The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-09-17
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (29,436 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On September 17, 2025, the Portland City Council held a work session, described as the first of two sessions on developing the city's 2026 state and federal legislative agenda ahead of a December work session and anticipated vote. Discussion opened with context on the short legislative session, revenue forecast challenges, and federal-state dynamics, followed by review of issue-evaluation criteria intended to guide agenda development; feedback addressed adding considerations such as regional alignment, urgency, political viability, and prior council resolutions as inputs. The body then discussed a preliminary, unvetted list of state-level issues spanning housing production, behavioral health and an "Oregon State Hospital North" concept, federal overreach, transportation and infrastructure funding, public safety, workforce development, and related topics, with participants offering individual priorities and suggested additions. A parallel discussion covered federal priorities, including reordering agenda items, earmark strategy, international relations, and community safety. The session concluded with an extended conversation about internal decision-making processes—how consensus or supermajority thresholds might be used, how individual council members could testify independently on issues outside an official city position, and how disagreements between council, the mayor, and the administration might be handled. Staff outlined plans for ongoing communication, briefings, and further vetting before returning with a draft agenda in December. No votes were recorded during this session.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 Good afternoon. It is 1:32 p.m. On Wednesday, Wednesday, September 17th. I am calling to order a work session of the Portland city council. We don't need to take roll in a work session, do we? Okay, so we are going to jump in and I believe we have mr. Jordan kicking us off. But before we jump into the agenda, colleagues, I just want to flag that this is the first of two meetings about our legislative agenda that we will be having in a work session format, so that we can talk through some of our priorities and what we need and expect as we work with the rest of city government and our office of government relations, to move forward the city's agenda at the federal level with our local partners. And in Salem, we'll have the first meeting today to start to talk about how we set our agenda, what we expect from each other, what we expect from our ogre team and from the other parts of our city government, and to look at some things that our bureaus, our colleagues, previous councils have put on the city's agenda. Our ogre team will then take that and do a fair amount of work over the next few months. And when we have a better sense of what, at least at the state level, what folks are looking at for February session, we will come back in December and have another work session to finalize our 2026 agenda, which is what our team will take forward into the February legislative session and what our federal team will take forward into the work that they do. So I just want to note that so that as we hear these introductions and have these conversations today, there aren't questions about why we're not finalizing the agenda today. We also I just want to flag as we get started, we'll have some conversations today about how we set expectations for how we all work together on this, but we probably won't dig into the specific details of the individual things that are on the list that is before us. That's work that will happen over the next few months with the ogre team. And then as we finalize the agenda in December, what I'm hoping we can do today is weigh in on some key questions so that we can give direction to the team, and so that we know how to continue this work moving forward, and ultimately so that we can get to a shared agenda where there is overlap on all of our priorities, the mayor's priorities and the work that our bureaus need us to be doing with the state. I'm going to pause there. I'll probably have a little bit more to say later. But, mr. Jordan, do you want to kick us off as the person who really pulls all of these different groups together?
1 Oh, thank you, madam president, but don't give me that much credit. This is really ogre's work. And today I want to thank you guys for taking the time today. It's it's work and it's good work. And today is really about us hearing your thoughts about where the city should be vis a vis the state legislature, at least today. But every conversation we have, including this one, is had in a context, right? Both in time and in space, in time, in the sense that we're facing a short session. Short sessions are very challenging things to get anything big done in there is like a deadline a week. You've got to get out of a committee, you've got to get out of the first house, back out of a second committee, and through the second house. And you have to do that about once a week to be successful. And so it is a challenging thing in sense of time. And you should keep those things in mind as we think about what we're doing. The other thing about legislative sessions is that they come in series. They're not isolated experiences with the state. They we had 1 in 25. We're going to have one this winter. We'll have another 1 in 27, and they come in a series. And so ideas can be matured over multiple sessions sometimes. So keep that in mind. Also that this isn't a one and done thing with the state. We do it in, in a in a time frame that extends beyond a short session. So think about those things. The council president mentioned the mayor's agenda perhaps, and I know each of you have thoughts about what is really important for the city to be concerned about vis a vis our relationship with the state. Please keep in mind that we are most successful in Salem. When we speak with a single voice on a topic, and I know that that can be hard for us. It does not preclude you from having your own priorities about things that the state legislature is considering. Absolutely. But we as a city of Portland, are most successful when we are one. And go down there and speak with one voice and, and and can be and our folks who are down there every day can be confident that they are speaking for the city when they're down there. So so please know that I can I can vouch that the mayor will be very concerned about making sure that his thoughts are engaged in this discussion, but we as a whole city speak with one voice. That's when we can be most effective. And you're going to hear today from the people who are really the professionals that we hire to be the strategists in this venue. I tell them all the time, I'm happy to do what you tell me to do, but you are the people who are there every day. You're the strategist. You know what message needs to be delivered, at what time. So at some point, as the council president mentioned, we are going to want to talk about how you all and and our staff engage in real time during session. Also. That's a conversation that that will need to have at some point. Also, the last thing I'll say, and I'll reiterate the contextuality of this discussion, there's a lot going on in this city. Our relationship with the federal government is a particularly challenging discussion right now for all of us. So that, that, that and other things going on in the city provide this broader context for this conversation. It is about our relationship with the state government during a session. But everything we do happens in a context. And you know that the state legislature also needs to consider the state's relationship with the federal government. And that will be a topic in this session also. So again, we're focused on a short session. The topics have to be relatively concise and narrow and tight to be successful. On the other hand, everything we do happens in this broader context, both in time and our relationship with others. With that, I'd like to turn it over to sam and have him guide you through today's discussion. Sam.
2 Thank you so much. Really so appreciate you all taking the time to have this discussion. And it's really I, I typed into chat gtp gpt, please develop legislative agendas that will be unified across the city in support and maximize our outcomes and give us the flexibility and rules that we need. And it wasn't very helpful. So so we are going to have to do the work here today. And so this is really a touch point in an ongoing process that we have. And I want to share the. I will share. Let's see here. It was all working the second okay. So these are the areas that we are going to cover today. It's about building a shared framework for how the city engages on state and federal issues, and will review the legislative landscape and challenges ahead. Discuss evaluation criteria, criteria for developing and setting the agenda. Begin vetting and prioritizing issues for state and federal engagement. Outline and outline how the council, mayor, and administration can collectively shape a unified legislative agenda and how we will all work with one another. Is there anything I would just pause here and say, is there anything else that's not on this agenda that we are missing that we should have at this point in this discussion? For today's discussion? Great.
3 Not seen any pushback. So I think you're good.
4 Thank you. Before I get into the next slide, the city entered the 2025 session in some pretty unprecedented circumstances. We were transitioning to an entirely new form of government at the very moment session was beginning, Portland faced daunting political and economic challenges. Federal overreach, and and and, you know, unprecedented challenges. You know, on the federal front in Salem, we had headwinds for revenue forecasts and less revenue than we had we had originally hoped for. And we always, you know, interacting with the frankly unfounded, incorrect perception that the city is overly demanding and of its businesses and constituents out of touch, receives disproportionate resources. There are stereotypes about Portland that we need to be always conscious of as we're doing our advocacy. It takes a little bit of a special approach for us when we're entering that space. The results were not what we hoped for. They the, you know, session fell far short on issues that were of very high importance to this council around rent assistance, around housing supports, obviously, transportation and and more. Despite this, we did see progress. We showed the legislature that we are collaborative and unified and a strong ally, and we really showed a strong level of support as a unified body, and it made a big difference when those decisions were getting made at the end of the session and so on, that I want to just reflect and say thank you to this council and to our mayor and to our administration for really doing that internal work to get on the same page to the extent we could before going and interacting in in that space and advocacy and it it really helped empower and show, hey, Portland is getting things done and they are unifying when they need to bring a message and when issues are urgent. We have many upcoming challenges. The federal administration continues to create conflict with large cities on several fronts, sowing fear among immigrants in our communities, dangerously meddling in local law enforcement, threatening to cut off various funding streams. Federal tax cuts are being offset with medicaid snap other core service cuts, as well as clawing back funding awarded for major projects and projects like restoring and revitalizing lower albina. The most recent state revenue forecast shows declining revenues this biennium and beyond. State legislators will be focused on balancing budgets and limiting and limited to introducing only two bills each, and so that those cuts that are coming are going to be, you know, a very large focus for the legislature. And I think that's very important to keep in mind as we're thinking about issues and how and what our strategies are around those non-revenue solutions, such as cutting shared revenues, cost shifting to local governments, preemptions on local authority and unfunded mandates might gain traction. We may see momentum going the wrong direction, which is, hey, these things can't be these. These problems can't be covered by the state. We're going to shift that burden to local jurisdictions. So the federal overreach is expected to persist, with appointees becoming more effective over over time. They've been in place longer and longer, and they're getting better at accomplishing what they set out to achieve. So today, we're looking for your guidance on how to collectively evaluate the issues which federal and state priorities to advance, which should be on under consideration and and vetted, and how the city can work together for the greatest impact. So I'm going to move us into and I wanted to give you a quick overview of the process that we are underway. And as I said, we have a continual process, really, of working with you regularly. But at this point, this is the process for us getting to a short session agenda and beyond. And so we we collected issues from throughout the the leadership in the city, subject matter experts, bureaus, council members, submitted ideas. We have not vetted those ideas. Some of those are carry over from the 2025 agenda. Some of them are are new ideas, and they are not necessarily ones that are right for the agenda or appropriate for the agenda, or have been evaluated according to the criteria that we will discuss. And so I just want to be clear about that and what that is. We're trying to be as upfront and transparent as possible around making sure that all the information is on the table.
5 Am I hearing you correctly that this list is everything you've been given so far? Yes. Not vetted? Not necessarily. What will be the agenda? And also not necessarily inclusive because as we talk today, there may be other things that surface.
6 Absolutely. And we're hoping that you do take time to surface all of those ideas. Then during the. So today we're going to have our discussion. And then we will work with you over the coming months. Individually, we'll have briefing times that will continue to have be available for answering questions among staff and council members. And we will then have another work session in December, where we hope to bring forward an agenda that really reflects the collective priorities of the municipal government of Portland. And then we will have a vote planning to have council vote in before the holidays, before the christmas holidays, winter holidays. And then we would distribute and publish and really begin the work of communicating that to the legislature. So now in your packet was a list with more of the information around the the evaluation criteria. It is essentially what we've been using as a guide on issues. It as issues arise. One for consideration to be on the agenda and others for that align with the agenda that you set, that come up. Of course we get there are thousands of bills we get, you know, we need to evaluate and work on hundreds of those. So we we, we find it's very helpful when we have a framework for evaluating those criteria and want to really get your input and engagement around what those criteria should be. So we've set forward some some questions here. We would like to set clear expectations across bureaus council and the mayor's office. Establish a common language to develop and assess issues, refine strategies to maximize outcomes and service delivery for portlanders. And while inherently subjective, you know, all of these criteria are inherently subjective. And that is, you know, part of the challenge that we have, we we have also been working under the premise that issues need to meet some level of, of these, of each of these criteria. So with that, I see there's a question from councilor.
7 There is, and I was going to ask as soon as you went through the criteria, if you would mind if we paused to see if there were any questions about the criteria, is now a good time or.
8 I can I can walk through the criteria. You have the one pager. I can do a quick walk through of that if that's helpful.
9 If you were going to move through, then let's just pause for a minute. And councilor Clark, did you have a question about this?
10 Well, if we're not going to walk through them, I don't really have a question. I had a couple comments about them.
11 Get those out there.
12 Okay. Great. Thank you. Back to what city administrator jordan mentioned. I had a a just a bullet, a thought. And maybe this fits inside of one of your criteria, but oftentimes issues take multiple sessions to to succeed. And also the legislature is not necessarily just about getting laws passed. It's about raising issues and having discussions and having a public discussion about issues that don't necessarily end up in a change in law. So I just wondered where that fits in your criteria or if it does it really there's an opportunity for us to raise issues and to educate about a problem, whether it's Portland statewide or whatever it is. That's my first comment. Secondly, maybe because of where I come from, I'm used to working in partnership, regional partnerships, local partnerships, and I don't see that anywhere. And maybe that fits somewhere into your criteria, but it seems to me more and more important that we have shared agenda with our regional partners, that we can agree with our regional partners on what's important for our for Portland and our region. So just those two things. I just want.
13 To.
14 If you think they fit in here somewhere or if they should be a different evaluation criteria.
15 I would I would tell you where I see those in here and I and I welcome the conversation, but I would really put those around the political viability. And so then these criteria, I are, among other uses, a tool to help determine is something legislative agenda ready. And things can be, you know, in various stages along these criteria. But it in the effort to get something politically viable for the legislative agenda, we would ask questions, what are the coalitions, what are the partnerships? What agreement level of agreement are we going to the legislature with to say, hey, look at all of the communities, organizations, people that are behind this effort. And so building and collecting and getting that sort of political will as far along as possible is always something we're in favor of. And, and, and the sessions can be used as a opportunity to educate and build some of that political viability. That is a strategy for getting something, you know, to the point where it's ready to get passed. So there's a little bit of a nuance there between what work needs to happen and how might the legislative process be part of getting an issue ready to be politically viable?
16 Well, I appreciate that, but I wouldn't want political viability to stand in our way of raising an issue because, I mean, as you said, it may be viable in another year or two years, but I wouldn't want our decision to hinge on that, necessarily. I don't want to be tilting at windmills, but I do think there are issues that take time, and it won't be viable in the short session. It may not be viable in the next session, but we should continue to pound on it. Thank you.
17 I would just add, I encourage, I think that where where some things may set fit into a short session agenda, where some things may be getting prepared for longer agenda, longer session, or that cycle of continual development is, I think, an important part of that, and I think does fit with kind of the way your you're framing it, that it's not about not having the issues on the table. It's, it's, it's about where are they kind of what at what development stage.
18 Well, madam president, I would ask us to consider that that we consider issues that are not necessarily politically viable in the short run that may have regional significance and be important that we the environment may not may be hostile to them, but that we continue to to bring them up.
19 Councilor for what it's worth, I would suggest that when I look at a list of eight values, if something hits most of them and we think in the long run it could hit the other, but it might take some time to get there. That we certainly shouldn't preclude that from being on our agenda. I'm not sure how our colleagues feel about that. I'm seeing some nods, but I think that we could absolutely get to where you're pointing to without needing to change the criteria, but instead just recognizing that not everything is a slam dunk on all of them. Right? We might have something that isn't quite complete yet, but that meets all of the other criteria, and we know it'll be complete and ready by the end of a long session. For example, I think there's other places where we could look at that. Same with cities ability to impact. It may be that us on our own wouldn't have an impact, but that us not being in the room would have an impact. So we need to be there.
