The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-09-24
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (14,973 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council convened on September 24, 2025. After roll call and a reading of decorum rules, the agenda was approved with the note that a District One office lease item had been pulled from consent to the end of the agenda, and four foreclosure items had been referred back to the Mayor's Office pending property owner negotiations. The council took up second readings on permit submittal requirements, parking space reservation code changes, small donor elections code amendments, and surplus property disposal; discussion touched on parking hours' fiscal impact, small donor election program mechanics including matching fund thresholds and staffing, and asset management. The council also acted on Portland-Gresham urban service boundary amendments after extended outreach to affected neighborhoods, and discussed a series of foreclosure actions, with staff explaining code enforcement and redemption processes. Finally, discussion addressed a lease for a District One office space, covering funding sources, construction cost concerns, internal service fund rates, and equity of representation across districts. Votes occurred throughout the session; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
Procedural markers in this session
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Procedural episode · turns 0–8
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0 Good morning. It is 931 on September 24th. I am calling to order this meeting of the Portland city council. Welcome, everybody. Keelan, could you please take roll.
1 Koyama Lane here, maria? Here. Clerk. Here. Green. Here. Zimmerman.
2 Present.
3 Dunfee here. Smith. Here. Here. Here. Pirtle-guiney here.
4 Thank you. And could we please get the. Order and our statement of decorum read before we begin.
5 Welcome to the Portland city council to testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at wwe Portland.gov/council agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council's clerk's webpage. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The presiding officer preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls your name. Thank you.
6 Thank you very much. Colleagues. We have an agenda that is a lot of second readings and some more administrative items today. But the first thing we need to do is agenda approval. I will note that agenda item five, which is the authorizing a contract for district one offices for two of our district one councilors, has been pulled off of the consent agenda and is now placed at the end of the agenda. I will also note that agenda items 11, 13, 14 and 17, which are four of the foreclosure items on our agenda, have been pulled back to the mayor's office. I suspect that we'll hear that there are negotiations underway for payment on those properties. In addition to those changes, are there any other proposed changes to the agenda? Seeing none, do I have unanimous consent to approve the agenda? Okay. I'm seeing nods around the dais. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is our first time certain item keelan. Could you please call the agenda item?
7 Item two amend city code to reduce permit submittal requirements and temporarily suspend city imposed development upgrade requirements.
8 Thank you and colleagues. This is a second reading. We heard this at our last meeting, so if there is no discussion, we will move to a vote. Seeing no one in the queue keelan, could you please call the roll.
9 Koyama Lane I maria.
10 I. Novick I.
11 Clark, I Ryan Zimmerman Avalos. I Dunphy.
12 Proud of the team for this work. Excited to push on to cap two. Let's go.
13 I vote yea Smith I.
14 I I. Pirtle-guiney I.
15 The ordinance passes with 11 yes votes.
16 Thank you. And keelan. Could you please call the next agenda item?
17 Item three approve comprehensive plan map, zone map and title 33 amendments as proposed in Portland. Gresham urban service boundary amendments project.
18 And colleagues. As a reminder, this is one of two items that are coming together agenda items three and four. We will open agenda item four.
19 Sorry, my my mistake. That's actually a time certain.
20 And it is a time certain for 10:00 isn't it?
21 Well yeah. And the first one was actually a time certain for 945. Sorry about that.
22 We moved through introductions to quickly. Should have taken longer calling roll colleagues. Why don't we move forward to agenda item five? Or. I'm sorry, it would be consent next, wouldn't it? Why don't we move to the consent agenda, which is agenda item six. Vote on consent and then see where we're at timewise.
23 Keelan. Koyama Lane. I maria.
24 I Novick I. Clark, I. Green I.
25 I Dunphy. I Smith.
26 I.
27 Ryan I. Pirtle-guiney I.
28 The ordinance or sorry the consent agenda is approved with 11 I votes.
29 Okay.
30 Should we move to agenda item seven while we wait for time to catch up? Great. Why don't you get us started there? Keelan.
31 Item seven. Amend parking space reservation code to allow for flexibility in the distribution of responsibilities.
32 Thank you. Colleagues, this is a second reading of an ordinance so we can move straight to a vote if there's no discussion. I'm pausing for a minute because it had sounded like there might be some discussion or proposed amendments coming today. I'm not seeing anyone in the queue, though, so. Councilor Dunphy.
33 Thank you. Yeah, there was some good conversations that happened as a result of this. I think that there are some good questions that this body needs to be answering. Also, while this isn't directly related to the broader conversation about hours for parking, I do look forward to having that conversation I've been hearing in recent weeks. I've been hearing a lot from the music community, from the arts community, from the theater community, and from the film community, explicitly saying that this is already creating a hardship in their industries. So I look forward to that conversation about figuring out how we can accommodate that, whether it is the broader conversation about rolling back choices or authorities, but also whether or not we make exceptions. So I look forward to that conversation and look forward to including as many colleagues as want to be involved and can, without avoiding a quorum. And we'll be moving forward to support this item today. So thank you.
34 Thank you. Councilor councilor Kanal.
35 Thank you, madam president. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here to say, as it relates to your question, that there may be action through a different vehicle than this particular document. So that question around the hours is, is sort of separated here. I will just again note that I, I think we are committing here to a level of specificity in code that I think is good. And I hope we continue that when we get to some more difficult things coming down the pike. Thanks.
36 Thank you, councilor, councilor Clark.
37 Thank you, madam chair. I just wanted to reassure you that while there was some discussion of amendments, that's not happening today. We're having those conversations separately, as you heard. And any questions around the labor issue here were resolved as well. So this is should be fine.
38 Thank you. I had also had some conversations about the labor concerns, and it sounded like we had gotten to an okay place, despite the fact that there were some concerns. But. There may be some follow up needed in the future on that. So maybe that's something that you and I can coordinate on. Councilor. Koyama Lane.
39 Thank you so much, council president. I'm interested in further conversations around the extended parking hours, and I also am a little confused because I think we voted in our budget. We planned out how much we knew that we were going to get about $1 million more from that, so I just am wondering if that means we have to find a million somewhere else. But I'm interested in hearing more.
40 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Green.
41 Yeah, thank you, councilor Koyama Lane. Good question. I had a conversation yesterday with some leadership and PBOT, and I think that you're raising an important issue. And so we've asked them to sort of provide an analysis of what the net impact would be, should we in a separate action. Not today. But if someone were to bring an ordinance that that rolls back that extension, we would have some clear eyes on what the the costs would be so that that discussion is underway. And I would just went in the queue to just say, I want to echo everything councilor Kanal said without repeating it for the interest of time. Thanks.
42 Thank you, councilor Green. Keelan seeing no one else in the queue, could you please call the roll.
43 Koyama Lane I. Maria. I. Novick I.
44 Clark a Green. I Zimmerman Avalos. I Dunphy. I Smith.
45 I.
Procedural episode · turns 46–54
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46 I Ryan. I pirtle-guiney. I the ordinance passes with 11 votes.
47 Thank you keelan. Why don't we move on to agenda item eight?
48 Amend small donor elections code to adopt the recommendations of the Portland elections commission.
49 Thank you colleagues. Again. This is a second reading of an ordinance. I am not seeing anyone in the queue for discussion. So keelan, could you please call the roll? Oh, councilor Ryan is asking us to pause. Go right ahead, councilor.
