The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-01-16
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (24,851 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 January 16, 2025, Portland City Council held a work session focused on the Vibrant Communities service area, covering the Office of Arts and Culture, Portland Children's Levy, and Portland Parks and Recreation. Presenters outlined each bureau's mission, staffing, funding sources, and recent program highlights, including grant-making, cultural venue attendance, meal programs, tree canopy and urban forestry work, park ranger services, and community partnerships. Several community partner organizations described collaborations involving housing services, arts residencies, swimming programs, and youth and family services. A budget overview covered revenue sources such as general fund allocations, the arts tax, the Children's Levy, the Parks Levy, system development charges, and Portland Clean Energy Fund allocations, alongside expenses for personnel, materials, and capital projects, noting a substantial deferred maintenance backlog. Council members raised questions on topics including insurance requirements for community partners, tree permitting and storm-related concerns, preschool programming alignment with county initiatives, park ranger staffing and district alignment, community center hours and access programs, SDC methodology, PCEF fund balances, and bureau responsiveness and reputation. Presenters offered to follow up in writing on several detailed questions. The session concluded with council noting an afternoon land use meeting; no formal votes were addressed in this segment, though any that occurred 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.
0 I am going to call us into a work session this morning. It is Thursday. It's Thursday, January 16th at 931. We have a number of guests here from our vibrant communities service area. I would like to recognize that many of you were with us until very late last night. So thank you for coming back early this morning so that we can learn more about the work that you do. We have a team here that I will turn it over to. But first, counselors, I just want to draw your attention to the outline that you have at your desk of the presentation that we're going to get. And I believe that we'll be pausing at the end of each section for questions. So if you have questions, please hold them until the end of the section. And then I think our dca sonia will have folks pause. Let us know that it's time for some questions. Great. Take it away. Thank you all so much for being here today with us.
1 Hey. Good morning. I'm sonia shemanski. I'm interim deputy city administrator for the vibrant communities service area. And I think physical stamina is an underappreciated part of public service. So I salute you all for being back here. I think I'm okay. Do we have that?
2 Are the mics working? They're picking up. Okay.
3 I can hear myself. Perfect. Yep. Okay. Sonia szymanski, very pleased to be with you. To share information about the work and the impact of teams in this vibrant communities service area. Last evening, you heard, I think, a pretty good truncated overview of the Portland parks and recreation three year levy report and audit. Today, you'll hear about the service area as a whole, and I think that you'll have ample time to ask the questions that you had last night and that we didn't get to. Next slide. I'm probably going to prompt the slides because I changed my remarks, and I don't think our navigator has them, so forgive me. This is our agenda. You'll hear from our directors and from a handful of community partners who help deliver these services to portlanders. We timed the presentation at about half of the overall work session window, which leaves the balance for your questions and discussion. And as the president said, we'll be pausing at each of these transitions for that. As a final housekeeping note, the president said, you have a one page outline so you can keep track of your observations, questions. You have notes as we go along. And if you want to count, we have 48 slides and they're numbered. With me today in the order I think that you'll hear from them are charity monte's director of the office of arts and culture, lisa pellegrino, director of the Portland children's levy. Deanna long, director of Portland parks and recreation. And todd lofgren, who heads our vibrant communities support services team. And I think we'll have a pretty big cameo from claudio, claudio campuzano, who's our finance, property and technology manager for the service area. Next slide nicola. Next slide nicola. Portland was recently named one of 50 places worldwide to visit and travel and leisure's where to go in 2025. And we all know that Portland is more than a place. It's a network of communities and neighborhoods and neighbors woven together by an appreciation for nature, culture, learning and opportunity. Vibrant communities teams serve those community priorities for people who call Portland home and those who choose to visit us for work and play. In business terms, the work you'll hear about in a moment is part of portland's competitive advantage. Bringing people here and keeping them here, sustaining our tax base and our ongoing economic and cultural health as a major metropolitan area. Next slide. As the previous council and staff considered how best to organize the bureaucracy in this new form of government, a refrain we both used and heard often was there are many right ways to organize a city. Led by commissioner Dan Ryan, your predecessors chose to unite these three parts of the city under the heading vibrant communities. They saw an opportunity to create a hub of human experience a front door to the capital. See city, an engine for community partnerships and a uniquely high leverage set of programs and services where so much goodwill and community investment finds a home. This is a service area that can be imprinted and guided by your vision of that human experience, and of how the city can best partner with community. We began working in this formation last spring, and we took the charge and opportunity of building a service area very seriously. Since then, this leadership team and their leadership teams and their leadership teams have led work to integrate functions and operations across our service area, strategically aligning resources and expertise is allowing our teams to do more better. Some of that work has been more technical in nature. Think finance, accounting, human resources and real estate, and some has been more art than science, giving us an opportunity to create shared philosophies, priorities and practices. Think partnerships, performance management and events and activation programing today business practices and programing across the service area are deeply braided, and they're more efficient and effective for it. I'm going to editorialize just a little bit to say this was, I think, very thoughtful, very organized and very strategic work with approaches that are scalable and replicable and can be shared with other service areas as they do that work and can be shared with central teams doing that kind of work citywide. What worked and what we learned while we did it. More on that in a few from todd. I think now we go to charity. Montez.
4 Okay. Thank you. Shymansky. Good morning, madam president and city council. I'm happy to be here this morning. For the record, my name is charity montez. I use she and they pronouns, and I'm the director of the office of arts and culture. The office of arts and culture puts arts at the center of public life for all portlanders by supporting a diverse array of creative expressions. We will continue to enhance and support the arts and culture ecosystem in Portland by overseeing the Portland five centers for the arts venues, managing the city's public art collection, and percent for art program, funding individual artists and coordinating the arts access fund, which supports arts organizations of all sizes, and k-5 arts and music teachers across all school districts in Portland. We do this and much more with six fte. The arts are critical to portland's economy and to the region. In 2022, arts related spending in Portland generated $405.1 million in economic activity and accounted for nearly half of all arts related spending statewide. In our short time as an organization, the office of arts and culture has been very busy. Recent highlights include. We led development of the ten year regional cultural plan called our creative future, with six other jurisdictions which the previous city council unanimously adopted in may 2024. Next up, a Portland action plan. We launched our in-house general operating support programs, and to kick that off, we convened all 80 nonprofit arts organizations who receive unrestricted grant funding from the city for the first time, helping to build community among arts leaders. We established new small grants contracts with the regional arts and culture council, friends of interstate firehouse, cultural center, and music Oregon. And that last one marks the first time the city has made direct investments in independent musicians. In summer 2024, we sponsored more than 100 arts activations across the city in collaboration with downtown clean and safe music Portland, prosper Portland and urban arts network, and as part of the ongoing Portland monuments project, we hosted a two day monument symposium in October 2024, bringing attendees from across the united states to discuss the intersection of art, history, storytelling, and the role of monuments in public space.
5 Hello madam president and city council. I'm delighted to be here this morning. I'm lisa pellegrino. I use she her pronouns and I am the director of the Portland children's levy. We call it pcl for short. So that's what I'll be referring to in the presentation. Pcl is a voter approved initiative that was first passed in 2002, and it was modeled on similar initiatives in san francisco and seattle, and has served as a model for other cities since it was initially passed. Pcl has been instrumental in improving the lives of countless children and families in Portland over the last 20 years. Pcl goals are to prepare children for school, support them to be successful inside and outside of school, and to eliminate disparities. Racial and ethnic disparities in children's outcomes. Pcl budget supports 50 community based organizations to provide 86 programs. These grants support positive early development, school engagement, and academic achievement, high school graduation, and family safety and stability. Approximately 70% of the children served in pcl funded programs identify as black people, indigenous people, and people of color. We do our work with a team of eight people, seven and a half fte. Next slide please. A few recent highlights for pcl in may of 2023, more than 70% of Portland voters renew the children's levy for a fourth time, extending funding through funding through June 2029. This past fall, pcl launched a competitive funding round for large grants to commit funds for this new levy period. The funding round is underway, and we are set to wrap it up by the end of this fiscal year. Before starting that funding process, and in response to community feedback, pcl created a community council to provide ongoing input on our policy and funding. This 13 member council reflects the communities served and levy funded programs. They have both professional and lived experience working with diverse communities, including black people, indigenous people, people of color, immigrants and refugees, people who identify as LGBTQ, as a youth with disabilities, houseless families and families experiencing poverty and food insecurity. In early 2023, this new community council began meeting to shape our community engagement process that precedes every funding round. Through surveys, focus groups and interviews, pcl engaged more than 750 people to understand what priority community needs were. Participants engaged in this process in more than 25 languages. This input shaped our funding priorities for this current grant fund that's underway. And then last in 2020, pcl piloted a small grants fund to improve access to levy funding for organizations that have barriers for applying for government funding like pcl small grants fund recipients have successfully implemented and grown their programs and grown their internal capacity. And now most of them are applicants in our large grant funding process that's happening right now. Our next competitive small grants funding round is set for to open in the next fiscal year, 2526.
6 Hello, madam president and councilors, I'm adina long, director of Portland parks and recreation, and I'm happy to be here this morning. Portland parks and recreation gives life and beauty to our city by providing a diverse portfolio of parks, public places, natural areas, urban forest and recreational facilities used extensively by residents and visitors alike. Portlanders are deeply connected to our services, facilities and programs. The 2019 Portland insight survey, conducted by cbo showed that 96% of survey respondents said they visited a city, park or natural area in the last year. I want to share a bit about how the bureau is organized. We have 680 fte or full time equivalents, and another 2000 plus seasonal and casual employees. Fun fact we're one of the largest youth employers in Oregon. Four major divisions do the work of the bureau. Their managers are here with me today. I'll ask that they raise their hands as I introduce them, so that you can put a face to their names. Assets and development is headed by lauren mcguire. This is responsible for planning, design and construction of new and renovated parks, and for assessing and maintaining high quality built assets for the community. Recreation services, overseen by maximo behrens, is responsible for community and arts centers, sun community schools, summer and free meal programs, summer day camps, cultural and community events, aquatics, sports and teen programs, and services for seniors and people with disabilities. The Portland tennis center, Portland international raceway, and five public golf courses are also in maximo's portfolio. Tonya booker oversees land stewardship, the division that manages the physical upkeep of developed parks, natural areas, community gardens, and regional trails. Services include turf care, irrigation and horticultural management, and a variety of public programing like environmental education and stewardship activities. Urban forestry, led by city forester jen cairo, is responsible for the planning and management of portland's urban forest, tree planting, proactive and emergency tree maintenance, education and community tree stewardship, implementation and enforcement of title 11 tree regulations, and administration of the city's advisory urban forest forestry commission. Let's talk about some recent highlights. Portland parks and recreation is ranked the ninth best parks and recreation system in the united states by the trust for public land. This is based on acreage, investment amenities, and equity work. As you heard last night, the parks local option levy continues to support recreation for all, protect and grow nature, care for parks and facilities, and build strong community partnerships. And we recently received a clean, independent audit. Portland parks and recreation uses system development charges and other funding sources to address system inequities and make improvements to parks and facilities. Here are just a few examples by district. In district one, our team completed gateway Green and leach botanical garden improvements with mill and parkland parks in construction. District two saw improvements to the columbia children's arboretum, and the north Portland aquatic center is well underway. District three is enjoying a new errol heights park, and creston skate park is underway. And in district four, we designed and built the gabriel park accessible playground and performed restoration to the halpern sequence with steel bridge, skate park and darcelle 15 plaza underway. Portland parks and recreation has received substantial investments from the Portland clean energy fund to support programs in urban forestry to plant more trees and low canopy neighborhoods, provide arborist training opportunities, and provide better care and protection of our community's trees and in particular, street trees, which historically have been the responsibility of adjacent property owners. In addition, we've received PCEF funding to transition from gas to electric leaf blowers and to make resiliency improvements as we renovate mount scott community center.
