The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-09-08
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (16,920 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Transportation and Infrastructure Committee met on Monday, September 8, 2025, with three committee members present via roll call, plus staff and public attendees. The session opened with a statement of conduct and covered two agenda items. The first was a presentation on National Preparedness Month, featuring the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management and Public Works Service Area bureaus (Water, Environmental Services, Transportation, and Parks), describing programs such as Neighborhood Emergency Teams (NET), the BEACON communications program, CERT training, community organizations active in disaster (COAD), infrastructure resilience investments, and continuity-of-operations planning; figures on volunteer numbers, training hours, funding, and program costs were stated inconsistently at points. Committee questions addressed volunteer expansion, homeless population preparedness, translation needs, and intergenerational programming. The second item covered PBOT's small traffic safety improvement projects, including the 311 intake process, traffic investigations, and the Quick Build program, followed by testimony from community members, school representatives, OHSU, and neighborhood associations advocating for the "Reimagining South Sheridan Street" safety plan. A video was also shown describing a stop-sign installation near Duniway School tied to council office funding. Votes, if any occurred, are not detailed here; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned with the next session scheduled for September 22.
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 Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call the meeting of the transportation and infrastructure committee to order. It's Monday, September 8th at nine 9:30 a.m. Diego, can you please call the roll?
1 Good morning. Koyama Lane.
2 Here.
3 Morillo Green Smith here. Clark here.
4 And claire. Can you please read the statement of conduct?
5 Good morning, and welcome to the meeting of the transportation and infrastructure committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland.gov/council agenda slash transportation and infrastructure committee. Or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
6 Thank you claire. It's quite a turnout today. I'm really happy to see everyone here. I want to apologize, though, that we have three members today. One of our committee members is in vienna. The other committee member is on a joint policy advisory committee on transportation trip to dc. So I hope there's lots of people watching at home, because the information that we're going to hear today is really vital to everyone in Portland. And we have two items on the agenda today. The first is going to have a presentation on what I like to call emergency or disaster preparedness month from the bureau of emergency management and our public works service area. And thank you for all coming to the table. And then we're going to hear from PBOT and then from community members who've championed small but very critical traffic safety improvements in their neighborhoods or near schools. So, diego, can you read the first item, please?
7 Item one preparedness month.
8 As I was saying, I think this is a very, very important topic, particularly what's going on at the federal level with potential cuts in FEMA. And every time I'm with people in the community, I take the opportunity to talk about how important it is to know your neighbors, to get involved and to potentially be on an entity. I can't tell you how many events I've been to in the community, where nets have had a booth, have shown up, have been talking to the public about how important it is to be prepared. So September is actually the national preparedness month. And so why don't we kick it off with dca bob cozzie. Welcome all of you.
9 Thank you. Good morning, chair Clark and committee members. It's a pleasure to be here today. I'm bob cozzie interim dca for public safety. Now September is national preparedness month in the city of Portland. Our preparedness work looks a bit different than in other parts of the country. Thankfully, we're not faced with some of the types of disasters that devastate communities in other states, but we take seriously the unique risks that we do face here, such as severe earthquake and with climate change, more extreme weather. When we prepare for a major earthquake, we are also preparing for many, many other events. Our city works together to prepare, plan, drill and respond to emergencies. As you will soon hear about, the Portland bureau of emergency management is here to share their mission, strategic goals and recent activations, which can only be accomplished through a partnership with every service area and the commitment of all of our elected leaders, we're pleased to be joined by the public works service area, because preparedness can only be achieved when our missions are aligned to serve our community. And thank you. And now I'll introduce richard narwal, city of portland's chief resilience officer.