20 I want to encourage those conversations about what are those issues and let's put them, you know, really want to hear about those issues today. And and then we start working with you to determine where do those go. And so that's, that's part of this process that will be taking place up into December and beyond.
21 Thank you councilor Kanal.
22 Thank you, madam president. And thank you, director chase, for you and your team's work on all this. I first agree with both of the points that councilor Clark made, and I have a suggestion related to that. So I really like when I see these eight headers and I think on I have a couple comments on the, the one pager that has some more definitions. I think the regional alignment is really important, and I think there's been increased efforts already by our administration to do that. And I think that's really, really good. So I think it makes sense to kind of find a place to, to incorporate that maybe a little more explicitly as it relates to political viability. I think the way you described it, director chase, really aligns with the second and third of those three sentences that describe it potential roadmap for success, and will not hurt our ability to advocate on other priority issues. But maybe that first sentence of aligns with the values and direction of legislative leadership is the sticking point. As it relates there, I think that I could see a world in which elections dictate a very different set of values between the city and the state, arising, and so I think that might be a challenge, and that we certainly, certainly should not fail to advocate for ourselves at all times. And then similarly, I think collective agreement is an excellent goal, and I would love to see elected leadership, executive and elected leadership agree. After after receiving advice and collaborating with our city bureaus and subject matter experts, but not setting so high a bar that every bureau director has to necessarily agree. Because I think that that is not exactly the form of government that we have where elected leadership is subsumed there. And then the third comment I'd make is that I agree 100% with our city values and equity impact, both the headers and the the description. I just like to see a stronger implementation of those. The the way in which that those have been applied to the agenda, I think is, is something I'd like to see developed and bolstered so that we don't ever end up in a situation where we're advocating against our equity goals. Thank you. And I welcome any comments if you have them. But I can also do it later.
23 I would just add that I think that's really helpful input.
24 Thanks.
25 Councilor sam, we've got a couple of other people with questions here, and I will flag that. We want to spend the bulk of our discussion time on agenda items five and seven, but I also think it's important for you to hear the feedback on the criteria so that we're all on the same page as we go through the rest of the exercise. So let's run through the rest of the hands. But just make sure that we are moving as quickly as we can toward those other pieces. Councilor Zimmerman.
26 Thank you, madam president. I was getting a little confused where we were at in this. So my question, I think, relates to these these criteria. This is probably the most split the city council has ever been in terms of political ideology and how we've moved on things. And I'm curious in terms of for other towns who are who are in a similar position, how the legislative agenda is best developed when you have a deeply split council on some of the hot button. So is it better for us to hash out up here what gets on the agenda, or is it better to leave the hot button items where we're split off of the agenda so that the boring but important stuff is has alignment? Because I think we have a unique situation here with this council, and I think this falls into evaluation criteria. I'd look for your advice on that or what other cities are doing who are facing this, but it seems more pressing than I've ever experienced before. Having been in your chair in other places, this would be a challenging city to come up with a coherent legislative agenda.
27 Well, and that is why I tried to enlist chapters to to help and was unsuccessful. But I think that we. So there's there's practices in other cities. I think that is a $64,000 question that we, we are intending to have discussion about around, you know, operating agreement. How does council want to work together? How does council want to work with the mayor and administration and and what, you know, your recommendations are for, you know, the the rest of the city, the the evaluation. And, and I will say in, in light of yes, there are divisions and issues that this council maybe has different perspectives on when it came to the agenda and our legislative session, this council was really, really united. I think it was, you know, it was remarkable down in the legislature to be able to go down there and have them see this united front, whether they were talking to the mayor or to any of the council members, they were getting the same messages and the and the messages even around shelter and housing was was aligned and and and delivered with the expectations as I understood them from council. So I think we have been able to kind of thread that needle the, the, the issue of how and and and how this council wants to work on those, on those areas where maybe, you know, there's a couple members that don't that aren't on board, maybe it's a larger number. You know, that is a problem for us if, if, if there are folks speaking out in ways that are not aligned with the city's agenda, that's that's a big challenge for us. And that that shows up as a, you know, something that. Diminishes our ability to get as many results. And so that's that's a key question that we do have flagged for later today is, how do you want us to handle those situations? It gets into the collective agreement, you know, what does that mean? So I hope that's helpful.
28 It is. I think it's something we should discuss as we get to the end. To me, that says there might be a really important thing, but if it is a divisive thing that that makes the whole agenda go kaput, it may not be worth the momentum on other items. That's how I'm taking that a bit, because the collective front you have noted is important, and I'm just noting that in your answer.
29 Yeah, it's a lot harder to get a resolution around a divided proposal than it is a unified one. And and if we don't have the mayor, the administration and the council aligned, it's it's the, the odds of us being successful on a given issue go way down. Thanks, jim.
30 I think I hear an undertone in your question. Councilor also about how divisiveness affects not just one agenda item, but the agenda as a whole. If we have something divisive on the agenda. Councilor Ryan.
31 Yes, thank you, madam president. Good to see you, director chase, and thank you for your leadership. Your office runs so well since you've been in charge. And I wanted to acknowledge that. I think this has been discussed enough, but I just want to make sure I get it. So there's urgency that shows up. And when there's urgency and we all come together, is that pretty much covered under the values of viability and strategic and financial values? For example, let me give you an example. So there was a council. The council was the council previously focused on redoing measure 110, helping with that rewrite. Obviously that was divisive. We got together and I think that was an example of urgency. And and then it did get amended. And I know that this, that the city was a big part of helping that move along. So that's an example of urgency. I don't think it was on our agenda when we had a meeting like this months out, but then it became a part of our agenda. So I think I'm just getting at the urgency aspect of needs, even though I agree with councilor Clark that most issues take several sessions, there are examples where there's urgent needs.
32 I think that's a really great flag. I think that, you know, I could say, you know, that maybe there's some places where urgency fit in. But I think that really, you know, identifying that as, as something timeliness, urgency that, you know, some issues can't wait. I think that is a good one for us to take and back to our team. So I appreciate it. I think we'll we'll work on trying to see how we can make sure that's incorporated.
33 Thank you. And looking at the lens statewide on that one, we obviously had a lot of allies, not the county. But after we went outside of Multnomah county, we had a lot of allies. So I hope that we look at the bigger picture of what alignment can look like. Thanks.
34 Great. And we will take back, just to clarify, at this point, we will take the the input that you are providing here today and and develop another evolution of this, this, this work and, and the overall work that we are doing and have continual conversation with you on that.
35 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Smith.
36 Thank you, council president. Thank you, sam and your team for all that you do for us down in Salem. I know that that is a huge lift. I've done that before. Just curious, do you all ever look at the resolutions that we pass as an indicator of things that you should be prioritizing? Let me let me give you an example. Like there are two pieces of language that I got passed in the committee and the the big city council cip, the sidewalk improvement and paving program. And the second one was the summer works apprenticeship. And so I'm saying, do you ever look at the tacit approval? One went, I think they both went 11 one, 11 one. But so when you're looking at your list of things because for me, jobs and regional significance that we have enough money in the apprenticeship programs since we're going to be redeveloping the 2627. Contracts for coab, I still see opportunities for us to triangulate, like, for example, if there are monies from the federal government that go to the state for transportation, and if those if we go after those smaller grants that come through the state and or through the legislature, that we can divert general fund money towards, say, debt service, because I still have a $200 million request in for cip on the financial side. And so if there's ways that we can divert money that's already being used for something else and get a grant so that we could use that freed up money to pay for debt service appropriations. I mean, apprenticeships and summer jobs. We just went on a tour yesterday with ibr, the interstate bridge, greg johnson said that there's going to be 22,000 jobs and that we don't have those jobs and those people ready to go right now, and that bridge is going to cost a whole lot more if we have to go and get workers in other states. So I guess if I was doing this too, I would look at the things that council passed that got approval. Are there ways that we can help fund this on the state and the federal levels, if they're unfunded mandates?
37 So the short answer is, yes, we do look at those materials and resolutions and and information. There is a lot of it. And we we don't always you know, we sometimes learn about things later on or or maybe don't, you know, hear about stuff. I sort of don't know what we don't hear. So we really encourage communication. Back to ogr. If there is something that might have some external government or sort of relationship, and we absolutely love to provide, you know, feedback and, and, and identify where we can be helpful, I think the, the criteria we're talking about here today is really something for us to help interact with folks around. Hey, you know what is getting proposed? And I think one of the challenges we have is we're not policy. Our team doesn't make policy decisions. We don't decide policy. We work on the process of making sure we're getting clear direction about what we need to go get done down in the legislature. So on those issues, it's the questions would be, you know, around these issue bucket areas in terms of, you know, do we have something ready to go? Do we have is it complete and ready in terms of are we able to do we have the ability to impact this, you know, are we is the city ready to deliver on whatever we're asking for the legislature? Are we clear in in in what it is specifically we are asking the legislature to do? Those are the kinds of questions we really enjoy, kind of, you know, helping folks think through. Right. And the earlier we're engaged, the I think the more helpful we can be in, in going through that process. But and there are things, you know, I mean, this council, it's it's responsible to the voters. And we don't try to enforce or tell folks what to do. We do have preferences, which is we. And that's why we have our issue sheets. We want to make sure that we're getting and being proactive about getting that information. If things are directives in a resolution or an ordinance, you know. We, you know, love to hear about that, but we prefer that it's really starts with a conversation with ogr before it's, you know, gets to that point that we have a touch point.
38 And I'll wrap this up. But what I was talking about, things that have already passed, like sip, the non revenue piece is passed the the summer jobs and apprenticeships passed 11 111 one. So what I'm saying is can you begin to look at those and say these are places that we can probably identify money, like for apprenticeships and the whio reauthorization on the federal level. Would that be something that that we would put down there to say apprenticeships are a priority for us. If we can get written in to the new language on the reauthorization on the federal side, this is where we could see some some monies freeing up and that we didn't have to spend our general fund. That's a priority for me because it's a regional priority, because this is about jobs for this entire region, and it's about transportation for this whole northwest corridor from canada all the way down to mexico. So for me, that is a priority. And it's a priority for the people who are who are working here. As you saw the article in the paper the other day, 11,000 people are losing their jobs. And if this is happening every month, the thing that's going to keep us, you know, on the straight and narrow are these infrastructure projects that we have in the queue that have been here since the biden administration that we need to, you know, we need to get these workers trained up.
39 Councilor I think you're starting to move us into what our priorities are.
40 Okay.
41 Yes. And I want to make sure I think you raised a really important point around issue evaluation criteria evaluation. If we have said something is a priority through ordinances and resolutions, does that help move it up the list in terms of evaluation? But I want to hold on sam's response to individual issues until we start talking about building the agenda itself.
42 Perfect.
43 Thank you.
44 But we are capturing that issue and that that will be something we will follow up with you on.
45 Okay. Thank you.
46 Sam, we're getting there. We had extra time built into the agenda, so I'm not worried yet. We've got two more folks with questions about the evaluation criteria themselves, and then we'll let you move to the next part. Councilor Novick.
47 I just wanted to say that I like the evaluation criteria. And in concert with what the council president said earlier, I think that pretty much anything that we might think is good can fit into some of them, like, you know, reforming measure 50 that might not have political viability immediately, but over four sessions it might and maybe the voters might be willing to do it. And it's strategically important and it's equity important. So my assumption is that none of these criteria would preclude our pursuing that. So I also just wanted to say that your reference to the $64,000 question prompted me to do something by meeting you for years, which is see what inflation has made that since 1958. And I think people like you and me remember that show should start referring or remember hearing about that show. Just start referring to it as the $725,000 question.
48 Thank you, councilor Councilor Avalos.
49 Thank you. I am curious about what it has looked like in the past. Do you have some kind of process where a councilor Can bring an idea that's not on your list? Right? I think you guys do a really good job of trying to consolidate, obviously, also bringing forward, you know, things that you've been working on that take years to get through. But have you seen a process like that in the way that the last council was, would, I guess, would get to this place of telling you what our priorities are, part one and then part two? Are you envisioning that maybe we could create a process by which, you know, we come to a work session or a council meeting and people can pitch ideas? I'm trying to understand what has that looked like cultural wise with the councilors in the past?
50 Well, I think. It's a good question about how it looked in the past. I think it was really there were some fundamental differences around commissioners and and running those bureaus and sort of aligning their issues through those, those bureaus. I think what we are interested in here is really providing every opportunity we can for council members to bring forward their ideas. And so really, we want that we we appreciate that we try to do that in as consolidated a way as we can. And so that's why, you know, we have the the issue sheet process and really encourage council members to to do that. It helps us when we can get that information earlier in the process. We want to have a conversation with folks at any point when they have something that they want to bring forward. We want to be a strategic partner for you in thinking through those issues and making sure you're recognizing where the rest of the city might stand on a given issue. What are the challenges ahead? What are some of the things that could be getting started to address some of these evaluation criteria? So we we are really appreciating when folks can work through the the issue sheets, because then that creates the opportunity for the entire council to look as a whole at the issues. But we still, you know, are there to work with folks, you know, as as issues arise and issues are going to arise all through, up and into and after the session. So, you know, we really have an open door for that. But we we want to have this deliberative process of really vetting these issues. And so as, as you are all submitting issues, we want to have subject matter experts in the administration look at those and, and think about what are all of the ways to have this be. Does this align with the city's overarching, you know, values, evaluating it based on some of these criteria and sharing that back the criteria doesn't determine whether something gets on the agenda or not. The the leadership and the decision makers determine that this is just a tool to help you kind of identify where some of those gaps may be.
51 Thank you. Yeah, I was just trying to understand, you know, how it had worked in the past. And the closest thing I have to go off of is how we got through the budget process this year. Obviously not a perfect process, and there's a lot that we need to tweak about how to make that more effective. But the, you know, us being able to have a frame to start off of and then bring forward amendments and discuss it, I guess I'm just trying to see what y'all's vision was considering. You've got, you know, triple the size of a council to have that kind of discussion in a way that I guess I feel could be similar to how we did the budget. So I was just trying to get a temperature check of what it looked like in the past, because I just wasn't following it closely enough back in the day to know how they were negotiating and bringing up the ideas. And, you know, again, just curious and we'll keep talking about that, about how what your ideas are for how to do it in this new form with the other layer, I think, of having the mayor and the councilors be having very different roles than they did in the past. So I think they, you know, they worked together because it was very, you know, they were all kind of on the same page, like per charter, I guess. So, yeah. Another flag that I'm sure we'll keep talking about.
