investments, expanding transit options among other modes, and finally ensuring the efforts of the proposed task force are implemented. And that concludes the committee. Staff summary. Thank you.
116 Thank you. Claire. Councilor Clark, you were the chair during this committee meeting. Do you have anything you'd like to add?
117 Actually, I would just hand this over to councilor Koyama Lane to provide the background and really express my appreciation for her leadership in getting us all on board.
118 Councilor Koyama Lane your carrier report, please.
119 Thank you, chair Clark. Thank you. Council president, colleagues and community members. Ten years ago in 2015, our city council pledged to make Portland a vision zero city. So tonight, as councilors, we have an opportunity to reaffirm that commitment. This resolution before us is not it not only recommits us to eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries, but also directs us to bring together leaders and staff across bureaus to act with urgency and coordination. The goals of vision zero are simple, yet profound. Every portlander deserves to make it home safely. At the end of the day, saving human lives is at the core of this work. Achieving these outcomes will take collaboration. I'm really I'm truly grateful to the collaborative co-sponsors of this resolution from district four. Councilor Clark has been so excited to join in on this work, and vice chair of the transportation committee from district three, councilor Morillo. And this resolution is actually co-sponsored by the entire transportation and infrastructure committee that includes councilor Smith from district one and councilor Greene from district four, and councilor Kanal from district two has also added his support as a co-sponsor, giving this piece of legislation support from councilors in all of our districts. I've learned a lot over the past months in this new job and also working on this legislation, and I can honestly say I've been grateful to everyone on this dais for the different conversations, support, questions, curiosity from councilor Novick being interested into looking into data around traffic cameras from councilor Ryan, graciously taking time to discuss this topic with our new citywide vision zero lead and dcr for public works to council president for hopping on the bike. Her bike and joining bike busses in her district to councilor Dunphy. Support around ensuring vision zero was prioritized in our most recent budget, and to councilor Zimmermann's mike bennett, traffic signs that I love to see. Every time I go by your office, I see, I see this. The legislative and administrative branches have to come together to work on this vision. Zero demands that we break down silos, prioritize high crash corridors, corridors, and protect the places where our loved ones walk, bike, drive, ride, transit. This legislation is an example of what it looks like when the city works together across bureaus and service areas on a common goal, which I believe is really what our constituents want of us. You'll see clearly that there is widespread commitment to collaboration from all of our dca's of on from public works, community and economic development, public safety and operations. This resolution is more about transportation more than transportation. It's about prevention and it's about people. It's about listening to our constituents who move through our streets every day and listening to those who have lost loved ones. So tonight, I hope you'll join me in voting yes. Not just to reaffirm our commitment to vision zero, but to take that next step forward to increase collaboration between different service areas. I know that together, we can ensure that Portland can be a leader in saving lives and preventing traffic deaths. Thank you.
120 Thank you, councilor. Colleagues, we have a lot of people signed up to testify, but are there any technical questions? We'll have our discussion after public testimony, but questions for the carrier. The chair, claire, or technical pieces. We need to find out from the bureau before we hear from the public. Okay. Seen councilor Koyama Lane.
121 I do have a question. And this is something that I have heard from other folks, is exactly how the different service areas plan to work together and what that would look like if there is someone available to speak to that, I think that would be helpful. Going into public testimony.
122 And I believe dana dickman is the right person for that. If you want to come up and introduce yourself.
123 Yeah. Hi. Good evening. I'm dana dickman in the public works service area. I'm the new vision zero policy manager. Although I've worked with the city on vision zero for nine years. So this is very close to my heart. This is somber work, but important work. I have spoken with all the dca's we've met together to talk about what this collaboration could look like. We're still in the early stages, but we already have a lot of examples of working across service areas. Pbot and police work together regularly. They talk, sometimes almost daily, but have regular collaboration meetings talking about fatal crashes, talking about co-managing the speed and intersection cameras. We have a lot of opportunities like that to build and to lift up the work that's already happening, and to also find additional connections. Is there anything specific that you want to know other than we have support across the service areas, and we are really looking into digging into it further over the next couple of months.
124 I think that's helpful. Thank you.
125 Okay.
126 Thank you very much. And I'll note when we come back for discussion later that I do believe we have all of the dca's here. If there are questions about the other service areas. Councilor.
127 Portland city council's report. Oh.
128 We are about to move into public testimony. I would like us to be able to hear from your fellow portlanders who are here to testify on the item before us. You are cutting into the time that your fellow portlanders have taken out of their evening.
129 Members of city council were not being terrorized, I am.
130 Your conduct is disrupting this meeting. We have responded. This is a warning and if there is continued disruption, we will have to have you leave our meeting this evening.
131 Sit down. What? You need to know how much pain this is putting our people through. You guys can protect us. You guys can help us make the change.
132 Thank you. Thank you for making your comment and sitting down. Keelan, could you please call up our first panel of public testifiers on vision zero?
133 Yes. Thank you. We have kate connolly, joseph perez, zachary laurenson, rob galanakis, Eric esqueda. Please come up to the testimony table when I call your name.
134 And we do have some folks coming down from upstairs. So if you are downstairs, feel free to go ahead and begin.
135 You guys are getting seated. Do you guys know that indigenous women are getting beaten up outside the ice building for protesting? I mean, to interrupt your time, but your bike guys, right? I love you guys. But, you know, honestly, you guys got to know what we're doing out here. Serious? I know.
136 We know.
137 Go right ahead.
138 Kate, is kate here? No, kate. Thank you. To the ground. My name is joseph perez. I live in district two. I'm speaking today on behalf of myself. Most people in Portland want to ride transit, and many people want to ride bicycles. 60.2% of portlanders want to ride transit, and 45% want to ride bicycles. Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine what that would look like, how amazing it will be, how amazing Portland will be, and the data to support this statement that I just made can be found in the 2022 Portland inside survey, delivered to the city budget director on July 1st, 2023. Before many of you were sworn in earlier this year. Tonight, the Portland city council will once again make official commitments to vision zero goal for all road users, including drivers. Tonight's vote will help empower all city bureaus in Portland to identify actions to achieve zero road fatalities, as well as the stakeholders who will make this happen. After tonight, the mayor and the city council need to fully fund a vision zero program that deliberately chooses safety over speed and community over convenience. Portland has a capital improvement program, but it does not have a capital safety program. Portland has not assigned strategies, initiatives, targets, or timelines to any other city bureaus besides PBOT and the police. That will change tonight. The current mayor and council will begin their fiscal year 26 and 27 budget processes next month. Elections for council districts three and four are next year. It is time for the mayor and the city council to develop a budget across city bureaus that deliver safe infrastructure at high crash intersections and on high crash corridors. The Portland community needs safety programs and safety projects with a focus on equitable outcomes everywhere in the city. City employees and bureau directors are just some of the stakeholders in vision zero. The city has a lot of volunteers like myself who want to pitch in and help, so please engage with us. Portland city council and the mayor must create a budget that builds safe sidewalks, safe transit stops, and safe bicycle infrastructure. We need more than just signs warning people of curves ahead, and more than just painting crosswalks where none existed before. We need safer systems. And as I said a few months ago, I think signs and paint are like thoughts and prayers. We need to build safer infrastructure. The city has the data and knows where the problems are. And now the mayor and city council need to budget for the programing and projects using this data, Portland city council should make sure members of the community are present when safety projects are in early design stages. The vision zero task force should meet regularly with community and finally the city and PBOT should commit to vision zero statistics. Please engage with your bicycle advisory committee, your pedestrian advisory committee and other community advisory committees. I look forward to community reports, quarterly reports from the deputy city administrators on vision zero task force and vision zero action plan. My wish for all of you on the dais is to remember a time when people smoked in restaurants and did not wear seatbelts, and our government decided this was not safe and they made changes for a better future. Now it is your turn to change the future, to make Portland a safer city for all road users. Thank you very much.
139 Thank you.
140 All for.
141 We still have three other people up here and many more panels. We have heard your concerns. I would like us to be able to hear from everybody who's here tonight. Permit is now causing a disruption. We have given a warning. If you are not able to sit down so that we can continue our meeting, I will ask our security team to remove you from chambers I. Security team to please remove the person standing up and leading chants so that we can continue hearing from members of the public who are here to testify about our vision zero action plan.
142 Thank you. About the permit. Revoke. Permit? Permit. Remove the permanent. Permit I started Portland, south Portland.
143 Thank you all for your patience. Please go right ahead.
144 Hi. Good evening, city council. My name is rob galanakis. I'm a parent in district three. My two kids are back there as well. Be going to sleep a little later than their normal bedtime tonight. Portland committed to vision zero ten years ago, and since then we've moved backwards. The most frustrating thing about this lack of progress, other than the fact that over 500 of our neighbors were killed in those ten years, is that we know exactly how to end traffic violence. We know we need to reduce speeds because speed kills. Research is clear that street design, not education or enforcement, plays the primary role. But we continue to rebuild streets that prioritize speed. We know that nearly every road death involves someone deciding to drive, whether home from the bar or just to the store. For kale, we need better transit and bike lanes so we have better options in how we get around. We also know that cities with fewer traffic deaths subsidize their drivers less than Portland does. We subsidize parking and attempt to preserve an impossibly large number of Lane miles. Drivers need to start paying for the true cost of their trips, including the $6.5 billion represented by those 500 plus lives stolen. Since we adopted vision zero. We know these things work because cities like stockholm, oslo and helsinki have largely eliminated traffic deaths in the last decade. So why don't we do the things we know will save lives? Why are too many portlanders still dying in our streets? Because I hear you saying Portland is not scandinavia. So how about barcelona, which has 1/15 of our traffic fatality rate? Well, portland's not barcelona. What about hoboken, which hasn't had a traffic death in seven years? Portland also isn't hoboken, apparently, when it comes to traffic violence, Portland can't be on par with northern europe, northern spain, not even northern new jersey. You're right, of course, because Portland isn't any of these places. Portland is just Portland. Portland one of the first u.s. Cities to build light rail. Portland, the first u.s. City to launch the modern streetcar. Portland, the first u.s. City to invest in bike lanes. Portland, the first u.s. City to replace a highway with a park. Portland, the first major u.s. City to establish an urban growth boundary. Portland, the first u.s. City to cancel a major freeway. When we say we can't do what other cities have done, we need to remember that for decades, Portland was the aspiration that so many other cities compared themselves to. Leaders across the country would tell their residents, well, we can achieve that. Who are we? Portland. So I hope when casting your vote today and when this task force weighs in with recommendations that include adding diverters, painting bus lanes and removing parking, you will say, yes, I will make those hard decisions that save lives. Because oslo is in Portland, barcelona is in Portland, even hoboken is in Portland because my Portland and your Portland is the Portland that leads the Portland that others look to, the Portland that can and will end traffic violence and deliver the safe streets we all deserve. Thank you.
145 Thank you very much.
146 Go right ahead.
147 Hello. My name is kate connolly, and I'm a survivor of traffic violence. In 2018, while riding my bike, a teenager driving almost 40mph assaulted me head on. This is a model of my spine. After my emergency spinal surgery I had during my icu stay. Seven years later, I'm alive. I'm walking, but I manage chronic pain every day. The pain from my spinal reconstruction and permanent nerve damage still wakes me up at night. Despite this, I love biking. I never blame my bike. I blame dangerous policies, outdated design codes, and car manufacturers. The way we design our city doesn't just affect me, it affects the next seven generations who will inherit the city that we build today. Today, portland's transportation plans and new infrastructure projects rely on the conscientiousness of all drivers to keep pedestrians and cyclists safe. Alternative modes of transportation, that is, non motor vehicle methods are too often an afterthought. From poorly considered psps to six inch curbs with flaccid plastic wands on protected bike lanes. Ironically, I drive more now than ever. I drive because I can't trust drivers on the streets that we have today, and I often don't have the extra hours that our current public transit system requires. Often, I can't bring myself to submit my health and my life to the attention of people texting behind the wheel, rush drivers, angry drivers, drivers and trucks larger than my bedroom. They all terrify me and usually there's nothing between me and them besides the hopeful wishes of paint and road signs. Before I get on my bike, I ask myself, are you ready to die today? On the days I take my bike instead of driving, I say yes, yes, I am ready to die. Today. I will take that risk. And that is what it takes for me to ride my bike in the city of Portland. If you seriously considered the injuries and deaths of pedestrians and cyclists, it's not hard to see that traffic violence is a public health crisis. Counselors, it does not have to be this way. You can decide to prioritize walking and biking and public transit. You can make portland's roads safer for everyone. You don't have to treat driving as an untouchable, right? This resolution you're here to recommit to today is the ground zero for creating this new reality. And I urge you to find your courage now to do the right thing and protect the most vulnerable road users of Portland. Thank you.