10 Thank you, director cozzie. Good morning everyone. My name is richard narwal. As dca said, I'm chief resilience officer for Portland bureau of emergency management, and I oversee community preparedness program and planning functions for the bureau. Next slide please. So what you see in front. Sorry for it being super texty, but what you see in front of our are broad definitions of what emergency management and resilience is. I think it's important for us to define it for this context because as you hear more from our community preparedness team and also public work bureaus, that will set some some ground for what what's what we're about to share. So emergency management is the leadership and enterprise function of an organization for organizing a whole community framework of complex system and multidisciplinary personnel to reduce all hazard risk and increase resilience. So when I say all hazard, this includes and hazard ranging from cascadia subduction zone earthquake to cyber attacks. So from manmade nature caused natural hazards. Everything. So that's what Portland bureau emergency management is responsible for, to prepare the city for those for those hazards. Now, resilience is the practice of strengthening our community's ability to effectively recover from disruptions through preparedness, adaptation and mitigation of risk. So that's how a large city's resiliency programs are set up in these four buckets that you three buckets that you see in front of you, that's preparedness preparedness actions. There's adaptation actions for for the hazards that I just mentioned and mitigation. Now a big term here is whole community resilience is the I'm sorry everyone in Portland when I say whole community, everyone in Portland, residents, businesses, governments and organization has a role in resilience. And that's what we call whole community. This is why pbem either has an established program already that you'll hear, hear about in in a few short minutes, or it's working towards establishing a program to support preparedness in those for those community members. Now, if you go to the next slide. Now, this slide is important because I wanted to highlight that Portland bureau of emergency management has several key programs that covers what I just shared in terms of emergency management and resilience. So we have eight different program areas that cover from our on field support services. Right now, we're not there yet 100% with our on site support, but we have 24 over seven monitoring program. That's called our duty officer program to community preparedness, mitigation, emergency response planning and training and exercise. So these are eight different programs that our bureau have different work areas that we are responsible for. And today we'll only be looking into one of these areas. That's community preparedness. And with that I'll pass it to our community preparedness program manager, mr. Jeremy vancuren, to talk about that.
11 Thanks, richard. Hello. My name is jeremy vancuren. I'm the community preparedness manager for the Portland bureau of emergency management, and I joined pbem in September of 2012. I'll open up my part to talk about the pocket prep handouts that were distributed to you. These are what we hand out in community presentations to help portlanders prepare for disaster, particularly subduction zone, cascadia subduction zone earthquake. And I'll talk about the if you want to unfold that show everyone, I'll talk about the the beacon map later in the presentation. And on the other side, you're going to find information about what goes into or what we recommend that you include into a disaster preparedness kit. It also provides information about the two bucket system we recommend for sanitation, and how much water you do well to keep stored. Once upon a time, pbem had about a dozen different pamphlets that we would give out that didn't make a whole lot of sense, so we put them all into a single handout that folds down to the size of a credit card. So Portland emergency management is preparing for what will probably be one of the worst days of our collective lives a cascadia subduction zone megathrust earthquake. Community preparedness programing is one of the ways that pbem is getting ready. A little background according to a 2018 analysis by oregon's department of geology and mineral industries, that quake will cause between 12 and 18% building loss, thousands of casualties and tens of thousands of displaced persons. And just like that, now you know why we emergency managers never get invited to parties where we come up short on social niceties, we make up for in community engagement programing. These are the five major programs that I will introduce today. But first, I wanted to point up a statistic from craig fugate, who ran FEMA from 2009 to 2017, in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic disaster, 90 to 95% of all the people who are rescued are rescued by their neighbor, not a professional first responder that tracks with an important analog to what we found. For example, in the 1985 mexico city earthquake, data is spotty. But we do know this in the aftermath of the quake, hundreds of everyday people took spontaneous action and saved the lives of many thousands of their neighbors. We also know that many of those spontaneous volunteers were injured or even lost their lives in rescue attempts. Oops! The los angeles city fire department took note of what happened in mexico city and the need to train civilians