52 Yeah. And, and we want the, we want council to feel largely as if they see their themselves in this agenda. The issue she processed was we also used that with the previous council. And it's really our, our opportunity and we've tweaked it and adjusted it. But and this criteria is this is something that we as ogre brought forward more recently. But the the process that we would hope to get to, I would say would be different from the budget. And in this last one, which is that we would like to get to a place where you all see yourselves in it, and the city as a whole all sees itself in it, and that we are coming to you in December with a hopefully with by the time you're voting with a package that you are supportive of, you know, and that really does capture that collective interest and unified voice or whatever, we're going to talk about the, you know, how to work through some of that stuff a little later in the agenda. So we'll continue this conversation.
53 Councilor I think this is the start of that process. We do need to sam's point to get to something that has more unanimity and support than pieces of the budget did. You'll see that on the agenda today. We're talking about what everybody thinks priorities should be, and today is really our opportunity to give direction to sam and his team about the types of things we might want to see on the agenda. Sam can then take that and the issue evaluation criteria, plus the nuances to the criteria that we've discussed right now. And think about what you're hearing, sam, from bureau directors needs are what you're hearing from council. Priorities need to be what we hear from the mayor, who I hope will be a part of our conversation today, what his priorities are to bring us something that we can then make those changes to in December. Right. That is that is the process that that we have laid out so that we can try to get everybody's ideas in here.
54 Yeah. Thank you. I more than anything, was just wanting to hear what it was like in the past so I could have something to compare to. And as I think about what this new process could look like. So yeah, I appreciate that context. Thanks.
55 Okay.
56 Sam, I think that's the extent of questions about the issue evaluation criteria. And I know we've we had some extra time built in. We've used some of it, but we still have extra time. So we are on track. And I think we're getting into now the meat of the conversations that you want us to have. So why don't you keep us moving?
57 Great. I will jump in before I jump into the state stuff. I just want to make sure I take the time to introduce the folks from our team that are here. We have, and they may be. I may need to phone a friend at different times on different topics, but we have back here we have evan mitchell, who is our state legislative manager, and Dan bates, who is the has our contract both to do federal and state work. Nils who tillstrom, who is our deputy director, and jack arriaga, who is our federal program manager. And they are the actual experts. So somebody referred to us as being experts. These are the ones that are the actual experts. The state priorities, the current list of issues you have before you. This is the raw input. I just emphasized that one one more time from elected leaders and bureaus and subject matter experts. Of course, we have a lot of folks throughout the city, and these are ideas that it may be just one one person. So the vetting and the and the alignment and all that work needs to be done. But we really want to be welcoming those ideas. As councilor Smith was starting to share and and others, you know, we want to be capturing those ideas so we can help with the process of vetting those throughout the city and then and then having a dialog with you about what what are the the issues that are ready to go and what are the priorities and what fits into short session and what's longer term. And thinking about those buckets that that the issues would land in. We're not asking for approvals or votes on these issues at this time. We we want to make sure that we've captured the issues that you have either either more depth in the issues that have been submitted or issues that are not appearing. That should be here. We want to understand where there are places of clear alignment, where questions and concerns may remain. So we know where to focus discussions as we do that given the limitations of the short session, we would like to, you know, get to a point where we're focused on what is achievable in the short session after session. And but I don't want to, you know, we want to hear the ideas, whether they fit with the short session ask or even longer, because we want to begin really having things in that longer term, kind of developing those strategies. The. I think that's good for now. I think I'll just turn it over and, and we'll just jump right into the questions.
58 Okay. So colleagues, we've got about 55 zero minutes set aside to talk about our state agenda. And sam has put a couple of questions up here. I'd like to do this in a little bit of just a a normal discussion style. I think later in the presentation, I'll ask us to go around and each provide our input on some things, but for now, let's just let folks jump in as you have something to share. Thinking about what issues should be at the top of the agenda? What issues generally should be on the agenda, I guess is the first question, and maybe we can take those together. If you have issues that you think should be on the agenda and then note of those, if there's one that you think is perhaps more important than the others or not, and then maybe we can come back around to our approach and how we align it with the city's goals. If you have separate comments there, councilor Dunphy, go ahead.
59 Thank you. Sam. Mine's more of a process question. I guess if this council was, for example, unified around councilor Novick proposal to redo measure 50, and that becomes the top issue on our agenda, does your team then go and talk to, for example, the Portland delegation, the Portland senators and representatives to try and find a person who's willing to sponsor that? Or do we just sort of put it out there and hope that it it finds a willing partner? How do we connect those dots between the work we're doing to find our priorities and actually getting a bill?
60 So we each each item would have a different strategy. And so, you know, sometimes you want to collaborate with different elected leaders that maybe have an interest in moving that forward. I, I think that the starting point is what do you want to accomplish? And then our team will help communicate with you and throughout the city. What here are the strategies that we think are going to be most effective on this. And keeping in mind these other strategies that we want to, you know, you know, have success with also, and how do these all match together. So, you know, I think the, you know, getting those issues on the table is with that issue, you know, we would say, hey, let's let's start with a conversation about the using the evaluation criteria, because that's the tool. We have to go through those buckets and say, you know, is this how politically viable is this. Well it's x viable okay. What would make it more viable. What other things could happen to put it in a place where it can be as successful as possible? How is this related directly to city services? Well, it's it's about the funding that the city gets. So there's really quite a direct relationship because so those those are the kinds of, you know, getting the issue on the table and then doing the vetting with you and, and getting subject matter experts and others in the city to help you all are elected leaders, mayor, you all in, you know, feeling like there can be some alignment around what the approach is.
61 And does that. I guess this probably is under political viability. But you know, with short sessions, there are bill, bill caps number of member can introduce. Does that play a role. I mean like if by you know mid January we haven't found a willing person to take our top priority and all the bills have been introduced, would we readjust our priorities or would we continue to ask your team to talk about reforming measure 50, for example, even though we know there's not a vehicle, even though we know that there isn't a path in this session.
62 I mean, you know, for example, with that issue and this is the first it's come up. So I'm just really they always say just, you know, say whatever's on your mind when you're in front of council. So, you know.
63 I want you to know that we're watching your team's expressions behind you as you say that.
64 You know, the short session is coming up. There's conversations about realigning the the tax system because of the federal changes. The they are facing tremendous amount of cuts in a normal short session. There's a lot even there's a lot of reluctance to take on big new things unless leadership's already, you know, seeing it and feeling like it's it's something that's been in the waiting for a long time. It's something. So I think, you know, we would look and say, hey, this one is one that, you know, the odds of being successful on it are never zero, you know, because all kinds of things could happen. Let's let's figure out what we can know about it. Now that might inform the conversations if they come up in the short session and there's tax reform work getting done, let's know and understand and vet as much as we can on that issue. But you know, we might say, you know, hey, if we put that issue forward and the odds of it are extremely slim, we might not be spending energy and capacity and time on these other items.
65 Thank you. Councilor councilor Morillo.
66 Hi. Thank you so much for being here today and for going through this process with us. It feels kind of wild to discuss new legislation that we're asking for when the current legislature hasn't passed anything yet, but here we are. Can I is this the right time to just list out my top priorities for you? Okay, great. I'm going to go I'm going to dive in. I think one of the top issues that we've been dealing with as a council, obviously, is federal overreach. And there are things that we simply can't do at the local level that the state legislature might be able to help us out with. So it's my understanding that the state democratic caucus is working on a package, and some of those policies are still ongoing. But I think it's really important for the city of Portland to be at that table when they are addressing federal overreach and things that we can do at the local level. I know this is a top priority for councilors canal, Avalos and Smith, who've been working on a lot of things along with me on, you know, regarding federal overreach and I specifically. So this is an issue that a big chunk of us really care deeply about, and I hope that we can bring that to the state level. I think that the federal overreach issues that we're seeing, too, they impact everything from privacy to health care discrimination. States that are tracking people through their data, and how that's impacted people who are seeking abortions, etc. So anything that we can do to prevent some of that or policies that I'm going to be focused on during the last legislative session, I was also really concerned about the fact that we didn't have a strong push for any housing or rental assistance in the ways that our community desperately needs. Clearly, we are seeing a lot of people who are facing evictions, who are going on the streets, and we're creating a revolving door where we're expanding shelter but not housing. And I really want to see our legislature help us fund some of that rental assistance. I know that councilor Green has also submitted a number of proposals for discussion that are going to support housing development. The revolving loan funds upzoning those types of things. And I think that that's going to be really critical to expand our housing. So those are my top three. And then I have kind of a a more random one that I think is really important. As co-chair of the climate committee, senator mark gamboa pushed forward the Oregon transmission authority house bill 3628, which will help investigate and help us put together a plan to expand electrification in the state. And that has been an issue that has come up repeatedly. And so I think that we need a focus on that as well as far as infrastructure for the next few decades. So hope you got all that down. But I think we submitted it and I will send it to you if you don't.
67 We appreciate the submittal and we're capturing, you know, everything that's getting communicated here.
68 Wonderful. Thank you so much.
69 Thank you.
70 Thanks, councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane.
71 Thank you, council president. My office has also submitted. But thank you so much for this reference chart of these different state issues. Looking here, something that popped out to me. There is an issue titled housing production. I'm looking at the first one and under there it says changing state laws and rules to address limitations associated with providing sufficient visible and accessible units. And so I know as part of the city's projects like residential infill and better by design, our city planners have attempted to increase the stock of accessible housing for older adults and people with disabilities. In Portland, however, state building code and building code division building codes division has remained stuck in a place that limits our city's ability to increase our accessible housing stock. I see you know about this, so I'm just wondering if in the future there's a way that we can explore as a city, maybe an exemption from the state building code and or work with the state legislature to increase ability for cities like Portland to provide accessible housing that meets the needs of older adults, people with disabilities. Is that anything we could pursue?
72 I would say all of all of these concepts are in the world of pursuable, and I think we will take the additional input and the issue sheet you submitted. Any other comments that folks have to any of these issues? We absolutely welcome here today also. But that is something we will capture this and work with within the service areas to help that and identify, you know, what, what options we have for legislative agenda. Work on that.
73 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Zimmerman.
74 Thank you, madam president. So, sam, I just this table that you've provided with the yellow headings that has a state agenda items. I've gone through all those. My request would be to have some sort of something in this table that is an indicator of if that came from the administration or the departments. I'm pretty used to knowing, like what is coming out of a department for. I'll put it in the category of sense making, or those are the types of things that they really need to do to make their work successful. It's hard to tell in this what has come from those input groups versus what has come from our our group up here. I am taking it as those that do not have an ex in the carryover from 25, that those have come from all of us as we submitted them by September 5th. But that's being generous. There could be departments who did it as well, and that's what's hard for me to tell right now.
75 There are both and and we can get you that.
76 Thanks. The other question I have before I talk about my priority, what should I read into when I see a senator's name next to an item? There are a couple of items that have a senator identified and I would like to know is that because they agree and want to champion it, or is it because they've asked us to place it on our agenda?
77 Neither. Okay, those are ideas that are coming from the city. We are not putting other ideas on. We are putting the only only submittals that we have received. I'm not.
78 So I see senator phelan and senator tran both have somewhere in our document, one about inclusionary zoning, one about hearsay trafficking. And I, I just don't know what their name. Excuse me, rep tran not senator, but what that means.
79 I think that they are at times just inserting context and information about who may be already, you know, engaged in similar or or that particular issue. Okay. So like maybe it's for the inclusionary housing one.
80 Zoning is is something that was not in last year's agenda. So it's obviously a new item at the very end of it in parentheses. We've got senator from.
81 So that's kind of I think context information. She has been very active in working on inclusionary zoning.
82 So maybe kind of a note within the staffing side of it of like, hey, she's already working in this area is how I should take that.
83 Yes.
84 Okay. Okay. That's helpful. I just.
85 I would not there's really very little that's conclusive in any of it. Okay. To be to be honest. That's fine.
86 Yeah. My next point is actually less for sam's team and more for my colleagues in terms of of priorities. So a little bit of sam's team. You know, I've been around legislative agendas for a long time. They usually look like this. They usually have a lot of stuff that is just. Incremental, which in a government is a lot of way in which we do stuff is incrementalism. And I'm not opposed to that necessarily, but. I have been kind of trying this on with the county, with other stakeholder groups for a while. And you'll see on the second slide that they provided us in the list, there's an Oregon state hospital north title. And I'll be honest, colleagues, I think that we should stunt this. We should go in front of the cameras with the county. We should take our legislative agendas. We should rip them up on camera and say Multnomah county and the city of Portland have one thing on our agenda. We want an Oregon state hospital north campus for the Portland metro area that is not accessible to the judicial system, that is accessible to people who are actually mentally ill, who haven't yet committed crimes, so that we can actually have access to institutional mental health care in this state for the first time in I think, decades. This system is so broken that talking about increasing capacity is one of our thousand bullet points, which means that we're going to work on three beds at a time, ten beds at a time. I don't think it's going to work. I think we should be mature enough to do similar with with. I agree with councilor Novick on measure 50. I think it's that serious of a transformational need in the state and in the in the community. It will never happen unless we let some other stuff go by the wayside for the time being, until we get the big thing. We've spent $750 million in the last few years on housing and homelessness as a combined county, metro and city. To what end? We have a system that is generally set up and does pretty well from a poverty based homelessness. But we're really bad at the mental health and addictions based homelessness, and we are combining those populations in a way that ways that I think are really damning for everybody involved. So I'm offering that up because I think that these proposals I've seen are all thought out. They're all good. They're all important for city business. None of them are transformational in terms of the biggest change that could actually save this state and this community. So I'm offering that up, not as a critique of anybody else's, but I think it would be interesting to have Multnomah county and the city of Portland go to all of our legislators who we sent to Salem and say, we want to talk about a bigger thing. And this is this is the bigger thing. So that's that's the one thing I put on the agenda that I submitted. I hope you guys will consider it, because I don't really know what else we're doing here. When it this topic consumes every conversation we have. And most of these things on here are about fixing this topic. But in one aspect of it. But we still have a very sick population, so I'll just leave it there.