148 Thank you very much for being here. Go right ahead.
149 Hi, my name is Eric esqueda. I'm the president of the mount scott-arleta neighborhood association in southeast Portland, which is bound to the north by foster road. As a lot of people know, in 2018 it was redeveloped to have a road diet, increased pedestrian crossings, improved signalization, all that sort of stuff. And if a lot of people will remember, it was very controversial at the time. Foster having been a four Lane road, many considered to be a major highway through southeast Portland, local residents were concerned that there would be an inexorable gridlock and traffic, that it would be unnavigable for the foreseeable future, and local businesses saw that decrease in traffic as a decrease in revenue for their businesses. Now, almost ten years later, we came to find out that that didn't happen. The introduction of bike lanes, improved pedestrian crossings, among other things, has rejoined our neighborhoods from the north and south. My neighborhood, mount scott-arleta with foster-powell. The addition of those bike lanes has created a new thoroughfare for alternate modes of transportation, which I take every day. I biked here, I bike to work seven days a week. I find myself on foster connecting to our neighborhood greenway system, so it's become a major lifeline through the neighborhood, and the businesses see as much traffic as they did before. And in fact, a lot of the businesses through the heart of foster have actually expanded see more traffic. And that investment was a direct driver in that happening. Now, to say it's all positive is no, for the most part accurate. But I think there's work to be done that can't necessarily be done through just basic roadway design. I live on 82nd avenue and was fortunate that around my neighborhood at 82nd and woodstock, there's a traffic camera installed, and since that was installed, we've noticed a lot less reckless driving through that intersection. I also live near woodstock boulevard, for which it had a reduced speed limit imposed and a couple of speed bumps put in. But unfortunately, there's an aspect of this that goes beyond design that will need to rely upon both enforcement and maintenance. Maintenance already falling under PBOT scope. But I guess the ask today to council, as we get into this cross bureau task force is effectively partnering with other city bureaus to enact that sort of collaboration between departments that will allow improved safety through through the entire city. I know no matter what you do to the paint on the road to the enhanced pedestrian crossings, the vision zero data shows that 69% of fatal crashes involved impaired drivers and no amount of protective roadways. No amount of paint is going to sober up a driver. And as it goes for pedestrian deaths, we find that over half of pedestrian deaths in the city are among our unhoused population. And it doesn't. Again, doesn't matter what paint you put on the road, it doesn't matter what you do to the curb or how you redevelop the ADA accessibility ramps in the sidewalks. That doesn't get people out of harm's way through PBOT scope. So again, reiterating the ask to council today as you consider this cross bureau task force to really fold in as many bureaus as you can, pulling upon the success of what I've seen in my neighborhood from foster road and expanding that to I would love if you could do hollywood, that would be great. But again, taking those lessons and then leveraging that into relationships with other bureaus in the city, thank you.
150 Thank you very much. Thank you all for being here.
151 I miss the party. Should I wait for someone else to join me? Do you want to call some folks? Sure. Okay. Good evening. My name is zachary lauritsen. I work at Oregon walks for a pedestrian advocacy organization. This morning I was at a world day of remembrance planning meeting. And if you've been there, many of you have to that event. It's incredibly sobering, and it's difficult to be there because we are remembering people who were killed on our streets. The people who put that on are families for safe streets, and they are the real heroes in this because they have lost someone in their lives. And then they turn around and they dedicate time and energy so that other people don't have to. And that is incredible work. And we are here hopefully tonight to link arms with them and all together so that they're not alone, so that we do not have to continue to have world day of remembrance events. There's a now famous quote that charlie kirk said. He said something along the lines of, we have to have some gun deaths in order to have protect the second amendment. And I've been in this job long enough that I'm afraid there's a lot of people who think we have to have some deaths on our streets to protect our transportation system, and we reject that framing. We don't think that you have to accept that. And so tonight, we're here to encourage you to say we can have mobility and we can have safety at the same time, there are trade offs, right? You can't drive 55 miles an hour on powell or sandy or 82nd or 1/22. It may mean removing some parking at intersections so people can see pedestrians. It may mean it may mean that we have to like we heard earlier about foster doing some road diets. These are the trade offs that we have to do. And those are the things that we believe are tradeoffs worth making. If you're thinking, I'm for safe streets, this is a kumbaya moment. Hooray! I would urge you to vote no. This is going to take political leadership. It's going to take political capital. It's going to take actual capital, real money. And so tonight, when you make your decision to vote, I hope you vote yes. But I hope you vote yes with the full understanding that it's going to take some energy. It's going to take some real effort from all of us, you all included, to make the changes that are necessary to eliminate traffic deaths on our streets. Thank you.
152 Thank you very much.
153 Keelan, could you please call up our next panel?
154 Next up we have glenn fielding. Joe ro, connor lennon, garret pryor, alyssa plumas.
155 Hi. Thank you.
156 Thank you for being here tonight. I think we may be waiting for some folks to come from upstairs, so go right ahead.
157 You want us to start?
158 Yeah. Go right ahead.
159 Good evening, madam president and councilors. My name is glenn fielding. I live in forest heights in district four, and I'm a volunteer with aarp. Not very visible, but aarp asked me to be here tonight to convey its enthusiastic support for vision zero. For those of you who don't know much about aarp, it's a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization with more than 500,000 members in Oregon, including about 80,000 portlanders. It's its mission is to empower all of us to choose how we live as we age. I'm going to concentrate on just one reason why aarp stands fully behind vision zero. I have an expanded rationale and written testimony if you have time to look at that. But tonight, just one reason and that is that vision zero promises to protect older adults. People age 65 and over are among the most vulnerable to traffic crashes. We're more likely to die or to sustain serious injuries when struck. Vision zero promises to result in safer street design and safer streets, and I wanted to convey just a personal experience. About the importance of increasing safety on our streets for pedestrians. About a year and a half ago, while I was walking on my regular walk in my neighborhood, I was hit by a car. I broke my neck and sustained other serious injuries. And I'm very grateful that I've had a good recovery. But it it. Really brought home to me how vulnerable pedestrians are to reckless driving. And I think that is one reason why aarp is fully invested in the work of vision zero. I think I'll I'll stop there and just say that we aarp has worked with the city in the past. Okay. I'm done. Thank you. Yeah.
160 Thank you so much for being here.
161 Yeah.
162 Please go right ahead.
163 Thank you. Council. For the record, my name is connor lennon. I'm a resident of district four. I'm here today in support of reaffirming vision zero. I moved to Portland about four years ago in 2021 and three months after moving here, I experienced a car crash. I was a pedestrian on the road, and it took everything in my life that I had had up until that moment. Before that moment, I was a violinist of 13 years and in the moment I was hit. Everything I had ever known was taken from me in a way that I could not ever get back. And while I can say that I am lucky to be standing here today, sitting in front of you, talking to you, there are many days after this accident that I had wished I was not. I walked away from this lucky, but I had many, many months of recovery where I could not lift a can of soup, nonetheless pursue the passions that I had been pursuing since I was four years old. Vision zero does not mean reducing our accidents. It doesn't mean reducing our deaths. We need zero to mean zero. This is going to take some very hard decisions from each and every one of you up here, and it's going to take some very hard decisions from all of us sitting here today as well. But we need to make those decisions and we need to make them confidently. We need zero to mean zero. We need to stop removing our diverters. We need to stop getting rid of our pedestrian safe infrastructure, and we need to add more. I do not wish what happened to me on anybody else in this world, and we need to make sure that Portland is a leader in stopping our traffic accidents. So thank you for your time and let's really make zero mean zero check.
164 Thank you. Please go right ahead.
165 Thanks.
166 Good evening. Councilors. My name is alyssa coombs. I'm a district three resident, parent of two ps students and a bike bus captain, among other things. Thank you to vice president Koyama Lane and other council members who are reaffirming our commitment to vision zero and the opportunity to speak. I'm here to show my full support of all aspects of vision zero, but wanted to focus my testimony on neighborhood greenways. We are so fortunate to have this network of streets designed to prioritize people biking, walking, and rolling through our city. Greenways, greenways passed by our schools, parks, libraries, and business districts. They take us on a tour of the best of Portland. Unfortunately, they aren't living up to their full potential and as is, they are giving bicyclists and pedestrians a perception of safety that is dangerously false. Almost three years ago, my preschooler was run over by an suv while biking with my husband on a neighborhood greenway. She's a driver. Went to pass them. My child wobbled, hit the side of the car and fell underneath the car, ran over his pelvis and ankle, resulting in multiple fractures. Five days in the hospital and a whole lot of suffering. Over time he is healed, but I can't tell you how often I've replayed how tragically different our story could have gone if things had been only slightly different, and how heartbroken, enraged and urgently motivated I feel when I hear a story when it ended in tragedy. Even though neighborhood greenways are promoted to bikers, they currently serve as convenient, cut through streets for cars, trying to avoid stop signs and traffic speed bumps and signage do very little to stop people from driving on them, especially when google maps and other wayfinding apps are sending them there to shave off time. Street markings tell bicyclists they can take the Lane to avoid car doors, but they don't prevent cars from passing too closely when they become impatient. In pbot's 2020 neighborhood greenway status report, they highlighted this increase in car traffic and concluded that traffic diversion should be used proactively to protect neighborhood greenways from higher traffic volume. I have been both the biker and the driver, and I know that without physical barriers that guide cars off greenways, more tragedies will occur. It needs to be foolproof. We can't have this many cars using our greenways and still call them bike streets. As PBOT noted, most people won't bike with cars, passing them frequently. They will choose to drive, leading to more cars on the road and more pollution. Everyone wins when more people walk or bike instead of drive. If we make these changes and bikes really are prioritized, not only will we protect those who already bike and walk, but we will see more people use them. The bike bus I lead to our neighborhood school will be 40 kids instead of ten. There should be a reasonable expectation that you could bike with your family on a greenway and not have to worry a car is going to run over your child. I hope our story can serve as a wake up call for actual change that protects the most vulnerable users on our streets. We must provide the basic right of safety for all people as they move about our community. Thank you.
167 Thank you all for being here today and sharing your stories.
168 Thank you, thank you.
169 We'll check for joe rowe, garrett prior. Okay. Our next panel includes fisher, jamieson, jordan lewis, skyler cruz, alex morrell said. Morrell. Go ahead. Go ahead.
170 Right ahead. As we wait for others.
171 You go ahead, okay.
172 Hello, council.
173 My name is jordan lewis. I'm with the Portland democratic socialists of America, and I'm here today in support of the vision zero resolution. So I'm going to talk about three separate incidents that happened within a block of my apartment a year ago. I was crossing southwest morrison around 19th with my partners, when a few boys in a sedan swerved north, screamed a six letter word out the window, and flipped us off before speeding through a red light. A few months later, I was crossing northwest 19th with my partner when we saw a car south of the intersection pointed the wrong way. The car sped through the intersection, almost hitting us before heading north up 19th, which is the wrong way. Last month, after a thorns match, I was crossing Burnside with a family of five who had clearly just gotten out of a game, and during the signal, a huge lifted truck lurched right from 19th into the crosswalk before flipping us off and doing a burnout west down Burnside. So speed was a factor in all these incidents. Easy wide turns were a factor in two of them. So these near-misses are exactly what vision zero tries to prevent if it's taken seriously. We can't talk about vision zero without talking about the northwest diverter situation. Two portlanders spent years getting those installed, only to see them almost removed with little to no public outreach or process. And I recall I do recall a councilor Zimmerman and Clark speaking out in favor of the removal. I hope supporting the removal. I hope this removal would have been followed by commensurate improvements in bike safety somewhere else in the city. Recently, I attended one of the Portland solutions pmo meetings because I consider whether or not I get hit by a car to be a matter of public safety and livability literally affects my ability to live. When someone brought up the removal of a traffic diverter on northwest 20th, I was told they were told this meeting is about public safety, not that bike stuff. We can have a conversation about that bike stuff later. When I brought up the right turn incident I described on Burnside, my concern was similarly shrugged off. I'm tired of this idea that not getting hit by a car is some fringe special issue. It's not. Vision zero can't be a ratchet where forward progress is impossibly frictional, and backsliding is just effortless. It's not enough to make another performative gesture like we did ten years ago. Please back up your words with action. Thank you.