7 Good morning, madam president and city council. I'm todd lofgren, deputy director of vibrant community support services. As we look at the services provided by arts and culture, Portland children's levy and Portland parks and recreation, we can see all the ways the service area supports a thriving city and how our work is connected. This graphic shows the initial list of metrics we selected, showing overlap of service and some shared metrics within the vibrant community service area. For example, each vibrant communities office or bureau provides grant dollars to partner organizations. Both the Portland children's levy and Portland parks and recreation provide free meals to portlanders, arts and culture, and parks and recreation support and present community events. It's exciting to see where our goals and efforts are aligned, and think about how we can share expertise, tools and resources across our teams. Dca szymanski directed our team to create an online dashboard of key, vibrant community performance performance measures to create a space for community and policymakers to find simple, understandable information about our work and our impact. I encourage you to take a look at our interactive dashboard on the vibrant communities service area website, and I think you'll find a lot to celebrate. Our team tracks nearly 200 metrics that we report in annual performance reports through city performance reporting, and here are a few that we've elevated to report on for our service area as a whole. For fiscal year 20 2324. Attendance at cultural venues, city sponsored art events and programs was nearly 3.7 million. Over 63,000 children were served and nearly 2.6 million meals were served. In addition, each vibrant communities team provides grant funding to local organizations for programs that align with our goals, totaling over $443 million just in the past year. Extending our reach through partners allows our programs to be tailored to the communities needs, while also reaching more portlanders at the same time. Our service area receives grants primarily from federal, state, and metro. Now, let's review how vibrant community partners with our community. Community partnerships are a unique aspect of our service area. We collaborate with hundreds of partners from nonprofit, public and private sectors to increase our collective impact across our entire portfolio. Community partners include emerging nonprofits to well established ones, small and large businesses, community groups, individual volunteers, and federal and state and local partners. We have over 965 partnerships in our service area, 750 of them with unique partners. Vibrant communities has embraced community partnerships as a primary way we do our work. There are a variety of ways we partner with community grants, sponsorships, philanthropic giving, volunteers, program and maintenance partnerships. For instance, we will receive sponsorships as well as provide sponsorships for events and programs. In some cases, sponsors will invest in the city's infrastructure, such as the Portland trail blazers and nike. Investing in our basketball courts and parks. Partner has a primary philanthropic partner, the Portland parks foundation, and they raise up to about $1 million each year. We'd like to invest further in our partners to position them to receive more philanthropic and private sponsorships from private donors, to further leverage city investments. Many of our programs and places wouldn't be what they are today without our community volunteers. We are so appreciative of portlanders as they give their time and skills. With nearly 400,000 hours contributed just in the past year. Vibrant communities has worked hard to align its services within our service area. We have achieved operational and functional integration both in our programs and our organizational support services. We are benefiting from efficiencies of having a joint approach on all of the items that you see on the slide here, and with a new unified management approach as a service area, we are improving the effectiveness and effectiveness of our services for the community. We expect the benefits of this approach to grow over time. So now I'd like to invite two of our community partners. As I mentioned to primary way, we work, and we have alicia blakely, a program officer from home forward, and prentiss owner. Yummy yummy, interim executive director of ecfc. So we're going to start off with alicia if you're ready.
8 Okay.
9 Hello. Good morning, madam president and city council. I'm alicia blakely, program manager at home forward. I'm happy to be with you this morning to talk about how home forward partners with Portland parks and recreation. Home forward is the largest affordable housing provider in the state of Oregon. We provide rent assistance to and have over 6500 apartments and over 9000 residents who receive housing choice vouchers. Safe and affordable housing is oftentimes not enough to assist households facing poverty. Home forward looks to community partners such as Portland parks and recreation to connect residents and parks and provide supportive services and programs and connection to community resources in the summer, parks partners with our housing units to serve free lunches and host lunchtime arts and plays activities. Some are free for all events and new access. Discount program allow residents to access activities and classes for free or at a discount. The teen force is a wonderful program that provides summer employment opportunities for our youth and community. Community partnership program is connecting our youth to community and helping us support their workforce and leadership development. The urban forestry program has hosted planting and volunteer events for residents at home forge sites, and the adaptive recreation and lifelong recreation program provides specifically designed and tailored programing for older residents or residents with disabilities. These opportunities, among others, build community support, economic and education success and are invaluable in improving home for residents health and well-being. Thank you very much.
10 Good morning. My name is prentice onayemi. I am an artist, a farmer and interim executive director of friends of ifk. Our nonprofit stands on the shoulders of community pillars like your predecessor, commissioner Charles jordan, portland's first black commissioner, who founded interstate firehouse cultural center in 1982 as a cultural home for the black community. Friends of ifk, grew out of the community advisory committee that commissioner Fritz pulled together in 2018 to develop a vision and operating model to revitalize the facility. So as a group, we are six and a half years into what was intended to be a six week commitment. Over that time, we've supported a capital project feasibility study that will hit your inboxes in the spring. We collaborated with parks and the office of arts and culture to bring the federally funded ifk artist grant and residency program to life, which since 2022 has provided 34 artists with dedicated workspace and grants of at least $10,000. With that federal funding sunsetting in a couple of months, friends of ifk raised the funds to continue the residency program through a combination of grants and city contracts that are dedicated to championing ifk as a capital project. In parallel with bolstering the artist community that will take the reins once the new physical asset comes online. The application cycle that closed last week received 182 applicants for the two dozen grants and residencies available. Our future ask of you will be for your support with this capital project to fully decommission the adjacent unused water tower and expand ifk into an anchor facility befitting the community that it serves. Later this year, please be on the lookout for invites to be in community with us to engage with ifk artists celebrating the brilliance of cultural expression among some of the city's most gifted and hard working creatives. And we will ask that you co-lead as together we build a model of public private partnership that reverberates among this culturally specific population that bolsters the city's broader arts ecosystem, and that serves as an exemplar for the nation's creative landscape. Thank you.
11 And we have one more committee member with us, morgan spriggs, our co-founder of the black swimming initiative.
12 Good morning, madam president and esteemed council. Thank you. And we're indeed honored to be able to address this body in its first year and instantiation. I want to just take a moment to talk about black swimming initiative, and primarily it was formed in 2020 to address the swimming needs or the lack of swimming exposure to the bipoc community in the Portland area. And during our journey for the last five years, Portland parks and rec has been instrumental in allowing us to function in providing us access to the mat dishman pool, providing us access to access to their excellent staff, and to provide us actually access to that facility that has allowed, and last, in our last calendar year, to provide 200 lessons to the black community. And then over the five year stint that we've had, produce an offer of seven, about a thousand lessons to the community there. Going forward in this calendar year, we're going to invite you to come to mat dishman this weekend and every third Saturday to see the community swim and to see the magic that happens in those particular pools. Our five year goal, and it was and it'll be probably our goal for all, is to develop the mission of having bipoc lifeguards, instructors engage with our community. So in this calendar year, we're going to be delivering again, two lessons down into cathedral park. And we've benefited also with the partnership with another nonprofit human access project to help that's there. So with that, I think Portland parks and rec would be instrumental. And then last, I want to kind of conclude with the historic nature of mat dishman and the opportunity that we had, and we were honored to be there as one of the areas for the black community to actually receive swimming lessons. Formerly known as the knox street center. Mat dishman has been one of the key places where blacks in the area have been able to swim, and we're going to continue that into the future. We're also honored to be able to participate and be on the advisory committee for the north Portland aquatic center, and we're very excited to see that facility, and we hope that we can grow to be able to do that. So again, thank you. Really appreciate your time and the honor to be able to address you this morning. Thank you.
13 Thank you. Thank you to all three of our guests here today. We appreciate it.
14 And that's our first break. We're going to go to budget next.
15 So before we move to budget counselors, if anybody has questions about the overview or questions for our three community members who were here, councilor Novick, would you like to start us off?
16 Yeah, I have three questions. And if it's better to answer it offline, that's fine. There are three very separate questions. One is I talked to a parks friends group recently that said that they've recently been required to get some form of insurance, which was new to them and expensive. And I was wondering, is that a new requirement that like, portland's catching up with everywhere? That's like a legal requirement that such groups always get insurance, and we're finally getting around to implementing it? Or is I mean, is that or is that something that's at all discretionary? Another is a year ago when we had an ice storm, we heard all sorts of tree horror stories, and we heard that people had to get retroactive pay $100 fee to get retroactive permits to remove trees that had fallen on their houses. We heard that trees fell on people's houses, that the people had been denied permits to remove. So my question on that and I apologize. I probably have just been following developments since then as well as they should, but I was wondering, were all those stories overblown and those things didn't really happen? Or has council and urban forestry addressed all those concerns and everything's new and different? Has urban forestry proposed changes to the council that the council needs to approve and the council hasn't? Where where where are we on the rogue trees? And third, my question for lisa is what relationship is there or could there be between the county's preschool for all initiative and the children's levy? Is there some way that children's levy investments might change or be aligned with the scaling up of the preschool for all? So those are my series of questions.
17 Okay, I think those are each a briefing. But we'll do we'll do just a snapshot before we move on. I think the first one is probably todd. Second will be jen and third will be lisa. But we also have an interesting and new parks preschool for all partnership that adina can speak to.
18 So our goal is to have portlanders have a barrier, barrier free interaction with us so they can contribute to their parks and recreation system. It's their system. There are some arrangements where it's a real property agreement, like a lease or a license agreement of where there is a city requirement to have an insurance certificate. So I'd have to get into the details of this specific group. As I mentioned, we have many groups, and if that became a barrier to the partnership, we just need to work that out in detail with them. But we have many groups that work in parks that do not have insurance. They're oftentimes they're not non-profits themselves. They're informal groups that are showing up in your neighborhood parks and picking up trash and raking leaves or weeding. And so I'd be happy to follow up with that group to make sure they have the support they need.
19 And I might know what you're referencing from maybe a month ago, we had some back and forth with a partner, and we do have more details about that. It was largely around communication, so we'll follow up soon. Trees, trees.
20 Good morning city council. I'm jen cairo with the city forester. I'm here to respond to. Councilor novik's questions. Our goal in parks, urban forestry is to provide portlanders with the many services and benefits that trees provide to urban dwellers like cleaner air, cooler summer temperatures, wildlife habitat, cleaner water, and to ensure the safety of those trees in the forest. Last winter storm was remarkable. We hadn't had a storm like that in quite some time, and the impacts from that were unfortunate and disturbing. It's interesting that we have 4.2 million trees in the city, and the impacts we saw affected approximately 0.02% of those trees. In regards to permits. The permit fees are currently being reviewed. They were waived last year for the retroactive permit because of the storm emergency declaration. But each year we review our our fee structure and that's something that council will decide along with the other city fees. And thanks to the Portland clean energy fund, we have the resources now to waive many of the non-development related fees for permits going forward, which is something we've always been interested in doing. The permits are there to help folks do the proper treatments on trees so that their risks are not increased, they are reduced, and indeed dangerous trees are removed. And we've understood those fees to be a barrier for a lot of folks in the past. So we're really excited to be working on that now. And the other thing I would mention is kind of like when folks are trying to maintain their home and they need to get the furnace inspected and repaired or the roof inspected and repaired at times by professionals. It's similar with trees. So storms will happen and a great way to prevent undesirable outcomes is to have folks care for those trees who are skilled in that, trained in that in advance. And I'm happy to say thanks to the Portland clean energy fund as well. We are now resourced to develop a private property tree care support program, which will help folks pay for those services and get the appropriate professional care. So it's done correctly and doesn't increase the risks. And the last thing I'll say about that is part of our role, as I mentioned before, is indeed to reduce risks that may be posed by trees. Again, as I said earlier, those risks are relatively few when we take it in the context of the entire population of the forest. But one of the ways that that can happen going forward is for folks to really engage with those private property care programs that will be providing and also get the professional help that they need. Thanks.
21 Can I although I realize it wasn't very many trees, if it's true that trees that people had asked to remove and been denied permission to remove fell on their houses, that's a pretty big deal to those people. I just wanted to know, did that actually happen or was that an overblown rumor I that could have happened?
22 I'm not aware of specific cases. There are about 11,000 permit cases that we handle a year. I think media coverage included the area. So some might have been in Portland and some not. To get a little into the detail of that. Councilor novic. When we are requested to go and inspect a tree, for example, someone wants to remove a tree on their property, our trained staff and experienced staff go and assess that tree in its current state at the current time. If it is dead or dying or dangerous, it is. It is permitted for removal. We too do not want risky trees in the environment. In some cases we have to require removal because they're dangerous trees or risky trees, and the property owners aren't really looking to remove them. And when that's when that happens, we're done with that tree. Unless the property owner brings it back to our attention. So if there's a time lapse after that, many things could happen in between, similar to, for example, if you have someone come and look at your electrical system and then there are changes made in the house after that, then maybe the electrical system is affected. Same thing with a tree. If there's site improvements that are done that we're not involved in or other arborists professionals aren't involved in, or just time passes and the conditions of the tree change, then there could have been a permit that was not granted at one time that the tree condition changes after that.
23 Okay, I appreciate that, but I'm just like reading from one of the articles that it's quoting a second article that said that some homeowners were denied permits for removing trees that later fell in their homes, as garcia wozniacki reported. And I just would hope that we would follow up with the reporter and learn about those stories and know some specifics about it.
24 When our staff are involved. If a tree is dangerous, it is permitted for removal.
25 Absolutely right. But these are these apparently were trees that the homeowners thought were dangerous and your office did not. So I just wanted to know if there was follow up and analysis of those specific instances, if they in fact happened, where we have city risk claims that have occurred or other things.
26 There is follow up on those.
27 Yes, but but what if there weren't city risk claims? What if there's just I mean, there were people there apparently were real people that said that this happened. And did you call the reporter and say, who were these people? Can we talk to them? We need to figure out what what what went on.
28 I, I wasn't here I have a suspicion that that did not happen. I think your point is well made and well taken. And I offered that we could follow up with you and brief on each or all of these, any or all of them. I'd like to learn more about what we did a year ago, and come back to you and share that and get your ideas.