87 Thanks, councilor. Councilor Green.
88 Thank you, madam president. Sam, before I get into my priorities, I just wanted to clarify. So under housing production, there's a suite of advanced housing production strategy. And the last bullet is mortgage interest deduction reform. Do you know, off the top of your head what that reform looks like? In those conversations?
89 There have been different versions of of mortgage reform in in sessions. I think there was I can't remember if this last one. It was around getting rid of second home mortgage deductions. And so, you know, the way the system works, you can take it on your vacation home. Also, I will say that, you know, we have this handy guide with all of the legislation that we worked on and engaged in. And so there is more detail in there.
90 I'll refer to that. And thanks for that clarification. I appreciate the prompt. It's going to help me kind of narrow in here. I've got three categories colleagues categorical priorities for me. And they're not in any particular order of importance. But I start with in a broad bucket, respond to federal overreach. I agree with my colleagues that mentioned it earlier. I think one of our most pressing concerns we have is to to make sure that we're not just being passive in the face of trumpism and that we're actually sort of saying, no, we we think that our local government or state government should go in this direction and stand up. So I see a number of efforts on this spreadsheet that are that I would support. There's the warrantless drone piece that I think needs to be taken up surveillance, I should say. I also think that we should support a legislative agenda that has a tough conversation about revenue. And, you know, are we are we going to claw back the big, beautiful bill, tax cuts that some of the wealthiest people in this state got through the federal legislation, rather than just pass those cuts on to our poorest in the state, which I think would be wrong. So I, I hope that we have that kind of conversation collectively. And I and I know there are colleagues in Salem are going to do the same. And that first item that just says federal overreach, I support all that. The second piece is infrastructure. I think that's our second, you know, pillar of what we need to be talking about. So it's so it's federal overreach, it's infrastructure, it's housing for me. And there's an item on here, a statewide utility, a utility rate assistance. I think that's important. But I think the rates go up because we've had inflation costs, construction in our capital projects. And so what I would like us to pursue potentially as part of that conversation, would be creating some language that says when we get grants for those kind of projects, that we can use them to sort of buy down the balance sheet costs of previous projects, like I think about bull run, I think about the big pipe years ago, like many municipalities around the state of Oregon are facing utility rate increases because it's gotten so expensive to build. And so if we were able to sort of write that down through state assistance, then we could have a leveling off organically of our rate increases. And so I think that might be better than just sort of dealing with it on the back end. Just as an idea. I would actually place the I mean, I strongly support the Oregon state hospital north concept that I just don't think it's our only thing. I don't want to be so theatric and like, rip up the thing and then be like, this is our one thing, but I do like I just do my theatrics differently. It's really important. And I think it's just strongly echo what you said. We need a sort of place for folks to go to get well, that's not just in a jail cell. And it's infrastructure to me like that capacity is infrastructure, in my view, and we should be lobbying for that. And then I did I did put a number of housing related things in play. Those references to senator pham that you were referring to, that that came from my staff, just to provide context, because there were some unfinished business in the last legislative session, particularly around the construction revolving loan finance fund. They did pass senate bill 684, which created the framework for, you know, public development revolving loan fund. But they didn't capitalize that fund. And so I think, you know, we should support using some money in the next session, if possible, to capitalize that fund so we can get to work building. To that end, I think I'm really worried that the city of Portland is going to take too many years to update our code. I mean, we're going to try really hard. We've got our best people working on it, but land use consideration takes so long in this state at the local level. And so I did put in a request for an up zoning legislative item. We don't have a sponsor for that. But but creating just a state level action that says around transit nodes, you should comply with the the state's multifamily model code. And I think if we can do that stuff in the next session, it will unlock the developer capability that our sdc waiver was trying to accomplish. Like if these things are connected. So again, I'll just say it again, it's it's federal. It's federal overreach, it's infrastructure and it's housing. For me, that's I think that's it for now. Thank you.
91 Thank you councilor, councilor Canal.
92 Thank you, madam president. I'll just say that the first item I'm going to mention does relate as well to the criteria it was. I forgot to mention that local control had historically been something presented as a criteria and in and of itself as an evaluative mechanism. So that might be helpful there. I think it's related to the good governance issues, which I think also ties in to some degree with measure 50 and ties into the fixing house bill 2805. Federal overreach, I think, definitely relates to warrantless surveillance as well. I kind of agree with councilor Green on that. And I would argue that any expansion of surveillance, not merely warrantless, is is I think I'd like to see that incorporated into that item. I was a little confused, but I think it relates as to the the second item, the artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and privacy. I think that's kind of one category of items there. Another category, I'll split it up a little bit. On the public safety side, the sci hub items were both really important. I'd also mention the need to support house bill 2749 from this year's session, which is not on here, but is the seismic resilience and design review specifically. But anything that can help with replacing the bridges over the north Portland railroad cut to help ensure that people have an evacuation mechanism that's not going to be collapsed in the context of a cascadia earthquake. On that subject, medicaid reimbursement for street medicine is also in the public safety space. I think that relates to behavioral health capacity. I agree as well with councilor Greene's comments about the Oregon state hospital north, and I appreciate that being brought up by councilor Zimmerman. I think the public safety space finally includes the bottle drop conversation as well. I'm not sure about this exact, you know, path. It seems to continue to seek collaborative solutions is nice. So we'll see how that that works out. But I know that that's a topic I hear a lot about from constituents in our district. Housing. There's so many great things in here. The capitalizing the revolving loan fund, rent assistance. The second item marked housing production. And at least of the first, at least the exploration of the tax credit issues related to historic rehabilitation at the state level. And I guess of the things on here, I mean, it generally, all these particular projects that we're seeking money for, I think is worth saying. I imagine we all agree with them. If we agree with the project, we would want the money for it. I'll highlight the broadway corridor one. I do think that in terms of socializing some items for the longer term, there's a few others that I'd like to just mention here talking about qualified immunity reform of the lsc processes, the arbitration processes at the state level, and ethical investment, especially as it relates to pers. I understand those probably aren't going to come up this session, but I wanted to mention them and just get them into the conversation as things that I'm I'm interested in as well, and I'll leave it at that. Thank you, madam president.
93 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Novick.
94 I also have a stand up in front of the cameras with our agenda pieces and say, this is all we care about thing, and it's something that councilor Could all just mentioned, which is getting the legislature to direct oha to take the steps necessary to make it easy for street medicine providers like psr and chad to get medicaid reimbursement. This is something that we've been told our folks have been talking to oha for months. There's leading medicaid experts who say that oha is making it much more difficult than it should be. It shouldn't be that hard for them to create codes that we can build, that don't require us to distinguish between physical and mental health. This is something that's not like a big cost to the state. It shouldn't be politically controversial. We should have allies. And but it would have an immediate impact on our budget. If a chunk of the cost of psr can be taken over by medicaid. So in the spirit that we I figured that getting big things done in the short session is unusual. I would focus all our efforts on this one little thing that has an immediate budget impact on us. Thank you.
95 Thank you, councilor. I'm going to come back to myself to make sure we have time. Councilor or councilor Smith I'm sorry. Go right ahead.
96 Thank you. Council president. A few things and you probably won't be surprised at the priorities that I have. As I said before, we passed the cip resolution, the non revenue piece, and I view this as a tie to improvement and maintenance of our infrastructure and built environment. And it's also tied to our climate and equity goals. To me, this fits within a majority of points within the issue of evaluation and criterion. During the budget process, we we approved funds for summer works to support our broader workforce development goals. And when we look at large infrastructure projects like rose quarter and ibr that yield high paying jobs that we don't currently have in the labor force, I think that's so critical and important. And lastly, it's estimated that within future ready Oregon that we will need thousands of trade jobs. And as you know, future ready was built on $200 million of ARPA money. It is now going away. And so as much as we can support other organizations like work systems, who's going to be asking for 20 million for future ready Oregon? That would be helpful to us to be able to see them do the work that they've been doing over the last four years to to creating a workforce that we so, you know, immediately need to make sure that these projects don't go out and get workers in other places. So I think that that is my that is my agenda for the for the state level. And on the federal level, I think there are opportunities to to make sure that we also look at those same issues, to see ways in which we can in the reauthorization of the we act, talk to congresswoman bonamici to see how we can be written in. I know it is tough times for us democrats in in the federal legislature, but the issue is we had a lot of monies that were on the line that we had already approved, and all those marks went away. Every last one of them. So for me, I think we need to figure out a better way with in in partnership with our congressional delegation to figure out how are they prioritizing. They do a whole long list and they give a priority list. But I mean, which ones are they really prioritizing that's going to move the needle, and how can we get to those conversations with them? Because of course, they want to be able to tell their constituents, yes, we we approved you as a priority, but this administration didn't pick it. But we want to figure out how do we do that in a way that there's something they're getting I mean, those. Folks who who are not in in power there, we're getting something. I just need to figure out how do we how do we figure out a way to get into that something and ask that right question? And what is what is the list is are there three things that you can get? And if those three things are your priority levels, let us know what they are so we can bring forward those requests for appropriations that are appropriate. I mean, I know we bring everything under the sun, and those are not likely to get funded. We're not we're still I think we're still approaching earmarks as if we're in the obama and biden administration. And we can't we can't be sending them a whole bunch of lists of stuff. And we know good and well it's not going to pass. We need to get three good things that are on our list, and that we're telling the other all the entire delegation that these are our three things and not send a whole bunch of stuff. And it's like, whatever. You know, I used to do appropriations. So it's like, okay, really? And I would see a city of Portland come in with some appropriations, and then the next year it would be totally different. I was like, well, what about those priority things that you said were a priority last year? What happened to those? So I just really want to have an honest conversation with our congressional delegation on what's what's what is reality. So thank you so much.
97 Thank you. And we'll capture some of that in the federal for the federal conversation that we'll be having. But you sound a bit like an ogre staffer.
98 So.
99 Sometimes I wish I could have a job over there.
100 Now, councilor Don't go defecting. We need you up here. Thank you for those thoughts, councilor Ryan.
101 Thank you, madam president. First I want to say I'm agreeing with much of what I've heard from my colleagues. I'll add and won't won't repeat what I've heard. I will just make a underscore on what councilor Zimmerman said about the needs for mental health services. I think some of you might know dammasch hospital closed in 1996. That was about 30 years ago, with the promise that the counties would provide those types of services. Here we are. And so I couldn't imagine that the county wouldn't be behind this, since they've had challenges implementing any sort of vision and practices that could be satisfying 30 years later. So I do think this is a big, urgent need. It's embarrassing that the state of Oregon tends to always trend last in mental health and behavioral health services. On that note, as a child of this state, I was always really thrilled that we had the first bottle bill in the country. It was in the early 70s, and I have a lot of historic pride. I think everyone around my age does when it comes to that. But guess what? It's a lot different today. We have different systems for recycling and such. I know we have the bottle bill on here, but I wanted to go a little bit deeper with that because there are clear issues that we're seeing, whether you just scroll a little bit to the west and you see the plaid pantry near the newly renovated Portland art museum, where sadly, you see the system. It's a pretty sophisticated drug system. It's not really that under the market. It's kind of you can see with your broad eyes. And so when governor kotek closed that system, that kiosk, if you will, plaid pantry, you didn't see the conditions that you see on the streets now. But those are back. And we all know about the bottle drop challenges. But there's something I've learned about in doing this constituent work that we get to do in this new form of government. So I spent an afternoon on the beaumont village, which is upper fremont, and what I learned is that if you're three miles away from a bottle drop, then you're required to have this kiosk that gives instant cash. And drug addicts need instant cash. The dealers know that instant cash is there. So back to the plaid pantry. They provide the goods and the open market is there. It's the number one reason they're having storefront issues that include vandalism and break ins in that area that was gone. That probably wouldn't be the case. I think all of us have this scenario in all of our neighborhoods, the safeway and the fred myers. They have a different system. You get to bring back the Green bag and then it shows up in your account maybe a day later when you're an addict, you want instant cash again. So you're not going to go to that system. You're going to return it to one of these kiosks. That's my way of saying, I think this conversation needs to be daylighted, which I'm trying to do right now, and I hope that we can prioritize it because it's really impacting the livability of neighborhoods throughout the city. Thank you.
102 Thank you.
103 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Clark.
104 Thank you, madam president. I don't usually talk about my past history, but I am going to today in regards to the legislative session and the situation that the state is going to find itself in, and we're going to find ourselves in with an extremely difficult budget. All a lot of these things that we're talking about require money. You know, in the early 1980s, 40,000 people left the state. We were in a terrible, I would call it depression. People were leaving. There was no money. And the lobby had to be incredibly creative to get anything done because there wasn't any money. So what I would suggest that we also look at things that don't cost money, and we also, of course, rely on our partners at the league of Oregon cities to carry some of this. But I think what councilor Ryan just mentioned is something that doesn't necessarily require money. So regulatory reform, bottle bill reform, ethics reform, the creating a table for the cei hub. It doesn't necessarily take any money, but the state has a huge responsibility there that they need to create that table. I'm sure there are other things that don't require money that would have an impact on us. Sdc reform, for example. Now, maybe this is not a short session issue, but these are the kinds I think we're going to have to be very creative because there isn't going to be money. Now I'm going to contradict myself even though there's no money. I do strongly believe that we need to be theatrical, if you will, and join together with the county, with regional governments and to pick one big priority. And I think that would be a state hospital. North, I absolutely agree with councilor Zimmerman, and from my previous experience as a local government lobbyist for the city of Salem under three mayors, a very contentious city council that couldn't necessarily agree with anything. We all agreed on one thing, and that was to decentralize the prison system, and that happened. But it took all the mayors of all the communities in the region, the counties. The city of Salem led that effort. I think that if we could pick one thing in this region, that's what it would be and we could be successful. Okay, there may not be any money for it right away, but we need to make the point. And it's a huge point and it's connected to everything else that we do here, everything else that we hope to do. I know the mayor knows this with the homeless issue. It's related to our economy. Our reputation, I think, is the most important thing we could do for ourselves. So I know I just contradicted myself about money. I think we also need to look at all those fundamental value local government values around preemption. No mandates. Maybe the ethics reform, other issues that the league of Oregon cities can can take the lead on. But I think there's lots of things we can do that would affect our community that don't require money. So I'll just leave it at that.