in basic disaster response skills. They created the community emergency response team curriculum in 1985, called cert for short. Fema adopted cert programing in 1993 and promoted its use nationwide. Fema estimates there are now 2700 cert programs in the country and the Portland neighborhood emergency team program, which is called net for short or net, is one of those cert programs. In fact, Portland net is one of the most venerable cert programs. Net got its start when a Portland fire and rescue community services coordinator named rachel jackie launched the first Portland net basic class in 1994, over 100 portlanders signed up for rachel's first class. The purpose of basic cert training curriculum, which net uses is to prepare everyday people to both safely and effectively render aid in the aftermath of a catastrophic disaster. Trainees learn skills such as search and rescue, basic medical response, utility shut off, small fire suppression, and more to be ready to help their families and their neighborhoods. A basic net class runs for a total of 28 training hours. The graph you're seeing now illustrates the number of net volunteers we've graduated over our 30 plus years since rachel's first class. I want to acknowledge my colleague glenn devitt with pbem, who has done a lot to step up basic net classes. The spike in graduates on the right side of the graph has a lot to do with his work. Until COVID effectively shut down our classes for a little while, we've trained 4593 volunteers and 96 basic classes by 19 since 1994. Right now, there are 1325 active net volunteers, and they are your neighbors. By comparison, new york city, a city that is 13 times the size of Portland, recently boasted about having 700 active volunteers. We also have to have a waitlist of over 2700 people waiting to take the net, training folks who graduate from basic net join their local team. As the animation demonstrates, we've grown the reach of net teams over Portland, and 85% of portlanders have a nearby net ready to help after a disaster. The gray areas on the map are the only neighborhoods without an active net presence right now. Portland net began with the prospect of a cascadia subduction zone earthquake, but net has always taken an all hazards approach to resilience. Nets deployed to one of the most significant disasters in our history, the 1996 Willamette valley flood. This newspaper clipping is an Oregonian story about nets helping to build mayor vera katz's sandbag wall and going help, going to businesses door to door to offer help. As climate change has transformed portland's disaster risk profile, our community resilience ecosystem has also changed so that nets are deploying to help their communities during extreme weather events. Nets maintained perimeters around downed power lines when storms knocked them down. Doing that frees up firefighters to take higher priority calls. They also volunteer at emergency cooling and warming centers for homeless persons, and they assist with the county for the logistics of standing up homeless shelters before and during the rainy season, they start neighborhood campaigns to clear storm drains and to prevent pooling on streets. The recent hot weather event is probably top of mind for many of us, and nets deployed during that event as well. These are just a few examples. Even though we haven't seen an earthquake yet in our recent history, nets have been very busy the past five years supporting pbem and Portland fire and rescue. We averaged 30 deployments a year, putting in about 1600 response hours annually. Looking at the graph, those averages factor out the great outlier that was COVID 19, probably the most impactful disaster in portland's history. From March 2020 until the end of 2021, nets logged over 20,000 volunteer hours supporting their communities, to name just a few of the ways nets served. They took administrative roles in the emergency operations center and even cooked for response. Staff handed out COVID information posters along routes, prepared shipments of sanitizer and other critical supplies for distributing in the community, assisted in COVID clinics, and helped arrange vaccination appointments for older adults and persons with disabilities. One of our net volunteers, amanda westervelt, was nationally recognized for her work organizing other volunteers to sew together COVID masks, about 20,000 of them. She was awarded the 2021 national cert volunteer of the year award. That's a big deal because FEMA estimates there are approximately 600,000 cert volunteers in the country, and her peers recognized her as first among them. And update on amanda. She's now an employee at pbem. Couldn't let her get away. Part of why nets were effective during the COVID response is because pbem worked to increase the number of active volunteers, as you saw earlier, but to be ready and effective responders in disasters, pbem also invests a lot of time in advanced training classes and diversifying volunteer skill sets that build from the basic curriculum. Advanced training topics have led to us developing special volunteer units with advanced skill sets. So for example, we have hundreds of amateur radio operators. We have a growing group of disaster medics and a group of volunteers who specialize in mental health response. Collectively, net volunteers put in about 8000 hours a year in advanced training. I'd like to break here for a moment and turn it over to brenda newton to talk about her experiences as a net team leader. Brenda.