50 Thank you, madam president. Yeah, I guess that pause is a good word I thought it would be important to because we had a lot of conversation about this at governance. And when items come to the council without a little bit of a summary, I think it's just important. I know we did a little bit of that last week, but I just want to say that there were two things that were a little troubling to me about this, and I have to say, I have been a frequent flier. I've been a member of this program. In 2020, 2022, 2024. I'm hoping that I'm finally not on the ballot in 2026. I am going to I'm going to vote no. But I know this will pass. I'm doing it for because I want the dissent to be recognized as something that we have to just keep our eyes on, and that's around the third party, the third party donors. Let me find the spot. Sorry. I just want to make sure we have transparency. This is a program that I really care about, and I'm worried that if we don't really stay on this issue with a lot of transparency, we could run into some problems later on. When we have paid solicitors that go to door to door to fundraise for candidates who are third party canvassers, who represent multiple candidates and causes to have public money, go to those political nonprofits. Campaigning for a slate just remains a concern, and I think that we need to be reminded that those third party canvassers, canvassers need to disclose all their beneficiary causes and candidates so clearly in front of the people that they're engaging with. This is something I wasn't looking to talk about. It's just something that kept coming up to me from confused neighbors and such. So I just wanted to make sure that we continue to daylight, that it seems like a relatively easy requirement to institute, since we all want more transparency in our elections process. And I didn't think there'd be any objections. So I just hope that susan and the commission that you work with, the advisory body just stays on this issue. I just would hate for us to see 1 or 2 bad situations take it down like it did the first iteration, which I think was now 20 years ago. So that's why I'm going to have a vote on this item. Thanks.
51 Thank you, councilor Ryan, for that background and explanation. Councilor Smith.
52 Thank you. Council president. Could I have susan come up the director.
53 Susan, please go ahead and join us.
54 Thank you for coming up. Just in addition to what councilor Ryan is talking about, what are the other changes to this so that I can remind myself to this small donor election vote today.
55 What are the changes before the council?
56 Yeah.
57 And if you could please introduce yourself first. That would be great.
58 Sure.
59 I apologize, I actually don't have the summary up and I can't do it from memory, so I will pull that up. But first I will introduce myself. My name is susan vote yea and I am the director of the small donor elections program. And I will talk about the changes I do remember first. So one of them is to give delegate authority to the Portland elections commission so that they can institute a rule preventing. To not match, not sorry, not match, not count contributions from other candidates toward the 250 or 750 certification levels in order to get matching funds from the program, and for the tier to qualify for tiers that is designed for the purpose of seeing if we can sort of disincentivize any candidate to candidate explicit quid pro quo contribution swaps. Another thing it does is that it gets the programs the start and end of the election cycle. It aligns it with the state's recently adopted start and end of the election cycle. For small donor elections. It's currently 45 days after the prior election, which is usually around December 20th to start. Okay, okay. And then it is and then it ends the day of the election. The state has a more simple thing. It's just January 1st, the year before the election to December 31st, the the the year of the election. And then it also changes the last the the deadline to return unspent matching funds to the program to the last day of the election cycle. So it's not before the last day of the election cycle.
60 Which is December 31st.
61 Yes.
62 So I want to go back to the first to the first item. So the first item is that you can get a match from someone who's a who's a candidate, but it can't be used to meet those thresholds of two 5750 and 1200.
63 That's right.
64 Okay. But they will be matched, but they just won't count towards getting meeting those thresholds.
65 That's right.
66 Okay. Correct. Thank you. So I'm sorry to have to go over this again. But I think people who are looking at this new and fresh, they don't have the advantage of looking at prior memos to know what we're talking about today. But I really appreciate you going through that again because I totally forgot about it. Okay. Thank you.
67 Did you want me to review the remaining changes?
68 Yes.
69 Go ahead. Okay. Another change is that it updates the administrative rule making authority in the code to reflect the the change or change charter changes that were made in 2022. It. I'm just scrolling through to make sure I catch every single one. It changes the match cap for the auditor from $100,000 to $50,000 to align its match cap, more similarly with the other races match caps, so that they're all a proportion of what it generally takes to win those seats. That the auditor's office isn't the only office to run for where the match cap is significantly higher than it costs to win such a seat. Okay. And then I think, I think that might.
70 And so it also removes the contradiction in code about the payment of penalties. Right.
71 Yes, yes it does. There's a contradiction in code where an amendment was added a few years ago, and then it didn't remove the contradictory language about how penalties can be paid. And then it also eliminates a a blanket prohibition on campaigns making any financial transfer to another political committee. It creates an exception so they can do that for legitimate campaign expenses, such as in the case where multiple candidates share one expense, like an event together, or if they go in and share a, you know, field director, that they can compensate each other for to share that expense.
72 Because before we would have to pay them individually for our third of it, or.
73 That's right, the vendor would have to bill each campaign their share. And that was very difficult for vendors of 12 campaigns. We were doing one event together for the vendor to have to bill 12 separate campaigns.
74 Okay, I see.
75 Right. And I believe in terms of the substantive changes to the program, that that is everything. Yes.
76 Thank you.
77 Sure.
78 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane.
79 Hi.
80 Can you remind.
81 Me how many candidates were running a year ago? Is it 118.
82 118 ran, but not all participated in the program.
83 Okay. And how many staff do you have? Again? I was trying to remember.
84 We have two staff. We used to have a number of casual staff who would help us out. As things election season ramped up.
85 Two staff and that's includes you. Yes it does. Okay. I wanted to thank you for coming to governance, for answering all of our questions, for coming back to governance and doing an extra presentation. And I also just want to thank you for running this program. That's a really big one on just two staff members. As someone who, just a year ago, as a working mom who was literally teaching third grade and running for office, I know that I personally wouldn't have been able to run or be in the seat without that program. So thank you for all your work.
86 Thank you, councilor. Councilor canal.
87 Thank you, madam president. Thanks for being here. Susan. I wanted to ask a clarification on councilor Smith's question. Is the change that we're making today to actually implement not counting donations from other candidates towards the 257, 50, 1250, or simply to allow the commission to delegate the authority to the commission to make a a restriction of that nature. Because in looking at the code, the exhibit a, the 216 05082 for those following along, it just says including whether to count those contributions. So I it appeared to me as a delegation, but I just love to confirm.
88 Yes, it is a delegation in order to give the elections commission that authority. What they wanted to do is experiment with making that change and seeing if that got the job done, and if not, then come back and figure out what else needs to be done before enshrining something in code.
89 Okay, well, I think it's appropriate to delegate authority. And so I have no concern with this particular provision. I'll just speak in the encouraging way that I think others have in terms of what we'd like to see after this and say, I don't think candidates waive the right to free speech, which supreme court has determined donations are a part of by virtue of their own declaration of candidacy. I personally donated to some of the folks up here, and part of that was having a joint event where a ticket to a single event gave a donation to multiple candidates. I think one of the really beautiful things about the 2024 election was the the collaboration and camaraderie between candidates in multiple overlapping groups. And yeah, the obvious one to my left here, but but it wasn't just that. I mean, it was there were tons of different groups, and I don't think that it's I understand the quid pro quo thing completely. I'm not I'm not I'm differentiating that from just the idea of I feel like it's a good person who's running for office, especially in another district. Or here's someone I'd like as a colleague in my district and, and a donation going that way. So I think that's a really appropriate thing to do. And I would encourage the that to be a part of the conversation at the commission level. I, I also wanted to pile on what councilor Koyama Lane was saying. We often say that nontraditional candidates are more likely to run because of things like small donor elections or single transferable vote ranked choice voting. In general, I do not merely believe that that is true. I know it because I, as a nontraditional candidate, looked at those two things when deciding to run, and I would not have run without this program. And while I don't know it for sure, I don't think I would have won without it either. So I wanted to also say express my appreciation for you, for daniel, for all the casual staff that were involved in this as well, because we know that you had people on loan to help with a larger than expected field. And as a related point, I do think the field is going to reduce naturally. That's how it has occurred in other cities and states that have done ranked choice voting over around the country. Obviously, we're going to have half the number of districts as well. But even within a district, I do expect that to happen without any sort of intervention. And while that's only semi only part of the conversation here, I do think there are other conversations going on about how to artificially restrict the field. And I, I want to express alarm at that before we get there. Thanks.
90 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Ryan.
91 Just a quick question. I'm curious. So when you said that that's the pattern across the country with ranked choice voting, do they also have multiple representatives in one district with single transferable vote?