29 Thank you, thank you.
30 Councilor Novick.
31 Excuse me. Yes, Steve, we did work with Multnomah county to transition all of our preschool providers that were being funded by the children's levy to the preschool for all program. And starting with this funding round, the allocation committee that kind of governs our day to day operations and allocation of resources, is devoting fewer funds to early childhood because of Multnomah county's investments for preschool. And we will no longer be funding any preschool classrooms.
32 Thank you.
33 Can you touch on the parks conversation about certainly.
34 Just this past month, parks was approved as a preschool for all provider for the 2526 school year. So we will have 11 classrooms in nine community centers. Thank you. That will be accepting three and four year olds into the program. We're really excited.
35 Thank you for all of those answers, councilor Dunphy.
36 Thank you, madam president. Szymanski and team, I deeply appreciate you all being here this morning. I am just generally a huge fan of this service area. I think that you all, as we've as we've said specifically, you're the front door to the community. This is the way that outside of an emergency, this is how people interact with their government. And I think that the service area is incredibly important because I think it's so important. I have some tough questions for you. Specifically, I have four questions. But first, I'm going to start with an anecdote in that my senior year of high school, I performed my first concert at matt dishman. That was the first experience I had as a musician getting in front of people, and it changed the perspective, the trajectory of my life to where I got here today. So I am deeply thankful for the community assets that exist for us. But specific to some of the slides, $43 million going out the door to partners. I worry about the deliverables and accountability on the back end of that. Historically, the partnership with rac was not responsive to the city in terms of where those dollars were going and what grants were looking like on the back end. How has that changed with the new office of art? How has that changed within parks to talk about what we're getting on the backside of those grants charity?
37 And then todd.
38 Thank you for the question, councilor Dunphy. One really great thing that we're excited about, and kind of as we took on the general operating support grants in-house when our contract with rac expired, we determined that we could take on those that grant making function. So at the same time, the previous council adopted a new city wide grants policy. And we are working really closely with the grants management division to make sure that all of our outgoing grants align with that new city wide grants policy. Great.
39 Since we're being managed by one service area now, which is great. This is one of the benefits of that slide where we've had functional alignment. So charities, teams talking with our grants team and partnership team. And we're aligning our administrative services. So that's happening. And like you described it's really important in grants to be really descriptive of the outcomes that the city is seeking. And I'll mention we're doing that on the cash side. As important for parks is our space grants, which we're inviting community members as well as nonprofit organizations to come in and use the spaces that we have for free. So that's been a really important part of our offering.
40 And I'll go up and out just one step briefly with respect to rac commissioner Councilor Ryan knows this very well, as do you, councilor Dunphy. We are in the later innings of a pretty long arc transition in our relationship with rac and as a city in the space of arts and culture began a handful plus years ago with a performance audit that told us we had a lot of opportunity in the space to set a city vision, to define a more strategic relationship with rac, to figure out who we wanted to be regionally, what we wanted arts and culture to be in Portland and how we wanted to be part of it, and then how to deliver it accountably efficiently and transparently. Today, we have an office of arts and culture. That was a recommendation of the audit. We have a drastically revised relationship with rac. That was a recommendation of the audit. I forget the others, but I know they're done. Two and we're at the front end. As charity said of building a Portland specific action plan to carry that work into its next chapter, which is going to provide, I think, a much more clear and positive experience for artists and arts organizations in this community where they touch government. I thank you for the question.
41 It's very true, and I've watched that happening over the last few years. And, councilor Ryan, I also appreciate you for your leadership on this issue specifically. So thank you. That cues up my second question, though, specifically, and I mentioned this to you all privately, but I want to ask again. Now also that we have the full spectrum. Is there a tension with having so many arts facilities within the parks portfolio when we have an arts office? Separately, I fcc has always been an important tool, but it has maybe not always been the right fit for parks. More broadly, are those conversations happening and how are you thinking about those resources?
42 They're absolutely happening, and there are a couple ways to think about that. One is maybe more philosophical. And it's where, how do you want to nest things and how do you want to put them together and organize them as a signal to community of what you want them to achieve and deliver? And then there's a more practical, like business alignment conversation to have. What do you want those buildings to do? With whom, for whom, to what level of service and outcome, and where do you put them to do that most effectively and efficiently? One of the benefits of having these two work units together in a service area is they're neighbors in the Portland building. They're in a lot of meetings together, and they're talking about that all day long. I don't know the answer to where do they best fit, but I think it's exactly the right question. And it's one that we're working on. And I think there's probably a committee that's going to hear a lot more about that as we go.
43 Absolutely. Two last very quick questions. I'm glad that I don't actually know vicente's title here, but the head of the rangers is unmistakable. Yeah, I'm glad to hear I think that the park ranger program is an incredible asset that we have in the public safety spectrum. I would love to see it expanded in whatever ways we can, because I've seen those interactions in park spaces be able to de-escalate scary situations for folks, and being a resource for frontline staff within parks as well is an amazing asset. I would this is not so much a question as I guess a recommendation. I'd love to see the park rangers. I don't know, shifts or territories aligned more closely with the city council districts so that we can more collaborate on what specific site issues might be, knowing that downtown tends to be the majority of the area where needs a lot of attention, but we need some help on the east side as well in our parks, facilities, and as much as we can to get folks out of trucks and into the community. And talking with folks is going to help with some of our our broader image as a city and our the way people feel in these spaces. So I have one last comment that I have spent, as I mentioned, I, since I was 18 years old, have had a deep involvement with the parks system, and I care about the outcomes and I will just flag that. I do think that there are some, perhaps some structural communication issues between frontline and your leadership. I have heard specifically from a few dozen parks employees about some challenges with middle management specifically, and being able to communicate the actual experience of working in community centers, working in park structures, and having that reflected in the policies and programs that leadership brings forward. So I would just flag that and ask to make sure that's on your radar. And thank you.
44 Yeah. Thank you. That work is never done. And I appreciate the reminder.
45 Councilor Green.
46 Thank you. I appreciate the presentation. I'm I'm curious about this this this kind of new program for private tree health. Do we have like a good pr campaign for that. Do do folks know about that? Because I haven't really heard about that and I don't think my constituents know about that. It's a big deal. In southwest Portland, my neighbors have had houses completely destroyed by by trees. And I think that's going to get completely get worse. And so I'm a firm believer of if we've got a good program, let's tell everyone about it and let's have them get get into it. So I'd like to know a little bit more about any strategies you guys might have for really promoting that.
47 Thanks. Thank you for that. Councilor Green.
48 Director long will tell you the question. You don't have to memorize the answer, which you don't need to memorize, because we will gather information and we'll send it to all of you so that you have it and your staff have it, and your constituent services folks are able to share it out as well. It's a great point. Sorry. Go ahead.
49 No that's fine. So that portion of the PCEF funded programs is in development right now. So we are thinking about what the pr looks like, what the education looks like. Absolutely. And in fact, there's somebody who will be who will be on staff, who will focus on that specifically. And when we're ready to roll, we will certainly want to have a conversation with all of the districts and think about how best to share that information with the community.
50 Councilor Kanal thank you everyone for being here. I first just wanted to say I'm going to have two questions for now, and I might have more later, especially on the rangers program. I know you have slides on that coming up, so they're both related to the recreation side and the part that's not classes. And I'll start, I think todd, with the first one, I hope. And so insurance requirements as, as councilor Novick brought up are a concern for me too. I had an event in July at lillis albina park. I booked similar events when I lived in other cities or been part of those conversations. And our requirements are significantly higher than I've seen in some other cities, and I wanted to understand why that is the way it is. And I also just want to suggest moving away from the response model, which is that we can fix this problem for one group and look at how do we fix the insurance requirement problem for everybody. Because as as I think councilor Green alluded to, sometimes you do a really great job, but you just can't show everybody it. And so having that first thing you see on a website being high, or the first quote you get from when you're trying to book a place, be high. And then I think that I'll just ask the other question now as well. Are we moving towards a system where you can call a single location to book any community center? Right now, I believe you have to call each individual community center to see if you have a time and a place and what you want your event to be, but you're flexible on location, and I'm I think there's, as last I saw, there's limited to no ability to say I need a space on this date at this time. What community centers are available. I, I'm just curious if that is the goal long term.
51 I'll jump in.
52 Sounds good. So in the city of Portland, risk management, the city attorney's office advise Portland parks and recreation our service area and bureau's about insurance levels and insurance requirements, and the kind of approvals of those actually ultimately go back to the city attorney's office. So that's the general guidance. But then bureaus have the business decision of where to apply those and how. And I think there's work to be done here. You're experiencing it personally as a city. We need to make more collective decisions around the risk that we're willing to take as a city, not as individual bureaus, not as individual program managers. So I think there's work to be done there. We generally try to reduce those barriers so we can continue with the activity and make sure that it's not an impediment. But there is this tension within the city of Portland about having certain risk levels that are told to bureaus, and then if there's a trip and fall, if there's an accident, it's not a city wide budget issue. It becomes the burden of the individual bureau to pay for those claims and spread it over time where risk helps them. So I think this is an area of improvement as we move more to one city administrated, you know, one city approach where we collectively maybe lower barriers and understand what that means.
53 It's just to clarify, you're talking about, to some degree broadening the risk pool.
54 I think those are the policy decisions and business decisions that we need to work on as a city. But there's no question right now we have certain levels that are given to bureaus that would impede some small individual activities. And then business decisions are being made by directors and other program managers to waive those. However, then when there's an accident, that individual bureau ends up paying for those claims and what you would, as you can all imagine and read in the newspapers, sometimes what you think are small accidents are very large claims that have real financial consequences.
55 Thank you. My other questions, I think, are probably more to director long and just. They're related to the plans that may or may not exist. And just if there's any progress to talk about in terms of extending community center hours, including both evenings and weekends, charles jordan community centers closed on Sunday, for example, free drop ins for community centers. I'm not talking about classes or access discounts, but just come in and use our space types of rules, either on specific dates or times, specific centers, or just in general. I know the barriers cost in part to that, and I'm just curious if you can get figures on how much we're talking about and, you know, some scenarios for that. And I think there is a model for this with the north Portland. I can't remember the exact name of it, but there's a free pass for north Portland, and we'd love to know how much that has cost and the ability to extend that to other parts of the city.
56 Thank you for that question. I guess there's a lot of questions rolled into that one. We have not looked into what the cost would be to provide drop in, free drop in program. Excuse me, entry into our community centers. As you know, the access pass gives up to a 90% discount. So it's a very, very deep discount. And folks do not need to disclose their financial situation to take a discount. Up to 90%. And I'm not really sure how we'd even aside from just doing a survey or asking people like, really, you know, keeping track of who's coming in and not paying, I don't know how we would actually say what that cost would be in terms of increasing hours and days. Currently, our financial situation, our staffing situation model just doesn't allow for that. And we've also seen that we see we see very few people when we have been open on sundays, very few visitors. So our hours often mimic what we're seeing because we can keep track of how many people we've had. I will also add that in terms of extending the hours now, as you know, our budget packages that have that are being contemplated actually look at lowering those hours, not increasing them. Unfortunately.
57 So for the future, I guess it would be helpful to know. And we don't have to do this here, but just in writing is fine. Exactly what we're talking about, the cost of that, and I think in the context of the other, the first part with the access discount, it would be just good to know how much money we're coming is coming in through the 10% that someone who's getting a 90% discount is paying, because it's more foregone revenue, I think.
58 Exactly, yes, thanks.
59 And I would say you asked three questions that were under the general heading of simpler, easier, cheaper, better access. We are strongly aligned with that goal.
60 Just a reminder, councilors, we have three other sections. Yes, this is a good opportunity for the broad questions, but we are going to get a deeper dive. It looks like on budget and some of the specific outreach to community. A little later in the presentation, councilor Zimmerman yeah, I think that was going to be the cue I made.
61 I think I'm going to hold. I have a lot of questions, but I'm going to hold until we get through the rest. I'd like to see what comes out of the rest, but thanks, councilor Clark.
62 Thank you, madam chair.
63 I'll just really quickly and maybe we're going to get to this later. But the rangers, are they paid for by the levy? Their general fund or their general fund? Okay. And just I don't know if this is the right time to ask this, but I would ask sonia, you talked a little bit about I mean, you've had the service area now what, for six months or or maybe more. And you mentioned and todd mentioned some of the functional alignments. And I just wanted to ask you a 50 zero zero zero foot question about the lessons that you've learned and what you're sharing with the other service area. Dca's what can you give us some more examples of those functional alignments and maybe some savings that come with those briefly, and then I'd love to talk to you more.