105 Thank you. Councilor. I want to start by saying I agree with a lot of what has been said, including every single non-monetary item, councilor Clark, that you just listed. Sam, I worked really hard to have a list of only five things, and I've added one. In listening to my colleagues, I apologize. I also worked really hard to make sure I didn't have more than three that cost money. I think I stuck to that. The absolute number one thing on my list is funding for behavioral health. I don't know that I am where my colleagues are yet. On saying that advocating for an Oregon state hospital north is the answer. I want to hear more about what you all are thinking there, but I do think that asking the state to invest in the actual infrastructure and service provision and related housing at all levels of. At all levels that we need in our community, things that provide more independence, things that provide more security, that funding has to be at the top of our list if we actually want to make a change here. And as some of my colleagues have said, the only way that we're going to get the other goals we have for our community is if we make some changes there. I have been looking at it though, as all levels, and so I think we'll need to have a conversation about where that funding goes and what that looks like. That's just a huge piece of what we need to be doing. I want to be clear that when I say advocate for funding for behavioral health, I do not mean creating a system that the city runs. I do not want this to be another thing that we take on, that we do that not is not within our normal book of work. I want us to be advocating that the state invest in the systems that the state and county run that the state said they would invest in, in our community. What was that 30 years ago? Something like that. I just want to be really clear about that point. The second thing on my list is the cei hub. There is a lot there that costs money, but there is also a lot there that doesn't cost money. It felt like that stalled out last session. I don't think it will continue to move forward unless we continue as a community to say that it is absolutely critical. So I hope that that stays near the top of our list. Federal response is on my list. Some of my colleagues went into more detail about what that could look like, but I think we need to partner with the state to make sure that we are setting up our community to be able to provide the response that our community is asking for. In light of the current federal administration's actions. Transportation funding is on my list, and my colleague in district two pointed out a big issue in our district safety routes off of the peninsula. If we are not able to get a transportation package through now, then I think we have a bigger issue on our hands. I am hoping that that gets through in the next week or so, and that we can be focused on some smaller issues that need to follow along behind that, but I think we just continue to have transportation conversations that we need to have in our city, especially in district two. The other thing I originally had on my list was that there were some investments in big projects that will spur economic development in our city, or continue economic development in our city last session, but there were some things that were left on the table. The projects that the city is behind, like broadway corridor and albina vision trust. But there are smaller projects on that list as well, and I think that we need to get together and say for the city of Portland, what are the priorities there? And make sure that we have those on our list. The sixth thing that I added in listening to our colleagues, because I have thought that this needed to be a different path, but it could be that we could take a legislative path that doesn't cost money. Is that medicaid reimbursement piece? With the changes coming out of the federal administration and the budget cuts that the state is facing, we are going to have more and more people who don't have insurance on our streets, and we are going to figure out what to do and how to help them. And if we can't get reimbursed for the services that we provide to people who do still have insurance, I don't know how we are going to be able to help the people who don't. So this feels like it is an increasingly important issue at this point in time for us to be advocating for. There's a lot more I could talk about. There's a lot more I care about, but I want to try to stay focused right now. Colleagues, I believe everybody else in the queue has already spoken once, so I'm going to ask that for second time's through on this question. We do a little bit of a lightning round so that we can get to sam's other questions. But sam, we do have a few people who'd like to add more councilor Koyama Lane.
106 Yes. Thank you, council president. I do feel heartened to see many places where I think we do overlap and share some goals here. I want to lift up the two that I formally submitted to you. I did put on the human trafficking legislation that centers victims, which is being sponsored by representative tran and willie richardson and a few others, and talking about places where maybe we don't always agree. I do want to also mention the legislation around warrantless surveillance, surveillance, including drones and facial recognition. You know that this is something that I care about and have been tracking the aclu, other civil rights organizations, a whole bunch of my very fierce japanese American aunties have been tracking this. They tracked it through the last session. It the bill did not go through. And there's also wondering if it's going to be coming forward again in the short session. So I know that there were we were on different pages there and want to make sure that that's something we connect about as a council, along with the mayor side too. Thank you.
107 Thank you, councilor, councilor Green okay.
108 Lightning round. Here we go. I just I wanted to really just echo what councilor Clark had said in sort of saying, we we really do need to prioritize finding the things that don't cost any, like incur an accounting cost. At least I'll note that all the housing related ones, except for the capitalized the revolving loan fund, don't have a direct new cost. And in fact, I think, and this is important, can be an engine for generating new revenue. Because if you can unlock the ability for the private sector to do development, then you've created revenue that we didn't need to come up with in the first place. So I just wanted folks to have that extra emphasis on that piece there, too. Thanks.
109 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Dunphy.
110 Thank you.
111 Sam. First, I wanted to my colleagues emphasize I love the idea of an Oregon state hospital north and the medicaid reimbursement components of it. I think they both complete the narrative that we are really all talking about. And I'm very open to the tearing up the list and drama about that. That said, short of tearing up the list, I'm also very serious about having starting the conversation about reforms to measures five and 50, that the compression that is happening on tax collection in in east Portland, the way it's impacting school districts, specifically the parkrose school district and their budget, it is having enormous consequences on some of the neediest students. And I think we need to start that conversation knowing that it will not happen in this session. But I think we really need to have that conversation. Transportation funding is absolutely important, but also specifically and explicitly a long term plan for the I-205 bike path. This has become an enormous, ongoing challenge that the city and the ODOT have been playing ping pong with, with some really bad situations happening for neighbors, and it is a ODOT property. And so we've had limited abilities at certain times to be able to intervene and help with bad behavior and campers. And this is one that's probably also never going to happen, but I sure wish the state would collect the arts tax for us.
112 So thank you.
113 Thank you, councilor, councilor Ryan.
114 Thank you, madam president. Ditto. Councilor Dunphy, on that last comment. To echo a bit of what I heard from councilor Smith, I think that we need to really focus on economic development jobs. And so I want to make sure we stay focused on that at this time. That's why I brought up the urgency of the drug crisis on our streets, which is having a direct impact on the deprivation we're experiencing. And on that note, I don't think arts should ever be off the menu. It should not be only in years that we have lots of money, but we have to be steady. And I applaud the leadership coming from representative no stone in Salem on this issue, and it's going to be what will bring downtown Portland back is a vibrant arts community, an evening and weekend economy that's that's centered on that. Thanks.
115 Thank you, councilor Councilor Kanal.
116 Thank you, madam president. I think the there were a couple things around sort of increasing criminalization or levels of a crime in the case of strangulation and hearsay trafficking that are on this list. And I'd love to get more information. I don't I don't want to express an opinion for or against them in general, but I did want to just note that in the strangulation one, there is a piece here about asking the legislature to increase funding options for domestic violence and sexual assault, nonprofit and government programs. And regardless of what happens with the rest of that topic, I think that's an important thing to support, and I think that will be supportive of a lot of the other efforts we do around around the city. Thanks.
117 Councilor sam, I believe that completes our feedback on the state agenda.
118 Okay. Well. I appreciate that. And we will be.
119 Is your hand back up, counselor?
120 Oh, I thought we were just going down the. I thought we were just going around. I do have a it wasn't up. I thought we were just going down.
121 Did you have one other thing to add on state?
122 So I'm. Trying to I'm trying to get a better understanding. What is the base operating budget of the of the state legislature? Because everything above that amount is the amount that goes to other places or back into the state. So I'm trying to figure out what is their what is their operating budget, their base operating budget.
123 Well.
124 2832 like they get up into the 35 million, you know, total budget I think. But I think, you know, what we can do is get back to you.
125 Because I'm trying to figure out because their. Base depending on so what I'm looking for, what's the difference between the base and what they have to spend right now? Because it was in the paper that they have 378 million that they have to, or 75 million that they have to reconcile. And so I'm trying to see if that is 375 million out of their operating budget, because when they also do the. The, you know, the lottery christmas tree bill, it's what they have left over after they get finished paying for their operating budget. So I'm trying to figure what is now their their new operating budget.
126 We'll have to.
127 Because we're asking for a lot of stuff. Not only are we asking, every city in the state is asking the legislature for something, and so I still want to be realistic what our what our goals are. I mean, we have this mega multi-page thing that's not going to get all. I mean, if we just look at what happened, you know, the previous year, let's say let's go two previous years because last year doesn't count two previous years. What did we actually get for the city of Portland? How much in millions or hundreds of thousands.
128 We were over in terms of value of dollars, either saved from unfunded mandates or dollars coming in. You know, I can say roughly we were over $100 million, but I don't know.
129 But I mean, direct to the city.
130 So what I'm trying to say is that we all got 13 different ideas about what to do. And except Eric, he wants to do this one big thing, and I don't know how much that costs, but then that is going to be another cost that's put on the state in the, in the counties. So I'm saying what did we actually get for the city of Portland. Not things that we said, oh yeah, that's a priority for us, but that we fund that goes into our coffers.
131 Well, I think that part of the process that we have to go through right now, we're all the everything on the wish list is getting put on the table. And then we have to have conversation and deliberation with you all about what are the strategies that will get us the most in terms of outcomes and results for the city. And and those can come in dollar amounts. Those can come in regulatory ability to do things. Those can come in the state spending dollars on things that don't come to us, that help us. I think what we, you know, what we would do is recognize the short session has these significant limitations. We you know, they are going to be in a place where they're, you know, however you slice and dice it, they're cutting $370 million worth of, you know, work.
132 But is that all the state's work or is that any of the the projected monies that they were going to project from the, from the lottery dollars?
133 I, I, I would have to get back to you in terms.
134 Of and I would think that the 375 I.
135 Hope I don't know how much of that wouldn't be a big, huge chunk of it, I don't think, for the lottery dollars, but I think that, you know, we will be in a place where they'll be maybe thinking in their minds, okay, there's this request for more money in front of us. Are we going to cut more medicaid services that we were backfilling? Are we going to.
136 Cut more.
137 From education? Where where do we get the money to fund the things that you want? City of Portland.
138 And just one last question. So we didn't get our $11 million that we thought we were going to get for the shelter system that the mayor was wanting. But there is a board meeting coming up, and I think it's an emergency because it was we put it in our budget. Can we go after that 11 million in the board meeting? Because I wouldn't mind doing that.
139 I would.
140 You know, the.
141 I'm sorry, the emergency board, where they saved a little money from the legislative session to do things that are urgent and emergency kinds of that's that's what I'm talking about. And it's coming up. And that whole effort is led by senate president wagner. And so we can put a request in. And so that's what I'm asking is can can we put that request because I think that is urgent enough, especially since we passed it in our budget.
142 I think we can do anything. We you know, we this body determines we should do without having set up what dollars are available in that fund. And having had some communication about that beforehand. You know, I think we'd have to look and say, what were the expectations for those emergency dollars that the legislature has?
143 Maybe that's not necessarily that that emergency fund is for whoever, and you got to put a request in for it, and it has to be urgent. And I feel like that's urgent for us about trying to make sure that we have as much shelter beds as possible, because that's going to put a drain on our current operating budget. By not having that and our ability to do the services that we said we were going to do, and even us tackling that bigger number, that 7000, that of unsheltered folks who are in our city of Portland. So I would go for everything. I would put a request in if I was government relations.
144 I see evan right behind you. I'm not sure if we want to.
145 For the.
146 For the shelter, for the shelter.
147 The.
148 Come on.
149 Yeah.
150 Sorry. Hi. Evan mitchell, state relations manager with the office of government relations. I just wanted to make sure that we're we're being really clear about what money we did and didn't get. We got those shelter dollars. So the mayor, we requested shelter dollars through the oaks, the state agency budget. We got a portion of those to fund Portland solutions existing programs. Those dollars are coming slower than we expected, but they're coming. What we didn't get was the other the other portion of the ask that the mayor put forward when he started out. And so we did get some of those funds.
151 But we're short 11 million.
152 Okay. So we'll definitely talk about the the emergency fund as an option and get back to you about that.
153 Okay.
154 And I would say what we want to do on issues like that, which is that's where collectively we want to look at those evaluation criteria and say, hey, where are we in terms.
155 Of that's what I'm asking.
156 All of these. And, and then and do that hard work internally to say, are we aligned on doing some kind of ask to the emergency board? Have we looked at and evaluated it sufficiently that we feel good about collectively moving in that direction? That's how I that's right or wrong, that that's how we would process something like that. And I think that's part of what we're going to talk about in the collective agreement conversation that we have coming up is how do we handle those kinds of scenarios? You know, here's a good idea. How do we vet and determine that this is what the city wants to do?
157 Sam, I think you just brought up the exact right point there, which is that not the next thing on our agenda, but the the item after that is how we all operate together with ogre, with the administration, with the mayor. And I think this will be a test of that. Right? Bring that forward. Let that be a test of it. But let's make sure we get to that part of the discussion, okay? So why don't we move into federal the federal conversation. And sam, I'm cognizant of the fact that you asked for about 45 minutes. We probably need a little more than that for the final agenda item that we were just starting to touch on. So we'll need to move through the federal priorities discussion in about 20 minutes here.
158 Okay. And what I would say is that we are handling the federal conversation a little bit differently here. We don't have a short session, you know, deadline coming up and bill filings and those kinds of things. So what we have shared with you is the existing federal agenda that we've been working on. We feel like it. And again, right or wrong, we want to have this conversation. We feel like it's it's been sufficient in helping guide our team to do the work that they've been doing to this point, and so would ask the questions that we have for you are really focused on what can we be? You know, what else should we be working on? What what what information do you have that we should be making sure that we're tracking? And, you know, is the approach that we are taking with the federal, you know, administration and federal government is is it is it going in the right direction?
159 Thank you. Sam councilor Zimmerman, do you want to kick this off?
160 Yeah. Thanks.
161 Sam, I appreciate that. I have reviewed the federal agenda. And thanks, Dan, for being here. To my my point here is not really too much of a change to any of the categories that I'm seeing listed, but with the groups that I work with nationally over in d.c. They have emphasized now for the last year, essentially almost a year, that some of the stuff that maybe in, in normal circumstances wouldn't be as highlighted or as important that they actually are important. So how we order our paragraphs in our federal agenda might matter now in ways that it didn't. And so given that in terms of how do we convey the Portland needs and priorities and values, I guess I'm looking to see the federal agenda not substantively changed so much, but conveyed with when I look at support, economic recovery and development, instead of being in the middle of the document, I kind of think maybe it needs to be at the top of the document. I think that bolstering infrastructure investment probably up there in number two or number three, but maintain local authority is holding a particularly interesting position in my brain right now. And I think that showing that the city of Portland values its local authority, that the city of Portland is capable of keeping its residents safe, that we have a public safety apparatus that our police chief is is active, that our mayor is active, that that also be front of page. Right. So those two those three things economic infrastructure and maintain local authority. To me, given the advice that I've gotten from the lobbying firms and groups and advocacy groups in dc seem to be front of page items and the others, the others just kind of put in in the subsequent pages. The one area that I would consider a breaking up of the topic is paragraph or subject. Area two is enhanced community safety and behavioral health services. Going along with what I said previously about the state, I actually think those should be two separate things so that we can be specific. I think in lobbying, specifics are important, and I don't think we lose anything here, but it might it might gain us something. So that was all my feedback. Appreciate, like I said Dan, for being here and everything this these are strange times. But. We have seen some groups who have said, you know, we've got we've got some terrible stuff to work through. But at the same time there are also projects, funding and things that we do want to get and we want to make sure that we can get them. And I want us to be aggressive in that, and I think we might be able to to market this in a way that is potentially putting Portland in a better position. That's all. Thanks.