92 Most of them do not. Is it okay to respond? Most of them do not.
93 Thank you for checking the.
94 I think Portland is unique, and I think it's great to have to be a leader again. I think for many decades, Portland was a city people would look at and say, hey, this is a great idea. Maybe we want to do it a little differently in our town, whatever that is. And I think we got away from that in the last several years. And I think it's a really good idea that we have, you know, done the experiment and are able to point to that and just if we need to. But yeah, it's it is different in other cities and other states as well.
95 I'm curious to see how it all shakes out. Thanks.
96 Thank you. Councilors. Susan. Thank you. I know that we pulled you back twice in committee plus twice in council now, but I'll just reiterate the vice president's comments that we know it's hard work. It's a lot of work. And it does create accessibility for candidates who wouldn't otherwise be able to be sitting up here with us. So thank you very much. Keelan seeing no one else in the queue, could you please call the roll.
97 Koyama Lane. I Morillo. Hi Novick I Clark, I Green, I Zimmerman I Smith. I hi Ryan no pirtle-guiney.
98 Hi.
99 The ordinance passes with 11 yes votes and one no vote. Given.
100 Keelan. Since we are past 945, what do we need to do about that first time certain item?
101 Yeah. Thank you. The so we item two document number 2025 314 is a time certain scheduled for 945. The oral record for this item is closed. But I want to make sure that there's no one in the audience who is here for that item. Council did vote on that item around 930, and they voted to pass the ordinance with a yes 11 vote with one absence. So just going to pause for a minute. Okay. I think we're good.
102 Thank you. Keelan. And it looks like we are not quite to our 10:00 time certain items yet. So why don't we take care of item number nine.
103 Item nine declare property located on southeast 21st avenue and southeast powell boulevard as surplus property, and authorize the city administrator to dispose of the property at fair market value.
104 Thank you very much, keelan colleagues. This is a second reading of an ordinance. So unless there is additional discussion, we will move to a vote. Councilor Clark.
105 No discussion, but just a point that we this issue brought up lots of other issues about what kind of property we own around the city, and I think that's something that really accompanies the asset management plan is what assets do we actually own. So hopefully we'll be we'll be going after that. This was a it was a good discussion. Thank you.
106 Thank you counselor. I have already started having conversations with some of the administrative staff about what we can do as next steps, because it sounds like there is definitely appetite for further discussion there. And given your work on asset management, I think you should certainly be a part of that. Okay, seeing no further discussion, keelan could you please call the roll.
107 Koyama Lane I.
108 Maria. Hi Novick I Clark I Green I Zimmerman I Avalos hi.
109 Thank you maddie I.
110 Smith I.
111 I I.
112 Pirtle-guiney. I the ordinance passes with 12 yes votes.
113 Thank you. And I think we're close enough now to go back to those 10:00 items. What do you think keelan. Can you read it in 45 seconds. So we get to ten.
114 All right. Item three, approve comprehensive plan map, zone map, and title 33 amendments as proposed in Portland Gresham urban service boundary amendments project and item four direct city administrator to approve Portland Gresham urban services intergovernmental agreement.
115 Thank you, keelan and colleagues. These are second readings, but we had asked we had kept the record open for longer than we might normally do to give our colleagues in district one time to reach out to constituents in these neighborhoods, to see if there was anybody else who wanted to provide input. Councilor Dunphy, would you like to share with us what you found?
116 Absolutely. First of all, colleagues, thank you for allowing us to have an additional week to gather input from everybody. I'm deeply impressed with my team and with the district one teams who sprang into action, and my field organizer and director, emma jensen, on my team created a one pager and ran out, and she and lucy moody in my office went and knocked on over 100 doors in this neighborhood. Overwhelmingly, the the the feedback we received from pleasant valley neighbors was, wow, I can't believe somebody's here knocking on my door. And also pretty overwhelmingly may like, go ahead. But they were deeply appreciative for the effort to try and do this. We are going to try and be more proactive in the near future about things like this, but it really this demonstrates the change of what is happening in this community. I'm if you look on the record, there's at least four pieces of testimony there that would not have otherwise been there. And while it doesn't substantively change the outcome, you know, feedback really matters from the people who are affected. And this is the embodiment of why we changed this form of government, in my opinion. So thank you, colleagues, for giving us this space, and I'm ready to move forward and vote on this.
117 Thank you. And before we move to other colleagues, councilor Avalos, councilor Smith, do either of you have anything to add?
118 Yeah, I just want to thank councilor Dunphy's team for doing some work on that. I was also at the powellhurst-gilbert neighborhood association last night where we discussed it a bit and heard similar ish results. There was an ask from a couple of folks to possibly postpone the vote even further, but hearing how the outreach went, I feel good to go ahead and move forward with a vote today as well.
119 Thank you, councilor Smith. Anything to add?
120 Yes. Council president, I want to thank you for presenting us with this option and an opportunity to go out and talk to all portlanders and for me and my colleagues willingness to provide a little extra time to show people of district one that they are considered at city hall, in addition to Dunphy staff. My staff went out and talked to folks and tried to explain what was happening and a very similar response in regards to not really understanding what it was, but we mentioned it and we had coffee with a cop at my district office last week, and we discussed we discussed it. So for me, public safety, urban forest infrastructure and business development were issues that are top of mind for district one. So I just want to thank. Bts for their work and understanding that that their proposal is not uniquely controversial or problematic. And so I will be supporting this this item. So thank you so much. It just means a lot.
121 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Novick.
122 Councilor Dunphy, do you think the words overwhelming and mayor really go together? Yeah. Okay.
123 For east Portland? Absolutely.
124 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor canal.
125 Thank you, madam president. I appreciate the the information and the work that you've all done in your neighborhoods. I wanted to ask, you know, one of the pieces of testimony came in earlier, but three seem to have come in subsequently. I noted two of them in particular, the written testimony from pleasant valley neighborhood association, which does include what councilor Avalos referred to as a request to delay. My understanding is, is looking at reading that paragraph in particular. The rest of it seemed broadly, here are things to look at in the future. And I was curious if your interpretation of that question around the school district property was also effectively, these are things to look at in the future as opposed to things related to this particular vote. And I have another comment after that. This is more a question to all three of my colleagues.
126 Go right ahead.
127 Yeah, I would say that, yes, that that is, for me, more of a conversation about the future here at as we looked into this, near as I can tell, the soccer field that we were originally talking about near the centennial high school isn't actually directly affected the way that we were sort of implying it was. So this feels like it's I mean, my read on the conversation we've had with them is just that, yeah, we more work to be done.
128 Okay. Then I'll just add on two related notes to look at for us later. I appreciated the, the the testimony from the city of Gresham and from carly rice. I think that's a really good pattern that we should be in more communication with our neighbors. And then I'll note the one testifier from before last week did talk about a not that related to this vote point about rental inspections that I'd like to follow up with the housing committee about as well, comparing favorably gresham's approach to rental inspections to ours. So I am prepared to vote for this, but I just wanted to make sure that that thread was not lost. Thanks.
129 Thank you. Councilor, colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue, let's move to a vote. Keelan. Go right ahead.
130 This is for item three, document number 2025. Dash 349 Koyama Lane I Morillo.
131 I.
132 Novick I.
133 A Green. I Zimmerman.
134 I noticed that former metro councilor Shirley craddock is here. I don't know if she's here as a champion for Gresham, but appreciate you being here and I vote I.
135 Avalos I Dunphy.
136 I.
137 Smith I.
138 No I.
139 Ryan I.
140 Pirtle-guiney aye. The ordinance passes with 12 yes votes and item four document number 2020 5-3 50 Koyama Lane. I. Morillo.
141 I.
142 Novick. I Clark I Green, I zimmermann.
143 Avalos I I.
144 Smith I.
145 I Ryan. I pirtle-guiney. I the ordinance passes with 12 yes votes.
146 Thank you very much. And colleagues thank you for that extra work there to make sure that your constituents were heard on these issues. And I think there were some follow up items in that letter from the neighborhood association that I'm sure the three of you will be working with them on. Colleagues, I believe that moves us to a series of foreclosure actions, and these are all first readings on non-emergency ordinances. Keelan could you open them all together so that we can get a joint presentation on them? Sure. Thank you.