12 Good morning. My name is brenda newton and I have been an active net since 2018. I think most net members have a moment when emergency preparedness moves from well, that's something I should think about pretty soon to. That's something I need to take care of now. For example, many people were inspired to join net by the 2020 new yorker article the really big one, about the effects of a cascadia subduction zone earthquake on the pacific northwest. My personal call to action was a red cross presentation where I learned that following a cascadia subduction zone earthquake, they anticipated it would be at least two weeks before they would be able to establish relief efforts in the Portland area, and that because of the anticipated extensive damage along the I-5 corridor, their staging area would be all the way over in redmond. Most disasters, tornadoes, floods, etc. Have a relatively limited geographical scope and rescuers arrive within the first day or two. Surviving 2 or 3 days on your own is one thing. Surviving two weeks or more is something else entirely, and it became clear to me that I needed to get serious about emergency preparation. I joined net, went through basic and advanced trainings, participated in meetings, deployment exercises, and neighborhood outreach events. Two years ago, I was elected collins net team leader. As a team, we focused not only on our own preparation, but also on helping our neighbors prepare. The net team is a neighborhood resource to help our neighbors learn to help themselves. For example, last June, collins view net hosted a neighborhood fire extinguisher education event. Two pbem trained volunteers brought a fire pan and extinguishers and trained us to use a fire extinguisher to best effect. Northwest fire, inc. Sent a van with employees who volunteered their time to inspect home fire extinguishers and offer replacements for sale if needed. There were tables with information about post-disaster hygiene techniques, also known as poo and pee buckets, information about how to use radios in an emergency, and about wildfire risk reduction for your home through the firewise program, and the neighborhood kids organized a lemonade stand for thirsty participants. Other neighborhood activity has included cpr classes, national night out participation, establishing medical supply caches throughout the neighborhood, outreach to encourage purchase of water barrels, and block parties focused on emergency preparation. Our most recent project was buying a utility trailer to store our equipment. Previously, team equipment was distributed at various members homes, leaving us reliant on those individuals being available in order to access our supplies. We were looking for a more central storage system that would be available to the team at large. This project quickly grew beyond just the collins view team. Kent snyder, part of the collins view neighborhood association and also board vice president for the district four coalition, encouraged us to apply for a district four coalition. Small community grant, community small grant, and we were thrilled to receive funding for the trailer purchase and for creating a parking pad for its home. A neighbor donated the use of part of his vacant lot for offstreet storage. Team members from our sister teams of riverdale, marshall park, far west side and west Portland park came to help with construction. A non net neighborhood arborist volunteered to trim some low hanging branches over the site. My husband not yet a net, but I'm working on it. Worked with us through the weekend and even a team member's friend in from out of town ended up building a gate and helping us lay pavers. It was a true community effort to create a resource for our team and for our neighborhood. We deployed the first trailer, the trailer for the first time at the citywide deployment exercise this past may, and it was a resounding success. You can see it in the background there it. When the cascadia subduction zone earthquake hits, there will be little that I can do about whether FEMA is still viable, whether the interstate bridge collapses, or how much fuel escapes from the critical energy infrastructure hub into the Willamette. What I can do is use my net training to help my team be ready to carry out search and rescue operations, and to help my neighborhood be ready to survive two or more weeks on our own. I'm honored to be part of net, a program that punches way above its weight in community impact. We are neighbors, helping neighbors to make our neighborhoods stronger together. Thank you.