162 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Clark.
163 Thank you, madam president. Actually, I'm on the same wavelength as my colleague here. And thanks for our folks in the audience for all the work you do for us. I was going down the same track just thinking what would resonate in this new administration and what wouldn't. Short of removing things, I think reordering is really important. I agree about breaking up safety and behavioral health. I was wondering, I don't remember if I saw anything in here about drug trafficking. I think that might resonate. That's also an issue here. We have a bad reputation for that in Portland. I also was wondering if we couldn't add something about FEMA knowing what's happening to FEMA and how important FEMA is to issues around forest fires in Oregon, earthquake potential, flooding potential. Just climate resilience here. Somehow. If we could put FEMA in that list, enhancing community safety. I know we're having, you know, some disputes, some communities are having some disputes with FEMA right now in Oregon, not us so much. But I agree with the reordering and the emphasizing. And I don't know if we can drop any of these and make it shorter, but make it look like something that they would pay attention to. Thanks.
164 Thank you, councilor.
165 Councilor canal.
166 Thank you, madam president. Got a couple of things here. I think all the previous federal overreach items are sort of already reflected. One very I mentioned emergency preparedness. Two, I agree with everything councilor Clark said, so I won't repeat it. The there's the the volunteer protection act of 1997 has a cap of $500 that our volunteers are allowed to receive as reimbursement for the time they put in on their advisory groups here, without receiving or without incurring liability for their work. That number has not gone up since 1997. Inflation is over 100% on that just over right now. So ensuring that we can take care of our volunteers with a little higher cap, I think is something that is a very small amount of money to us and under the federal government, and might not be something that's overly politicized. Obviously, the on the more higher money front, it's been mentioned before, but the interstate bridge replacement, the albina vision trust, I'm sure you're already advocating for all of that. And that's something that just, you know, prioritize. Obviously I don't I'm not saying in the in the document necessarily, but how you go about it, I think that's already what's happening. But I don't disagree with the comments on ordering it to ensure that the reader gets what we'd like them to get. The other things I'd mention all are in the broader criminal justice reform and civil rights component. We, the city, accepted a recommendation from the Portland committee on community-engaged policing. Mayor wheeler accepted a recommendation to advocate for an end to federal qualified immunity. And that hasn't been in the agenda explicitly, but it's something the city has already agreed to a couple years back. And there's a few other items in there as well around civil asset forfeiture, ending that practice that I think are worth pursuing as a part of a proactive approach to saying we need to be expanding the protection of civil rights as much as we can. So I'll leave it at that. Thanks.
167 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Smith, go right ahead.
168 Thank you. Thank you, council president. Thank you again. I'm going to go back to what I said before. I still believe this. I'm not clear on what we got last year from our federal requests.
169 Appropriations.
170 Yep.
171 So we've got quite a few dollars that did come in and then other things that and we can we can share that list.
172 Can you share what we got. So it so I don't want to just make requests just to make requests and give you requests because I can look at them and tell which ones are likely to to go based on what we've gotten before. And in this new climate, us requesting and telling, you know, we got to look at in our delegation who are the ranking members in our delegation? We got seven folks who are on ranking members because they get to determine the ranking member and the chair get to determine what goes in there and how we spend our time. So for me, I don't want to give you a whole bunch of requests because I know they're not going nowhere. I'm not saying that you won't try, but I'm just saying we're not going to get them. So I don't want to go through this whole big old exercise. I just want to see what we got last year. What what what committees did they come out of and how did we fare? Because I need to know how we fared last year before I give you some more, because we have the same people in in leadership.
173 Yeah. I mean, I can share with you that, you know, over overall the city, you know, we do a lot of communication with the delegation and, and identifying those priorities and those, those grant, you know, earmarks that will be successful. And we've punched above our weight in in recent in past years. I don't want to promise that we will continue to do that. We don't always have control over that. But I would say having a strategy that is going to get as much resource as we can out of the federal government, as much authority as we can, as many of the priorities we. That is what we absolutely are objective and trying to find the best ways to do that. And I think the things you're saying are absolutely critical. And I think those are very much on the minds of our staff as well. I'll I'll see if jack wants to add anything.
174 On. All right.
175 Jack arriaga.
176 Yeah.
177 Federal relations manager. So I think, you know, first of all, years get a little complicated when we're talking about federal fiscal years. So sam's correct that about a year and a half ago, when the fiscal year 24 bill passed, the the city of Portland got a number of earmarks, I think we we fared probably better than most or.
178 Any in.
179 The biden administration.
180 However, in this past year, for fiscal year 25, congress actually was unable to reach a bipartisan omnibus agreement. They passed a full year continuing resolution that that maintained flat funding. And so no entity in the country got any earmarks. So there were zero earmarks for anyone in the country in this past round of fiscal year.
181 Except for the big beautiful bill. And that's what I'm saying. I know we didn't have that, and I appreciate that. And that's why I'm saying I can't tell based on the 24, because that was the biden administration. And there was a different there were and there was different leadership that were in charge. We were in charge. Our our delegation had chairmanships. We don't have none anymore in the Portland area. But we do have some ranking members. And so I just want to cut to the chase on it and not have us do a big old exercise when we know likely what's going to happen. We just need to figure out which those three that we're going to go for.
182 Yeah. And I think, you know, we're in a challenging place with with federal funding generally where, you know, we're trying to defend our formula, funding that we are owed by federal statute. We are still trying to strategically go after competitive grants that, you know, our chances of success may have shifted from the last administration, and just the number of opportunities is going down dramatically under the current administration of competitive federal grants. Right. And then there's this congressionally directed spending that you're talking about, earmarks, where that is actually the, you know, the area where we have the most leverage. It's not large amounts of money generally, but that's where our congressional delegation can specifically call out, you know, projects for the city. And we get direct allocations that are not do not require competition. And among federal agencies.
183 I know that that's yeah.
184 I'm just sorry for the context of the group. I want to break into those three different categories. And so where so in terms of our earmark strategy, I agree with you. That's where we need to want to be very targeted because that's where we have the most leverage and the most area to influence.
185 And however, where we have the least opportunity to get something to because of this new leadership. So it, you know, having the most leverage does not give us the most opportunity. So can you give me an idea. And that's and that's why I want even if it wasn't money, even if because we did a continuing resolution, they did what they did the year before. Okay. I'm just trying to get a sense of who's willing to do what, who's willing to be the champion for the city of Portland.
186 Yeah. So so right now we have pending eight different requests between our two senators and and congresswoman dexter and congresswoman bonamici, so we can get you the exact list that updates as the congressional appropriation bills have rolled out over the summer. So we initially submitted 12 requests, and we currently have eight in play. Some of the initial amounts we requested were pared back. So, you know, it's a process that sort of narrows over time. But we've had a lot of success going to our different members with with targeted requests. But I think your point is well taken that that the more we can be very clear with them about our priorities, the more responsive they're able to be in, in going to bat for those requests.
187 I think we are all clear about our priorities. I just think I don't want to get really into the weeds on this, that we think that we can actually get something out of this legislative session. And that's what I'm I guess that's what I'm saying. We can get all the way down there. We go to the appropriations process, and then we're stuck again. And we do another cr because we can't pass it. We're going to be stuck in another couple of weeks that the federal government is going to break. It's likely to shut down because they haven't they still haven't. You know what I mean?
188 It just.
189 That's just the landscape, the reality we're dealing with. So it is a very, very unpredictable and uncertain process.
190 And what I would say is the strategy for getting what we want is rightly being brought up because it is, you know, of huge importance, I would say, what we're trying to get to today is accomplishing the, the, the priorities. And then the working kind of operating how we're going to all work together and, and, and what we can. And we will be following up with all of the comments and, and requests that we have. And we want you to be at the point where you're feeling really comfortable about the strategy. And we want you to hear and learn and track the work as, as you need to, so we can be in communication with that and follow up with you on kind of how we are going to go about addressing the priorities that you have for the federal.
191 Workforce in the io.
192 Yeah. And I would offer I would invite you. This is where I think council can play a role that we haven't quite gotten to in the last year, which is championing these individual requests in concert with with our bureau partners. And so prosper Portland did have a workforce earmark request that was not not successful this year. And I think that's one we could easily revisit. And obviously, with your interest, councilor, you could sort of take that on and be the face of our lobbying effort with the delegation.
193 Thank you. I appreciate I appreciate the work that you do. This is this is tough stuff. And when we do this kind of stuff, we put so much energy and our heart and soul in it. And then at the end we don't get anything. It's just so devastating.
194 But we want to capture the experience of this council and all the individual members. So we really appreciate the engagement and you know that that will happen in a lot of different forums and forums and formats. But, you know, some of you bring tremendous experience from the federal level or the state level or other local all kinds of places. So we want to capture that and we want you involved.
195 Thank you.
196 Thank you, councilor, councilor Clark.
197 Thank you, madam president. Just a couple of things I forgot to mention earlier. I mentioned FEMA. I was wondering on the do we coordinate with the county at all? Because it seems to me that, you know, the cuts in health care, snap benefits, those kinds of things are all going to roll downhill right into our neighborhoods. And I'm just wondering, do we partner with them on those things and what their list is? So and the other thing I want to ask you is, have you maybe with nlc or others talked about ai regulation or how that might impact us, or should we have a do we have a stake in that?
198 What I would say is we will make sure that we're we're assessing what kind of ai conversations we have had and where that is. I would say with the county, we regularly connect with the county to, to see where we align on our agenda as both at the state and federal. And we actually use common government relations. Firm, I think still does county also so great we have alignment there as well.
199 Yeah. I just think it's really important that we also support efforts around health care funding and snap benefits and the like, because those those things are going to impact us directly.
200 We always like a bigger a bigger coalition than a smaller. So if we can partner with the county, if we can partner with metro, if we can partner with other local governments. The mayor's been really working a lot on building those partnerships with other mayors around the region.
201 Thank you, councilor, councilor Ryan.
202 Yes.
203 Thank you, madam president. I kept my hand up even though councilor Smith said almost everything that I would have hoped to have said. And I appreciate that dialog. I do think we need to be focused. I would appreciate if we had better information here about those earmarks, and where we can attach ourselves to be helpful. And I do think we're playing defense. We just have to make sure we land those earmarks that are out there and then hopefully get in some more. But I agree that I think sitting up here and coming up with aspirational ideas and the current makeup of congress isn't a good use of our time as much as it is to make sure that we're really focused on those earmarks at this time. Yeah. And so I heard from you, but I couldn't tell earlier this was put together with dialog with the two senators and the 2 to 4 congressional leaders that are connected to our city. Correct.
204 Jack has a lot of regular communication with them. And then we have a federal team also, lobby team that's contract in in dc. And so we have a lot of support to make sure that communication is happening. And the more that folks are hearing about things and directing information to our federal team, the more coordinated and the more strategic we are on those on those issues. So we we love to hear from you. We want to make sure and we will get you information about the earmarks and the history and kind of where that, that and how that we intend to see that develop over the coming months.
205 Okay.
206 Thank you. Thank you sam. Thank you jack.
207 Thank you councilor, as I'm looking at our federal list, sam, I think the number one thing is strategy. How can we best set ourselves up to keep money flowing into our state transportation dollars, housing dollars, everything else on the list, whatever we need to do to be most strategic, to keep money flowing to our state, should be our number one priority. I hope that just below that as a top priority is protecting local sorry, protecting local rights. I know that's a piece that's on there that some of my colleagues have called out, but anything we can do to make sure that we are able to do the work of our city and that we are both not preempted in doing that work, and also not stymied in doing that work because of actions of the federal government, I think, should be of utmost importance. There's a lot of good on our agenda. I do want to flag that. There have been a number of conversations about what we can do locally to support communities that are most under attack from the trump administration. And one of the attacks we've seen that we don't talk about as much on the dais, are the attempts to undermine the rights of our LGBTQ community. And anything that your team can do to make sure that we're tracking legislation that attacks the LGBTQ community and informing council of opportunities for us to step in. I know we're doing a lot of that for our immigrant communities, but making sure that we're doing that especially for trans portlanders, but for all of our LGBTQ community, I think is really important as well. And I just hope that your team has that on their radar also. Councilor Kanal.
208 Thanks.
209 Madam president. I agree with all of that. And I'll just mention that second paragraph of the enhanced community safety section. And behavioral health is really vital. And just wanted to make sure that that doesn't change because there's a lot of really important things in there, in particular, that 911 telecommunicators dispatchers designation would be really important, I think, for the long term. Thanks.
210 Thank you. Councilor. I think that's the end of your feedback on federal agenda. So we have almost exactly 45 minutes left for this last section.