147 Council president. I will also read the titles of the ones that are being referred back, just so we can make sure that's on the record.
148 Great. Thank you.
149 Okay. Item ten initiate foreclosure action on 1541 west of interstate southwest market street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 11 initiate foreclosure action on 1140 southeast 139th avenue for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 12 initiate foreclosure action on 1541 southwest market street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 13 initiate foreclosure action on 1810 southeast cesar chavez boulevard for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 14 initiate foreclosure action on 1822 southeast cesar chavez boulevard for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 15 initiate foreclosure action on 3821 northwest saint helens road for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 16 initiate foreclosure action on 5130 southeast 84th avenue for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 17 initiate foreclosure action on 8315 north wayland avenue for the collection of delinquent city liens against the property.
150 Thank you keelan, and I know you just opened those all and they are not all moving forward. We'll get to that in a minute, colleagues. But first, I'd like to turn to christopher hair for a committee staff summary.
151 Good morning, madam president. Madam vice president, councilors. For the record, my name is christopher hair, counsel operations policy analyst, and I serve as staff to the finance committee. The ordinance before you documents number 2025 332 through 2025 334 and 2025 336 through 2025. Dash 340 were considered in the finance committee on September 8th, where they were referred to council with a recommendation to pass the ordinances. Authorize the city treasurer to initiate foreclosure proceedings for the sale of eight properties. The ordinances also approved the associated foreclosure reports for each property and, in accordance with Portland administrative rule 80 14.10, provide that the property owner, any person with a legal interest in the property or their authorized representative may redeem the property by paying the full redemption amount to the city treasurer within 90 days of the respective foreclosure sale date. The full impact statements on these items include financial and budgetary impacts and analysis, and community impact and community involvement. There was no verbal or written testimony provided prior to committee action, and this concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.
152 Thank you. Christopher. Councilor Zimmerman, would you like to add anything?
153 Thanks. This is an important action, and I know that this body doesn't take it lightly. You know, the majority of the time when we find ourselves in this type of foreclosure situation, we're talking about properties that have largely been abandoned by either family members of, of deceased or of businesses who went under. And they're often in areas where the surrounding neighbors are asked to put up with something, I think, a little too long. And so it is important that we take actions that the remedy can start. And until this body takes that action, the remedy usually has gone for many years of of nothing. And so these are generally a scourge on the neighborhood. They usually become quite the the target and the beacon of bad behavior. So I appreciate the activity of the city staff and everybody involved in making the case for all of these. And I have full faith in in each of the presentations, these all passed, as was mentioned unanimously for those who were present at that meeting. Thanks.
154 Thank you. Councilor. Mr. Jordan, do you have anything that you'd like to add that we should know? This comes out of the administration?
155 No. Council president.
156 Business as usual on the foreclosure side, colleagues, I want to note that we do have staff here. If there are questions about particular properties. There was a discussion about a few of the properties, which I believe have all been pulled off the list. Everything that was brought up in the committee. But I also will just flag that. Councilor Avalos, I know you were absent that day, so we did not have somebody from district one present, and there is a single district one property still on the list. We are referring back to the mayor's office. Item 11, item 13, item 14, and item 17, I assume. And I'm looking to foster to you. I assume that that means that there has been progress with negotiations with those property owners, and there are payment plans underway.
157 Yes, that is correct.
158 Okay. Councilor Ryan, do you have questions?
159 I do, I just a comment and also a clarification. Good to see you and thank you, councilor Zimmerman, for that summary. We made action about was it two years ago where after this vote, it used to be about a year where there would where you would actually see visible action after we voted. And that made neighbors pretty upset. And that was changed to was it 90 days?
160 Yes. The redemption period is now 90 days.
161 Can I have you introduce yourself? For the record.
162 My name is kevin foster. I am the foreclosure prevention manager for the city of Portland.
163 Thank you.
164 Thank you kevin, I appreciate that clarification.
165 Anything else? Councilor. Okay. Councilor Kanal.
166 Thanks. Two things, but I'll start by also thanking councilor Zimmerman for that explanation of what the sort of factors are at play here. My question is, if you could just clarify. I got a couple questions about the difference on ten and 12, because the addresses are effectively the same, ownership is the same. And, you know, just just to get to the the meat of that there, if you could just kind of clarify that for the public.
167 Sure. The address is 1541 southwest market street. One of the parcels are have the wui in there, which just means it's west of the interstate.
168 Okay.
169 Thanks. So that's purely coincidental that it has the same, I shouldn't say purely coincidental. It is. There are two different properties with the same ownership is what you're correct.
170 Correct. And on the same lot. Just one is on the west side of the interstate.
171 And should we expect, have there been communications related to any of the other. There's we've talked about four of the eight properties here. Are we expecting that the how? I don't know if you can make this prediction. So I tell me if not, should we expect that the other four are going to go all the way through this process at this at this time?
172 Yes.
173 Okay.
174 Thank you.
175 Council president. I just have to correct something.
176 Go right ahead and then we'll go.
177 To councilor.
178 W I actually means within. It's not west of interstate. If you look at the property, this property is just two lots that essentially are used together. They have the same address. It's just at some point when the plat was was developed, there is a sliver of a plot here that is also 1541. I just wanted to correct that, that this property does not span across an interstate.
179 Thank you. I was struggling with that on the map. So it's the deeper versus the the adjacent the one that actually abuts the street, is that correct?
180 Yeah. I mean, I live in a similar property where I've got a sliver for whatever reason at some point historically, and it's contained within my own address. This is similar.
181 Okay. Thank you.
182 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Smith.
183 I thank you. I didn't hear what your title was. You said something. I didn't hear it clearly. So could you tell me your name and what department you're in again?
184 Sure. My name is kevin foster. I am the foreclosure prevention manager for the city of Portland, and I work in the revenue division.
185 Revenue division? That's what I didn't hear. Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
186 Yeah. Of course.
187 Councilor. I'll take a moment to note, since you asked for mr. Foster's title again, that and this is something we've talked about extensively in the finance committee. I think it's important that your title is foreclosure prevention manager. And while by the time a property gets to this stage, it often is a nuisance in the neighborhood, the goal is always to avoid foreclosure and find other ways to clean up these properties. Knowing that foreclosure is the last resort when there are no other ways to clean up the properties.
188 Thank you.
189 Okay, colleagues, if there are no other. Oh, councilor Clark, go right ahead.
190 Just a quick question. And I could definitely take this offline, but this is a something I'm not familiar with. And while I trust the work of the finance committee, I just is there a way to just very quickly run through what the process is? I'm sure it varies by property, but maybe just a rule of thumb or ballpark on how this works.
191 Let's do that. So it's on the public record at a full council meeting as well. Thank you. Go right ahead, mr. Foster.
192 Okay. So complaints are made to Portland permitting and development and they come there. Community member complaints that come into their office. They in return send out a housing inspector to verify the complaint. And then at that point, they can they engage the property owner, try to get them to rectify the property or bring the property into compliance. If that doesn't happen, then a lien is placed on the property. Then at that point, that's when revenue gets involved once the lien is placed on the property.