64 This has been a really interesting and exciting part of the work. Dca's meet regularly for long periods of time, and one of the things we do is we report out on what we're up to. So I've been really happy to share as we've gone where we're looking, what we're finding, what we're doing, how it's going. So I would say that we as a group are in really we have really good visibility into what others of us are doing. We have. Adopted well, when we started working in this formation in April, we had a long working session as a leadership team and identified dot connecting as a motif for our work. And we were really intentional about looking for ways that our programs, our priorities, our funding, our goals overlap, and leaning into that and not in a particularly prescribed way. But we just kept our heads up and our eyes open for when those connections appeared. And we would pause and we would talk about, oh, you have a program, you have a scheduling issue, and you've got a scheduling issue with that same person in your programing. And how can we work through that? You have a communications need and so do you. And maybe you don't need two people. Maybe you need one and you don't know how to do that complicated financial thing. But they do. Maybe they could do it for you. Some of it was bite size rewiring and partnering like that. Some of it was bigger and it was in the form of more formal projects with project managers. Examples of that include constituent relations and communications. How do we think about that and do that as a service area with one philosophy toward one goal? We did that with partnerships, and we did that with performance management, and it's leading to structural changes, operational changes. We have a dashboard that's great. I'm thinking of time. Maybe that's good for now. Did I answer all the parts of that?
65 I really appreciate that. And I think that's going to be an important conversation going on. What what we're learning and where we're finding efficiencies. And I look forward to hearing more about that from you. Thanks.
66 Thanks for asking.
67 Councilor Ryan.
68 Yeah, first of all, sorry I was late. I was at the police promotions. I know there were a couple other councilors there. You don't linger as long and you probably walk faster, so way to go. I also want to say how much I just miss seeing all of you. It's okay if you don't miss me. It's probably like a like when kids go off to college, they're fine, but the parents are sad. Maybe a little bit of that. I want to start off by saying I'm so proud of the integration. Like, you know, we when we were building these work areas, the goal was to find those natural connections, as you mentioned, dc shemanski and you all just took off and really made those happen. And this is the joy department. It's like when people are multi-generational portlanders, you know, the top three reasons usually are because of our beauty, our parks, the integration of arts, and that we're a family friendly city that's in a crisis right now. And so as we get closer to the budget, let's not make any mistakes here. This is a revenue generating department for the city. We're losing families right now. They're taking their businesses with them. There goes our revenue. Talk to the people at the county about that. And we there's a reason why recreation and parks will be put into the economics and arts area of our committee structure. So I'm really proud that you all are figuring out how to make that case. And the more that we can continue to make that case, that's important for this enterprise to understand. No more marginalizing arts into some small little wing of the city. And same with parks. Parks is so special that we can't figure out where to put it. It's like in almost every committee that we talk about. So there's a reason for that. There's also a reason why everyone's probably gonna ask you a lot of questions, because when you're campaigning and you're on doorsteps, everyone talks about the parks. And so you have an engagement that's natural, it's consistent. And you all know this, but it's messy. And I think we have to just continue to be comfortable with that uncomfortableness of the passion and the messiness that is playing with fellow portlanders and parks. So that was a little bit of a rant that I was probably pent up with. So I want to then also pivot to the integration downtown. I was criticized a bit when I had the portfolio with the focus on downtown. I knew exactly what I was doing because we do. The downtown, whether we like it or not, is the heart that pumps revenue out to the rest of the city when it's working well. And that was the Portland story after we cleaned it up in the 1970s. I'm old enough fellow councilors to know about this because I was a teenager and it used to be dead down here, and so we really worked hard. We started we started really receiving that in the 90s, in the early aughts, quite frankly, I think my hometown rested on its laurels and we lost track of that. And so we had to start investing in our amenities downtown. So tell me about those amenities and how they're coming along. Like, we know that the activation of darcelle plaza, the activation that the rangers have really helped with quite a bit, with people feeling safe at directors park at pioneer square, the steel bridge, a skate park, is finally. I was able to give a lot of sdc funds there, so that could stop being a conversation for two decades, but actually happened because those people that were seen to radical 20 years ago now look like some like council members with little kids that want to use that park and the parents like skate with them. It's really cool. So we have to like, wake up to the joy that parks is bringing to downtown so we can start to see more activation. And every retail outlet says that it's arts activation that brings people downtown. When I talk to friends and they say, yeah, it's really not much fun downtown. There's not a lot to do, but going to arts and activation events and cultural events, that's what's bringing people down. That's what makes the head of nordstrom say commissioner Back in that role. It's like when the square is active, when directors park is active, we actually have a profit that day. So as we get closer to the budget, just know that it's so important that we continue to look at those metrics that you had earlier on who you're reaching, and really have those numbers that are really present because I turn into a multiplier effect. Economist Mitch Green will dig into that and educate me about it. Professor Green, about that impact of that multiplier effect of that those units. But give me a little bit of a story about how we're doing with the activation of darcelle plaza. Is that going to be on track this year?
69 Yes. Thank you for asking. Thank you for the comments. And yes, councilor Green read appendix b of the levy report. So I expect a lot more of that.
70 That's great.
71 We referenced it. I think he read it. Yeah. Our downtown is not as much of a neighborhood as it could be right. Activations really help it. We want this part of Portland activated every day. We are on track with darcelle. Thank you for helping us get and stay on track for a fall opening and a pride celebration in July, and for putting the skate park gears in motion. That's on track as well. I saw ken going to a community meeting last night on my way over here. We have some very well known foundational festivals and events that are regular in downtown. Those are all on the books for 2025, and we have new opportunities that we're leaning into and trying to make happen. I want tod and charity to speak briefly, and then we're happy to follow up with more. I'm recalling when we visited the art museum, and we started talking with them about when they would be opening the new pavilion and our our ears perked up. The timing of that aligns with the opening of darcelle, aligns with pride month, aligns with a lot of other things, and suddenly we're talking about stitching together a whole kind of strategy of activation, rather than just being surprised that seven things are happening kind of around the same time, or maybe being disappointed that they're happening at the same time and they're in competition. So I know that's a piece that we're actively working on, and there's so much more underneath that. But that's that's the high level.
72 Super briefly, under your leadership, as you know, we started a downtown activation team specifically to activate our events that are outside of some of our historical partners and some of the spaces that we directly manage, like waterfront park. So we have more events in waterfront park in the last couple of years than we ever have in the past. And then our partners, as you mentioned, pioneer, courthouse square, downtown, clean and safe, many other partners that are operating downtown are partners with us both for activation and enhancing kind of the janitorial services that we have across downtown.
73 Thank you. As I mentioned earlier, in summer 2024, the office of arts and culture sponsored over 100 arts activations in the downtown. And while summer feels like it's far away, some are planning sort of starts now. So we're just now starting to have some of those conversations about around what partnerships we can dream up with. Art museum, as sonia mentioned, with PSU, with downtown, clean and safe, with some of our other partners, so that we can leverage those activations. So we are we're in the early planning stages, but we're definitely looking forward to activating downtown in 2025.
74 Great. And please know it's an and equation. It's not just about activation downtown, but it's good to just remember the economic equation of how the revenue does flow out. And that's how we have always filled our coffers in the past. Why have the mic real quick? I just want to acknowledge eugene cairo. I thought that the q&a that you had with her, commissioner Novick, was important. I was in that line of fire, and I'll never forget a gala I went to at the obt during the middle of that, and I think I met all 0.004% of portlanders that were in trauma. And so I know what that was like. But what I got to tell them if they listened, but really it was about me listening and taking punches. I did explain to them that I was out in the field and I was with people on your team that had been working seven days straight and many, many overtime hours within those days. And I kind of makes me think of it's not fair to compare, but when we're in the middle of a tragedy and catastrophic, say, like la right now, it's so important to just stay focused on cleaning it up. And then in retrospect, we can have this kind of dialog and make sure that that case study is, in fact, studied, and we can figure out how to improve next time we're in that horrific situation. But I just wanted to lift up that. That was really extreme. And it was a tough time. And I thought the people that I met on your crew handled themselves very professionally and very loyal to staying focused on the work, and probably sacrificed a lot to work so many hours during that period of time. So thank you. Yeah, that's all.
75 Councilor Green. And then I think we get back to the budget.
76 Thank you, madam president. And I'm mindful of your suggestion that we kind of stay focused, but I but I can't resist. I want to go back to what councilor Kanal raised about the insurance issue, because I think that's really worth knowing a little bit more about. So my question is, do you have plans to think about maybe a potential policy approach or change that's different than maybe what the sort of like default risk. Risk management opinion is like, is that is that a work stream that you were thinking about maybe developing?
77 I can go there.
78 Yeah we are we already have that. So right now the directors will waive insurance on a case by case basis based on our historical practice. And we're doing that at the bureau level. And that's where my comment comes, is I think there's room for us all to grow as a one city approach of where we could make a broader policy choice. If there's certain types of events across the whole portfolio of the city, that you wouldn't have to have one off decisions being made by directors. And so I think there's some room for us to grow as a city. But right now, we bring those to directors on a case by case basis. They're getting waived.
79 So the answer is yes and no because yes, but it's case by case. And I'm hearing you really clearly asking about policy and standards. I was briefed on something a few weeks ago that I think might put some more color on this answer, but I'd like to go refresh my memory on it and share more with you. I think the answer is yes. I think we have things in development and on the books that treat applications by class, by category, rather than individually. So we'll come back to you with more about that.
80 Thank you for that. And just to follow up, because my, you know, counselor Ryan, who I'm, you know, privileged to share a gavel with on the arts and economy committee, I think hit the nail on the head, which is that the fundamental issue is that we have families leaving Portland. They are taking their property tax revenue with them, which is creating this sort of death spiral. We need to make it really as easy as possible to activate our spaces. I would really invite, when we set our agenda to sort of bring up and invite you guys to participate in a kind of roundtable on sort of overhauling that, that risk management approach, because I, I get really anxious about kind of the user fee approach that our heavy reliance on user fees, because that does create barriers. There could be a better way. Maybe there's not. But that's something this committee is going to be for. So that's my invitation to you guys.
81 Thank you.
82 I think we're back to you all for presentation.
83 Thank you.
84 Okay. Budget. Go ahead todd.
85 All right claudio campuzano, our finance and property technology manager will overview the budget for us. Great.
86 Thanks, todd.
87 Good morning, madam president and city council. As todd said my name is claudio campuzano, finance property and technology manager for vibrant communities. And I'm going to walk you through the budgets of the component bureau and offices of that that service area. On each of the following slides, we'll talk about the sources of revenue and how we use it to deliver services to the community. We'll start with the office of arts and culture. Arts and culture is a multi funded, is multi funded with sources including general fund that large greenish slice at $4.4 million and the city's portion of the arts access fund tax or the arts tax. That's the largest component of the yellow 3.5 million slice. So note that the arts tax funds, more than just the city arts portion per city code revenue division. Oh thank you. Revenue division disperses funds to all six school districts. And that comes directly from the revenue division. As with the children's levy, the arts access fund carries over a balance with of obligations across fiscal years. So the $1 million of pcf that you see here, Portland clean energy fund is a contribution to the arlene schnitzer concert hall roof and cooling tower. That's a one time allocation. And these funds will be passed through to metro to perform that work. So finally, it's worth noting that the percent for art program is not currently budgeted in in this arts and culture budget. That program requires that capital projects built by city bureaus dedicate a percentage of costs to art, and that funding has historically gone to a third party service provider. And it comes it came directly from the capital bureaus, and that is transitioning this year. The actuals are already coming into this fund, but are not yet included in the budget. And we'll be will be updating that later in the fiscal year. But we anticipate that budget to be about $1 million a bit better than that. Sorry. No. So the expenses on the right are relatively straightforward. The personnel services costs are the six fte that charity mentioned earlier, and the bulk of expenses are external materials and services. And they're largely for funding of individual artists and arts organizations, as well as managing the city's public art collection. So next, this next slide shows similar information for the Portland children's levy. Revenues on the left, expenses on the right for revenue, where you see two big pie slices. This is all really one revenue source. It's the local option levy that director pellegrino discussed earlier, and it's in its fourth levy renewal right now. The big yellow slice shows what we budgeted to receive in taxes in the current fiscal year. About $23.7 million. Because of the nature of the grant cycle, not all funds are spent in the year in which they're earned. This means that funds often carry over so that blue slice is balance. Coming into the current fiscal year, about $10 million. So there's a tiny slice of cash transfers that's actually comes from the parks levy, which we'll talk about in a moment. This funding makes the children's levy whole for the tax compression created by the parks levy. So on the right you see how the funds get spent and the vast majority is going out the door to grantees, as director pellegrino mentioned. And besides this, direct service staff makes up about $1.5 million. That little dark blue slice and the light blue represents ending balance. And we expect to be unspent at the end of the year to carry over, to cover obligations into the next year. So Portland parks and recreation gets a little more complicated. So I broke it into into two slides, one for revenues, one for expenses. Portland parks and recreation budgets, and nine different funds. Based on the color of money. This chart combines eight of those nine excluding only capital, which we'll discuss on another slide, starting with beginning balance on the top right. This is, as we discussed with previous funds, the amount that carries into the current fiscal year. Of the $72.9 million total you see here, about $49 million is parks levy balance. The parks levy was passed in 2020, collections began in 2021. And this November next fiscal year will be the last year of collections. Over the first two years, we built up balance as operations ramped up. Last year, the third year, we spent about as much as we took in and were able to reach full service levels. At current parks, levy supported funding levels, and we plan on spending down the remaining balance over the last two fiscal years of the levy. The other components of beginning balance are in our enterprise funds, golf and Portland international raceway, as well as a variety of smaller special revenue funds like the tree planting and preservation fund. The next big slice as we go around the pie is the yellow general fund discretionary slice. These funds are received from the general fund and represent a blend of property taxes, business license, taxes, and a variety of other general fund sources. This is our most flexible resource and along with the parks levy funds the core services like urban forestry. As we talked about care and maintenance of parks and natural areas and recreation services.