174 Thank you very much.
175 Thank you.
176 Councilors. For the record, my name is fisher jemison, also a member of the Portland democratic socialists. I'm testifying today in support of the vision zero task force. And to explain why, I'd like to talk about the outer division safety project evaluation report, a document published by PBOT that I'm sure everyone here has read. Between 2021 and 2023, the city rebuilt a couple miles of roads on the outer southeast division to improve safety and create infrastructure for the two bus rapid transit line. The benefits of the project are significant. Crash rates dropped and southeast division bucked the trend of increasing traffic deaths on Portland streets. But reading pbot's report on the project, I have some concerns. The initial version that the city released before crash data was available included the sentence, quote reducing vehicle speeds was not a specific goal of the outer division safety project. End quote if you're familiar with the city's vision zero commitments, this should be surprising. Safe speeds is the most foundational principle of our vision zero plan, and it's also the foundational principle of vision zero programs worldwide. Last month, when the report was updated after ODOT released crash data for 2023, we saw the result that deaths and serious accidents only slightly increased after the project was completed. Against the background of portland's huge spike in traffic deaths during COVID. That's absolutely a positive result, but the way the report discusses safety sounds less like a vision zero approach and more like traditional us traffic engineering, where human lives are merely one outcome to be weighed against other priorities like maximizing traffic flow. I'm left with a lot of questions that aren't answered in the report about how this project was planned, and how we'll adjust our approach in upcoming projects based on what we learned from southeast division. And digging into the details here has left me concerned about if we're following our own stated values on vision zero at all when we're designing streets, and if we aren't implementing vision zero in projects like outer division, with large budgets where we have a free reign to change street design, clearly we don't just have a problem with lack of resources. So to me, that's what this resolution is about. Vision zero doesn't happen just because we proclaim it as a value of the city and leaving our vision zero program on autopilot for the last four years has been a failure. But in restoring this task force, we also need to do better than the old task force. We need more accountability around vision zero, and we need the city council to give PBOT the political backing to be bolder in the future. Thank you.
177 Thank you very much. Go right ahead.
178 Hello.
179 City council. My name is skylar cruz. I'm a pedestrian, transit user and cyclist in downtown Portland. I have rewritten my testimony multiple times today, and as I struggle to put my thoughts into words, one thing remains clear to me political violence should not be tolerated. Now, that's a hot button issue right now. Political violence. I think that phrase needs some investigation. Most political violence is quiet, practically invisible when it comes to vision zero. Not committing and not creating a task force is a form of political violence that you will be imposing on the citizens of Portland. The decisions you make, peaceful decisions have lasting impact. I imagine everybody here either has been, has been, or knows somebody who has been harmed or killed from a vehicle, whether that be behind the wheel, on foot, on a bike or any other mode of transit transport. Every time it happens to my friends, family and colleagues, it's truly heartbreaking. We can stop this cycle of needless death on our streets. If this city is to commit to vision zero, I want to see that commitment. No more rubber stamps, no more yanking the football out from under us after just a few years, please reaffirm your commitment and reaffirm it strongly. Lastly, I want to thank each and every person who showed up today. Everybody here is fighting political violence. And with that in mind, I want to extend solidarity. I urge city council to do their best to fight all forms of political violence. I hope that subtext comes through clear. If we don't fight political violence now, I worry that worse political violence becomes inevitable and that scares me. Abolish ice free Palestine. Thank you.
180 There you go first.
181 Hi, city council, thank you so much for your time. I'm alex morrell, I live in district three. I'm a Portland native. I own a restaurant, stickers asian cafe. For the last 27 years. My wife runs it now with our family. I'm executive director of dream big city. It's a community driven nonprofit. I love Portland because it's full of creative people, creative government, creative bureaus in the in the whole city. Dream big city brings people together through creativity, music, skating, basketball and community engagement. We we've done over 150 events all over Portland, all the way from zoomies at pioneer square to big block parties, Portland hip hop week, where we bring 1100 people. Everything is free. People are discriminated by dollars all all week long. And so everything is free. We believe in. We really just engaging the community where the community runs our nonprofit this summer has been pretty amazing, working with PBOT and and getting our streets safer. We're in two pilot projects with PBOT. One is with play streets, where we close two streets every week on ninth and taylor, and we do what's called fam jam skating, basketball, music, art, free food for all. We have anywhere from 500 to 1000 people every week. And then we also were given a street plaza. And I really didn't want to do a street plaza. I wanted to do an outdoor community center built by the community for the community. So we put in skateboard ramps, 126 foot skateboard mural, basketball hoops, and before there was drug dealers, guns, machetes, bulletproof vests, a guy named powder. And I went and talked to him. And I'm all, bro, you got to go. We're bringing kids in here. He moved to a different block. We brought love to the street. There's a street closed sign at Portland dream plaza, but the community member who comes there daily said you didn't close the street. You opened the street. So it was really powerful. Pbot has been so amazing with with PBOT play streets, the street plaza program, also with support from central eastside industrial council, we have over 300 people visit the street daily. Portland dream plaza, it's barricaded off. It's safe. It's just we have picnic benches. I'm a father of two. My kids go to school in Portland. I believe vision zero is so important. Even if even if we save one life, it's worth voting yes. And so deaths are preventable. We need real action. Our vision in Portland is to be safe, vibrant, creative and inclusive spaces where kids, families, and businesses thrive. I urge you, city council, to expand and protect people centered spaces. Let's save lives together.
182 Thank you very much.
183 And this is my kid sid.
184 Hi.
185 City council, I'm Steve, I'm 11 and I'm born and raised in Portland and I love skating, basketball, art and piano. I'm lucky and grateful. Portland has safe places for me and my friends to be creative. This summer we opened Portland dream plaza at southeast ninth and taylor, a safe, alcohol drug free space built by the community for the community. Before this block wasn't really safe. It had drugs, alcohol, tents, and even a drug dealer on the next block. But now people visit like every day with skate or with skateboarding, basketball, hoops and all that. I go to northwest academy and I'm crossing streets a lot, so I'm crossing like about five blocks every day. So a lot of traffic. I want kids to get to school, parks and friends. Oh wait, I want kids to get to school, parks and friends safely. Traffic or traffic deaths can be prevented, but we need some more action. I also love seeing vision zero signs and safety measures near my old school, sunnyside environmental school. I hope Portland can have more fun, creative and safe places. Spaces like this for families, for kids and families. Thanks for listening please.
186 Thank you.
187 Thank city council.
188 Thank you all for being here. And sid especially thank you for taking the time to come downtown tonight. We appreciate hearing from you.
189 Thank you.
190 I personally witnessed his skating is pretty good. Much better than councilor Green.
191 Thank you so much.
192 Thank you, thank you.
193 Garrett prior has joined us online.
194 Thank you for being here. Go right ahead.
195 Yeah, well, what a tough act to follow there. My name is garrett prior. He him pronouns. I'm the senior policy advisor on infrastructure and workforce for chair vega peterson. And I'm here tonight on behalf of Multnomah county chair vega peterson to express our support for this resolution. We applaud the city's continued work to enact a vision zero strategy that best coordinates and identifies actions to achieve the vision of no transportation related deaths. Vision zero work has long been championed by the chair. She's been in front and center as an advocate for safety measures that save lives, stepping into the political and stepping into political office. We have multiple county departments, health, transportation, homeless services and the sheriff's office working on this issue. We're always looking for new opportunities to team with other governments and community partners to better support our neighbors, neighborhoods and larger community in the near future. We'll have two reports coming forward our racial and ethnic approaches to community health or reach traffic safety report and urban east Multnomah county transportation safety action plan. We look forward to seeing how this information from these efforts can contribute to the conversation and the broader work the city is undertaking. Finally, chair peterson has prioritized her work as an elected official, increasing funding and political awareness for transportation safety. Because this work is about supporting people in our neighborhoods, making our streets and neighborhoods safer for everyone, but especially those living in high crash corridors who are often overlooked. The county appreciates our shared focus and look forward to next steps. Please feel free to reach out to me as needs or partnership opportunities arise. Thank you so much council for this. The work you're doing here tonight.
196 Thank you very much. We appreciate you joining us.
197 Our next panel includes michelle dewberry, mark sherman, michelle johnson, ernie munch, vicki payne.
198 Good evening councilors. My name is michelle dewberry and I reside in zone two. I'm the board chair of the Portland chapter of families for safe streets. But I am speaking for myself tonight. I am the mom of shamus dewberry, a one year old boy who was killed by a careless driver while being pushed in a stroller by his dad through a marked crosswalk in north Portland in 2010. Shamus was one of 26 people to be killed on Portland streets. 2010 is the year a long time downward trend in traffic fatalities began to reverse. Last year, 58 people were killed in traffic violence in Portland. This trend is reflected nationwide, but even so, Portland is an outlier. Seattle, a city with 100,000 more people than Portland, had 20 fewer traffic deaths in 2023. I didn't know this at the time, but the road where shamus was killed is very typical of the type of street where pedestrians are most likely to die. North lombard is a multi-lane state highway that cuts through a residential neighborhood on the corner where he was killed. There's a school, a grocery store, light rail stations, and two busy bus stops. But there is no physical infrastructure to slow cars or protect pedestrians. On paper, Portland has committed to prioritizing pedestrian safety above all other modes, and PBOT policies clearly direct leaders to prioritize walking, biking and transit over driving. Portland committed to vision zero ten years ago, but our budgets and our actions have never aligned with the goal of zero traffic deaths. I am heartened by this resolution because I know that it is in response to calls from the community for a renewed commitment to vision zero, but I want to qualify my support. I'm going to share a quote from steven fullop, who's the mayor of jersey city, new jersey, which actually achieved zero traffic deaths in 2022. He said, if you just do a resolution and say we are supporting vision zero, you should expect no results from that. But if you are committed to it, you will save lives. Thank you very much.
199 Thank you for being with us. Please go right ahead.
200 Oh. Good evening. Good afternoon. My name is michelle johnson. I am the agriculture and state director for an organization called dream big city pdx. And, alex, we pretty much like, stabilized a community that was definitely full of a lot of just unsafe situations. And by coming together with city of Portland, PBOT, we were able to conduct a closure on some streets and kind of like build it out into a more safer environment. You know, it's I feel like it's a good stepping stone to vision zero due to just kind of as my buddy alex said, we, you know, we closed the streets to kind of open the streets up a little more. You know, I'm born and raised in Portland, and I've been a bike commuter my whole life out here. And I've seen a lot of the downfalls of drinking and driving and, you know, just the the way that, you know, like people getting hit by cars on their bikes, whether it be, you know, biking home from some, from work or even, you know, just crossing streets by feet. And so I guess I'd want to say that like vision important or vision zero is very important to vote for, to kind of like just stabilize safety in our community. It's kind of a been a big vision of dream big to kind of like. Block down the streets or, you know, we do an event called fam jam. I help cure rate that. And we, you know, kind of, you know, shut down the streets and bring in, you know, skate art, basketball community. And just to kind of give, you know, make it feel like a safe place for a lot of Portland and just a lot of the community. And so, yeah, with that being said, vision zero should live on. And yeah, too much more to say.