13 Thank you brenda. Something else we know about disasters is that communities underserved by government are the communities most impacted by a disaster. Persons with disabilities, communities of color, or communities where english is not spoken as the first language, for example. So as we cultivate a community resilience ecosystem, it is crucial that all communities are included. On March 12th of 2018, there was a major industrial fire in the cully neighborhood, with 55 families evacuated. There were approximately 35 children and five elders among the evacuees. Most of them were native spanish speakers. The five alarm blaze sent toxic smoke billowing across cully. It took 30 fire engines and 170 firefighters, which is a quarter of the city's force to put that blaze out. It was a serious health and safety hazard that sickened many children, terrified a lot of people and killed a few pets. We later learned that the language barrier between some responders and residents led to delays in evacuation. In a follow up community meeting in may that year, one of the things pbem committed to is building a spanish speaking net program. That program today is called unidos, and it's the only spanish speaking program in Oregon. And it's also one of our most active teams. And it is led by marisol peralta lozano with our staff at pbem. Net volunteers also volunteer for the beacon program. Beacon stands for basic earthquake emergency communications nodes. You have a map of the beacons in your pocket, perhaps, and this is the only program we have that is dedicated exclusively to earthquake response. The program was started in 2012 by then mayor sam adams, and today we've grown it to include 416 volunteers. Those 416 volunteers manage 50 radio communication. I'm sorry. Radio communication caches spread throughout Portland and another 30 radio sets staged at every Portland fire station in the aftermath of an earthquake, when usual communication systems like cell phones no longer function, these volunteers will be able to activate neighborhood level communication hubs and talk with us at the emergency operations center. Beacon is also a great way to get neighbors involved, because I can train a beacon volunteer in an hour and a half. That's a much lower commitment than 28 hours of net training, which some folks simply don't have time to complete. This is important to note because we still need more. We still need another 270 beacon volunteers at a minimum to get the system. I would say completely ready. Now moving away from Portland net and beacon and into some of our newer programs. Let me introduce the speakers bureau. This is a group of volunteers who serve as community ambassadors. They promote disaster preparedness and resilience in their communities and get their neighbors involved. For example, in 2024, net volunteers logged a little over 5700 hours participating in community outreach. That's nearly the equivalent to adding three full time outreach and engagement staff to our bureau. Next, I'd like to talk about pbms, community organizations active in disaster program or code for short. A code is a network of about 80 community and faith based organizations that have a role in disaster preparedness, response, or recovery codes are common throughout the country, but we didn't begin planning ours until 2019. That turned out to be just in time for COVID. The photo you see here was taken in a supplies distribution event in 2020. Coed partners were critical to helping us distribute supplies and ppe, personal protective equipment and all of portland's communities, as well as keeping people up to date on how to keep themselves safe and healthy. Code partners are also helping us respond during extreme heat events, setting themselves up as neighborhood scale cooling spaces. This photo came from our early August heat wave, for example, and regina ingabire on our team is the community preparedness team lead for the code. I'll take a quick moment to mention that we are also starting disaster preparedness programing for small businesses. This is very new. We only started about a month ago and we're working with prosper Portland right now to gather information, and we're beginning to build relationships with small business partners. This graph illustrates the time pbem volunteers have put into this program. All told, adding up training hours, deployment hours, and outreach hours. Our volunteers log an average of 28,000 volunteer hours with the city of Portland every year since 2018. Now, I think it's true that volunteers and the work they do are absolutely priceless, but there's a lot of research out there that has determined that the average volunteer hour in Oregon is worth $32.37. So if we were to use that figure to demonstrate the return on investment Portland is receiving from volunteers, it would look like this. Starting from 2018, an average roi of a little more than $1 million every year. To wrap up, I'm going to revisit this image from the 1985 mexico city quake is where many of us learned that neighbors and spontaneous volunteers are the ones who will help us after a catastrophic disaster. This picture is also from mexico city, but taken in the aftermath of their 2017 earthquake. In this picture, there are 12 rescuers. The one in blue is a professional responder, the other 11 are all volunteers. And with that, I'll end this part of our presentation and thank you for allowing us this time today.