193 Is there sort of a standard time frame for that or.
194 You know, let me let mike answer that.
195 Welcome. Please go ahead and introduce yourself. And then you can take that one on.
196 Hello mike liefeld I'm with the property compliance division of Portland permitting and development. Yes, there is a process. So after a complaint is initiated, the investigation is completed. The notice the legal notice goes out. It at minimum allows 30 days. That is the bare minimum. Usually we engage with property owners and seek settlements or paths towards correction. When we reach the point of foreclosure. You're talking about probably a multi year process. So before we get to the foreclosure process, we would initially assess a code enforcement fee and start the lien process as the incentive to try to get the property owner or responsible party to work with us. After that point, we can take additional enforcement actions, such as doing abatements for nuisance conditions, hiring a city contractor with all costs assessed as liens against the property. We also can initiate a code hearing to seek vacations of properties when they're occupied illegally, without utilities causing impacts on the neighborhood. We can seek demolition orders if we if it's so dangerous or imminently hazardous that it needs to be rectified through a city contract to knock the building down again with all assess all costs assessed to the property. So we're we're engaging with the property owner. We have waivers, we give them time. If they can come up with a compliance plan in these cases, they are distressed, they're abandoned, their vacant. And all of those previous actions have failed to deliver a compliant property.
197 Can I ask just one more question then, counselor? If there's a deceased person, you try to track down members of the family who might live out of state, and I imagine that prolongs the process as well. But you give the family an opportunity.
198 To the best of our ability. Once we start the foreclosure process, there is a title report that is pulled. So at that point, we are following the legal procedure to reach all interested parties.
199 Councilor on this list, there was one property I believe, that was part of an estate, part of a death, and that was the property in my own district, which is why I was paying attention to it. It was agenda item number 17, which has been referred back to the mayor's office. So it sounds like they were able to work with other family members. Okay. Councilor Smith, are you okay? Colleagues, are there any questions about particular properties before we move these all to a second reading? Okay. Seeing none. Thank you both for being here, chris. Thank you for the overview. Keelan. Do we have any public testimony on any of these? Then, colleagues, I will move agenda items. Ten 1215 and 16 to second reading, probably at our next council meeting. Keelan, could you please call our next agenda item?
200 Yeah, we'll go back to the consent agenda. Item five authorize negotiation and execution of an in-district office space lease for district one councilors for a term commencing approximately October 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2029.
201 Thank you. And councilors. This was referred straight to council, so there's not a committee staff summary. And I'll note that it is an emergency ordinance. So it requires nine votes to pass. And this item was pulled off of the consent agenda by councilor Smith. Councilor Smith, would you like to speak to this?
202 Thank you, madam president. Is maddie here?
203 I believe that maddie left after one of the previous items. Would you like us to try to get her back, or would you like us to call up the dca for the service area?
204 Is sarah here? Okay.
205 Sally, would you like to join us.
206 On our way back? We're working to get her here.
207 Great. Thank you. It looks like you nodded to mr. Jordan when you said that. Thank you for doing that.
208 Thank you. Sarah, thank you for being willing to to discuss this. I looked at this in a couple of things. We talked about some of the safety concerns. And so you did settle that particular concern because I thought that there was a provision in there to do safety, to pay for safety, for district one, for this new lease. And I wanted to make sure that my office had the opportunity to get the same safety at their offices. But I wanted to kind of break this down. The 700,000. Could you tell me how much is that billed out and how much of that is a monthly salary? And maybe that's maddie's.
209 Yeah, the.
210 Technical questions would have to go to maddie in terms of what the lease is versus the tenant improvements and dca. Sarah morrissey, for the record.
211 Do you know what the entire square footage is?
212 I do not know off the top of my head.
213 So I think we have to wait for maddie to come up because my questions are more technical in nature.
214 Let's give maddie just a few minutes to get here. And while we wait, councilors Dunphy and councilor Avila, councilor Dunphy and Avalos, this is a contract for office space that your offices will be using. Is there anything that you'd like to share with us all? Or should we just recess for a couple of minutes to give maddie time?
215 I can give a little bit of context.
216 Fantastic.
217 So what is going on? This lease is for an office for counselors. Dunphy and I, for the district one office. What ended up happening is that we were the three councilors went to tour different spaces to decide where a district one office would go. As you all know, we talked at the very beginning of the year about our feelings that district one needs a space. We need a place for east portlanders to gather that is not downtown. And that was definitely a shared sentiment that we heard around the dais. And there was discussion around that came up when we were talking about council budgets, for example, because we were we were poised as district one councilors to use a lot of our first council budget since we had that first six months right towards the office. What ended up transpiring from there we were touring space, in particular the nick fish building in the gateway neighborhood, and there were a couple of options there. There was one office that was a small office that was used to was being used or had been used by the office of civic life. And then there were two adjoining spaces that were not built out. They were vacant. They're going to need all kinds of renovations. So the three of us were literally there discussing how we were, what we were thinking about doing. On if we wanted to use all of these spaces for a district one office. At that time, councilor Smith decided to create her own office out of the small civic life office, and did not want to participate in doing a joint office with the three of us. And so councilor Dunphy and I, because we felt at that time we were locked into possibly building out the rest of the nick fish, since the part that councilor Smith's office occupied was already built out, we felt that that was going to be a huge cost, because, again, those were just bones and it was going to require a lot of development at the same time, because, again, there was a shared understanding across council about east Portland needing space. We did some fundraising, if you will, amongst other councilors, to seek dollars to be put towards our office in particular, because again, we started in January. It's halfway through the fiscal year. Not all of the offices were expecting to use all of their budget, so it felt like an opportunity to acquire a solid amount of money so that we could guarantee an office that district one deserves and needs, especially in a district that is very lacking in commercial space. So we received donations, you know, councilors Jamie Dunphy and I obviously put money from our budgets. Councilor Smith had put money from her budget, and we received donations from Ryan pirtle-guiney and Koyama Lane as things transpired. And again, when we first were receiving those donations, it was donations. It was under the understanding that we were going to have one district, one office that obviously changed. And so we continued to move forward. We decided that we were actually going to we looked at a couple other spots. The spot that we ended up with. It's on 305 north east 102nd avenue was a space that kind of opened up later and presented us with a great opportunity, especially because they opened up the bottom floor. It's called Multnomah plaza, and councilor Dunphy and I went and looked at that. We decided that the cost for building out the nick fish was going to be way too much, and we cited this was more cost effective to go with this. And again, wait for maddie to give us all of the details on the negotiations. I think we got really good deals with that. And so the the dollars that we ended up with the 705 is actually a result of just councilor Me, councilor Dunphy and then council president and vice president councilor Smith and councilor Ryan decided to retract their dollars. So we had a closer to a million. We ended up with what we have now, but luckily that was enough for what we needed to accomplish. And the great news is that we are able to purchase this space and this lease for the remainder of our term. So this lease is going all the way until end of fiscal year 2029, and we're able to prepay it. So with this amount we're able to pay for the whole lease. We're paying for any of the cost of the development. And again we got a really great deal with the owner. They are actually doing a lot of the development for us. And so we negotiated a lease with them. And then the remainder will be about 50,000. That's going to go in a contingency pot for upcoming costs, unexpected costs that always happen when you own a building or lease a space. So ultimately, what we are presenting to you all is the approval of this lease so that we can go forward with signing that, securing it. The goal is that the development will be done. I think realistically, January is when we're expecting to open up the d1 office. So that's the context of what what transpired.
218 Thank you counselor. And I think we do have maddie online now. Perfect.
219 Sorry. It is incredibly hard to know where we're supposed to be and how to get there. Right now.
220 We fully understand and we know that you were in the room for previous agenda items and probably very reasonably thought that you were done with your work with us this morning, but I appreciate you jumping back online to answer a couple of questions from councilor Smith.
221 Thank you. And just for the record, I did want to have a district one office. I just didn't want to have a hostile environment. In fact, Jamie Dunphy is using my office right now, him and his staff, and they've been using it for months. And so when I was told that I didn't have the same values as councilor Avalos by her directly, I was concerned. I was concerned that I would be putting my office into a hostile environment. So secondly, and then when I found out what the build out cost was, $1.2 million, I was not going to pay it. I refused to pay a build out of $1.2 million. Part of the reason why I wanted this to come forward, sarah, is because. I don't understand why we have such high fees to do build outs when we could go to the private sector and get that built out. It didn't for me, just putting up some walls. The windows were there, the infrastructure, the bathroom was there. And to have this cost an estimated cost of $1.2 million, I thought that was egregious. So I did take my money back and I said, I'm not going to do it because I don't think it was sustainable. And I offered my office as a satellite office for all three of us, recognizing that we all needed to have a space. And the third reason why I wasn't going to go with it, because it wasn't going to be ready for two years. I could not wait to have interactions with my constituents in district for two years. That was just, they said, 18 months to two years. That was ridiculous and that was too long. So for me, I wanted to find out from maddie, how big is this new space? In square footage?