201 Thank you so much. Really appreciate hearing about that work.
202 Sure. Thanks.
203 Go ahead. Vicki.
204 Hello. My name is vicky payne. I want to thank you all for your commitment to vision zero tonight. While I've missed some of the conversations you've all had in committees and whatnot, what little documentation I have seen seems to be missing some key pieces to be successful in this recommitment, but I apologize if I'm speaking incorrectly about anything. The biggest thing I don't think I've heard anyone talk about is the law enforcement component. You cannot change driver behaviors with infrastructure alone, which is often confusing to all modes of transportation users and therefore unsafe. I myself. Walk cycle sometimes risk using transit again and drive. And I find some of these new parking setups are intricate bike lanes confusing as both a cyclist and a driver, so that's not safe to me. The safe systems approach has five pillars safe roads, safe speeds, safe vehicles, safe users, and post-crash care. Pbot seems to only be focusing on the infrastructure piece of this european model, and somehow expected it to just work without the other four pillars. Studies have shown that lowering speed limits alone does not change driver behavior. I think most of us have seen this around the speed cameras in particular. While I do greatly appreciate those and the red light cameras, most drivers know that they are there and they only slow down to avoid the camera and speed back up again. If a driver does get a speeding ticket, behavior only changes for about six months before reverting back to speeding again. This is compounded in Portland, where it's well known we don't have a robust traffic enforcement arm in our police bureau. I'm glad to hear mayor wilson has PBOT cracking down on illegal rv parking and not letting folks drive off and park somewhere else illegally if they aren't legally driving to begin with, and getting them into real shelter and a pathway to housing instead. The rv and trailer, no parking except for unloading and unloading logs is for safety reasons. I've heard anecdotal stories about children being hit by cars that couldn't see around rvs parked at an intersection. Pbot own fatality statistics show that the largest two causes of traffic fatalities, over 70% of them are speeding and or intoxicated drivers and homeless residents, who are often also impaired or mentally ill, entering lanes of traffic at night and not at crosswalks. These are preventable deaths that have nothing to do with road infrastructure. Mayor wilson is right when he says, we need to get back to basics. Clean, smooth roads where laws are enforced are safe roads. We need to focus on basic road maintenance and traffic enforcement before we continue to fund nice to have infrastructure that has to date, shown to be expensive and ineffective at ending traffic fatalities. Thank you.
205 Thank you very much.
206 Mark sherman is joining us online.
207 Good evening folks, I want to thank you for your vision zero effort. When I looked over the documentation, I found what I consider to be some bias in the assumptions from which you're going to proceed, which may reinforce what others have said before me. One of the biases I noticed is that the documents I saw assumed that we're not going to try and reduce the number of cars on our roads at all. Another bias I saw was that cars and bikes can coexist, and as is the case of division and foster, where bike lanes were added to busy roads, even cars passed me at 25, I still have to navigate cars and busses. I don't see a lot of bikes on those roads because they're not really safe. I think the assumption of throwing more lanes on for bikes on busy streets is not an assumption that will get you closer to vision zero. I think that. You can not assume that bikes and cars can coexist without barriers, or some kind of physical division between us. That just won't work. Well, it hasn't worked, as you've heard tragically, from people before me. There was no talk that I or no mention I saw of roads, road hazard. And if you put your two hands together and make a ball or a fist, that pothole can knock a bicycle bicycle rider off their bike if they don't see it. A lot of roads you have, especially on main street, are on the sides where leaves collect or not rideable for 2 or 3 months of the year when the rains start. I don't see road maintenance included in the vision zero comment that PBOT and the rest of the people did put together for it. If you consider the springwater corridor is a great place for bikes and pedestrians, it is too narrow to support both bikes and pedestrians, as pedestrians are always upset that bicyclists are going too fast. It's just not wide enough to support the kind of traffic that's on there. Let's see, I there was also a comment that you were hoping PBOT could leave. I haven't seen that. That's a big assumption. As far as I can tell. Pbot has been the lead in putting up new infrastructures that don't work. So I would really ask you to reconsider that. And I also didn't notice that we're considering other forms of transportation. I didn't see in any goals to increase the number of bikes on the road, the number of pedestrians on the road, and increase the number of bus riders on the road. So assumptions I believe should be in there but are not. And finally, I know you folks are out there with eye signs. I totally appreciate that. Support that. Keep it up. Thank you.
208 Thank you very much.
209 Okay. Let's check ernie munch. Okay. Our next panel.
210 Thank you very much for being here with.
211 Us tonight. I think we're going to call up the next panel now. Thank you.
212 Next up we have jacob. Happiness, andrea hamburg and rj shepherd.
213 Welcome, jacob. Go right ahead.
214 Thank you.
215 Hello, Portland city council, for the record, my name is jacob. I'm a district two resident and a member of sunrise pdx, where a local youth led climate justice organization here in our lovely city. I'm here to show my support personally for the vision zero amendment being brought to council today. No one should be injured or killed while on our streets. Whether you're driving a car, on a bike or walking, all people of all transportations have risks for being on our streets, and our epidemic of road violence is claiming lives from all modes of transportation. We must be diligent in fighting this epidemic and constructing streets that are safe for all. On top of this vision zero resolution, I just had one thing I wanted to add. Our level of success for safe streets will fully depend on the financial investment we add for vision zero. Thoughts and prayers won't actually build sidewalks or bike lanes as we re-up our commitment to vision zero. Please do the hard work of finding the money that will save lives. Whether that money comes from new fees, taxes on the wealthy, or redistribution of public safety funding or some other kind of funding, you must all research and acknowledge the price tag needed to achieve vision zero and work to acquire the funding necessary. Thanks so much.
216 Thank you very much.
217 Hello everyone. Thank you council. My name is rj shepherd. I'm a resident of district three and I'm also a volunteer with bike bus pdx. I'm here today to ask for your support for reaffirming, reaffirming vision zero, establishing the vision zero task force, and promoting the vision zero lead to the mayor and city administrator's office. I'm very excited about that. All across Portland, hundreds of students have been riding on bike busses these past few weeks, with now 30 schools participating across every district, we are seeing a surge in demand for getting students safely to school with pedal power. Just this morning, I arrived with over 70 students to abernathy elementary with the music pumping, students with smiles on their faces ready to learn. And while we do our best to make it a rolling party for many students, the bike bus is the only way they would bike to school. And that's just because our transportation system is still, unfortunately, not safe enough for many students to bike on their own. And that's why I volunteer as a caulker on the bike bus. I put my body in front of cars to ensure that students safely get through intersections that, quite frankly, are pretty dangerous, even for myself. As a 30 something year old, average average height man, on a good day when I. When I walk on the bike bus, for instance, we're crossing for high crash corridors. Division powell, holgate and 82nd avenue. Now try that with six year olds, you know, parents that are just getting their bikes out of the garage. It's a little harrowing. And frankly few students would ride this route otherwise. So why are we here. Obviously vision zero is this vision to eliminate fatal crashes. But I see vision zero as not just that. It's it's a vision for where we have people of all ages, all abilities, being able to ride and walk and scoot all around our city where our youths are not limited to backyards and playgrounds, where they can have independent mobility, where our students don't need adults to chaperon them literally everywhere they go. In my view, this vision is not only within reach. I firmly believe this vision is the path to portland's recovery. And so with that, I just want to thank you for your support for vision zero and for this bigger vision for Portland. And I hope you will all swing by a bike bus very soon. Thank you very much.
218 Thank you very much for being here and for the work that you do.
219 Andrea hamburg is joining us online.
220 Welcome. Thank you so much.
221 Good evening. Council president. Council. My name is andrea hamburg. She her I'm the environmental health services director for the Multnomah county health department. As you consider this reaffirmation of vision zero, I urge you to consider it as a public health issue. Unintentional injury, including injuries from traffic crashes, is the third leading cause of death in Multnomah county after cancer and heart disease. Multnomah county health department has documented inequities in the burden of these deaths, which disproportionately affects younger residents, black residents, unhoused residents and residents of east Portland, troublingly. The trend in traffic crash deaths has gone the wrong way, greatly increasing in the past decade and remaining high. This combination of a leading cause of death with unjust inequities and a trend heading the wrong direction, makes this a public health priority. Since vision zero was adopted, the health department has collaborated with PBOT on this shared priority. Our staff have done thorough analyzes of public health data to understand risk factors like housing status, speed, and the use of intoxicants. We've shared data on impacted populations like people experiencing houselessness and black residents. Our staff have worked side by side with PBOT to learn the nuances of a safe systems approach, and worked with PBOT and our Multnomah county public health advisory board to develop health public health based recommendations. In this work, we have found our colleagues at PBOT to be ready collaborators, open to innovation and compassionate civil servants who are genuinely committed to making Portland safer. We view the work of vision zero to date as effective. Where PBOT has intervened, there has been improvement. The safe systems pyramid emphasizes changes to the built environment and socioeconomic context as the most impactful types of interventions, which is which is consistent with public health evidence and practice. But the numbers tell us that this work is not over, and the investments made have not been sufficient. As your local public health authority, the Multnomah county health department is committed to continuing to collaborate with PBOT and the city of Portland to understand the epidemiology of traffic crash injuries, the effectiveness of prevention, post-crash care, and other solutions that cross disciplines strongly support the reaffirmation of vision zero and look forward to continued partnership with PBOT to address this public health priority. Thank you.
222 Thank you very much.
223 That completes testimony.
224 Okay.
225 Thank you. Colleagues. That is the end of our public testimony. We are moving into council discussion and debate. Councilor Avalos, did you have a question or a comment?
226 Yes. All right. Thank you. So thank you so much to councilor Koyama Lane for your incredible work here. As we can hear from the folks that testified, this is urgent work and it impacts people every day. And so I just want to start by saying I strongly support reaffirming our commitment to vision zero and creating this cross bureau task force, eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries is a responsibility that we all share, and we need to approach it with urgency, particularly for district one. The data is clear that east Portland residents continue to bear the heaviest burden of traffic violence, with 30 of 31 high crash corridors just in east Portland. And I agree with one of the testifiers who said that traffic safety is public safety. These communities are disproportionately represented in fatalities and serious injuries, and their voices must guide our solutions. So I think that the task force brings in advisory committees and subject matter experts, and I want to emphasize how critical it is that district one voices are at that table, because if we fail to center these perspectives, we risk reproducing the inequities that vision zero was created to address. So on that note, colleagues, I want to offer a friendly amendment that will strengthen the resolution by making explicit our commitment to community partnership. We've heard from community members that their voices must help shape the work, and this amendment hopefully ensures that meaningful engagement is built into the vision zero task force analysis and action plan. So the amendment would add the following clause, be it further resolved that the vision zero task force shall ensure ensure meaningful community engagement in the development of its analysis and action plan. This addition underscores the that the voices, portlanders, that the voices of portlanders will guide both the analysis and the solutions that we hope to advance. So is that accepted? Councilor Koyama Lane as a friendly amendment?
227 Absolutely. I am very excited to accept this. And as I mentioned earlier, as I'm learning a lot in this process, I'm learning a lot more about the different pillars of vision zero. We can post this, but I just shared with councilors this nine components of strong vision, zero commitment. And I'll say I want to especially thank sarah from families for safe streets, who after this passed through transportation infrastructure, said, this is great. You have like you're going to bring a multidisciplinary leadership team, which is one of the nine components for a strong vision, zero commitment. And we need to know that there is also going to be a connection to stakeholders from the community, especially folks who have lost loved ones. So that is really the transparency, community engagement, cooperation and collaboration piece. And so I'm really grateful you're bringing that forward. And if our vision zero lead is able to talk about what this could look like at some point, I don't know if you want to know, want to know more about that. But we can also hear from her. I think she's here.
228 Yeah. Go ahead.
229 And kind of what is that difference? Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead again.
230 Hello dana dickman, what a powerful night of testimony. I'm still just kind of sitting with it. I think with this amendment, it's something we've already been thinking about. The task force is intended to be comprised of staff from all the different service areas to kind of move the new action plan forward, but we don't want to develop the next set of actions without community stakeholders. So I see that as a huge opportunity for community stakeholders to be brought in to working groups on specific topics, and also more broadly in development of the new action plan. I also think there's an opportunity for community to engage in the new call for more reporting and transparency on vision zero. What does that look like? How can we develop new tools to have transparency, both internally within the city, but also things that are shared with the public and also through that process of the action plan? Really digging in deep on maybe some potential structure and definition of what accountability and transparency should mean for us moving forward in vision zero. Yeah.
231 Thank you, councilor Avalos. Do does the clerk have in writing the amendment that you read?
232 No. Yeah okay. I can send that to you over. Is that the best way.
233 And then for folks at the dais who are just following this, where in the resolved clauses would that go?
234 Councilor Koyama Lane what would be best for you?
235 I don't know if I have if I really thought that through. I have a preference and I know there's going to be another friendly amendment coming. Also, can I think about that for a second?
236 We're going to need to know before we vote on it where.
237 It goes. Yeah, yeah.
238 Okay okay. Think about that. And councilor Avalos, if you can get that to the clerk and if it's possible for you to send that to all of the councilors as well so that we have it in front of us, that would be great. And then whenever we can get it posted.