14 Terrific.
15 We'll stick around for questions.
16 I really appreciate that. We're running up against a time limit here, but I this has been a fantastic presentation. I really appreciate your time and what you've done to grow this program. It's really amazing. And I'm I think the beacon in my neighborhood is on my refrigerator, but I'm going to double check. Councilor Smith, did you have a question or comment?
17 Yes I did, this is really great information and I think it needs to be given widely. You're you talked about the volunteers and I was looking on the map and it looked like district one out in east Portland had a fair amount of volunteers out there. How often do those folks meet that?
18 So particularly in rj and parkrose especially, they are they're one of our more active teams in the whole program. They have a team leader out there who's just a dynamo. Her name is kathy reese.
19 I want to follow up with you offline. But the other question that I had, I was waiting for you to tell me what what are we doing for our homeless folks and how do we keep them safe? I didn't hear anything about that particular vulnerable population and how we're how we plan to to help to help them.
20 At this time. We we don't have a program specifically reaching out to homeless persons. We we have designed a program, but we we haven't had the resources yet to implement it.
21 Follow back up with me. We got to have the resources to to deal with this. This is very important and it's critical. One of the things that I was leading when I was at Multnomah county was about this cascadia earthquake. I always thought that we needed to shore up our bridges and make sure that we have at least one of those bridges that was working, hence the Burnside bridge. But I think it's so important that our most vulnerable in our communities, whether it be in in nursing homes or homeless shelters, bipoc communities, small businesses, we need to make sure that we have a plan for everybody. And I think we're missing the mark on that. That's so important, and I'd appreciate if you would follow back up with me after this. I know I'm going to tell my staff that we need to get some conversations going. Okay. Thank you.
22 Thank you, counselor Smith councilor Koyama Lane.
23 Thank you so much. This has been amazing. And volunteers like you, brenda, give me so much hope and courage that there are great people out there that care and your that your work is so valuable to our community. I'm wondering how can we support. Net program expansion into areas where there currently are no net volunteers?
24 I think candidly, the resource that we need the most at this time is just more staff resources. We need more time in order to expand into those communities that we haven't got a great foothold into yet. And another another area that I think would would be helpful for us is just making sure that we have really good access to resources for translation and interpretation so that we can get curriculum like the pocket prep out in all languages. We have this translated also into spanish and simplified chinese, but I would love to get it translated into to all the safe harbor languages, for example. So those are a few things that come to mind.
25 And if it's okay to follow up, I understand. And what I know is that trained season older volunteers are so critical to preparing and responding to disasters. And I'm curious if the net team or pbem has started doing, or is interested in doing any intergenerational work to bring together older, more knowledgeable, experienced volunteers together with students, younger people. It seems like that type of partnership could really help prepare our vulnerable community members for events and for long term resilience.
26 Yeah, and that's something that we we actually have worked on a little bit with Portland state university, where we're actually discussing a project right now that addresses that kind of a partnership between PSU and ourselves and meals on wheels. But we're still in the the planning phases, but it is definitely something that we think about quite a bit.
27 Thank you.
28 Great. Thank you. This has just been amazing and I really appreciate the fact that you brought up roi. I think that's pretty powerful information. When it comes time to budget, that will be very useful. And I think, brenda, I think I've met you at a net table at some.
29 Entirely possible.
30 Probably.
31 Multnomah or the intercultural fair, I think I.
32 May have been done several at tryon creek. Okay.
33 Yeah, well thank you. Thank you so much. Thank thank you all. I know we have more questions, but we have very limited time. So I'm going to ask you to vacate for the next panel. Thank you so much again. Thank you. Now we're going to invite dca and the public works staff to come up for the next part of this presentation. I know that many of us during the campaign season expressed concerns around our public works resiliency, particularly given climate change and what that may represent for our water bureau, our bts, as well as the transportation. But I think we're going to hear about that today. So I think we're going to have dca kick us off. Welcome. Thank you all for being here.