88 Let me just make it a little closer.
89 Is that better? All right. I usually talk too loud. Sorry.
90 So it sounds like.
91 All right. So taxes the next slice is all parks levy. Other revenue is a very diverse mix of resources. So probably best covered in detail in another point. And the biggest component of that grant slice is $12.5 million state grant for the new north Portland aquatic center service charges and fees. That's a mix of recreation services, charges at community centers, camps, etc. That makes up about a third of the $35.1 million you're seeing there. Golf represents about $15 million of that figure. The raceway, Portland international raceway, is about 2.5, and the remainder is largely parking. And that's mostly at Washington park. Finally, there's the clean energy Portland clean energy fund. As you'll see in a moment when we get to expenses, most of this amount will not be spent in the current fiscal year. This allocation covers a five year period. Each year will draw down a portion of it for eligible expenditures. A few things to note about this information. First, the parks levy fund reimburses the general fund. So we backed out all interfund transfers to avoid double counts. And second, vibrant community support services. Todd's program was created out of the central administrative functions of Portland parks and recreation, and that transition is still underway from a technical budgetary perspective. So the figures you're looking at here are both parks, parks and the vibrant community support services. So moving on to expenses. As you can see, the biggest slice of our expenses are in personnel. I'll note that while the chart says 40%, that is a bit of an understatement since we're carrying over that big pcf balance, the clean energy balance that I mentioned without ending balances included staff costs make up about half of our total annual expenditures, and those are the folks cleaning restrooms, picking up trash, dealing with downed trees in the right of way, maintaining 11,000 acres of natural areas, etc. The next big slice is external materials and services. In addition to people, it takes equipment and supplies to provide all that service. Our water and sewer bill alone is budgeted at $4.8 million, electricity at 2.4. So this is where you'll also find a lot of the community partnership support funding for our partners like schools, uniting neighborhoods or sun schools, as well as our downtown partners like pioneer, courthouse square, internal materials and services is the next slice is largely what what pays for other bureau services, particularly procurement, city fleet facilities, technology services and city risk or insurance. So I mentioned that I was excluding the capital fund in these figures. The capital outlay amount that you see here is outside of that capital fund. It's roughly 50 over 50 PCEF funding for mount scott renovation and the state grant that I mentioned for the north Portland aquatic center. Surrounding things out is ending balance. Beside the $21.3 million of local option levy, the vast majority of this 82.9 is the carryover of PCEF. As I mentioned, most of the allocations we've we've received are five year amounts. But we manage that balance. We manage that balance per guidance from the PCEF staff. So finally, a quick summary of our capital program. The single largest source we have in the capital program is system development charges, which most which are mostly represented here in blue. These are fees that are charged to developers for new commercial and residential units. To ensure that we can continue to build out the parks, natural areas and community facilities to meet the demands of that growing city and simultaneously close existing service level gaps, particularly in east Portland, said another way a new unit means new capacity for a bigger population, which adds demand for our services and sdcs are our way of creating that new supply. To meet that new demand, we collect these resources under provision of state law that strictly limits their use for the development of new capacity. And really, that's the nexus, the justification for charging those units. So sdcs during the most recent development cycle, topped out at a little over $40 million annually this year. Halfway through the year, we've collected less than 2 million. So as you can see, the economic cycles really impact that resource. So what you're seeing here is largely the construction. The blue is largely the construction of those projects approved through through that last economic cycle, including the north Portland aquatic center, which makes up a big portion of that blue. But there is currently very little anticipated in out years due to the decline of incoming resources. It's important to note that this picture is not just resources to build out the new parts of the system, it also represents the resources we have to maintain the system. Those are those orange bands, largely. But therein lies one of the biggest challenges. We're currently funded with about $5 million annually from the general fund to take care of, to take care of the major maintenance of the system. And that system has a value of over $2 billion and growing. So that's led to a large and growing deferred major maintenance backlog that's estimated at about $600 million, the consequences of which are being felt more acutely each year as assets decline and fail, resulting in service impacts for portlanders. Obviously, we're not alone on that issue. Underfunding of infrastructure maintenance is an issue across the us and, frankly, across the city of portland's assets. So it's another issue that we'll look forward to working with this new council on in coming years.
92 Okay, that's the budget section. So this is our next break and a little bit of wayfinding. The next section goes a layer down into programing infrastructure outcome goals. And then we wrap up with a look ahead at the next year. That's a very brief section. So that's where we are. And I think it's about 11 is just about 11.
93 We've got another hour. Why don't we do any budget specific questions now and then. Maybe we can save questions from the last two sections to the end. If that wrap up section is pretty short. Counselor Clark, is that old?
94 Okay, it's legacy, but legacy. It's legacy. But I'll take it. Claudia, I have just a question for you. Back to the backlog, the $600 million backlog. So do you have the ability internally to reallocate discretionary general fund to budget capital maintenance? And can you talk a little bit about how about that.
95 So the bureau would not have discretion although council and the mayor would, would have discretion. We currently receive a little, like I said, a little under $5 million or a little over now, $5 million each year. And that's a transfer from the general fund to our capital fund. So any any change in that allocation or moving funding that comes directly to parks, operating fund, to that capital fund would be a decision for council. Okay.
96 Well, just to build on that and maybe this is not a budget question necessarily, but I wondered if we have a detailed list of those major maintenance issues and how we prioritize those for the future, because that's going to be an issue for me.
97 Yeah. So we do have a list. It's on our public website, and people can go and see where they are across the city on an interactive map so they can see the facilities that are in poor and very poor condition, and how we estimate to get to that $600 million major maintenance number. So that number is out in the public. We've tried to provide briefings over time of looking at the near term, five year horizon, what potential facilities are coming for closure, possibly due to they need a roof replaced or something major done to them that we can't afford to pay for with the $5 million that we get every year. And so we do have those briefing materials, and we've been having this conversation both with council and the community since about 2019. That's actually when we kicked off what we call our sustainable future effort and explain both to the community and the council the challenges of we. There's two stresses, as many bureaus have, of both paying for your operating funds, but then also the major maintenance required to take care of the system that we have.
98 Great. Thank you. I'll take a look at that. I know it's an issue citywide. Thanks.
99 Councilor Kanal.
100 Thank you. On slide 22. And while they're pulling that up, I just wanted to say thank you so much for breaking down the expenses on earlier slides by the three main budget categories. I think everybody should be doing that. It really helps us drill into why m and s is such a high percentage in this case. I understand the explanation, but on this slide under service charges and fees, you mentioned that about 15 million of that is golf. The raceway is 2.5. The remainder is largely parking. So what I'm hearing, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is somewhere between 0 and 5% of revenue is of overall revenue is coming in from what people pay for recreation programs, including both drop in fees and classes together. Is that accurate?
101 That may have been when my mic was a little quiet, about $13 million, so about a third of that $35 million comes from recreation outside of golf and pier. So we do receive that $13 million number is associated with community center, community center, fees, day camps, etc. So a third of that is 3.3% is the upper limit of total parks revenue.
102 Coming in from those fees.
103 I would have to do the math to confirm, but that sounds about right. Thank you. Yeah, I will, I will note that that that number has remained roughly stable over the last couple of years, even with the, the, the access discount. And so we've been while we have not been generating more money, as we would have expected with price increases over over time, it has remained roughly stable. But we, we have so that that access discount program has probably impacted the foregone revenue over time, but not as much as maybe we would have expected.
104 Thank you. That means there's been a lot more access. Yes.
105 Yeah.
106 Councilor Green, thank you.
107 On slide 20 for arts and culture service charges and fees make up a third of the revenue structure for the fy 2425 period. Can you give me a sense of where that is historically trending? Like, have we always been at about a third, do we expect to stay at about a third?
108 So I would need to look back at the historical trends. Managing arts and culture is on the newer side for me as we've been merging. So I don't have a lot of that history personally, but my understanding is that it is roughly the same because of the nature of the arts tax, which is a fixed $35, which has not grown over time. So the, the, the buying power, if you will, has shrunk over time. And I believe that the total revenue from the arts tax has remained roughly stable.
109 Okay. So that comes from the arts tax okay. Next question is let's see here for the capital budget. Slide 24. What percentage of that is funded by sdcs. Is it 100%.
110 It nearly 100% of the blue is 0% of the orange. Okay.
111 Great. And then in your view, what do you think is driving that decline, the decline, the decline in projected capital budgets for through this series here?
112 Yeah. You know, it's almost entirely the decline in the development environment. You know I sit on. Well I'm allowed to listen in on the Portland permitting and development group as they work through their revenue projections. And they've got a series of experts who help them understand the nature of the development environment. And it does sound, and I'm no expert in development, but from from listening in to them, it does sound like we are we have not been seeing a lot of new starts. We probably will not see a lot of new starts for a period of time to come. And so that's driving our projections, which are based off of numbers that we receive from planning Portland permitting and development.
113 I appreciate that answer. And then I'll just raise this for the council that this feels like a vicious cycle because the cost, the marginal cost of the sdc itself is a contributing factor of why we can't develop in this city, which then starves us, starves, starves us of revenue to fund our capital program, and then people leave our communities and so on and so forth. So we've got a structural issue on the revenue side that I would like us to think about. Thank you.
114 Councilor Smith.
115 Thank you, madam president. Thank you so much for giving us this presentation today. I looked at an article and I don't believe everything I read in the paper. I'm just going to tell you this. And I read that the city of Portland, in a Willamette week article yesterday said that the city of Portland had 865. Ftes that have not been used. And then I looked at the who was the number three. It was parks, the transportation police and then parks. And it looked like it was about 110 ftes that have not been used. And I just wanted to get a sense to, to, to kind of verify. Is that true? And where does the balance of that those, you know, unfilled positions come from, from which departments?
116 I'd like to follow up and give you the exact answer, but I can give you that dynamic answer. Okay. We have about 800 fte, as claudio said, our attrition rate or turnover rate on an annual basis is about 10% of that workforce. So you can think about 80 people turnover of our 800. And then we rehire them takes about 100 days. In the city of Portland, from the time you decide to hire a person to when that person begins. So there is a lag for that 80. And I think that number is artificially high, probably that you saw in that article. But I want to go back and check because did you see it? Did you artificially high? Because we hold positions that are just used in the summer. So we have some positions in our portfolio that's probably in that number that you saw in that article that are only used from June to August, when we scale up our 2000 seasonal workforce to run the pools. And those are supervisor positions and other positions, but we hold those positions on the books so we can use them. We don't have to recreate them every year. So I'd want to follow up and give you the exact answer, but that's the dynamic that would be perfect, because what they didn't do was disaggregate the data to say where it was coming from.
117 Right? They just did a, you know, a whole number. And so that's why I was looking to see where those numbers were coming from. And if there's something that we need to do to make sure that we're we're fully staffing our, our parks and recreation, because I think what you all do is amazing. It's an amazing part of the community, and it is a piece that keeps our community bright, from parks to the programs that you offer, particularly for folks who are vulnerable in our community. And I think that's the one light. If I when I think about Portland, I think about parks, I think about our libraries. Those are things that we are known for and that I want to maintain to make sure that we're doing the best work that we can.
118 Thank you, thank you.
119 I'm putting myself in the queue, which I don't usually do. I apologize, colleagues, but I have three quick and specific questions. The first, following up on councilor Smith's question, those positions that you hold for the summer, those supervisory positions are those funded for a year, and then you have unspent budget there. Or are those only funded for that summer period?
120 They're they're budgeted and we hold them. If you go into the personnel system, they'll show up on a vacancy list. However, they're only intended to be used for June through August.
121 But our budget that you receive, though, are they funded for a full year or are they funded for June through August?
122 Just June through August.
123 Got it. Yeah. And then on that capital budget slide, you've talked a little bit about the sdcs follow up question on that. Are the numbers that you use for your projections numbers from our permitting agency, or are those numbers that you're putting together, or is that based on actual applications in and what that would mean in terms of sdc revenue moving out over the next few years?
124 No, that's a great question. So it is it is based off of the permit projections of permitting and development. And then we use that figure to develop our our financial projections. So we're looking at what they're projecting in terms of demand for their services. And then we're applying our our projections to that around per unit costs.
125 And on the other part of this slide, the all other the orange bar there that also drops by about half between the 2526 and the 27, 28 years. What is that drop due to.
126 So that's going to be largely a function of some of that PCEF money that we were talking about. So mount scott has a significant portion. There's also let's see actually that's going to be that's going to be the largest portion, although there's also metro funding that that will drop off over over time because that's not an ongoing source. So really the only ongoing source in that list that you're going to continue to see out into the out years, is that $5 million of general fund cash transfer?