239 Yeah. And we because it is a substantive addition to the resolution, we will need a motion and a second and we'll need to vote to amend the resolution.
240 Okay. And we have a motion from councilor Avalos. Do we have a second for it?
241 Second.
242 Working on getting the language. I want to make sure we have a motion and a second so that we know it's on the table. And then if folks need time to review it before we consider and vote on it, councilor Avalos, if you are comfortable with us moving on to hear from other councilors and we'll come back to voting on it so people have a chance to look at it.
243 Yes, I just have one more thing in my statement to mention. Okay. Lastly, I just wanted to flag for my colleagues that my office is looking into proposing a resolution on affirming our commitment to the rose lanes as well. So that would contribute to our vision zero goal. So just want to flag that. That's some legislation we're working on and we'll bring that to a future committee. Thanks.
244 Thank you. Councilor I councilor Koyama Lane did you have.
245 I was just going to say I can email it to everyone if that's helpful.
246 You could email it. That would be great. And colleagues, so that we don't have to take a recess to give folks time to look at this. I want to hear from our next councilor in the queue, councilor Zimmerman, and we will come back to a discussion on the amendment and a vote after we hear from councilor Zimmerman.
247 Okay, I just want to say thanks. I appreciate this been an important night. I think that there's a lot of important work that has happened to kind of make sure that this program has, you know, there was ten years ago, and then there's been refining since. So councilor Koyama Lane, thanks for your leadership on that. You know, I think I've been I've told councilor Koyama Lane this before. I think sometimes we have a lot of bike advocacy in the community, but I, I'm always in the pedestrian advocacy space as well, because in my district and where I used to live in the district, it's a very much a walking area. We heard some really important stories today, both from constituents in district four as well as other places. And I and I highlight that a lot. And so I think it's important the some of the stuff that makes some of our most wonderful neighborhoods. Right. The big tree canopies that are wonderful during the day are also the hardest places to see people in the fall when it's raining. And if you're a driver through the windshield, if you're a walker trying to understand, you know, the different lights that are coming at you and the different lanes. So that's really important. One of the things that, you know, I really appreciated about the report was also just the highlight in such a discrepancy in district one, I was just out in district one. I shared with some of you that I was. You know, dealing with some vandalism, and I was out there getting things repaired. And so I was walking around and and just in that short afternoon, I avoided getting hit in a crosswalk. I watched multiple people avoid getting hit in a crosswalk. And in one afternoon, I think I saw four cars on one red light. Four of them went through continuously, and then that kept happening the rest of the afternoon that I was there dealing with that repair. So it's, you know, it's real. And I know that not everybody feels it and recognizes it, but but it really is real. And district one is just so overrepresented in this in this data. So it's really important. I've sent to all of you a another proposed amendment. And I would hope for and I consider it a friendly amendment. And councilor Koyama Lane and I have spoken. You know, if you look at the pedestrian deaths, 50% of the pedestrian deaths are are homeless folks. That, for me is incredibly concerning given our conversations even earlier, some of the stuff that was said today. So I'm proposing an amendment and I hope it's considered friendly, be it further resolved. And I would put this in the I think it's the third be it further resolved, that the vision zero task force shall specifically examine the overrepresentation of traffic fatalities involving people experiencing homelessness, conduct an analysis of the underlying causes, and recommend targeted strategies to reduce and prevent these deaths. If you do, 15,000 out of 675,000, that's 2%, but it's 50% of the pedestrian deaths. And so I think overrepresentation is a very clear term that's appropriate here. And I think we should get very specific. So I hope for your support on that. I appreciate the conversation with councilor Koyama Lane. And that's my proposal.
248 Second.
249 Okay. And a second from councilor Kanal and councilor Zimmerman. Would that go after the current third, be it resolved in between, be it resolved that the deputy city administrators, and be it resolved that the vision zero task force will invite community advisory committees and community subject matter experts? Is that what you're.
250 Yes, that's correct. Between the two. Okay. Thank you.
251 Thank you. So, colleagues, we have two open amendments on the table. I believe you have both in your inboxes. So I'd like to go back to the first one that was put on the table for debate. We'll move from that into the second one that was put on the table for debate. And then we will go back to the queue on the main motion. I'm going to write down the order of folks who are in the queue for the main motion, so that you all can leave the queue while we debate other motions now on the table. So I have councilor Smith, councilor Canal councilor Novick councilor Clark as the order when we come back to the main motion. And then councilor Ryan, did you just jump in for the main motion as well?
252 I wasn't there for the main motion. Then I went out. Now I went back in because we have these two new amendments.
253 Okay.
254 I'm assuming other people are in the same place.
255 Perhaps that's the order I have when we get back to the main motion. So we are going to go back to councilor Avalos. Proposed amendment, be it further resolved that the vision zero task force shall ensure meaningful community engagement in the development of its analysis and action plan. And councilors Avalos and Koyama Lane, do you have a sense of where you would want that located at this point?
256 Yes, right after the third, be it further resolved. Right after that, the vision zero task force will invite community advisory bodies and community subject matter experts to engage in this work where appropriate. Thank you. That makes sense.
257 Perfect. Councilor Smith, are you in the queue to discuss this amendment?
258 Yes.
259 Right.
260 Thank you very much. I'm very much in support of having a meaningful community engagement, but I need to find out what is the definition of meaningful. And the other issue is do we not have engagement with vision zero right now? I thought we did do engagement. So I'm trying to figure out what are we doing that's different than what we're already doing.
261 Dana, would you like to come up and answer that question? Or if there's somebody better to answer that question, let us know.
262 We do already. And when I say we, I'm going to be speaking mostly for PBOT because that's who's been leading most of the work. There is a lot of engagement that is already happening around vision. Vision zero, both around projects, also just with a focus on east Portland and particularly black portlanders, there is specific engagement that isn't around projects. It's really talking about the work that is happening to change streets, why we might do different things on our streets, right? So that work is already happening. My understanding of this amendment, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that the idea is that we are committing to bringing community members into the process of updating the action plan, that it isn't specifically called out anywhere else in the resolution. We have advisory committees which are community bodies. We have those called out, but we didn't specifically have anywhere where.
263 A say that. Was that. Why don't we say that instead of saying meaningful, you're giving me the imagination of what meaningful is, and my meaningful may not be your meaningful. But if what you're saying what you just said, bringing the community back and updating them of the new initiatives as it relates to vision zero, then I can understand that. But just meaningful is just a blanket statement to me. And so I don't get what's different because. Because if you all were not doing outreach right now, I would be really concerned. And so it suggests it's this amendment suggests that you all are not doing anything.
264 Yeah, I'm going to have to leave that to you to change.
265 No.
266 I'm that's my thought. That's my thought.
267 So are you proposing an amendment to.
268 Well, I'm, I'm proposing a I guess a friendly amendment to the friendly amendment that would say that you would go back out into the communities that we originally have been reaching out to, to let them know we have new updates, or so I see.
269 Update of the action plan, right.
270 Update of the action plan.
271 Director williams, if you'd like to join us up here, you're welcome to please.
272 Good evening everyone. Millicent williams, director of the Portland transportation. Thank you so much for bringing forward this really important opportunity for the community to recommit itself to the work of vision zero. What I was sharing was that, to answer your question, councilor Smith, yes, PBOT has been for the past ten years, engaging pretty significantly.
273 And you felt that it was meaningful.
274 And it was meaningful. And it does continue to be. It continues to be. And it bears out we your identification of the need for us to more clearly articulate what meaningful means is something that we will make sure that we provide as it relates to the work that will continue to happen at PBOT relative to vision zero. What I was sharing with dana was that part of what I'm thinking about as this resolution or as the amendments are moving forward, is that there are two things that are happening here. We are, as a city, committing to bureaus largely PBOT, continuing in its work around vision zero. However, with dana being moved into this different space, there needs to be the acknowledgment of that continuation of the outreach from the space that she's now residing, which is outside of PBOT and now housed within the deputy city administrator's office. So there's an additional layer of outreach that will differ or but it will be complementary to what's happening with pbot's work. But it's more related to the vision zero task force. More specifically.
275 Yeah, I think thank you for articulating that. I think it's.
276 That was that was very good because so that that makes a difference because it just for me I it didn't sit well with me because it gave the appearance that you all weren't doing anything. I know you were so and I want you to be able to I want us to be able to clearly state what we want you to do in this resolution and in this, in this amendment, because I think it's important.
277 Thank you. Council.
278 Thank you.
279 Would you be willing to accept a a friendly amendment to the friendly amendment?
280 Can you repeat what the wording of that would be for us?
281 Well, it sounded like to me that they said that there was different outreach that was being done in PBOT that is now going to be done in the in the dca's office. That will include going back out to the community to update them on the task force plan.
282 So right now, what councilor Avalos is proposing is be it further resolved, that the vision zero task force shall ensure meaningful community engagement in the development of its analysis and action. Are you proposing something like.
283 And it should include reaching back out to the community and updating them on the new plans of vision zero.
284 So a comma where the period is and then adding that clause, you just said.
285 Yes okay.
286 I believe in less. Councilor Avalos we have two options. Councilor Avalos can change her amendment or we can vote on the underlying and then either adopt it and have an amendment to add this as well, or reject it and propose a new amendment. Councilor Avalos, let us know where you're at here.
287 I guess I also want to see it in writing. I don't I didn't catch exactly what the what the addition is.
288 So councilor Smith, can you send that to councilor Avalos?
289 I can also try to type it up if you'd like. Counselor Smith.
290 Okay, okay.
291 That helpful?
292 Let me see. Comma.
293 I'm going to pause for a minute, colleagues, so that we can get this down and make sure we know what we're all debating and voting on.
294 Okay. So we would put a comma behind the action plan. And it would say. Development of its analysis of the action plan. And to include. Updating. Of all. Communities. Of the new action plan. Is is that okay. So well I just want to so when you say meaningful and you leave it standing there, I mean what does meaningful mean? I just want to know what that meaningful is. What's the difference between what we have right now and what we don't? I this is the first time that I saw this, but it it's it's a powerful statement, but it it doesn't give us direction in terms of what that what that exactly means with the Zimmerman one, it says specifically homelessness into it gives you a direction.
295 And. Debating right now I think do we have in writing that change to get to councilor Avalos?
296 I can send it. Councilor Smith just to clarify, it just it adds on in the development of its analysis and action plan and to include updating of all communities of the new action plan.
297 Yes.
298 I believe there is something about the communities that had been previously engaged in the work.
299 Right?
300 No, no.
301 I'm just would it make more sense to put something in the reporting and transparency parts of the resolution?
302 I'm trying to deal with this, this blanket statement, okay. On the amendment. That's what I'm trying to deal with. So if you put it somewhere else, it won't have any meaning to this statement right here. I just sent a basic. Hold on just a second.
303 That's a great question.
304 I, I just sent this to you, candice. And to include updating updating of all communities of the new action plan.
305 Okay, councilor Avalos, why don't you take a quick look at that and councilor Novick, let's hear your thoughts while we wait for councilor Avalos to consider the language that councilor Smith has put forward.
306 Yeah, first of all, I was pleased to hear erica talk about the success of the foster streetscape plan, which was quite controversial ten years ago. As he mentioned, I also wanted to be a broken record and agree with those folks who said that it's not all about infrastructure we haven't had. Infrastructure hasn't gotten worse in the past ten years, but the fatalities have gone way up. And part of that, I think, is councilor Zimmerman has indicated, is that we have a larger and very vulnerable homeless population. Part of that is that cars are bigger and more dangerous. But also, as some folks have said, I think that drivers, many drivers went insane during the pandemic and they have not become less insane since then. So enforcement I think, does matter. The speaker talked about cities that do better than us, including hoboken, home of frank sinatra, and other city that does better than us is new york city, which has a third of the fatalities per capita that we do. There's a variety of reasons for that. But one thing to note is that new york has 3000 speed and red light cameras. We have 30, even though we have a third as much Lane miles as new york city. And I've been pleased to hear in the past couple of months that PBOT believes that hiring a new contractor who should be more efficient for the speed and red light cameras could mean that in the future, adding more cameras won't actually cost us any additional money. I also talked with the administrator of the Multnomah county circuit court who said that although right now they have some constraints in terms of how many speed and red light camera citations they can handle, she gave me reason to think that actually they would be able to get more personnel from the legislature if necessary to handle that, especially because the legislature gets the state, gets a chunk of the money from those cameras. So I will continue to pound away at calling for 1000 speed and red light cameras while supporting the rest of the zero agenda.