34 Good morning, chair Clark and councilors, I am priya paul, deputy city administrator for portland's public works. And thank you for making preparedness a priority during national preparedness month. Public safety and pbem have laid the groundwork on focusing on community preparedness, the people side of resilience and public works brings the systems side of the story on how we prepare our infrastructure, operations and workforce so Portland can recover faster and stronger. Next slide please. So public works operates the lifelines that keeps Portland running drinking water, sewer, storm water, transportation and parks. And in a disaster, these become the backbone of response and recovery. We keep the water flowing, roads clear for first responders, wastewater contained and parks open as places of refuge. The speed of response and recovery, however, depends on two factors. First is prepared employees equal a prepared city and second, prepared residents equal resilient city. When our crews are trained and ready, lifelines are restored faster. But when portlanders have supplies, plans and networks, our collective recovery is faster and stronger. Public works and pbem work hand in hand to support the readiness. Next, our lifelines are interconnected. A failure in one system like transportation cascades into others and slows recovery. And that's why we built resilience as one system. And finally, investment in our infrastructure today prevents larger failures tomorrow. National studies show that every $1 invested in hazard mitigation saves $47 in recovery costs for infrastructure, so deferring maintenance is not savings. It's debt with interest and a liability that we pass on to future generations. Next slide please. The reality is that disasters don't respect bureau boundaries. And we shouldn't plan that way either. So public works aims to operate as one integrated service area, working in lockstep with pbem and other local and regional partners. Our goal is strategic coordination, aligning investments, operations, partnerships and outreach. So when crisis hits, we respond as one unified force. Next slide. Shortly, you'll hear from the operations directors of each of our public works bureau on how to prepare for emergencies. And while the scope of each bureau is different, everything connects back to the four pillars that you see in the slide. Here we invest in infrastructure resiliency. We do operations through continuity planning, prevention, hazard reduction, training drills and incident command response. We have strong partnerships with pbem other city bureaus, many local and regional partners, including volunteer and community networks, and then outreach to equip portlanders with tools and preparedness information with focus on reaching our most vulnerable communities. You will see these four common threads in how each bureau plans for and responds to emergencies. And with that, I'm pleased to introduce kim gupta, who will be sharing how this looks in practice for the water bureau.
35 Thank you, donna paul. Good morning, chair Clark and councilors, I'm kimberly gupta, director of operations for the Portland water bureau. The water bureau's mission is delivering safe, reliable drinking water every time you turn on your tap. And that doesn't stop during an emergency. Our resilience and preparedness efforts protect our water system by investing in infrastructure improvements, strong partnerships, community education, and keeping our staff trained and ready to respond. Next slide please. We continue to invest in our drinking water system to increase our reliability. We design for redundancy in our system, a key strategy for managing for emergency preparedness. This redundancy means we have multiple ways to deliver water in the event of a failure. Our maintenance program includes preventative maintenance and proactively replacing aging infrastructure. Our crews replace over 30,000ft of water pipe annually that have reached the end of their useful lives, replacing old pipes before they're before they fail makes our water system more resilient. And then we rely on studies such as our water system seismic study to guide our future investments, a resilient supply and distribution system is critical for us to complete our mission. While we have two excellent sources of water supply to ensure that we can keep water flowing to portlanders even when emergency disrupts our bull run supply and our distribution system, we've invested in seismically resilient reservoirs, which together provide more than 85 million gallons of seismically resilient water storage that can withstand a major earthquake. Including our most recent addition, the Washington park reservoir, which provides 13.4 million gallons of seismically resistant, resilient storage on the west side of our city. Additionally, we've been retaining pipe joints since 2004, which give our pipes more ability to withstand ground movement. We've also installed 5000ft of earthquake resistant pipe in critical locations. Next slide please. The bull run filtration project is one of the bureau's most important investments in resilience. It will not only allow us to meet current federal regulations, with a facility and pipelines that are built to robust seismic standards, but it will also provide the tools that will allow us to adapt to future regulations. Additionally, it will allow us to continue to use the bull run supply even if we experience elevated turbidity in the bull run watershed as a result of storms, landslides or wildfires. Finally, we have many partnerships. As dcr donna mentioned, that we effectively coordinate with local and regional partners in the event of an emergency. Portland plays an active role in Oregon. I, in fact, a vice chair of that organization, a mutual aid network among water utilities. This means that in a crisis.