211 You are a master facilitator.
212 I think we had only scheduled part of the time that we had, so I wouldn't go that far.
213 Okay, I will open this up with a few comments and then hopefully we can just jump into these, the next set of questions that we have for you, government relations, is about building and managing relationships to influence decisions that affect portland's ability to serve our residents. This includes advocacy, conveying the city's needs to lawmakers and decision makers, monitoring, tracking new laws and regulations, lobbying influencing outcomes that support portland's needs and priorities. As you've heard us say many times, a unified voice is essential. Collective action across council, mayor, administration and bureaus positions us for the best, puts us in the best position we can be for success. Taking. Let's see. I want to again share that we don't set the policy. We're we're process advocacy, lobbying, strategic experts charged with advancing the city's collective agenda. That's what we're wanting to represent. We want to represent your agenda. The municipal government of portland's agenda. And we are often we are often asked to clarify and get even more clear direction and guidance from the city. Sometimes that means we're offering strategic advice that might differ from individuals or bureaus. And and we you know, it's not uncommon for us to be in a place where we're providing some strategic advice or input that maybe isn't exactly what folks want to hear. We are not enforcers. We're not decision makers on it. But we do feel it's very important for us to be sharing strategic advice and information, even if it's maybe not what's wanted at those in those forums or those times. And so we appreciate I feel like we've been really able to have very frank, direct conversations with the council and really appreciate that, that you have been open that way. Collaborative decision making can be messy. We think talking about these things will help us meet your expectations and find the best ways to reach as close to consensus as possible, even though it isn't always possible. We think consensus as in everyone can live with the outcome. Not that everyone supports every piece of the the work is the best positioning we can be. To get there, we are asking that you stay engaged in continual dialog about the vetting process. Build collective direction on what ogre should pursue. Keep us in the loop so we have awareness of important context and can be supportive for the work and issues that you are interested in and help keep everyone on council, the mayor and administration well informed to make the best possible decisions. And I think one of the things that we're constantly pushing for is before we take something out outside the city, before we begin to engage, that we have done all of the hard work that we can in the city to get as unified and strategic as we can. And that pays dividends in terms of our success rate. That's that's our perspective. So with that, I would just open it up to the council president. Facilitate some questions.
214 Thank you sam. Colleagues, what I'd like to do here because we've got some limited time is if folks have reflections from last session, this first question about ways that our government relations team can improve, that are not related to what do we do when the council is not fully aligned, or when council and the administration or council and the mayor are not aligned? Let's leave that for the second question. But if you have any reflections on areas for improvement separate from that conversation, let's take those questions. And then I'd like to just go around the dais and have everybody have a chance to weigh in on that second bullet that has two questions contained in it. Councilor Ryan, do you have something on this? First question.
215 I have something that I want to bring up that's not included, hasn't been included yet. And I don't want to give up on international relations. And so I didn't hear anything about that. I hope that we continue to invest in international relations. I think that trade and tourism is more important for our city than ever before, and we're working against a lot of headwinds with Washington on that. And also, we have a unique opportunity since the big country of china now has interest in Portland, Oregon, like never before. Like if you look at social media, they're just all into Portland trailblazers. And I think some of you know why. Because of yang hassan, the the draft pick. And so you saw that during the summer league. That's a pre league thing that goes on in the summer for those that are getting bored. But the fact is we have an urgent issue called saving the Portland trailblazers. And so I wanted to put that out there. And I do think that our sister city program is something that we need to continue to steward. And I'm concerned that the office isn't giving that any attention. So I'm just advocating for international affairs. Thanks.
216 Thank you. I appreciate that. And we are focused on the state and federal legislative agenda work. The ogre also does work in tribal relations, international relations, local government relations. And, you know, those are also important bodies of work. But I will we will reach out to you about the international relations.
217 And it.
218 Just never comes up though. So when am I going to mention it?
219 No.
220 I appreciate it I appreciate it.
221 Thank you. Councilor councilor Kanal.
222 First I want to cosign everything that councilor Ryan just said and would love to be briefed on the international side. I've asked for some more info on sister cities as well, and I'll also just take the moment to highlight that district two Portland trail blazers need all the support we can give them. But yeah, I think to I'm going to split a single issue into two parts here to reflect the council president's guidance there. I think the updates to the spreadsheets are really helpful to know when the city is in the process of applying the agenda to a bill or a proposal that is not was not originally anticipated. We had a situation where a item was marked as placeholder in a spreadsheet, and just making sure that those updates, when that moved out of the placeholder category, and this is the category, was where the city stands on it, and it was, I think, a 1 to 6 range and seven was placeholder, meaning it was going to get updated later. Totally fair, but just making sure that that communication comes earlier. And the other thing I'd mention related to that is keeping in line with the way we do committees, which may change, of course, from now until the session, updating not only the the council president, but also the co-chairs or chair of the relevant committee if it's housing or something goes to that committee, as well as, of course, the council president and the mayor. Thanks.
223 Thank you. And we may follow up with you to just dig a little deeper on making sure that we're getting that information right.
224 Thank you, colleagues. So let's move into question two, which I think is going to be the bulk of our conversation. And if folks don't want to weigh in, that's fine. But in order to make sure everybody has a chance, I'd like to just go around the dais and give everybody an opportunity. And council vice president, do you want to start and just set the tone for us here?
225 Sure. I don't have the perfect answer, but I think it's a great big question. I think it's actually something we've talked about in the governance committee quite a bit, not necessarily with legislative issues, but issues in general. I know that I hear from multiple colleagues that there is a hope and desire to figure out how we can figure out where our goals and vision align in terms of the best way to move forward. I would love to ask you if you know about other jurisdictions, what you've seen. I'm sure this is this happens in other places too. How is this usually navigated? And if I were to pick right now and give some advice, I do think that there is a time where you can't expect it to be 12 zero, but if you have a majority that's heading in a certain direction, then that is a way you can go and maybe even sharing that as there's lobbying being done. How many are in favor? But I'm excited that this is coming up and I think it would be healthy for us. I think doing some of this work will be healthy for us as a body.
226 Thanks. Councilor councilor Morillo. Do you want to share anything here?
227 Not really. I mean, I think we're going to have to probably do whatever the majority of council thinks is appropriate, but I also think that I don't want to jump into the last question about council members weighing in when the council as a whole doesn't have a position. But our districts are very unique, and we also represent very different constituencies within those districts. Like, I'll be frank, in district three, there's a Palestine flag in almost every window. There's Palestine flags in buildings and things. So if I were representing my own district, I would do it differently than representing council as a whole. So that's just a question that I'm wrestling with. But my constituents are expecting me to speak up on certain issues in ways that other councilors are maybe not being asked to.
228 Thank you. Councilor councilor Novick.
229 The only thought I have is that I think that if you do a straw poll and only a bare majority of us, plus the mayor support something, if it's seven five, I think it's probably best not to make that a city position. I would want it to be at least a four, because I would think that if it if people in Salem knew that we were that closely divided, it might undermine their credibility.
230 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Clark.
231 Well, I agree with you. I think it would undermine our credibility. I think that and that's a note I wrote in the margin here, is we lose credibility if we share the division or if we pursue something where we are divided. It just negates our efforts, unfortunately. Do you want us to answer the the last question, too? Are we doing the whole thing?
232 You know, I think some folks skipped the last question, but if it relates to your answer to this question, let's.
233 I'll just say that if there's a council member that feels strongly that they need to go to Salem and weigh in on something, that it's really important that they declare that they're acting independently and they're not representing the city council. I mean, that's absolutely bottom line. But I do think that if we don't show a united front, that we just lose credibility and we should just walk away from the issue.
234 Thank you, councilor Green.
235 I echo what everyone has said so far. It doesn't. It's self-defeating to try to pursue something on a slim majority. Speaking with this, this voice. That being said, there's there's a lot that we've talked about today that I think we have some pretty good consensus positions on. So that's a good indicator right there, I think, you know, I have testified in favor of things just by saying, for the record, this is the voice from my own independent office. This doesn't speak for the the council as a whole. I think we all can do that. I think that's just fine. That's it for me.
236 Thank you, councilor, councilor Zimmerman.
237 I'm going to probably also touch a little bit on on the first part. I think that Portland and what we're asking for has the ability to work with legislators more deeply who are outside of the city limits, too. I just think that that's an area that I have felt we've we've gone a little bit nose up about in the past. We collectively, not any one individually, but I think it's going to take that broad alignment to to get what we need out of it. So in terms of addressing when things are. I think the points have been made about about what's the right number. Et cetera. Et cetera. I think that's a tough call. I also recognize that there's moments in there are times in the moment that something has to be conveyed. And. I think your, your staff is well positioned to make a good judgment call. And that when you you've got a few people who I think are really important to touch base with on that judgment call the mayor and the council president hold particular positions in this government that when something hasn't had the time to have a full conversation or be added to an agenda, but there has to be a judgment call. I want to offer that space up, as well as something that I'm quite comfortable with, knowing that it will be messy at some point, but I think that's the point of of citywide leadership positions. I think the you know, the last question here, how councilors weigh in when a city doesn't have a position, I find and I've done this. Last year, I testified on a couple of things related to veterans, military stuff where the city doesn't have a position on those items and and did what? Councilor Green said, I'm here. I'm councilor Zimmerman. I don't lie about that. But I say I'm here to testify on something, that this is not me as a city representative on this topic, but really an elected official of 165,000 residents. That squared fine with me. Ethically. I felt comfortable about that. I do think that it would be a much deeper ethical dive if the city council or the city had a legislative position, and I was there to disagree with it. For me, that's a much different type of individual engagement. So I guess it's more of a a litmus test for ourselves as we go through it, of of advocating for something that this city council has not weighed in on doesn't seem to bother me too much. I hope that we tell each other, or that we walk each other off the plank. If we are about to torpedo a city position because it's one that we hold personally or within our district, and I and I don't know that that has occurred last year, but that's I'm going to try and put myself in that same position. If I find if this last question, if I find myself in that in that situation, I hope I'll back away from it versus making a play of it. And I and I think sometimes talking that through with colleagues is the best way to make that, you know, that professional and ethical decision. Thanks.
238 Thank you, councilor, councilor Avalos.
239 Yeah, I was lingering on that last comment around what happens if we reach, I guess we decide on a number. I would think if we're going to choose a number, I would probably choose nine out of 12 to be the closest to consensus, because we already use 912 for other reasons. Just feels like the right number, but open to folks. Thoughts on that? But yeah, in a scenario where it is a 912, for example, but then somebody feels very strongly about being on the opposite side of that position, I guess, I don't know. Has that happened before in your knowledge, or can I ask you that real quick? Have you seen that happen before?
240 I think we've.
241 Had some places where we have not had where we've identified, hey, there's not alignment here with with the city. And I think our approach has been to say, hey, let's step back on that issue. Let's pull back and let's see if there is a place that we can get to, that we can land and kind of do the hard work internally, you know, come back together and see if there's a place to get to that. That's, that's I think kind of the way we that's sort of the existing thinking for us.
242 Okay. Well then on that note, I think it's even more important that structurally we are making sure that we have enough time allocated on work sessions or council meetings so that we're not feeling a crunch, like we're not going to have time to discuss it, because I do think things are just going to take longer for us to discuss with triple the size of a council with many different ideas. So let's work on building in good timing and infrastructure, understanding that, yes, things move quickly in Salem, of course, and I don't. I'm going to think on the question of like, who? Who can help in those quick pinch moments? I'm not I don't know how I feel about that yet. I'm going to ponder that for a bit. But yeah, I think structurally, let's make sure to build in enough time so that we all feel like we can have space to debate that, especially if there's a big disagreement on something that's pretty fundamental to our work. So yeah, I'm landing on 9/12. Feels like the right answer to me. I don't think it has to be a full 100% consensus, and I'll continue to ponder what it might look like to have a different opinion than nine of my colleagues. I don't necessarily foresee that happening, and I feel like, you know, we should all definitely use our judgment to look at the greater good in those scenarios so that we're not picking petty fights in public, especially because, as we know, a united front helps us get our agenda accomplished in Salem. But I'll keep pondering that. Thanks.
243 Councilor. Councilor Dunphy.
244 Yeah, a couple of thoughts immediately. First, I don't think consensus is the goal. I but I also think that some of the principles of sociocracy could be helpful here, where we have some very clear, defined values as a city and some clear, overarching goals of issues we're trying to address. So within that framework, identifying that, you know, we are moving in a direction as a city, we all are, you know, housing, addressing the homelessness crisis, addressing behavioral health, addressing transportation infrastructure. All of these things are clear. And some of the details don't necessarily matter. But for my colleagues, if there is something that 9/12 of you are are dead set for, but it for whatever reason, betrays all of my personal values, I think that that's a problem that we should have in this setting, not out there. And I think we need to make space for that, for people to be able to say, I'm sorry, this is a hard line in the sand for me that betrays values because of previously agreed upon values that we already share. Beyond that, I don't think it's agreement. It's just is there a real reason why you cannot get behind this and otherwise you shut your mouth and I, you know, if I'm on the losing side of it, I'm on the losing side of it, and I'm not going to go undercut the values of what this this city is trying to accomplish. I think that also, though. Yeah. You know, retaining the right to testify. You know, I submitted testimony on three bills that there's no situation where the city would ever have an opinion on last year around arts funding, around tax credits for the film industry and around flavored tobacco. Those are not things we should spend our time worrying about, but I still want to be able to go down and do that. So I think that as we are getting closer, I think we do have a responsibility to the, the, the whole, the body, and we need to make sure that we are taking that responsibility seriously because otherwise we could be underdoing it. And I think each of us need to be sensitive to the when a colleague is saying, absolutely not, that we take that seriously, even if the vast majority of us agree the direction.
245 So thank you, councilor. Councilor Smith, did you want to add anything?
246 Yeah, I just wanted to add I do agree with councilor Avalos about the 9/12 that it should be 9/12, since that is something that we're already using a metrics. That would be good. Thank you.
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247 Thank you councilor. Councilor canal.
248 Thank you. First I'll go to the the last question and say I think what councilor Zimmerman said makes perfect sense to me. We should have some sort of not exact words necessarily, but boilerplate sort of. I'm you know, I'm a councilor, represent this district in Portland, but I'm here speaking on behalf of my office. I think councilor Green reflected that, too. That's the easier one to the other one. I think the degree to which we're able to come together ahead of time, I think the goal, and I strongly agree with my d1 colleagues about creating the space and time to have these conversations, but I actually think your argument about consensus, given the definition you said director chase, makes sense, and I believe you said everyone can live with the outcome, not that everyone supports every piece of the work. And this relates to what councilor Dunphy brought up to where it is about, is this something I just don't think is a good idea, or is this something that's that's not only a deeply held belief, but also something where we've expressed it before in some sort of agreement. And this came up this year. I want to I want to flag that this came up with a bill about allowing warrantless drone usage and surveillance. And it's complicated because this year's process was different. It wasn't something that council had weighed in on. So that that's a slightly different situation. And I think we're going to have to have some grace in that, because we may have a situation in several years at any given odd numbered year where the legislative agenda was decided upon and a new councilor Might come in as the session is in existence and after an agenda has already been reached. So we may need to have some grace around this and some ongoing conversations. Because maybe you ran because you were against the policies of the old council. The old council sets a legislative agenda that you're against, and now you're in office, but you're also an advocate. That's the reason you ran. And I think that's a challenge that could happen at any time to up to six of us. You know, I don't see necessarily two districts turning over completely, but that's a process question we're going to have to navigate as a council. And I think we can talk about that more as we get into next year's. But for the purpose of this, I think having a vote is helpful and having that that high threshold, but also making space for someone to say, hey, this is this is something that's about the application of a value we've established together and my deep and or my deeply held belief. And so getting back to your definition, director chase, everyone can live with the outcome. Not that everyone supports every piece of the work. I think is a is a really valuable standard. And then the last thing I'll mention is that in this middle bullet point, it says when the administration, council and mayor are not fully aligned. And I think I'm viewing the administration as sort of part of the mayor for purposes of this, because I remember when we were appointing a city attorney, we asked, what is the city as a legal entity, who's the client of the city attorney? And the answer was the 14 elected officials of the city of Portland. And I think that's the appropriate way to to look at that particular thing. And this gets back to the are we all on the same page question in the state criteria. Thank you.