307 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Avalos, have you and councilor Smith worked this out? Okay, we'll get there. Councilor Clark, are you speaking to the amendment on the table?
308 I will speak to one of them.
309 The amendment is the one that we're currently debating.
310 I'm not speaking to that.
311 Okay. Councilor Koyama Lane, are you in the queue to speak to the amendment?
312 So we.
313 Got it. You got it?
314 Yeah.
315 Okay. Councilor Avalos, where are you at on this? Is are you changing your amendment or should we vote on your amendment and then come back to what councilor Smith has proposed?
316 The final language is going to be adding a comma at the end of how it's currently written. And it will say and to inform communities of the new action plan.
317 Be it further resolved, that the vision zero task force shall ensure meaningful community engagement in the development of its analysis and action plan and inform communities. What was the last part?
318 Inform communities of the new action plan.
319 And inform communities of the new action plan. Who was your second councilor? Avalos. Who was your second? Who was the second on your amendment? Councilor Koyama Lane, are you okay with this change? Yeah. Okay. Colleagues, would you all like this in writing? Okay. We're good. Councilor Ryan, are you in the queue for councilor Avalos? New amendment. Okay. Seeing no one else in the queue for councilor Avalos. New amendment as changed by councilor Smith. Keelan. Could you please call the roll?
320 Koyama Lane I maria. I Novick. I Clark, I Green.
321 I. Zimmerman I.
322 Avalos Dunphy. I Smith I. I Ryan. I pirtle-guiney. I the amendment is approved with 12 votes.
323 Thank you keelan colleagues. We have councilor Zimmermann's amendment open on the table. It has been seconded, I believe, by councilor Canal. Councilor Smith, are you in the queue to discuss councilor Zimmermann's amendment?
324 Yes.
325 Go right ahead.
326 I think this is important because I think our homeless community is probably one of our most vulnerable communities in the city. And I was just on division at the division alliance last week, doing a business tour last Friday, and they had me walking along division street from 117th all the way past 123rd. So I stopped at 119th and I said, you all, I'm getting ready to go get my car and I'll meet you all down there. And so they said, well, it's only seven minutes, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm really triggered right now because I know cars are, are going really fast down division street and understanding how important it is. And it is a high crash corridor. And I had to insist to them that I'm going to go back and get my car. And so I went back and got my car. And so director williams and I was going to call you and tell you about this. I was on the corner of division and 119th. And so there is a walkway there, and there's a median in the middle of the street of division. So I was waiting and it goes, the light goes so quickly. So I had to quickly. It was not enough time for me to cross the street, so I had to do it in two phases. I had to cross the street and get to the median, and then the light changed again. And then I had to run to get across to the other side of the street to so that I would not be hit. And if you're looking up division street as they're coming down, oh my god, it is a scary thought. And people were speeding and I was like, I don't think there's enough time for people to walk across the street. And I'm sorry I didn't. I was supposed to call you and tell you about this, but it was it was really scary. So I really do support what councilor Zimmerman is talking about, because just imagine folks who are who are homeless, some of them have mental health issues and in crisis and trying to get across the street. I just can't imagine how you can do that. And I had half of my wits with me, and I was and I was frightened to cross the street.
327 Thank you, councilor Smith. I will share that the city traffic engineer, wendy cully, is here. She can speak to signal timing and why things are currently staged the way that they are on certain corridors as it relates to medians and signal timing. Part of why on on division there is a median is because it is wide, and so it provides a respite for people. If in fact the light does change before they would need to wait a cycle to cross to the other side of the street.
328 But but you cannot get across that whole street on one light.
329 We recognize that that is that is a challenge that we have in terms of understanding and balancing how we move people who may be walking or rolling and how we continue to move, folks who may be motorists or riding transit or or going in the other direction. So it is a significant challenge. And when we speak to road diets and road reconfigurations is actually a better way to state that. Part of why that is done is to reduce the amount of crossing distance that people would have, so that they can make it across the full width of a street within a single signal timing period.
330 Okay.
331 Can I get that right? Wendy? Thank you. She's coming to actually say the right thing.
332 Okay. I didn't mean to expand this whole conversation.
333 No, I'll be quick. I think you described it best. And I've taken a note to just check in with our folks to check that signal, to make sure that it is operating the way it intended. And this is wendy cully, city traffic engineer.
334 Excellent. And so I do support council zimmermann's amendment, and I will be voting for it.
335 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Clark.
336 Thank you, madam chair. I think this is a very complex issue. There are lots of different pieces to it. And so I'm very pleased with councilor Zimmermann's amendment that will actually add in the analysis of all the components, all the complexities of this issue. Having worked at TriMet, I can tell you that a significant number of the deaths involving transit are homeless people, are intoxicated people and are people who were in the right of way, you know, mistakenly in the right of way. Or and there's also the distracted people. And your amendment doesn't address that. But we can deal with that at different time. But people who are walking in a distracted fashion on their sofa or whatever, but I think this amendment is very valuable, will help us with our analysis.
337 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane to councilor Zimmermann's amendment.
338 Yes.
339 Thank you. Colleagues, I intend to vote in favor of this amendment. I would have accepted it as a friendly amendment. Thank you to councilor Zimmerman for bringing this forward and for being willing to do a little back and forth talking about this. I'll be candid when I first saw the language, I my hesitation came from a history. This is not connected to councilor Zimmerman, but with the language I was. My hesitation came from the history of how, at times, data like this has been used in the past, particularly to justify actions like clearing camps. And that's not what this resolution is about. So I do believe it's fair and important to call out the overrepresentation of people experiencing homelessness in traffic fatalities. And it's also important to be clear, this is one part of the problem, not the whole problem. The commitment through this amendment is to understand why is this happening at such high rates, to identify strategies that actually improve safety and save lives. And so, as written, I really think this amendment is helpful. And it directs the task force to bring forward information and solutions. It does not direct the council or the mayor to take action outside of that process. And I think that distinction is key. And I believe framing this is going to help us move forward responsibly. And again, grateful for the both both amendments that have been brought forward today.
340 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Ryan.
341 Yes, thank you, madam president. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. This adds a lot of value to this resolution. I appreciate it. I've been asking about this like get to the real why on this. And so if we don't include this component, we'll never get to the why. I think we could also add more dialog to this in the appropriate conversations that PBOT will have. And that would include where's the corner information like when people are perishing on the streets. Let's get more data on what happened. And I just think we've been lacking that critical data. So in all it's it's our ten year milestone and no one's pleased with where the results are today. So unless we get to the critical, why we're not going to be able to move forward with solutions. So this is very additive. Thank you.
342 Thank you councilor. Councilor canal.
343 Thank you, madam president.
344 Yeah I.
345 Second this I support.
346 It.
347 And I think.
348 You know, you do ride alongs. I've done two fire stations with two fire stations. And they.
349 Talked about.
350 How half of the the.
351 Calls they're.
352 They're dealing.
353 With are related to homelessness. I did.
354 Ride alongs.
355 With police officers. Half the people that are arrested are.
356 Houseless in the city.
357 There's without.
358 Getting.
359 Into the.
360 Blame, I think it's very or.
361 The.
362 Causes at this moment.
363 And because this.
364 Is about looking into those causes, I think every single thing we look at, there's an overrepresentation. And this is a major issue that we obviously all know about as a city to deal with, but it's important that we are addressing it as part of just about everything else. And so I think it's it's a really good precedent to set that in the context of looking at traffic violence and traffic deaths. We're also having that specific focus to understand the the causes here. And I appreciate the context given by the vice president on the specific text. And and that was meaningful to me. And I'm looking forward to supporting this.
365 Thanks.
366 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Morillo.
367 Thank you, council president. I'm certainly in favor of us getting more data on all of these issues. And because I worked in city hall before, when this happened the first time, I guess I just I appreciate the context that you added, council vice president. But I remember when, back in 2022, mayor wheeler issued an order preventing camping along high traffic areas under the guise of protecting people from getting run over or harmed by vehicles. But what we found out later that that ended up happening was that those people had fewer places to be and often ended up in even more dangerous areas, so they ended up having to cross dangerous multiple highway lanes to sleep along the highway, that sort of thing. And so I, I am all for getting more data, and I want to just put it on the record that I would hate that that data be utilized against our houseless neighbors. Because at the end of the day, if you are living literally on the streets, you are going to be on the streets more, which means that you are going to face traffic violence more. The only solution to people on our streets not facing higher rates of traffic violence is going to be getting them into long term housing, and I just want to make sure that that's on the record. But overall, I'm in favor of getting more data and I'll be happy to support the amendment. But I just wanted to make that clear for PBOT staff in the room, that that is the critical eye with which I will be looking at that with. Thank you.
368 Thank you, councilor Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue to to debate this amendment. Keelan, could you please call the roll?
369 On the amendments.
370 On the amendment, on the Zimmerman amendment?
371 Koyama Lane I.
372 Yeah. I Novick.
373 I.
374 Mark I.
375 Green. I Zimmerman. I Avalos. I Dunphy. I Smith.
376 I know I I. Pirtle-guiney I.
377 The amendment is approved with 12 yes votes.
378 Thank you keelan. Colleagues. I said we would go back to the order in the queue before we moved to amendments. Councilor Smith, you were next in the queue to debate the now amended resolution.
379 Thank. Thank you. On the first weekend of August, two, portlanders were struck in preventable car accidents, sadly ending in fatalities. And reports say that willie talamo lost his life while crossing the street on southeast 122nd avenue. Patsy lee miller lost her life on northwest. Ian and I want to give my sincere condolences again to the families and the loved ones. These major crashes occurred in district one and district four, which continued to lack safe pedestrian infrastructure, excessive speeds and distracted driving remains citywide. Cultural challenges that require community solutions. I know this to be true because I have been out there and I've already explained to you what happened to me when I was touring businesses in the division alliance district. And so I can say these tragic events demonstrate that we must continue to be vigilant and and stay the course by reaffirming our commitment to vision zero, a policy that has yielded a lot of traffic fatalities since the peak in 2023. But I think with additional work and additional I and a reaffirmation as. We're trying to do with this resolution, it will give us an opportunity to to decrease the number of fatalities on the streets. So I want to say I support this and thank you for your leadership. Tiffany, this is great. And let's see what we can do.
380 Thank you. Councilor councilor Canal I had you next on my list.
381 Thank you, madam president.
382 Today I'm.
383 And every day but specifically today, I'm grateful to councilor Koyama Lane for her leadership in bringing vision zero back to life through this resolution. And I'm proud to be co-sponsor. I agree with with the comment that everyone deserves to get home safely, and I think that's a comment that applies to just a principle that applies to so many issues, not just vision zero. As we saw earlier, there's a lot of folks who are passionate about ensuring everyone deserves to get home safely who are here today. And while we will have other items to talk about, I appreciate the opportunity to keep the focus on the 58 portlanders who didn't make it home last year, including 19 in district two, just starting by speaking to data and reasoning for for my support. And I appreciate that. The supplemental documentation shows this for far too long, our communities, particularly black and brown, indigenous and other already vulnerable communities, have carried the heaviest burden of traffic violence. In district two, we have the top three and deadliest top five most injurious streets for people, whether that that pass, at least in part through the district, whether it's pedestrians, bicyclists or vehicle drivers. We see that in marine drive, interstate, columbia, killingsworth, broadway, and and also in my capacity, not just as a district councilor, but as co-chair of the community and public safety committee. I see the need here to connect these threads much more strongly. So vision zero is is requires cross bureau collaborations across service area collaborations. I'm really grateful to see all four dca's here in support. I think that's that's particularly notable. We've seen Portland fire having a five layer safe system approach, timely emergency response. We have police and high visibility enforcement. I'll note and be appreciative to chief dave for supporting as well. And then there's plenty of things in the planning process between water transportation to ensure that and welcoming an emergency first responders to provide comments and how that develops to be ensure physical infrastructures as safe as possible. Beyond the data, though, obviously these 58 folks whose lives were cut short while crossing the street, going to work, waiting for the bus. And so I pivot here and say that the commitment to vision zero is ultimately a commitment to prioritizing people's lives over convenience and speed and over budget priorities as well, because that should be our top priority is protecting human life. I'll leave it there for now. Thank you, madam president.