222 Sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm online. For the record, my name is maddie sutter, and I'm the director of the bureau of fleet and facilities, and we have been charged with manifesting the offices, the district office concept. So the space that we are actually leasing is around 2900ft■!s, 2900ft■!s.
223 And how many offices are in there?
224 There's ultimately going to be two shared offices and then a conference room.
225 Two shared offices. I thought they were going to be three offices.
226 There are three offices. But since councilor Smith is in her own office, the third office is is a conference room. So it is made for three.
227 Yeah, it's, it's it's constructed for three. But in the meantime the third space is going to be used as a conference room. Exactly what councilor Avalos said.
228 So in 29, if new councilors come in, are they responsible for taking over this lease?
229 That's a great question. And that's actually why we brought this ordinance to council, is because that end period of the lease is so uncertain, and it really depends on who's elected and what they want. So the way the ordinance is written is that the lease is prepaid through the end of that fiscal year. So through June 30th of 2029, and there is a renewal period, there's an option to renew that will be in the lease. But we really want to make sure that we understand who is elected in 2028 and have an opportunity for them to see the site, get get their feet under them, understand what options are in front of them, understand their budget, and then make a thoughtful decision so the ordinance binds councilors abalos and Dunphy to be the exclusive pair of all costs through June 30th of 2029. And then we have this sort of option period in there, which we'll dialog and discuss with whoever is elected what they want to do after that.
230 Understand. And so what is the monthly lease rate?
231 That is being negotiated right now. And so the letter of intent has been drafted there. I don't have the specifics on that because other folks are at a at a meeting right now. But it is a little bit of a debate between tenant improvements and what we negotiate on that. And then the ultimate lease rate. And pauline is also here, and she's pulling that for me right now. She has that data.
232 So the way that I see it, there's $400,000 that that is being spent on tenant improvements and that the other 300,000 is supposed to be for lease rates. And if I calculated that up, that's it seems like about $10,000 a month. That's why I wanted to know specifically. And so since we don't have the entire specifics on this, I don't know that we can vote on it.
233 So we need the councilors to vote on this, to approve the ordinance, which then allows us to sign the lease. The lease is still in the letter of intent process, but we can't sign the lease until we receive the ordinance approving us to do that.
234 So give me a ballpark, maddie. Tell me what the ballpark monthly lease rate is expected to be here.
235 Sorry, it's $6,522.75 per month.
236 6500. So that's not so. Actually, they're not spending $300,000 on the lease payments until the end of 28.
237 They are spending. They will be paying every month until the end of 2029. And based on our forecast, we have those dollars already secured.
238 Right. But what I'm saying is, you said that 300,000 is supposed to go towards lease rates. If it's 6500, it seems like you have too much for the lease rate and then you have 400,000 for tenant improvements or, or build out. And I'm trying to figure out why does it cost so much for a build out. And that again, that was one of the reasons why I wanted to bring it forward, because I don't understand why facilities charges so much for us to build out a space.
239 In this instance, we have negotiated tenant improvements. So those costs aren't all ours. And so the tenant improvements have the owner assuming a lot of costs associated with construction, we are presuming are not to exceed in terms of construction is going to be about 350,000, with the remainder being able to pay the lease, which when you add in both the lease, along with other anticipated forecasts, costs, you know, kind of closes that gap to get to.
240 The janitorial service. And that's what I'm asking for for the entire amount, not just the 6500. It seems like it's going to be close to $10,000 a month.
241 Yeah, sorry. We're all in different spots here. So I not knowing when things are coming is a little bit challenging. So I'm trying to pull that up in the background. Otherwise we would have come prepared with that information. Pauline are you logged on to. Pauline? Are you on zoom okay. And we can provide the spread to the council if if needed.
242 I'm just trying to get an average. You don't have to be so specific. That's. That's what I was trying to figure out. Why it cost $700,000 to execute this lease.
243 Yeah. It's well, it's it's upfront construction. So with our portion of that not to exceed around 350,000, there's another I think it's 285,000 or so. That's the spread for the entire. Three years plus of the rent costs, plus all of the ongoing miscellaneous property costs that we're forecasting.
244 For internal services. And and the. Janitorial and all the utilities. Yeah. Yeah, I.
245 Got it. Janitorial, property management, rent costs, etc. So that's the cumulative cost over that three years.
246 Right on top of the $6,500 a month. That's that's all I was trying to figure.
247 That's including that's including the 65.
248 Okay.
249 That's all I needed to find out. Thank you so much.
250 Yeah. I'm sorry. I feel very unprepared. I, I thought we were going to be there around 1:01 p.m. So.
251 That's okay. Thank you.
252 Thank you, maddie, for jumping back in. We know it was short notice there, councilor Dunphy.
253 Thank you. This is an incredibly awkward conversation. I would like to start by just saying to councilor Smith, I do thank you for allowing my staff to use your office. It has been a wonderful opportunity for my staff to start the conversations with community and connect directly to community groups, so thank you for that. I also want to thank council president pirtle-guiney and council vice president, Koyama Lane for their contributions to ensuring that east Portland starts having real representation and a real physical place that we can be proud of for years to come. I'm not accustomed to the level of scrutiny that my office budget is being put under, and if that is the precedent that we're going to be looking at, that's fine. I am a duly elected official. I have my budget, and I'm choosing to spend my money in a way that connects me directly to my community. I appreciate good fiscal responsibility. This is as responsible as we can be because these dollars have already been budgeted, these dollars have already been allocated for this, and I think that this is as good of an opportunity to get permanent location in east Portland as we could hope for. We looked at the building. I wish that could have worked out our city procurement and our facilities. Quotes were, you know, with a 90% uncertainty, gave us a $1.2 million answer. I don't know how that's ever going to be justifiable, but we need to have some conversations as a body about how we we are spending money on internal services and facility build out, not because the work isn't quality, not because the employees don't deserve it, but simply out of fiscal responsibility. 1.2 million to finish a constructed building seems silly when we could just go buy a single family home at that price in the west hills, and I was never intended to do that. But additionally, we toured every possible vacant, publicly owned piece of land that was available in district one. The the follow up behind the finished building, which is a beautiful building. The number two was a decrepit 1970s water bureau building underneath a water tower, where the ceiling panels were literally falling down. Our number three was a brick building with with a bars over the windows on outer powell that was only partially available because there's still water bureau staff there as well. The underinvestment in this community, in my community of east Portland by the city, in the sheer physical built environment is is palpable compared to every other part of this community. And so we were forced to use a space that is beautiful and is exciting and is going to be available to the public. It's on good public transit. It has shaded parking lot where we can do events. We have opportunities to potentially allow partners to use this space, like Portland street response or community groups. I'm really looking forward to seeing this happen. I'm really eager to see this happen, and this is an investment that I'm absolutely willing and excited to spend money on. I urge my colleagues to help us get this across the finish line and move forward. So thank you.
254 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Avalos, I will come back to you, but I just want to hear from other folks, if that's all right, councilor Greene.
255 Yeah, I just wanted to express my support for this. You all need all three of you need offices and places to meet with your constituents. I followed the news on this. I've followed the discussions, and it looks like what you have done is secured a a cost minimizing approach. Frankly, that's still maintains the quality that we expect when we host our our constituents. You know, the numbers in the ordinance are sort of estimates of not to exceed. But I think at the end of the day, what matters is that this is coming from the budgets of my fellow colleagues who, when we approve a budget to give our offices money, we're saying, I trust you to spend your money the way that you see fit. And I don't think it's appropriate to try to micromanage the transactions that come out of individual councilors office. I certainly would not appreciate that myself. And so I'm going to vote yes on this. And I think that if we you know, I think the conversation actually that has been broached is very important. I think we do need to ask why things cost so much to the city of Portland, particularly as we enter a period where there ain't no more money to be found under the couch cushions. So that's all valid. But I'm going to support this ordinance because you are duly elected officials who deserve to have a space. And, and frankly, the the freedom to act as a duly elected official.