127 Great. Thank you, counselor Zimmerman. Thanks.
128 Looking at the revenue and expenditure slides, I'm thinking back, you know, Multnomah county caught a lot of hell over the last few years for not expending its SHS dollars. Right? That holdover was seen as irresponsible. And I think it was right that they caught that hell. So I really need to understand this. $82 million, $83 million of PCEF money that then looks exactly the same in its you talked about it as a revenue, but then it's an expenditure. But we're actually not spending it. I think we need some more information about that. I need to understand what what that is. It looks to me like PCEF needed to get down their spend rate. And you are the collecting agency. If that's correct, let me know. If it's not, let's talk about it a little bit.
129 Okay, so the balance. So we only received allocations within the last eight starting within the last 18 months. If my memory serves and we've gotten pretty significant allocations since then, and I certainly I don't know that I would characterize them in that way. We've got we've received them for the, the, the management of public street trees in the right of way. That was a big a big allocation and is going to be a significant change in the way we operate. We also received let's see. So that was a $65 million allocation for street tree protection and care.
130 And that will all be spent in this year.
131 No. And so that's what I'm trying to get to. Yeah. That is a so we received the five year allocation for that. And that's what's sitting in sitting in balance for us. It's still in the PCEF fund. So I think you'll see you'll see when you're looking at a fund level view of the city, you'll still see that PCEF balance sitting there. We don't actually own it, but it's in a sub fund that we control. But we'll be spending that down over five years. So that's that's the programmatically how there how how the folks at planning sustainability are running running that program. They give it to the bureaus that are the, the allocatees. And we then budget it and, and manage it within a sub.
132 And so in terms of the year spending, since this is an fy 24, 25 Portland parks and rec expenditures, are we about the 16 million of PCEF money that will actually be spent? This is an odd way to me to show this number, and I think it inflates something that is not clear. We are not going to spend $83 million of PCEF money in the community this year, based on what I'm hearing.
133 Yeah. Oh no. We're going to spend very little. We got five years worth of money. Yeah, we're building programs. We're trying to get positions approved to hire into, and we will not be at full spend for a couple or a few years. You're right. That's not intuitive. And you can draw conclusions from it that are not right. So we'll think about that as we're showing these graphics. I think that's an excellent point.
134 I think it I think it gets to in a world where we're going to go back to voters and ask for their faith, right? I think this is important. And that's where I'm coming from on this. Right? I think that there are a given oregon's most terrible tax system in the united states. We have banded together governments through levies. And anytime that levy shows a hint of not making sense, we risk that levy, we risk that special fund, we risk that next thing SHS is at risk. Because of this, I think PCEF has has gone through a significant overhaul because of these kinds of things. So these things matter. That's why I'm highlighting this. So thank you for indulging me a little bit there. And happy to be a guinea pig for maybe a new graphic that makes. I would love to make the picture make more sense. My second question is on our sdcs, and I'll apologize to my colleagues who were ever on the campaign trail with me and heard this way too much. So, with respect to sdcs state law and the dedication toward increased capacity, right. We talk about capital. Who defines the definition of new capacity?
135 I think it's a combination of state statute on the books and our lawyers interpretation of it. And when we have questions, we ask them, great.
136 So I would I would offer this up. Lawyers are wonderful advisors. And if we followed everything lawyers did, we'd all live in bubbles and we'd have no recreation. So I appreciate that. I have told our government relations team, I've told others that I hope that we attack the handcuffs, that I think sdcs put the largest city in the state in sdcs are set up for all of our suburban cities. They are set up for cities that are still growing out, not up. If the wells fargo tower next to us turns into all residential and not commercial, turns out the pipe to go to those toilets already exists, right? And that's what an sdc exists for in some sense. So why would we have to charge an sdc for that new population? You might think, okay, new folks are going to use the park system, etc. But in downtown, in my district, in some of my district, the parks are I think are are well used in a significant part in my central city, part of my district. I think that any maintenance, any additional patrol, any cleanup actually in and of itself is increasing capacity because they have become unusable parks in the central city in the last several years. And so I would venture that our maintenance backlog in many parts of the city, we could make the argument that by maintaining them, improving them, we're increasing capacity because families will return to them. The south park blocks the north park blocks darcel. These all fall into that category where I think our sdcs are ripe for use, and I would challenge anybody to prove me wrong on that because I know the capacity is about three right now. Three? What? I don't know, but it's not used. These areas are no man's lands in so many ways. So let's add that. Let's find a way to tackle this. I will offer it to the committee that will take this up. I'll offer it to a couple of committees, because I think this is an important area to highlight. When we look at a $600 million backlog and an account designed to increase capacity in the city, that's not growing outward. So thanks.
137 I haven't heard that point from you before, and I think it's very well made, and I'm very interested in following up. Thank you.
138 Thank you, councilor Ryan.
139 Thank you, madam president. And thank you, councilor Zimmerman. I welcome to that conversation. It's been active and it's on the legislative agenda. That would be great to have more support, to make it a bigger part of our legislative agenda, more of a focus. It's all about the interpretation of statutes. And you sound like an attorney, son. So that was great. I wanted to get to the parks. Did parks transfer money to the arts? Did I hear that?
140 Did you say that?
141 Yes. So that's correct. So when the levy, the children's levy was a preexisting levy. And by putting a new local option levy in place that would put compression on the children's levy. And so as part of the commitments we made to voters, we agreed to make them whole for the for the impacts on their levy.
142 So that's that's children's levy, not arts.
143 Right. I'm sorry. All right.
144 Children's levy I met. Yeah.
145 Yes. Sorry I and I misunderstood what you said was not a leading suggestion.
146 That was guidance. That was guidance from council with the last levy referral was to make sure there was no harm to the.
147 I just thought it needed more attention, though, because it's a good example of where the work areas are blending and molding together as one unit, and I just think it's a really good story. I don't think you hear such stories very often, so thank you for your leadership on that. And when you look at the expense budget, is there anything on routine maintenance like where's the line item for that?
148 So routine maintenance would be the vast majority of what what our personnel services and external materials and services. And I would say, in fact, that internal materials and services, which goes to city fleet, which provides the vehicles that support the folks that are doing all of that, that that maintenance, that daily maintenance and care. So just a huge, really significant portion of all of the categories that are on that slide.
149 So it's within that 130 5.4 in personnel or it's in other areas, it looks like about two thirds of the whole pie to me, the light blue, then the yellow, then the teal.
150 Of course, it's not all of it. There are lots of people who don't do maintenance. They do programs. But claudio is saying it's a really significant portion of all of those. And that that feels correct.
151 I thought you might say that. I think we're back to where sometimes communication people help. No offense, but help numbers. People like maybe tell a story that would be better told so they would understand. And a lot of people complain that they can't see if we're doing routine maintenance. And I explained to them they are, but I think they go online and see this and I don't know what happens, but there probably should be a better way to explain to the public that it is a big part of our day to day life as a member of the parks bureau, right.
152 And I will say that we do track that and budget for that as well. And in fact, it's a significant component of how we talk about the budget when it comes to the parks levy and also when you when you're looking at the budget documents, the city that the city budget office will provide to you. This is really a what kind of what kind of things do we buy with the dollars. But in terms of the service area service cut that you're talking about, that actually is displayed in what we call program offers. And you'll see that in, you know, in detail in the budget documents that the city budget office provides. And we'd be happy to display that as well. It's just you can slice and dice this, this stuff a lot of different ways. So I appreciate the comments.
153 And we can we can vincent, the head ranger there. Thank you for being here. I just wanted to acknowledge that when I was working in the homeless space, the rangers are lifted frequently by providers as being such a important element of a first responder. That's really an outreach worker. Your your members of your of the rangers really build relationships and build trust for government services. And I don't think that gets lifted enough. So I just want to acknowledge that's a big part of your portfolio, which is why you're involved in those meetings as well with scc. Correct. All right. Thank you.
154 Two more questions and then we'll let you get to the next section. Councilor Novick. Counselor Smith. Thank you.
155 Thank you. Madam president. I have a quick question. With the 600 million in deferred maintenance, can the PCEF dollars be used to pay for some of that?
156 In fact, they are right now with mount scott, and there are likely other opportunities. But like with all funds that have specific and defined uses, we would need to sort of identify those matches. And we've been applying. I think that in some there is a capital component to the to the electrification of the leaf blower fleet as well. And so we're looking for those opportunities, I guess is the short answer. But but it's not something that could just be substituted.
157 Okay. Thank you.
158 We certainly have a list of projects which fall into the category of major or routine maintenance that we would love to have considered for PCEF and sonya, what's the difference between routine and deferred maintenance?
159 Do you have a separate list that says deferred and then the list that says routine?
160 I may have misspoken. It's more about daily routine versus major, and major is where we have the deferred stuff. Daily and routine is mostly just smaller by dollar figure. I think it includes mowing lawns and fixing leaky sinks and things that feel really small scale. And then you pass a threshold that's maybe $10,000 and it's major.
161 Major is considered deferred. If you don't do it, what's deferred is major.
162 Yeah. Okay. Yes.
163 Thanks.
164 Okay. Why don't we do this? The next two portions of the presentation?
165 Okay. Thank you. Thank you for those great questions. The next section is three out of four. And like I said, it's the next layer down about the service areas, programs, infrastructure and funding and perspective from two more. I think community partners here you see key outcomes we're working toward as a service area. This is another dot connecting moment. These were originally adopted as part of the healthy parks healthy Portland strategic planning work that the parks bureau did very deeply with community. And after we became a service area, we mapped the work of the children's levy and the office of arts and culture onto them. And we identified those that aligned with the missions of all three. And this is our roadmap. So the next section is organized around them, and here we go. Charity. Thanks.
166 So vibrant communities provides infrastructure and funding that fosters community and civic connection and provides portlanders with a variety of parks, recreation, arts and cultural experiences near where they live. The service area is responsible for stewardship of 15% of the city's land, which includes open spaces, developed parks, natural areas, and urban forests. 86% of portlanders live within a half a mile of a park or natural area, and Portland parks and recreation does all of the daily care and maintenance of developed parks and natural areas, including emptying trash, cleaning restrooms, maintaining plantings are also plants and cares for the city's trees, manages our urban forest, and maintains the trails that allow people to connect with nature. Vibrant community service area activates spaces with more than 2000 events annually throughout the city, including but not limited to. Some are free for all downtown events and through our performing arts centers. The service area manages the city's public art collection, which is made up of more than 1700 pieces, including 180 outdoor sculptures, mostly in parks, and is valued at $18.5 million. Public art fosters a sense of community and connection, and helps make Portland, Portland and the percent for art program one of the most robust in the nation, allocates 2% of eligible costs of city capital improvement projects for public art, acquisitions, artist and residency programs, and creative spaces. Vibrant community service area fosters community and civic connection by helping organizations have affordable and accessible space for programing. Vibrant communities manages Portland five centers for the arts, the fifth largest performing arts center in the us, which includes the antoinette hatfield hall, and that one houses the brunish, newmark and winningstad theaters, the arlene schnitzer concert hall, and the keller auditorium. Portland five centers for the arts brings over 1000 music, theater, dance, comedy, and lecture performances to Portland each year. And last year, as we're still recovering from the pandemic, these five venues brought more than 800,000 patrons to downtown portland's cultural district, and they generate an average of $60 million in regional spending each year. Portland parks and recreation space grant partners provide service to the community in a palmer park community center or art center. The fee for the space is waived or reduced, and programing is free and supported by partner. Because it fills a service gap and meets an identified community need. Children's levy grantee partners like self-enhancement, inc. And the native American youth and family center also provide space for programing and cultural gatherings at their facilities, and many of the office of arts and cultures grantees, such as alberta abbey and milagro provide space for the community and other arts organizations at their facilities. This photo here shows Portland tennis and education. It's a community based organization that provides after school programing, thanks in part to a grant from the Portland children's levy. The organization operates out of the st. Johns tennis and racket center, which is owned by partner. Finally, service contract partnerships fill service gaps and provide key supports to the community as well. A contract partnership is not a grant and the service provided is directed by the service area. So under a service contract partnership, the service area identifies the need for the service and pays the individual or partner organization to provide that service. This could look like anything from urban forestry outreach, contract partnerships that promote and help people register for free trees available through urban forestry's yard tree giveaway program, or a soccer camp contract focused on underserved and underrepresented youth in Portland, offered at no cost to participants in partnership with para sports program.