384 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Novick.
385 Actually said.
386 What I had to say.
387 Over earlier, thinking that we were, well, Avalos Smith amendment was being refined. We were back to the main motion. So I have nothing further to say.
388 Councilor Clark.
389 Thank you, madam chair. I just want to say that incredible. Excellent testimony tonight. Very moving, actually very informative. Really, really enjoyed it. This has been a great night. I feel very proud of councilor Koyama Lane. I'm very proud of the transportation infrastructure committee and actually all of my colleagues tonight who are operating together, pulling in the same direction on something very important. I also want to agree with my friend to the right here about the scofflaws. I think that during COVID we did create a lot of scofflaws, a lot of speeding, and we and and we created some awful thing. I'm also very partial to the cameras, and I do think we should have a lot more cameras, but we'll wait for the analysis and see what comes back to us after this resolution is implemented. But thanks to everyone.
390 Thank you, councilor, colleagues, before we move on, councilor Ryan, I apologize. There are some folks chatting with people here in the room, but I want to make sure in case there's anybody online watching at this point in the evening, I think it is pretty certain that agenda item five, which is pulled off of consent, will be carried over to tomorrow. I suspect we will be able to do agenda item eight tonight. I am not yet sure if we'll be able to do agenda item nine, but if you are here for agenda item five, we will be carrying that over to tomorrow's meeting. I don't want to keep you here tonight any later than we already have. Councilor. Ryan, go right ahead.
391 Yeah. Thank you, madam president. Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane, for bringing this forward. I also want to thank staff leadership. Dana, I appreciate our dialog. We had a couple weeks ago and for building and stewarding that collaborative network that we formalized. And I also want to thank the passionate testimony here at council after dark, hearing about the bike busses and the good work by dream big city was especially inspiring, and we really did need some hope in the room tonight. So thank you. You know, I will continue to support this. On behind vision zero. Who isn't. But I want to join and I want to join the majority in supporting this resolution. But at this milestone, we've got to evaluate and be bold to move forward to get better results. This is rather embarrassing where we stand as a city ten years later on this, I want to be clear that I don't think in its current form, it represents the complete effort for our roadways to be safe. Sadly, just let's just say it deaths are up 56 to 85% the last few years from when this started. That's the opposite direction we wanted to go. So what is the bold reset at this ten year mark to move the needle forward. And I hope that that's what I hear from you going forward in further dialog. Because if we keep doing the same thing we've done the last ten years, we're just not going to get there. To date, the focus has been to reduce traffic deaths, and the actions have been largely focused on road and traffic design and attempts to reduce car reliance. I'm proposing that the program is critical components of roadway safety efforts, and it seems logical and should be included in the scope of the work. We need proactive and visible enforcement of traffic laws, and we need to address and unsafe activities occurring in our roadways, including street takeovers, racing and camping and the right of way. Let's just say it. That's part of this equation. Not to mention we lack critical data about pedestrians perishing on our streets. I'm glad that commissioner Zimmerman or sorry councilor Zimmerman got to that point, and I thought that was really additive amendment. I'm talking fast. We I thought we'd have more time to to dialog, but we had some friendly amendments. All portlanders want to see vision zero to get these results, let's include all who require a transportation infrastructure infrastructure to be safe and efficient. There's no utility in shaming people who need to drive cars to get to jobs. Parents who need to take their kids to school, elders who don't currently feel safe in our public transportation and need to get to medical appointments or grocery stores or businesses that move goods and services across our city. So many can stay home and work and live virtually. I also hope to see the inclusion and tolerance of transportation advocate world of all modes of transportation, including motorcycles, delivery vehicles, cars and trucks. In this dialog, if we don't include them, then I think we're going to continue to see these dismal results ten years later. The questions that I will write that I want to raise, that I'll put in writing to you later, will be in the 2325 annual report. It states that 55% of pedestrians killed, 30 out of 55 were unhoused when they died. What measures is the city and our partners at the county taking to address the overrepresentation of homelessness and traffic deaths? And what about the thousands who become disabled? We heard from one testimony tonight we're only talking about deaths, but a lot of people are disabled by all these accidents. And that was not mentioned tonight. The annual report also shows that speed safety cameras think you councilor Novick reduce speeding significantly. So let's be more like hoboken who also has day lighting quite up throughout their system as well. The stated goal is zero traffic deaths and serious injuries. These are certain initiatives that vision 0 in 21 and 22 regarding restrictions, we added restrictions on police traffic enforcement activities, specifically profiling limiting traffic stops. It was not clear how these are related to vision zero's original mission, but can you explain how these help to meet the goal of zero traffic deaths? Actually, that is a question.
392 Are you asking specifically about the restrictions on enforcement?
393 21 and 22 we added restrictions on police traffic enforcement activities. It was not clear how these related to the vision zero originally original mission, but can we explain how these met the goal of zero traffic deaths? Have they been helpful? And maybe someone from the police bureau needs to speak.
394 To.
395 That data that we would be able to write.
396 And I'm not entirely sure what it's referring to in that time frame.
397 So what happened is midway through this, that was added. And we you do notice when you look at the trends around that time the deaths went up.
398 Are we talking about the restriction on or the removing of the traffic division and bringing them back to the precincts? Oh, well, that wasn't a vision zero decision.
399 I know it's not a vision.
400 That you're.
401 Collaborating with police. So this gets to the heart of the matter, maybe why some of these numbers are going up. So unless we're going to get to the why, how are we going to move forward with better results?
402 Right. And so the recommendation that I would offer is that we ask someone from the police bureau to address that, because that is not something that dana nor.
403 And again, I thought we'd have more time for this type of dialog. I'm not on the transportation committee. This is my first time as an elected official to bring these issues to the dais, which I really think are relevant because, again, I want zero deaths every year. So this is my only time to do that. But we've, we've, we have going on and on.
404 And we're not attempting.
405 To like them to. Would you like to I.
406 Would, I would like.
407 To have public safety or one of our police officers in the room come up and respond to that.
408 But I'm feeling a lot of pressure right now because it took it's 842 and we finally got to this at council after dark, and we're getting to the heart of the matter on some of these issues.
409 Luckily, we don't have a hard stop at nine. We just don't start new items after 9:00. So all right, director cozzie would you like to come up or have somebody from your team come up to respond to that?
410 I.
411 Good evening.
412 Interim dca corsi for the.
413 Public safety service area.
414 And I'm here with.
415 Assistant chief amanda mcmillan.
416 And if I understand the question correctly, councilor, I believe you're you're seeing if there's a correlation with the.
417 Impact of that decision.
418 Yeah, yeah. On this.
419 And we've seen the trend go the wrong way.
420 Yeah I think you can probably answer that.
421 Yes.
422 We did.
423 Pull back.
424 You know, resources, as dana was saying, back to.
425 The.
426 Precincts in the wake.
427 Of everything.
428 That was coming out of.
429 2020 and 2021.
430 And at that time, the numbers in traffic fatalities, as we know, rose. We've reconstituted our traffic unit, and we have those. Resources redeployed. We've seen a reduction now in traffic fatalities as we've reconstituted those resources. I don't have something that would.
431 Say that's exactly.
432 How that worked, but maybe there's correlation there.
433 Since that went in, you see a correlation where they're going down this past year.
434 We're having.
435 We hope we're having an impact there.
436 Yeah.
437 And so I hope that becomes more and more part of the dialog. And also the, the, the cameras that we talked about earlier. How let's see. Let me see where I was. So my question is how does PBOT move the needle to reduce traffic injury and fatalities. If the basic services provided by partners are not available? Let's be honest, we lack services for our neediest population in this city. Providing most of these services is outside the city of portland's purview and are the responsibility of the county, the school districts, the state and nonprofits. We have been asking for our partners to ramp up the support for services for vulnerable populations since before vision zero was launched, and we still aren't close to what is needed. That's a big impact. If I'm currently reading this correctly, vision zero can only be successful if the basic needs are met for all of our community, but PBOT doesn't have the influence or responsibility over these social issues, and yet it seems to be a big impact. My question is, how can vision zero be successful if we lack the basic needs and services listed in the action plan?
438 I think that the goal of the this work moving forward is to try to bring attention to the fact that there is this connection, that there is this broader public health framework, that this is a prevention strategy, and to lay credence to the calls for more resources from those partners. I still don't think the city, and certainly PBOT, can't solve all of the issues around lack of basic needs being met in our city.
439 The the. Fact sorry, dana, the fact that our partners from the county did call in to testify speaks to at least an acknowledgment that they are a part of the solution. And so we've attempted to, over the course of the past decade, work really closely with our partners by again creating the opportunity for there to be focused attention with the appropriate authorities to ensure that the conversations can happen, which is why it's important to have all of the dca's here. It was important to elevate vision zero out of just one bureau and place it in a place where it could have more of an umbrella effect, so that there could be the intentionality around the engagement versus us. Pbot going to our partners at pbb, although tremendous partners and saying, hey, we need you to do this thing. And they're like, but this is not necessarily the priority of the day. Or and I'm not trying to call people out. I'm sorry you're sitting here, so I'll another any bureau that we might call on without the authority to do that. We were we were just asking for a friendly relationships to cause something to happen with the new form of government. With this creation of the task force, it creates the opportunity for there to be executive direction, for there to be clearly articulated, focus on where we are going as a city, not just as a bureau and not just one segment of the city. So I'm excited about this conversation. I'm excited about the collaboration, and I'm excited about dana's elevation to the space that she's in because she, as you've already had some conversation, is beginning to make sure that the work that has that she started ten years ago is work that continues, but in a different way. And so we're really appreciative of what councilor Koyama Lane has sought to do by elevating this. If if we aren't all talking about it at the leadership level, then we can be well-intentioned, as well-intentioned as we like. But we have acknowledged that we PBOT cannot alone do this. It really does require the collection of effort from so many partners, not just the the obvious ones as well.
440 So that's what I'm trying to do, is so at this ten year reset, can we commit to actually collaborating and and having accountability with all these partners. So we just don't hear in ten more years that PBOT really needs more support from the other partners.
441 This is councilor Ryan. That's what this moment is. And that's what the work of the past several months in terms of setting up the structure to ensure the success of dana's leadership in this space, has been intended to do. That's why, again, lifted out intentionally, we identified that dana, based on her previous work, was perhaps one of the best people to lead that work. And so that's why that identification of the staff was made. And we at PBOT made adjustments to our vision zero team to make sure that we could create the opportunity for dana to then move into that space. We also I would like to share, aside from just the folks who who have vision zero in their names or in their titles or positions at the bureau, dozens of people work on vision zero at the bureau. So it's not just 1 or 2 people. There are dozens of people we can't build and design projects without the backing of the, the, the, the full staff that supports this work. But again, pulling it out, making it a city priority, getting council backing, having the resolution helps to inform how this.
442 I have heard this before and so I'm hoping in this ten year milestone that we actually put some teeth into this and there's actual accountability with all the partners because PBOT can't do it alone. And there's real shared accountability and responsibility, and that we get data inputs that that show which way we're going and if the trends are going down. Let's ask the hard questions. Get to the bottom of it with the why. So we can actually stop seeing these deaths and stop seeing so many people getting injured on our streets.