256 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Koyama Lane.
257 Thank you, council president. I want to separate out a couple things right now. Part of what I'm seeing are some challenging interpersonal dynamics and some hurt feelings, and maybe some things that shouldn't have been said or should have been followed up on, or should have been repaired. I don't know exactly, because that's not really for me to work on. I think that that's a space where we could have a retreat or have some sort of space to do some repair work, and I want to separate that from what we have before us today. I can speak for myself. I take it very seriously that 16% of residents live below the poverty line in district one. This is not about these three councilors. They they represent that group. But I made this choice to give this money from my office budget based on the fact that there are more families in their district than any other district, that d1 has lacked representation here in city hall more than any other district. It's the most racially diverse. I we all sat up here in the very beginning when we were talking about raising our office budgets, and we all were saying, like, I think everyone up here, we need to prioritize district one if there are offices there. And so I really felt the need and feel the need to put my money where my mouth is. And I'll say that this got messy. I wanted to give the six figure amount that I gave to all three of them. So yes, ideally I would love to see all three of them together. I don't get to actually decide how that is working out though. And sarah, you can morrissey confirm? I would expect that any work that's done on these spaces, it's not going to stay with these people forever. It stays with the city and d1 counselors, is that correct? And it's built out so other d1 counselors could use this eventually.
258 So I think that's a decision for the future counselors to make. The tenant improvements are part of the lease costs that are included now. And so the decision would be for future counselors to make if they want to continue the space.
259 So I. You know, I did go back and forth and had some different conversations because this is a big investment. And also the fact that I have an in district office that costs a ridiculously low amount of money has nothing to do with anything I've done or not done or deserve. It's because that's already there in district three, ready to go. I believe that I'm listening to the folks like maddie who looked around. There wasn't something similar. So for me, I'm trying to separate and not think about this as like just going to individual counselors, but really thinking about what the residents of district one deserve. And they deserve access in district to all of their counselors and staff. And I do hope eventually that some of this other stuff can be repaired. And I don't think that's going to happen right now, today.
260 Thank you.
261 Counselor councilor Kanal.
262 Thank you, madam president. I will start by just noting I'm not going to make anyone guess I'm likely to vote yes on this, at minimum, because I want to be deferential to the work of my three colleagues in d1, and because I'm likely to take the same approach to other districts, as well as what the vice president just said. I do have a couple comments questions I'll note just up front. It'd be preferable if all three people were in the same in a single office. I think everybody agrees to that. That's not always possible, and nobody should feel like they can't move because two, 1 or 2 other independently elected officials have a different viewpoint. I'm not going to insert myself into your conversations or anything like that. I just think it's important to kind of frame that. The question came up around the date about the the date being after potential new councilors take office. I think this is actually a good thing to ensure that if there are new councilors, they have a district office. While they can decide if they want to retain it or have a new location, I actually think not super far out, but five months out is a good precedent to set. And I also understand the cost of the rent, but I want to share the concern about the cost of the build out, as at least councilor, Smith and Dunphy have noted, because I think that we're we're dealing with an internal rights issue, too, and this is a problem that I think has come up. I definitely support the work of of director sartor and her group. But I also want to note that we've been told that it can cost $25,000 to move desks 30ft within a pod. That is a problem. And that's when I say a pod. I mean a quarter of this floor of the building where the district, the three district councilors are together to, you know, where one of our one person per district is across from their chief of staff wanted to swap that office with their chief of staff, and the cost of moving the desks back and forth would be was quoted at $25,000. I cannot. I would love to see a breakdown of that. I won't judge until I see it, but my initial skepticism is only grown since I first heard that, and I am excited to support the work of the administration. Talking about reducing internal rates across the city. And then I have a couple semi-related notes. I first off, I support councilor Smith's desire to have security at her office equivalent to that of any other office. Secondly, I'm excited to hear councilor Dunphy mention that psr could use this space. I'd be really happy personally, and my concern around chipping in was entirely based on whether or not psr chat street medicine generally could have a second place to deploy out of and use. So I look forward to hearing more about that and being supportive. I think that office budgets should eventually physical office budgets should eventually be a council operations expense, not an individual councilor Expense, so that one doesn't have less money for operations because they're renting an office that is maybe bigger than what, d2 or d3 or even d4 might need. This will also avoid the need to do fundraising by just saying the city based on the infrastructure. As the vice president mentioned, based off of the historic service levels and engagement levels of d1, the city has a greater responsibility for physical spaces in d1, as then we do in d4 with d2 and three somewhere in the middle because city hall is in d4. So I think that those are all factors that I'm looking at as I think about it. And I think it's really important that we recognize that as a obligation, not of the three people who happen to be elected at any given time, but an obligation of the city to district one. And I look forward to to having that conversation over time with with my colleagues. Thanks.
263 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Avalos, you dropped out of the queue. Did you have anything to add or are you all right? Okay. Councilor Smith.
264 I just want to thank all the councilors who put in their office budgets to support district one in having representation, because that is important. That is so critical. And just us being there for the last few months, so many people dropping by saying that we really feel like we're represented. So I want to thank you all for for giving your money and because you didn't have to. I remember when we had the original conversation and we were trying to discuss how to increase our budgets, to meet our to meet our goals for the committees and all of that. And I said explicitly, and I remember Eric and and others saying, you all, we'll give you our money. And I and I refuse to take it. As I said then, I'm a grandmother. I don't take money. Everybody has to have the same budget. And I appreciate that. I appreciate it, then I appreciate what you all are doing for councilor Avalos, and Dunphy and I will be supporting this. This amendment or ordinance going forward. My my biggest concern is the amount of money that we spend on build outs and internal services that I think that that we need some sort of internal service reform because it's just it's just mind boggling what we're charged versus others. And it's mind boggling how much prosper Portland will give a a new private sector business on a build out. And they don't give us anything on a build out. We have to actually spend our hard dollars. And so being a quasi city organization, I would think that we would get the best deals and we would get some of those build outs as well. So that's a whole nother issue. But I will be supporting this ordinance. And thank you all for supporting my fellow district one folks.
265 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Clark.
266 Thank you, madam president. I just want to comment that I appreciate councilor Smith's reliable vigilance on budgets. I can always rely on you to dig deep and to look at costs and to think forward. And I think it's increasingly important because we're coming into a very difficult budget year, if not a couple of years. So I'm hoping that the cost estimates that we've been given today remain true, and that future councilors can reap the benefit of this investment, that it doesn't just go away. These precious dollars that we're spending here. So I will be voting yes for this. I want our colleagues to have their office. I think it's important, but I want to really appreciate councilor Smith's deep dive into the financial situation. Thank you.
267 Thank you. Councilor councilor Kanal, did you have something additional.
268 I forgot one item, which is I just from the. And this is not about this dais, but I think the media narrative on this, we have a lot of scrutiny on the hundreds and thousands of dollars, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions. And I am concerned about the way that that is being shaped right here by some of the folks who are outside of this building, because we often are seeing, you know, $20 million be spent on something, $10 million be spent on something. And that's somewhat accepted. And I would love to see. And this is an ask to those who cover meetings like this to focus on that, because there are significantly bigger issues going on out there. We have millions of dollars in contracts and 5 or $6000 on this or that is important, and I don't want to waste a penny of it. I think the city's the population of Portland deserves to have every penny of of tax dollars spent. Well. And fiscal responsibility is one of our six core values. And also there are much bigger fish to fry out there in terms of city dollars and how we spend them. And I'd love for us to focus on those bigger dollar amounts in the future, too. With that, with more at minimum, as much scrutiny as we're doing here.