249 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Ryan.
250 Yes.
251 Thank you, madam president. I really like these questions. Thank you. This is a great exercise. I see our goal right now is to find revenue. And so I think a lot of times we'll quickly come together in those circumstances. And I agree with the 9/12. Thank you councilor Avalos for putting that out there. I think that's a standard that we're working with. So that helps. I think the decorum about if there's three people that have a similar dissent and how they think about that and how that shared doesn't necessarily always isn't always negative if it's not a budget issue, but it's more of a statute and a law issue. I think sometimes that helps. Portland is a big city, and we represent a lot of constituents. And so I just want to noodle on that a bit. I will say that I found last year's last session, there were so many letters coming at us all the time, and it was confusing on what that process and protocol was like. And we didn't have a chance to do this type of dialog. And we've also haven't had the, the, the conversation that I think we'll still have, which is really getting us more aligned as a council on our big picture priorities. So then we know that there's a better then it makes your job easier, I'm sure. So then you can figure out how to bring us along and herd the cats. I know that we're going to have a lot of tension when it gets to more of the strategies and what we want to measure success on, on those big picture priorities. But certainly this is an example where there's a void that this council hasn't had, that type of transparent dialog in public. Anyway, these are great questions that remind me of that. Thanks.
252 Thank you.
253 Thank you, councilor. Mr. Mayor, before I weigh in, do you want an opportunity to weigh in here? I we didn't.
254 Get your feedback on the other pieces because it was really about whereas council at knowing that you're providing input on the agenda in different ways. But here as we're talking about how we figure out our agenda together, I think it would be helpful for us to have your voice in the conversation.
255 Let me ask a process question. First of all, sam. Jack. Evan nils, it's a pleasure working with you over this last long session. And I think, you know, my commitment to helping you out. I think I was down there every two weeks to represent what our agenda was at the time that the commissioner had set forward, and we had accepted as a councilor. And I thought we did well, considering it was a difficult, challenging time. So thank you for your efforts. Subject matter expert in transportation. And I'm getting calls from legislators and elected officials to help craft bills and to bring legislative concepts that are not on this agenda. They're asking me to participate and to help. Where does that come in as far as an individual in this case, certainly the mayor, but I've been working on certain legislative concepts and bills for many, many years. How does that square.
256 So.
257 You know, I again, I will say how I might handle that and that that is up for debate literally. And that is that, you know, as mayor, if you are weighing in and representing and and clearly representing your own perspectives, then, you know, I think that's that sounds in line to me with independent council members going and advocating for their issues and needs. I think being clear that it is. Your participation as an individual elected is is that part of it? I think what I would encourage is that wherever we can, we're putting those issues on the table and getting feedback from the larger city body, which means getting feedback from council, getting feedback from subject matter experts at the city that, you know, we expect are representing the policies that are are set by our electeds. And so we would just encourage that, you know, collaboration as much as possible. The, the the broader on any issue where we're generally always wanting the more the merrier. And it might be the more at the city that are, are tracking and knowledgeable about a given issue, the more within our region other local governments are participating and supporting a position we like. You know, more. So if that's helpful.
258 Yeah. Thank you. The first thing I would hope that we could perhaps gain funding for is heating in chambers. First item that's a personal item there. I don't have any real process other than once the agenda is set. You know our responsibility, mike, and our responsibility is to bring forward what our needs are as we have a unique position to understand the administration and the executive focus. Mike, and I'll bring forward, I already see a lot of that representative in the agenda. And then we work with sam and his shop to make sure that we're delivering on what your goals are. Personally, I focus a lot on the revenue side of it because we have tremendous headwinds, as you saw last year. And as far as personal and focus, sure. I think that comes with the efforts we put forward. But your agenda, we put forward the spirit and the intent. We bring it down to the Salem and we represent. So, you know, I think we're kind of learning as we go along. I appreciate your question, councilor Kanal about, you know, just the drone that was a specific we struggled with that one both administratively and personally. And we have our opinions. And I appreciated the way you said, hey, I'm down here to represent myself. This is something that's a value based. But when it comes to our agenda, I think we have to be disciplined, realistic, choose some specific items and all of us go hard at it. And I thought, I thought it went well with as little timing as we had to prepare. So looking forward to the short session.
259 Thank you, mr. Mayor. Sam.
260 I think there's a couple of things, as I have mulled over these questions that I want to add, I do think that we need to figure out the right space, the right number. Is it nine is the number variable depending on if it's something that our bureaus are saying would be really helpful to do the work of the city versus something that an individual brings forward, saying this is part of my agenda, that change the number of councilors that we need on board. Do we count the mayor in that nine, or do we count the mayor separately? How are we thinking about getting everybody on the same page? And I think we have a little bit of work to do there. But I do think that it is something that is a supermajority. I also think it's something where no single individual has. If the bulk of their colleagues are on board, and I think that's important for credibility, which some of my colleagues brought up. If we don't have a supermajority, we're going to lose credibility on our agenda. On the other hand, if we give any individual a veto, I think we lose credibility in bringing forward the the needs of the city as well. I think it's important that none of us ever oppose the city's agenda. I think that's the case for councilors. But I also hope that that's the case for anybody within the administration and the mayor as well. I think that it's different to weigh in on something where the city does not have a position than to weigh in in opposition to the official city position. I don't think anybody up here or anybody who is in a high level position at the city, should ever be opposing something on the city agenda. I think that transparency matters. So to that last question, what do you do if you're weighing in on something the city doesn't have a position on? I think the transparency of sharing that, sam, with your team matters so that we can catch places where people might be on opposite sides of something and have those important discussions. I also think that that transparency helps you with the next piece I wrote down, which is we need to trust you and your team's judgment. Use leadership. Certainly the mayor, the council president, the chairs of committees. Be willing to take that mayor culpa if we weigh in on something and then find out that we have split positions and need to back up and catch those things quickly, that's where the transparency matters. I also appreciate that folks have pointed out that there's a difference between somebody not liking something or not really caring about it, and somebody actively opposing it. And I while I don't think anybody should get a veto, I do think that if we have a group of three councilors who don't really care versus a group of three councilors who are adamantly opposed, that we, as their colleagues, need to think carefully about how that changes, whether we put something on the agenda or not. I also think that we should have boilerplate language. Somebody said, maybe we need this, but I would actively ask that we have boilerplate language from you on what we say when we weigh in on something that is not on the city agenda. I know that some of my colleagues have said, I'm weighing in as an individual councilor Representing my district, but we have three people who represent a district, and I have a lot of things I agree with my two colleagues here on, but I have things individually that I disagree with them both on, and I think we may need boilerplate language that says, I am a councilor from this district in the city of Portland. I am here today on my own advocating on this issue, as opposed to on behalf of my district. If all three of you in a district agree, perhaps that looks different, but I do think that we need some language to make sure that we are being consistent so that legislators don't read inconsistencies as meaningful. I think that's the bulk of what I had written down. So, colleagues, I think we have maybe 3 or 4 minutes to take any additional questions and comments. And I want to save sam about five minutes at the end. To wrap up, councilor Novick you have your hand up?
261 Yeah. Madam president, I have to say that I worry a little bit about saying nobody should ever oppose the city's agenda. I think that anybody in a leadership position should think twice in three times before actively opposing something in the city agenda. But if you feel strongly about something, whether no matter who you are, I don't want to suggest that you know where people lose their right to free speech. And I have to say that I'm particularly sensitive about that because as we've been sitting here, something absolutely horrifying has happened. The trump administration, through the head of the fcc, threatened abc over something that jimmy kimmel said that they didn't like about the charlie kirk murder. And abc pulled jimmy kimmel off the air. We are living in a dictatorship. The freedom of speech is being taken away. Major institutions that should defend freedom of speech are knuckling under. And so I was going to say that regardless of any conversation about what city employees should say about the city agenda, and I know that you weren't suggesting taking away people's free speech, but it just I just want to make it clear that although we think that people in leadership positions should think really hard before opposing the city agenda, there's going to be sometimes when people feel like testifying against something that we we've generally agreed on, and that's okay.
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262 I appreciate that check councilor. And I think what I'm looking at is our agenda, credibility and recognizing that if you oppose something on our agenda, you're jeopardizing the credibility of our entire agenda. And maybe it's maybe that's that. Give it a third and fourth look first that you're talking about.
263 Councilor canal.
264 Thank you, madam president. I was going to say something pretty similar on the context of if one disagrees. And as councilor Novick just said, but what I'll add here is that I agree with councilor Ryan's point about the distinguishment potential distinguishing between things that are revenue raising versus things that are statutes. I think that makes sense. As an accountability advocate, I can't say I support the idea that if a bureau asks for it, the threshold should be lower. I strongly oppose that. But I do think the idea between are we, you know, if I don't want to, or if a counselor doesn't want to have a particular project go forward in a district that's not theirs, let's say, and the group wants to advocate for it, that doesn't. That's not the same thing as as a rights based issue or something like that. So I do see that distinction that councilor Ryan raised. And the other piece of this is I do want to make sure that our the degree to which I'm comfortable pledging in advance is not to oppose an agenda is, is exactly proportional to the degree to which we talked about it ahead of time. So because otherwise the first person to express an opinion wins. And I think that's really dangerous because if we're able to talk it through, we won't have these types of situations. And I think that's actually what happened this year. So I think that that it wasn't so much a the system failed. As much as this was a weird year just because of the change of government. So I personally think we're grading on a curve. And I agree with the mayor that we did about as well as we could do. And that's a testament to the to the staff in the back. I probably get to say it later, but thank you to the entire state team. Thanks.
265 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Zimmerman.
266 Thanks. I agree, councilor Novick and and councilor Kanal. I think that when we put boilerplate language out there, it's a way of saying, here's your expected decorum as an elected official, but sometimes we use the word decorum to say, here's your expected behavior. And so in different conversations with with various members of this, I've always said, you know, each of us has to represent and govern the way we think is most fit. And most of my conversation is more about my, my professional and inner relationships with with you all about. If I was to go down and testify on something which is very different than if we say we have a set, you must do, and if you don't do it, somehow you're out of step with the council. I say that because we have seen where somebody who doesn't fit the expected mold speaks differently than maybe the way the body is used to, and then that body uses it against a member in a way that's really inappropriate. And all they're doing is representing using free speech, etc. So I'm also quite cautious on boilerplate language or anything of that nature. I think it's more about recognizing together the 12 of us, what a heavy lift it would be if we if we did have to step out and speak, speak differently. So I appreciate you guys both bringing that up.
267 Does anybody else have any final comments thoughts for sam direction.
268 Before we let sam wrap up and give us some next steps? Okay. Go right ahead.
269 Well, thank you so much. Really great conversation today. We will be tracking and will be kind of debriefing with our team and getting back to you individually with information, or to have further conversation around some of the issues. And then we'll be collectively setting up some systems to maintain regular communication with you. I want to say a couple things. One is building your trust is always on our agenda and is a absolute premium for us. And so please, you know, we we want to try to interpret and get it right. And getting it right isn't always crystal clear. Right? So know that I think that, you know, as you know we have thousands of issues that we review and then many hundreds we are active on. And so we need to build that cadence with you where we're really understanding and seeing ahead. What are the areas where council is going to be, you know, at least in this nine, you know, council members of support. And that's not necessarily enough if some are feeling very strongly about it and have a very strong perspective. And so we will continue to try to see ahead. I want to make a prediction, which is we're not going to get it right at some point. And, and, and so we've also built in some pieces into our system which are the communications we, we, we want to do weekly, continue the weekly communication as we get into session more frequent but generally weekly communications and updates with you. We connect with the council president and the mayor weekly. We visit, and we work a lot with councilor Clark because she's the league of Oregon cities representative. And then we work a lot with all of you individually. We we want to continue to do that. We want to have our our regular briefings. And we we love it. When you come to the briefings or and bring staff, but we love it when you're there also. And and having those those opportunities we we we think we'll do that once a month up until January and then every other week like we do normally during session. So those are opportunities to identify and say, hey, here's an issue that came up. This is how we we kind of realize that we had gotten sideways on an issue where there was some differences and, and, and that at least allows us to address it fairly quickly. Not we don't want to be in that situation. And this is the planning that we're trying to do with you here is to really kind of, for lack of better, you know, nomenclature, understand your vibes. Right? Like where, where is the and how are we going to put agenda language together that captures that collective interest and then and then help kind of push for conversation to happen where it needs to happen. So appreciate that those are the we we plan on doing and beginning that work and having that regular communication with you over the next couple of months. And we want to get to the point where the next work session, you're looking at a final draft of an agenda that we think does have that collective, you know, agreement or as close to that collective agreement as we as, as you want to be. And so that will be our goal. And then that will be a chance for another conversation and then bring something for a vote a couple weeks later. And we do think it's very important to have that vote before the new year because of all of the socialization that needs to happen.
270 Thank you.
271 Sam, thank you so much. And a big thank you to the whole team. I know we heard from some, but not all of you. You are out there doing a huge amount of work for all of us and for the city as a whole every day, and we really appreciate that. We know that it often involves a lot of very quickly moving things where you're trying to distill 13 people's opinions, plus the auditor, plus everybody who we work with in the city very, very carefully and quickly. So thank you to the whole team. Thank you, sam, for bringing this today and colleagues, I look forward to the continued discussion when we sit back down in December with something tangible to look at. With that, I will close the work session and remind everybody that we're back here in an hour and a half for a council meeting.