443 Absolutely. Thank you so much.
444 Thank you.
445 Thank you, councilor, and thank you to everybody who added pieces to that answer. Councilor Dunphy.
446 Thanks.
447 I wrote some things down. I'm going to.
448 Say it as quickly as possible.
449 Because I'm sorry it's getting late. In 2009, I.
450 Was in a pretty bad vehicle crash.
451 I used.
452 To drive a vespa and. Driving down killingsworth. Somebody pulled.
453 A.
454 California stop and t-boned their minivan, and I survived because I had a good helmet on. But I think we also need to acknowledge that, you know, in addition to walking and biking and bussing, I think that there is a significant portion of our community that rides on two wheels with a motor between their legs, and they have higher levels of fatalities as well. Vision zero means that motorcyclists get home safe at night to east Portland is home to an unbelievable amount of traffic deaths, and I'm thankful to my colleagues who've called that out already tonight. Councilor Zimmerman, my daughter goes to school four blocks away from the new freight warehouse that is going to be seeing upwards of 200 semi trucks driving down 122nd past her middle school every day. Vision zero should mean that the city of Portland takes a stronger role when we are helping. When someone comes to say they want to build a freight warehouse near middle school and a high school, I-84 has no exits or onramps for the entirety of district one, and there are almost there are not sufficient number of jobs in east Portland to supply a living for the people who live in east Portland, that means that people are stuck on the arterials, and the arterials turn into freeways. Vision zero means that these folks need good jobs where they live, and they don't have to be stuck in their car driving downtown, trying to beat traffic and driving poorly, or driving home much of east Portland. Much of our residential neighborhoods don't have street paint at a stop sign, and in the winter months when people are wearing their black columbia jackets and avoiding the rain, we don't know where the stop line is, and we lead to pedestrian conflicts in those areas. I think that vision zero should mean better street paint, so that we know that even outside of the major thoroughfares, people are not getting into conflict. Councilor Koyama Lane, I want to thank you so much for your dogged perseverance and your clear eyed vision and your leadership on this from day one. Since the moment we first connected, this has been what you have been talking about. And thank you for getting our city back on track. Yeah, the last ten years have been a lot of good effort. This is a time for real leadership to be demonstrated. And thank you for making sure we actually can put our money where our mouth is. That's all.
455 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Green.
456 I'll try.
457 To be.
458 Brief here.
459 Thank you for.
460 Your leadership.
461 Councilor Koyama Lane. And thank you.
462 To all the dca's here today.
463 I this resolution is important.
464 Because it speaks to the.
465 System, the systemic causes of why we have traffic fatalities. And it's going to require.
466 An integrated.
467 You know, enterprise approach to changing the built environment to solve the problem. Because there will be no amount of signage, there will be no amount of even hard diverters that can solve this problem. If we are not changing our comprehensive plan to support the sort of development patterns that are going to make possible a change in that mode switch. Like you, you cannot paste on little solutions here and there to get there. And so I think that this resolution is doing.
468 Is saying.
469 We have a mandate as a city to build vision zero into every single layer of how we do our business. And I think if we do it right, we have a huge opportunity to not only get to actual zero, but but to but to bend our cost curve on the the sort of liabilities that we face as a city, both in terms of the human cost, but also our surplus might like we have so much Lane mileage, right. We can change all that if if we have this integrated approach. So I'm really excited. I'm going to vote yes. I'm going to stop talking so we can vote yes.
470 Thank you councilor. I had a couple of questions, but frankly they're things I think I can ask outside of this hearing. They don't affect my support for the resolution. So I'm going to hold them up and just see words, starting with thanking everybody who has worked on this. I know that there are a number of councilors who have put time into this. The committee as a whole put time into this, but especially vice president Koyama Lane. This is something that I know has been on your priority list from the start, and I appreciate all the work that you have done, bringing people together to really figure out what the next step is and where we go from here. Thank you. I also want to thank all of the dca's in the room, because we've had you here to do exactly what just happened when councilor Ryan was talking, where we needed that support from another service area, where we needed to see how this all fits together. And I appreciate that you all took the time to make sure that we could have those conversations this evening as well. We're ten years in and it is time to recommit to this, especially in light of the data that we've been talking about. And that's why we can't just recommit. It's why we need to recommit, knowing that we are willing to have conversations about hard tradeoffs. As we've heard, this is the easy step. And I will say, like many, I drive, I also walk and bus, and occasionally my kids get me on my bike. But the reality is that most of the time I drive and the hard steps that we will need to take after this resolution are going to push me. They're going to push all of us. They're going to push people who bike to think about what type of infrastructure we really want. They're going to push people who walk to think about whether we are making every corridor optimized for bikes and pedestrians, or some corridors more optimized than others. They are going to push every type of user to think strategically about what we want our city to look like in the future. Those are the conversations that I'm here to have. I talk a lot about what our city looks like in the future, because I think a lot about what neighborhoods my five year old and my ten year old are inheriting from us. I want them to have a place where all forms of transportation are safe, where there are places where each form of transportation is optimized, and where we are working together as a city to make sure that this is a great place to live. In part because we can all get around this city effectively. So let's use the data. Let's be comprehensive as we're seeing today. Let's debate the hard tradeoffs, the ones where there is no only right answer and only wrong answer, but where we are really talking about finding solutions that help move us in the right direction. Thank you to everybody who's brought us this far. Today's the easy part, and I'm looking forward to the future conversations where we really get to dig into the details about what the future of our city looks like. Councilor. Councilor Kanal, I think you spoke once already, right? Okay. Councilor Morillo.
471 I'm so sorry.
472 I'm so sorry. I wasn't watching and did not see that that had just happened.
473 That was.
474 My bad timing.
475 Caringly shared a dumpling with me.
476 Had I not just been speaking, I would have.
477 This is why you're not supposed to eat on the dias. But we get hungry up here, okay? I'm almost done. Anyways, I was actually not going to give a speech because I think everything that needs to be said has already been said, but I do have to talk about some of the things my colleagues have said as we are reinstating vision zero, because I think that we have some really, we're at a critical crossroads with how we're going to engage vision zero. And I have some history from having worked at city hall before, when some of these decisions were being made that I think need to be put into context, particularly some of the comments made by you, councilor Ryan, part of the reason that the traffic division was partially removed was because we found that they were disproportionately stopping black portlanders in our city, and nobody else when we have a 6% black population. So we need to put that into context as to why some of those decisions were made. I also want to point out that later, that traffic division ended up receiving more funding than they had prior, and that any officer, whether or not that traffic division exists, is able to pull someone over if they are doing something wrong. You don't have to be part of a special traffic unit in order to make that happen. So this idea that our officers were not able to pull people over who are committing offenses is not true. And it actually ended up being a political issue. That bike Portland ended up interviewing an officer. I believe it was sergeant engstrom at the time who said, and I quote, we needed to create a stir to get some change, to get the city council to fund us back up. And I mean, that's the honest truth. I know that could make things more dangerous. But at the same time, we needed some change. So they were publicly talking about the fact that they had less traffic officers and that they weren't going to enforce traffic violations in order to politically motivate the council to get more funding. And that is a dark history. That's part of this situation and part of vision zero that we need to address. And I can't let those comments go without context, because we're also talking about expanding traffic cameras as addressing public safety. And one of the policies that I'm bringing forward right now is to address the way that ice and other agencies are using surveillance and tracking data to target our immigrant communities, to target activists, and to surveil us in a way that is extremely dangerous for vulnerable communities. So we absolutely need to do right by pedestrians. As someone who is a pedestrian, who does not own a car, who can't drive, who bikes and busses everywhere, this is near and dear to me. This is very important to me. And because I am also an immigrant, I cannot look at this with one lens only. It means that I have to look at this through multiple lenses. And so I hope that we are going to do right by our unhoused neighbors who face traffic violence. I hope we are going to do right by immigrant communities that are being surveilled heavily right now, and that every policy that we move forward with, vision zero has our most vulnerable community members in mind as well. And I will happily and joyfully and forcefully be supporting this, because it matters a lot, and we deserve to have a city where there are zero traffic deaths. Thank you.
478 Thank you, councilor Councilor canal.
479 Thank you, madam president. I want to start by noting something. I didn't speak on the first amendment, but I do strongly support it, even though we're doing lots of engagement already. And one of the reasons is because of the list of 17 intersections that I know PBOT has received that I have to from a constituent named keith who which have not had improvements there all along for the crosswalks. These are all along martin luther king, and they're often used by our black residents. And they've watched. While these improvements have not been made, even as some of the bike crossings have been improved, and so I appreciate the commitment to engagement. And I want to see that not only engagement to the black community happens, but that we actually, you know, listen and do the thing. I was really struck as, as councilor Clark was by the by the testimony. I knocked michelle's door last year and the conversation, we had changed my approach to a lot of things. I noticed after that that the feeling that I heard around the district was that vision zero has been a nice commitment that people support, but the feeling was broadly that nobody in power was willing to say at the time that it was a numerical goal. And I think it's important for as many of us, and some have already done so, to say zero is a numerical goal, a literal target for me. I spoke to zach and skyler at two events in the last week as well. I appreciated the reference to political violence and the relevance to this topic. Political violence is sometimes, but not always, reacted to appropriately. When it's a person outside of a system conducting it, it's almost never reacted to appropriately when it's people in suits that do it, a disease like this one, but it should be assessed as such. We bear responsibility when we, through our actions or our interactions, let people die. And I also want to mention that this is not the first step we're taking. We actually did two things during the budget process that were really relevant to this. One was councilor Lanes, which elevated this program to dc office and required quarterly updates to ensure we're on track. I'm incredibly supportive from a process perspective of councilor Ryan's rights and all of ours to have our questions answered here, and also actually have the assertion that we're we've historically not succeeded for a variety of reasons. And the inference I drew is that we need to do much more than just this resolution, which I think we all agree to. I am troubled by the implication that reacting to civil rights violations means we increase traffic deaths. I'm willing to drive five miles an hour slower or ten to save some lives, but I don't think we have to decide between civil rights and human lives. I would recall first, the correlation is not causation. And second, that there were a few things happening in 2020, I think most notably the pandemic and the impacts that councilor, Novick and Clark noted on traffic behaviors. There was a really interesting back and forth in the testimony from two testifiers about the role of education, enforcement and physical infrastructure. Rob talked about those three things, but street design, I recognize the need for education. I recognize the need for enforcement. I'm so excited to see the detailed reports. After hearing some really positive news as a result of the other budget note canal ten, which gave guidance to PPB on how to use overtime dollars, including prioritizing some notable traffic related categories such as street racing and traffic priority projects. Ultimately, however, I agree with rob's point that street design is the primary method that will achieve this, and I intend to pursue implementing this over time with ordinances, but primarily budget allocations through modal filtering, through support for transit, especially rail, and for converting select streets to car free, completely and permanently. Now with this resolution, we're committing to safer street design and deeper collaboration across bureaus and communities because no one should die just trying to get home. And so I will be supporting it. But I did want to add that for me personally, I'll be remembering four people today, all 31 years old or younger, three who I knew personally, who were killed in traffic, and one who I did not know, but whose last moments I was a witness to. And every life is precious. We need to work to make the last traffic death we had truly the last traffic death in Portland. Thank you.
480 Councilor councilor Koyama Lane.
481 Okay, I promise I'll be as quick as possible. First, I'll admit I was a little nervous at the beginning, and I thanked everyone and I got nervous and skipped over councilor Avalos. So I wanted to thank you for making scootering cool by acknowledging that you're scootering all around d1. Thank you for that and I'm sorry. Thank you so much. It has been amazing working with you all and this is just the beginning. I have so much trust in you all the four dca's, morrissey, donna, paul, casey, oliveira have been incredible. Thank you to chief de for the letter of support. Thank you to director williams. I feel really hopeful and very quickly I wanted to say something to the children that are still here and the kids who had to leave. I know for many of you it was your very first time in city hall. I think some of you are still watching right now or will watch this later. And I just want to explain clearly that us having to take a break was not about you at all. That was about adult stuff. And it's our job as adults to keep working through that big, important stuff. And we're going to do that. And to all those kids that had to leave, I promise I will find time to hear you and listen to your voices, because they're really powerful. And I know that everyone up here cares about them. Thank you.
482 Thank you, councilor Colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue for debate. Councilor Morillo. You're not back in, are you okay? Keelan, could you please call the roll on the now amended resolution?
483 Koyama Lane I.
484 Maria.
485 I thank you, councilor Koyama Lane I.
486 Clark. I Green, I Zimmerman. I Avalos I Dunphy I Smith.
487 I I.
488 Ryan I.
489 I the resolution as amended is adopted with 12 yes votes.
490 Thank you.
491 Colleagues thank you everyone for being here this evening when we passed our weekly council meeting rules, I said that where those did not conflict with other rules on the book, I would start implementing that immediately. Those rules state that we do not start new items other than emergency items or 912 items after 9:00 at night. So I will be carrying over. I will be carrying over the rest of our agenda. Agenda items five, eight and nine to tomorrow. Those items are placed on tomorrow's agenda. After the time certain items that were already scheduled. So we will start the agenda that was scheduled. Move to item eight, then item nine and then item five, which is the order we would have taken them up in tonight. With that, I will recess tonight's meeting and we will reconvene tomorrow.