269 Thank you. Councilor, I got a note from maddie sutter that there was some follow up that she has to some of the questions that were previously asked. Solder, would you like to provide any additional details for us?
270 Yeah, sure. First off, I want to say I appreciate everybody being behind this ordinance. We did do a lot of research on district offices, and councilor Dunphy was exactly right that there are very few city owned assets in district one. It was actually pretty shocking to see how few public assets there are in general. And so as an office, we fully support this ordinance and are grateful that the district one councilors were willing to work and look at different options to try to find the most cost effective solution. The other thing I did want to note is I think that we would all welcome a discussion of internal service fund costs as well as construction costs. Construction is very expensive, and so a lot of the quotes that were given were based on market averages, not having a clear scope and different levels of construction, whether it's a cold shell or a fully built out property, will cost different things. As a general rule, it is true, absolutely that construction within the city is much more expensive than it is in the private sector. There's a whole bunch of reasons for that, and a lot of it has to do with requirements that we layer on in terms of additional attributes for construction that we require. And so that's probably a deep dive, along with many other deep dives, to understand why city construction is more expensive than private market construction. And then the other thing I would say, hopefully I'm not speaking too much on sarah's behalf, is that I would welcome a discussion about internal service fund rates holistically. There is a lot that goes into those rates, along with the fact that we that finance all of the capital facility construction that the city does, so that we don't use geo bonds for that, we debt finance that. And so if you look at the stack of what goes into rent or you look at escalations in internal service fund fees, part of the reason that those costs are going up is because we're layering massive amounts of debt into your rents, into those rates, and that's for facilities that are falling down and need repair. So if you if you're seeing escalations in those total costs, it's because we are debt financing facilities that are end of life and need repair. So welcome a robust discussion on that, especially as we start heading to the curb garage this week and upcoming weeks to talk about that bond ordinance and why we're doing that work. But I think that there's a lot of hydraulics behind those internal service fund rates that have good explanations. And but it's a welcome discussion about cost generally, and of course, how those rates work and why they work the way they do.
271 And if I just may add one item on, in addition to what maddie noted is cbo, we've talked about them, about the internal service rates. So I, we presented an internal service rate fund project that we are we have now completed and we are executing this fall in terms of simplification of rates. We did that presentation to the finance committee. The report is now complete. We are happy to share that. And then the second piece is cbo is going to be doing deeper dives with council, especially around internal service rates, as we have more time with council through this budget season. So cbo is planning to do that as we structure the rates, so we can get that in front of you in the fall winter this year.
272 Thank you. Marcy councilor Clark, are you back in the queue? Okay, councilor Dunphy.
273 Thank you. I'd just like to be really explicit to to. This is not a criticism of sarah or your team, of maddie, your team, anybody in the facilities team. This is a the the exorbitant costs that we are being quoted for things as a result of compiling, compounding policies that previous city councils have chosen. When the city puts in place really good intentioned policies that are about quality and fire protection and warranty and all of these things, suddenly you end up with one company that can respond and you have a $2,000 couch, or that you have, yeah, to rearrange the to not even get much more furniture, but to rearrange the pods in my office, quoting $25,000 to in order to turn my our front reception desk sideways. Even the, you know, the the city's travel policies where we were able to find plane tickets for $800, but the city travel agency had to pay for it, and it was over $2,000 a piece, something that was completely out of my control. And then we also have the facility buildout for a quote of $1.2 million. I've gotten a fair amount of criticism in the press over following the rules around city procurement, and I really would encourage I'm welcoming the conversation, and I'm hoping I can insert myself into the conversation and invite any of my colleagues to have that, that chat about why things are so expensive and how we get to something that is closer to reality. It is not maddie's fault. It is not sarah's. It is not none of their team's fault. It is our fault and it is our responsibility to fix it. They are doing fantastic work with the tools that previous city councils have given them. So please, to all the staff, know that that is not where this is coming from. So thank you.
274 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Clark.
275 Councilor Dunphy, I appreciate those comments, but I think the private sector could be saying exactly the same thing. Are the development community about the layers of requirements that we have put on them for development?
276 Councilor Zimmerman.
277 I really have no interest in weighing in on another council's budget, but there's a couple pieces here that just go unanswered for me. I'm not sure yet. Can the councilors and district one who are the subject of this lease, cover these costs without the the supplementary budgets from other councilors? I'm trying to figure that out. And when the lease numbers were spoken, they weren't really said anything have been locked down. And that was unclear to me. I'm hoping you can answer that.
278 Yeah, maddie can probably give you more specifics, but because we were, we put the money aside. Essentially we gave it to facilities and so that they could hold it over into the new fiscal year. So all of those dollars that equals the oops equals the 705,000 that is. Hold on. I have the numbers here. 235,000 for my office, 255 from dunphy's office, 150 from councilor Koyama Lane and 75 from council president pirtle-guiney. So we put all of those amounts into a pot that we were able to roll over. And then, as we've been describing, right, we're going to be able to prepay the lease. We have money for development. We got a good deal. So a lot of the tenant improvements are actually going to be done by the. Landowner owner. I don't know the what.
279 The landlord.
280 Yeah. The landlord. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And so yeah this and then what ends up happening or what's the remaining is that 55,000 that I mentioned after all of the costs. And that 55 is for us to use to continue to, you know, do improvements or whatever over the next four years. So that's so as far as your question of can it be done without the other councilors.
281 I interrupt you. There's somebody talking in chambers and it is coming right into me. I cannot focus on what the councilor is saying. I'm sorry, councilor.
282 That's okay.
283 I'm trying to listen.
284 Yeah. That's okay. I think I'm done. Yeah. Okay. Did that answer it? And then maddie, maybe. Did I miss something?
285 Yeah. You're you're nailing it. So the run rate on the lease is not very much. I don't know what the councilors overall budgets are and how they've allocated their budget, but I would say that their run rate seems well within what I've heard the councilor Budgets are. So it's around, you know, there's a little bit of an escalation clause. But by the time we have our next election, depending on what the renegotiation is, it seems like the run rate will be around 90,000 a year. So that's divided by, you know, however many councilors elect to ultimately be there. So I would say that that seems like it would be well within the budget in terms of the one time costs. I again, don't fully know what the budgets were for everybody and how much money they had, but those are being paid or those are being paid for by the money that councilor Avalos summarized. That was then moved into the facilities fund, which is not a general fund. So we don't have to give back that money. We do carry over because we have so many debts and other long term obligations. And so that money is in our fund and it will fully cover the one time costs.
286 Thank you.
287 Councilors, I just want to add that I'm glad that we are at a point where we will be able to say that all three councilors in district one have space in district to meet with your constituents. I was happy to find a little bit of funding in my budget last year to support that happening. I was glad to be able to join with the vice president to do that, so that as a leadership team, we could say this matters. And I think it is really important for those folks who have the longest drive. There are some folks with almost as long a drive from other districts. But truly for the the portlanders who live especially toward the eastern side of your district, the longest drive to have that access to all three of you in whatever ways you see fit in your district. So I'm glad that we are getting there. Colleagues, this is an emergency ordinance. It needs nine votes to pass. We are voting on it today. Keelan did we have anyone signed up who signed up for public testimony after this was pulled off consent?
288 No one signed up.
289 Okay, and then why don't we move to a vote?
290 Koyama Lane I.
291 I Novick.
292 I mark I.
293 Green. I Zimmerman.
294 I I.
295 Thank you colleagues I.
296 I I don't think this is an emergency but I.
297 Ryan I. Pirtle-guiney I.
298 The ordinance passes with 12 yes votes.
299 Thank you keelan and I believe colleagues that that brings us to the end of our agenda. Unless keelan you have anything else written down that I don't.
300 We're all done.
301 Okay. And I will adjourn today's meeting. Thank you all and have a good afternoon.