167 Next slide. Healthy ecosystems and climate change resilience are critical to the community. The vibrant community service area plays an important role in supporting climate change, resilience, clean air and water, reduced urban flooding and extreme heat mitigation. Through the trees and nature we manage and through our responsible environmental practices. Pact manages nearly 8000 acres of natural areas where they maintain and repair trails, eliminate invasive weeds and plant native species. And increasingly, we are concerned with wildfires and are working on risk mitigation, especially in forest park. Trees and shady Green spaces reduce the urban heat island effect, protect people from heat waves and reduce summer energy. Use water smart playgrounds and parks and natural areas. Absorb rainfall and reduce flooding. Next slide a strong and healthy tree canopy is critical to our ecosystem and building climate change resilience. While we aspire to equitable service, this map shows how portland's tree canopy coverage is inequitable. West of the Willamette river, portlanders enjoy 56% tree canopy east of the Willamette, where 80% of portlanders live. Tree canopy is 21%. Even if you don't include forest park west of the Willamette, tree canopy coverage is still 44%. In addition, tree canopy is assessed every five years, and Portland has a stated goal of 33.3% tree canopy coverage overall. In the most recent assessment, tree canopy has declined from 30.7% in 2015 to 29.8% in 2020. Next slide. As you can see from this map, Portland parks and recreation's tree planting programs are focused on east Portland. As previously mentioned, PCEF funding allows for additional tree planting and care for street trees and parks. Levy funding supports proactive park tree maintenance, tree planting programs and neighborhood tree giveaways. We're working to mitigate the disparities in tree canopy coverage and bolster tree canopy in east Portland. Now let's talk about how vibrant communities service area strives to provide accessible, safe, clean, well-maintained public spaces for the community. Portland parks and recreation manages and maintains an inventory of built assets worth an estimated $2.4 billion and, as I've already mentioned, also takes care of 8000 acres of natural areas and over 4 million trees in the city. When you consider asset inventory, it's important to consider the value of Green infrastructure. Natural areas are currently in the process of being assessed and inventoried using a new standardized methodology and pilot project. Portland parks and recreation has an ADA transition plan that has identified more than 17,000 barriers to accessibility throughout the parks system. These barriers are being remediated where possible through planned capital maintenance projects. In addition, the previous city council has allocated $1 million annually toward the ADA transition plan. At our current funding rate, however, it is projected to take decades to address identified ADA issues in the parks and recreation system. Highly skilled tradespersons in the professional repair and maintenance services workgroup include carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and painters who build, repair and maintain assets in park and park facilities. Our land stewardship crews not only take care of our natural areas, but also perform perform critical work, removing trash, cleaning restrooms, maintaining turf and irrigation systems, and managing 59 community gardens and more. And urban forestry provide citywide tree emergency response 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and has begun a park tree maintenance program thanks to parks levy funding and PCEF funding. An important element to ensuring all portlanders feel welcome in parks and recreation facilities is our park ranger program. Park rangers visit parks, recreation facilities and natural areas every day, both engaging with visitors and responding to calls for service at all park properties. Park rangers are not law enforcement officers, rather, they serve as goodwill ambassadors and provide a positive public safety presence. Park rangers help self solve park problems. They enforce city code and help ensure the protection of our natural and cultural resources. Every day, park rangers are providing a positive presence in parks and community centers and responding and resolving to park rule concerns. And while park rangers are trained and ready to provide first aid, including administering narcan to community members in need, park rangers are also one of the city's leading frontline providers of outreach for social service and shelter referrals. When necessary, our team works closely with partners to solve very complex problems in our parks. We work with city partners as well as the joint office of homeless services. Join Multnomah county animal control, Multnomah county river patrol, neighborhood groups and many others in creating safer parks. That being said, over 98% of all contacts and calls for service were resolved without needing a response by Portland police or Portland fire. In just 2% of cases, park rangers needed to escalate issues to other public safety agencies. Such calls usually involve weapons or criminal behavior.
168 Vibrant communities manages and maintains the infrastructure that supports mental, emotional, and physical wellness through public recreation assets. I want to give you just a sec to read this. Slide over and see all the ways that we support recreation for the community. Good. Next slide people. I know how fast people read, but the arts access fund, which is funded by the arts tax, supports arts and music education and k-5 schools and also supports supports local nonprofit organizations. In this current fiscal year, the arts access fund will support 100 k through five arts and music teachers and nearly 3.5 million to 80 arts organizations. The children's levy supports early childhood after school mentoring, child abuse prevention and intervention, foster care, and hunger relief programing that focused on prevention and improving mental health and physical wellness outcomes for children and families. In the current fiscal year, the levy will provide nearly 30 million to 86 programs and support approximately 700 positions at community based organizations that provide services to children and families. In addition, we offer a huge variety of fitness classes and important life saving swim lessons to nearly 11,000 unique individuals last fiscal year. We provide adaptive and inclusive recreation programs to support equitable access. The parks levy funded access pass program, which you've heard about in this presentation earlier, provided nearly 4.1 million of financial assistance to improve access to recreation programs. Parks and recreation services help people feel better. 93% of us adults responding to the June 2021 national recreation park association poll indicated their mental health was improved by services offered by local park agencies. I think many of us understood this during the COVID 19 pandemic when we used our parks, vibrant communities also helps portlanders access fresh produce and nutritious food in a variety of ways. Portland parks is free lunch and play program provides meals for children. Parks also supports access to nutritious foods through farmers markets and community gardens. They manage more than 60 community gardens throughout Portland that provide 2700 garden plots to the community. There's huge demand for these garden plots, and there's a waitlist for people trying to get one. The children's levy provides a range of hunger relief services such as school food pantries, home meal delivery for people who have barriers to accessing other food resources, and community garden access for immigrant and refugees. Children's levy hunger relief programs serve nearly 13,000 children annually. Vibrant community supports learning, play, and discovery through programs that serve portlanders of all ages. You can see on this slide that we support children through older adults with a variety of programs. As adina mentioned earlier, we're thrilled to share that Portland parks preschool has recently been allocated 150 for preschool for all slots at nine community centers for the 2526 school year. We're excited to partner with Multnomah county to give three and four year olds access to free, inclusive, culturally responsive preschool experiences, land stewardship. Environmental education programing provides access to nature for city kids and serves as a gateway to teen nature team and the youth conservation crew, a paid summer experience that exposes young portlanders to environmental stewardship, team building, and work skills like trail building, ecological restoration, and tree care.
169 Vibrant community supports a thriving local economy where people want to live, work, play and visit. The service area is critical to quality of life for portlanders. From past surveys of portlanders, we know that parks and access to nature is the number one thing that people like about living in Portland, and a newly released 2024 engagement with parks report from the national recreation and park association found that 86% of u.s. Adults seek high quality parks and recreation when choosing a place to live. Vibrant community supports local, regional and national visitation through sports, events and tournaments. Arts and culture events. Events at waterfront park, family destinations and the Portland international raceway. Events and tourism have a big impact for portland's economy. Travel Portland statistics found that in 2021, the Portland region welcomed 11.3 million overnight trips, with those visits resulting in $3.8 billion in direct spending, an $88 million in local tax revenue, and that the travel industry supports 27,130 jobs in the Portland area. Annual events like the Portland rose festival and the blues festival draw hundreds of thousands of visitors. A sport Oregon report to council noted that a nascar event hosted at Portland international raceway in June 2022 produced upwards of $8 million in direct economic impact for our region and the 2023 arts and economic prosperity six study found that nonprofit arts and culture audiences spend an average of $36.45 per person per event in Portland, not including the price of admission. Vibrant community service area has a large, diverse, skilled workforce and is providing jobs for the skilled workforce of the future by employing youth, offering training and apprenticeship programs and artist residency programs. In the fiscal year 20 2425 adopted budget, the service area had 852 fte, and in summer 2024 the service. The service area had 2068 casual seasonal staff, which is the peak time for the staffing category, which you've heard a little bit about already. And as mentioned previously, our service area is one of the largest youth employers in Oregon, and we also offer professional development opportunities through training and apprenticeship programs and our artist residency program. Now I get to introduce two more community partners. Oscar arana, chief executive director of native American youth and family center, and peter kondra, board co-chair of Green lens. I believe oscar is joining us on zoom, so we'll have him speak first. I see him.
170 Good morning everyone. Happy 2025. I really appreciate being invited to speak with you this morning. I wish I could be there in person, but fortunately my schedule doesn't allow it. My name is oscar arana. He him pronouns I'm indigenous chichimeca from central mexico. I have the incredible honor of serving as nils chief executive officer. And this is where I've been fortunate enough to work for more than 15 years in various leadership roles. And before being the ceo, I was the community development director here for more than six years. I'll start by saying congratulations to the new city council. Council president pirtle-guiney and mayor wilson. I look forward to collaborating with you and finding solutions to better serve portland's native community. You're all invited and encouraged to visit nea's incredible community center, located in our ten acre campus in portland's cully neighborhood. The native American youth and family center's mission is to enhance the diverse strengths of our youth and families in partnership with the community through cultural identity and education. Nate has been serving the urban native community for more than 50 years. We have more than 160 employees, a $20 million annual operating budget, and we serve thousands of community members, from infants to elders, each year through our wraparound service model. A few examples of our diverse services include operating an alternative high school that many nations academy housing supports to houseless families, developing affordable housing, providing community wealth building and economic development programs, community engagement, leadership development and advocacy programs, and of course, the important services funded by the Portland children's levy. For more than a decade, nia has been funded by pcl to provide services in five areas. They include after school programing, mentoring, supports, foster care services, child abuse prevention, intervention and early childhood programing. Last fiscal year, nia served more than 1300 unduplicated clients through all our pcl funded programs. Our after school programing includes one on one and small group tutoring, supports cultural programing, spring and summer break camps, recreational programing like basketball, volleyball and indigenous games. Our mentoring program focuses on post-secondary educational supports like college nights, ninth grade counts, programing, one on one mentoring, access to workshops, college and career visits, fafsa workshops, applying to scholarships, visiting college campuses, identifying internships and summer jobs through our foster care program, our advocates provide one on one support to youth and their families and guardians. The program hosts monthly sibling and family night to provide positive and cultural environments for youth and foster care, to visit with siblings and other family members. Our child abuse prevention intervention program supports families with dhs involvement through parenting group sessions and home visitations, and our early childhood program focuses on ensuring positive parent child interaction, improving parenting practices, and increasing children's school readiness and success. Our staff offer support and encouragement through personal visits, play group resource connections, and developmental screenings. Overall, a primary focus and outcome across all our pcl programs is improving program participants connection to culture, cultural identity, and increasing cultural knowledge. And nia, we believe that a stronger connection to cultural identity and having cultural pride improves our clients ability to succeed in life and become self-determined. Most pcl programing occurs at nia, which is why I really hope you get the opportunity to come visit us so you can feel the energy in our building when our programing is happening. I also want to take this opportunity to just at least briefly highlight that. We also have partnerships with the Portland parks and recreation department through our summer free for all events, our recreational programing and many other initiatives. And we also partner with the city's arts and culture office through our indigenous public arts program. Just last month, we unveiled a beautiful theresa white bronze sculpture called ravens welcome on northeast 42nd avenue and going. And we have two more indigenous public arts projects that will be installed later this year. So thanks again for your time and the opportunity to share a little bit about nia's work and our connection to this portfolio. And I look forward to working with all of you. Thank you.
171 Good morning, madam president and city council. My name is peter kandra, and I'm here to talk about kind of my personal journey working with city programs as much as I am to talk about Green lens, I wear a lot of hats in the conservation and community engagement space in Portland. I am employed as engagement manager at columbia land trust. I am a volunteer co-chair of the board at Green lens, and I'm also a graduate of urban forestry's neighborhood, street. Neighborhood tree steward program. And this all started for me during the pandemic. Like a lot of folks, I found a lot of hope and solace in creating backyard habitat in my own garden. And as I quickly ran out of room there, I was excited to find that there were opportunities to do this all throughout the city, through restoration events and through volunteer tree planting activities. So among the many things I dove into was urban forestry, neighborhood tree steward program, and that educated participants on all things related to urban forestry and encourage them to go out and find projects to support. So with the contacts I made at the city and that encouragement, I felt empowered to pursue an idea that I had for my neighborhood. So over two years following that, I worked closely with PBOT and with urban forestry on various project proposals. And last fall we broke ground on the project, which was the installation of a 3000 square foot pollinator garden and the addition of nine street trees to a blank traffic median. A large traffic median in the powell hearst gilbert neighborhood. It's located on powell court in hundred and 116th avenue. And it it worked out really well. A lot of neighbors came out there was buy in from them. And most importantly, the neighbors adjacent to the project had buy in and were signing up to become long term stewards of the of the garden. And I can't emphasize enough how with any community projects and city projects with canopy and gardens, that that maintenance component is paramount. So really pleased with the support I had from urban forestry and from PBOT. And I want to, you know, personally call out some folks, daniel moya at urban forestry, Eric rosewall at Portland parks and rec and izzy armenta at PBOT. All were really instrumental. And I also want to thank our our new district one councilors for going to bat for our east Portland. Thank you so much. I'll say a few things about Green lens real quick. We operate a community tool library in downtown Lents where people come for cost saving resources. They come to borrow tools, and it's a hub stocked with city pamphlets resources. We were a contractor for urban forestry's yard tree giveaway campaign this summer, and it got a lot of traction in our community, so we look forward to working with you more. We see ourselves almost as a proxy for city resources, and we appreciate you counting on us to do good work in our community. So thank you.
172 Thank you for being here with us.
173 Yes, thank you both. We are at the end of that section so we can pause. I also see what time it is we have. I think three slides here and then we're done.
174 Okay.
175 Key issues. There's a theme and some of this is citywide. Some of it is unique to our service area. For a long time portlanders have wanted a higher level of service in all of these areas than can realistically be supported by just the general fund. For that reason, voter approved ballot measures provide critical funding to all parts of this service area. And as you heard and we discussed, like the rest of the city, there are significant capital maintenance backlogs both in Portland parks and recreation and within the office of arts and culture portfolio. And there is dramatically insufficient funding to address them. Next slide. Nicola, late last night you heard about the third year of the parks operating levy. Levy funds are extremely high impact. They've been essential to maintaining and expanding programs and services to the level expected by community and directed by council. The levy on the books now expires in June 2026. Because costs are increasing faster than property tax revenues and general fund resources, the subsequent levy would need to be at a higher rate than the current levy. To preserve the same service levels. You can see here the subbullets. The impact of different levy scenarios. The slide also mentions capital. You've heard the number 600 million many times, and you've heard that we're funded specifically for that purpose at about $5 million a year. In 2014. I may be on the next slide. Nicola, no, stay here a moment. In 2014, city council asked Portland voters for additional investment in the parks system, which they approved, passing a bond that funded citywide capital renovations and upgrades. That was a $68 million bond, and it has been successfully and fully spent. We are not keeping up with capital maintenance. And you heard also earlier that has resulted in will continue to result in failing and closed assets, which means it doesn't. That doesn't matter by itself. What it means is reduced community access to those spaces. And that really matters. The projection our asset management folks have done is that 1 in 5 park assets will close or fail in the next 15 years. On the trajectory that we're on. And the last thing I'll say on this slide is related to the Americans with disabilities act. The parks bureau has an ADA transition plan that is guiding work to become fully compliant with that act, and has identified more than 17,000 barriers to accessibility across the system. These are being remediated where possible through capital maintenance projects and through an annual allocation of $1 million that council has approved and directed. I think I'm right that the pace of work has us completing remediation in the to 20, 2085. Yeah. Next slide in the office of arts and culture charities managing, as was mentioned, reduced impact of the arts tax. It's $35. It's not indexed. It doesn't inflate and its buying power is decreasing. There is a deferred maintenance story with our p5 centers for the arts that you probably know at least a little bit about, and that we'll be talking more about through this year and the public art program, which is otherwise very well regarded nationally, also does not have maintenance funds for most city owned pieces. Lastly, the Portland children's levy faces revenue decreases the same property tax dynamic that is causing the parks levy forecast to be revised downward and revenue to decline is causing the same with the children's levy, which means reduced investment in community partners and community outcomes. Community health. Last slide. The work ahead. Here are key items that you'll see from this service area in 2025. I believe this is a collection of items you will see as a legislative body. This does not include or contemplate all of the things you might want to talk about in committees. The children's levy will be bringing you its next major slate of grants to approve in the spring. I'm just I'm just ticking down the list. You have, as you know, a decision point about a ballot referral to sustain a parks operations and programing with levy funds. The urban forest plan you may not know about, but I think you'll be happy to hear the urban forestry team is working on the first vision goal setting document since 2007, and that that plan is going to inform a very big look at the city's tree code, which will lead to updates you can expect to see probably next calendar year. Sdc is right there in the middle every ten years. State statute requires us to revisit the methodology that drives those charges. So we're doing that, and we'll potentially probably be back to you with changes this year. The arts and culture action plan was mentioned. This is step two. Having now passed the regional framework for arts and culture in our metro area, our our creative future, participating jurisdictions are building action plans specific to their work. So we're doing that for Portland. And we'll be back to you with recommendations to align investments around the goals there. We will have a new arts access fund oversight committee member coming your way, and we have an annual report sharing impact and outcomes that you'll see as well. And finally, in 2025, we may renegotiate igas with school districts receiving arts tax funding in with the goal of improving transparency, making reporting more consistent, helping people more easily understand the impact of those investments. They may also include code updates depending on what the updates are. Last slide. The vision of the vibrant community service area is to support a thriving local economy where art is central to public life. Children are successful inside and outside of classrooms, and the parks and recreation system delivers high quality experiences that inspire people to live and work and play. Here on the community impact side, you've heard and hopefully felt that this collection of services and programs is delivering for portlanders. And on the management side, I'm very proud of how this team has embraced the service area model and the vibrant communities vision to build management structure, business processes and shared guiding principles to deliver that community impact collectively, effectively and efficiently. And that's the end. Thank you for your time and engagement.
176 Thank you all for your time and your overview and answering a whole lot of questions. Previously. We have four minutes left scheduled. I am going to ask councilors if you're in the queue to ask your questions. If they are short answers, let's get the answers and if they are longer answers, if you can get those answers to us in writing, we'll make sure that everybody on the council gets those. That would be great. Councilor Kanal.
177 Yeah. Thank you. I just want to ask a question about park rangers, and then I'll just drop three for future reference. So when people describe what they want a safety response to be like an ideal response, what they're describing is almost invariably a parks ranger. And so I want to first shout that out and talk about that, that connection there. You have way more than 45 parks. You have 45 park rangers. How can that possibly be enough? And can you prepare for future consideration and idea of your staffing model and how you assign and place folks is my first question. And the primary one around parks rangers, which I hope to have in committee, and then I can just drop the other three. Is that the most efficient way to do it?
178 That'd be great. Yes.
179 Okay, so I had these are unrelated to that. I had some folks who asked if we could add, because we cost recovery for recreation programs, if we could have above cost recovery pricing for additional swim classes so that people who have the money but don't want to drive to Vancouver could pay extra to help bolster the capacity of the overall system just for those extra class spots, while retaining existing spots in the way they already are. There's been a back and forth about whether or not we should have community centers also be emergency shelters. And if you could follow up with us on the debate over that and how the costing structure and if we're reimbursed, if parks is reimbursed for that, and then why the decision was made to close columbia pool instead of convert it to seasonal usage. If the issue was with the building, which I know my district colleagues and I have all raised at various times, thank you.
180 There's a quick answer on park rangers. Let's take that and we'd love to see the other answers in writing.
181 Hi. Go ahead.
182 Yeah, definitely.
183 Please introduce yourself for us.
184 I beg, I beg your pardon. Good afternoon, madam councilor. City councilors vicente harrison, health safety emergency manager overseeing safety and security for vibrant community service area. We probably provide a lot more detailed answer in writing, but in short, the ranger program has worked very hard since 2019 to be more efficient in the services that we provide. I know councilor Dunphy's answer in terms of or question in terms of, you know, making sure the ranger program aligns with the districts that are now established. And I'd like to say we're very close to that now. We'll go back and reassess. Right now, we're aligned with the police precincts as well as our land stewardship divisions to be as efficient in that model. So, in short, the program is continuing to assess how we can be as efficient with the resources that we have now. And we're working with our leadership on what that may look like as we build out portland's future in terms of service in our parks and safety and security. So I'll leave it there and then we'll provide the rest in writing.
185 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman.
186 Thanks. I probably should not have given up my time earlier. So let's buckle up. So I just a huge thanks to the community members who showed up. I really appreciate those partnerships that are out there, especially the swimming programs, those youth programs. I think you'll hear that as a theme for me is that when I think about the core services in this area, it is children, children's access to recreation, family, usable family, parks and then enabling those neighborhood type programs where where people can do things on a very hyper local level. I, I do have a lot of concerns in the park bureau. I have a lot of concerns with the public's interactions with the park bureau. Outside of some of those areas. I think that we have not got a great reputation right now, particularly in my district, in areas that that I think while we can do great stuff in one hand, when we fail in others, that it has a way of creating a reputation. And so that's where some of my concern comes from, seeing as I do consider parks and recreation a core service of the community, it's not one that I'm willing to give up a bad reputation on, but I'm pretty disappointed in the question and answer as it related to the tree permitting the tree safety. You know, it was said we ensure the safety of the trees. And I guess I my question would be is where do we ensure the safety of those people and homes? And I can recognize whether it's a micro of 1% when you have 1,000 pound tree land on your house, it's a pretty darn big deal. And so I, I want to give credit that we're moving in maybe the correct direction, but I don't feel that that happened organically within the bureau. I feel like we got dragged there by the media and by the public and by the politics or the political leadership. And so that's tough for me. I think that that kind of ownership down in the bureau level would be more welcomed. Right. It's been a couple of years since I was in city hall, but I know that when I was in city hall, it was tough to work with parks as another bureau. And that was sometimes related to the canopy program, the tree program, and where other bureaus seem to be rallying around. We have to do some recovery in downtown parks was the hardest to work with, and I remember in particular, shortly after commissioner at the time Ryan took over the bureau of having such a disappointing meeting, talking about some of the safety in the parks and the park ranger program and what the interactions were, that we actually had to kind of end the meeting because there were just some some really out of out of, I'll say, common sense approaches that were happening. And it was it allowed. You know, I think that over the last couple of years, commissioner Ryan's team did a great job of getting things to be more responsive to the public. I worry without that political leadership that there won't be a pressure within parks to keep us hyper reactive and hyper focused on meeting the needs of everyday portlanders, and so on the one hand, I'm looking forward to the to the service area having that pressure. On the other, I worry about backsliding into an area that is a little insular. I'm aware that as a person who pushed heavily and essentially, I think, whispered the first killings of the idea that we were just going to turn o'bryant square into another grassy knoll, that parks was very upset by that, that it took commissioner Ryan's involvement to bring it up and actually meet the community's needs to expand and go into the darcelle plaza mindset. And I think that's been a great trend pivot. But I will I will say it was another example where the neighborhood around started losing faith. And we talked a lot about partners today who help. But for a few years there were there were not many groups who were calling parks a partner in in the central city. And that's where my worry is at, because I do think we have it's a sacred relationship. The parks relationship in their city is sacred. And so I'm very focused on that. I will welcome hearing over. It's been two years since I've been here, and I recognize that change happens and new, new managers come in. I want to support that change and that work happening. But I have some scar tissue and I hope that I can be a great advocate, but I need to be convinced that we're that we are moving in the right direction from the right perspective. I last year I raised concern when I was at Sellwood pool on labor day weekend, and it was 95 to 100 degrees, and I asked, why is this pool not open? And the answer was, that's what we've always done. We always close on labor day. To me, that shows a lack of ownership at the lowest level to make the right decision, and that worries me. It kind of goes along with the middle management conversation that happened earlier with another councilors questions. And that kind of ownership for me is what I very much value. It is the perspective that I think makes parks valuable and meet the public's needs. The southwest west trails organization is asking for 20,000 bucks to update signs that are unreadable today, and they have received pushback after pushback after pushback. And I feel like these are small fixes that actually satisfy so many itches. And I don't know that the perspective to meet those needs is there. So I say that to be transparent and I have been in government long enough. I'm not real interested in taking a briefing and being hyper complimentary, but not airing where my concerns are at because as I mentioned, this is a core service that we're going to go back to voters to ask to keep this core service alive. If not well, to keep it alive. We're going to ask them to spend twice as much to do nothing new. Right? These are huge, challenging asks. And so reputation is going to matter in this. And so, sonia, I'm going to look to you for kind of how we can continue this dialog and kind of hear me what I'm saying, that this critique is from a deep position of trying to preserve a good relationship for our for our public. But I'm not starting fresh. I'm starting from a position of a little bit of scar tissue. So I'll end it there. Thank you.
187 Can I say briefly I appreciate what you just said. I appreciate that you said it. I appreciate that you said it clearly. Much of what you reference and describe as your goals. I completely agree with these events in particulars are familiar to me. I look forward to talking more and getting where you want to go.
188 We did lose a couple of people to other meetings at noon. I think we lose a few more at 1215, so let's take these last two and then let our guests head back to across the street. Councilor Green.
189 Thank you. Sonia, this question is for you. Do do you have the authority to regulate the type of fuel that is used at Portland international raceway?
190 Good question. I think the answer is yes. And you're right on time. We have a meeting at 4:00 today with representative nelson, my representative, to talk about this, and we are looking forward to progress toward a lead free pier.
191 That's a great, very efficient.
192 Councilor. Novick.
193 I just wanted to say how much I appreciated your explaining the implications of the $600 million backlog and saying that that means that by I forget what year it said, we'd expect to close one out of five parks assets, that makes it very real. I'm actually going to ask PBOT if they can answer a similar question. How many of our streets will have reverted to gravel by 2040 if we don't get back into the mud?
194 Remember that.
195 I will hold my many comments for further discussions with you all, but thank you for being here today. Thank you for running over with us a little bit. We appreciate the deep dive into the work that you're all doing. It really is fundamental to our city, to how our how people in Portland experience our city and to how we build our future.
196 So thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.
197 Thank you all. Thank you thank you.
198 Close our work session and councilors. We'll be back here this afternoon for a land use council meeting.
199 Lisa finally meeting. Yeah, yeah.
200 Everybody awake? I was so drunk. Help!
201 Safety! Emergency management engineering program is in my