36 Kim, can you tell us what that stands for? Or. Warren.
37 Sure. Oregon water and wastewater response network. Yeah, so that means in a crisis, we can both give and receive help quickly. Next slide please. All right. In addition to investing in our system, we invest in our staff to ensure they're prepared. Our staff are highly trained to respond to emergencies such as main breaks, water quality incidents and turbidity events. We practice through drills and exercises that simulate real world disaster conditions. We maintain critical emergency response tools, including our emergency operations center. 4 million in critical spare parts, inventory and emergency generators and pumpers so that we have this when we need it. Even with our robust systems, however, residents should still be prepared for service disruptions during major emergencies. Portlanders should at least one gallon of drinking water per person per day for two weeks, plus additional water for pets. Now, I'd like to pass on to my colleague joe from the bureau of environmental services.
38 Thank you. Thank you kim. Good morning, chair Clark and councilors, I'm joe dvorchak. I'm the operations and maintenance manager. Our mission at bts is to protect public health and the environment by managing our wastewater and stormwater. These services are often invisible, but when they fail, it's incredibly vital and important that we keep them operating. Next slide please. So our approach is threefold. First, we are developing disaster response capabilities based on risk. So risk based just like the rest of our asset management program. Second real resiliency depends on the interdependencies between our other bureau partners. How beer, how wastewater, stormwater, transportation and water are interdependent impacts one another. We're building cross-functional awareness to prevent cascading failures. And third, while we're investing in resilience, limited funding means significant risk remains on the system and in the community. Here you see examples of the big pipe and foster floodplain projects. So these projects have helped build system capacity to reduce flooding. That's one example of resiliency. We've improved system seismic resiliency through the use of resilient pipe, just like the water bureau, and changing our operational strategies as well. But the continued investment is real. It's enormous, especially with climate change. Next slide please. For emergency preparedness. Bts also maintains a detailed continuity of operations plan or coop to maintain operations during disruptions. We've created specialized damage assessment teams who can evaluate nearly 100 wastewater treatment plants or 100 pump stations. And our two treatment plants, we have six dat trailers that are positioned throughout the city. Like the water bureau, we also participate in or warn for mutual aid support. The columbia boulevard wastewater treatment plant, the largest treatment plant in the state, can also generate alternative fuel in the event that the electric grids fall. Bts operates its own emergency operations center with FEMA trained personnel. So we're prepared. We coordinate with pbem and our other bureaus. We regularly activate for weather events, operational disruptions, and we participate in different exercises. While this preparedness is robust, restoration after a catastrophic event could take weeks if not months, so residents may temporarily need to manage waste at home with the twin bucket system. So refer to the dpo. Net for more instructions on those two bucket systems. So the regional disaster preparedness organization. Net next slide please. So looking forward bts is implementing recently adopted resiliency plans and policies into how we operate our pump stations and the columbia boulevard wastewater treatment plant. Several pump stations are slated for resilience based rehabilitation. But the challenges are real. A lot of these facilities, as this map shows, sit on liquefiable soils, making this really complex and expensive. So the closer you are to bodies of water, that soil is softer and it actually liquefies in a seismic event. And this is where it's super important that the unified public works service area adds value. It brings the bureaus together so we can avoid those cascading failures, and we can plan more strategically. Now I'll pass it off to jody yates, my colleague in the bureau of transportation.
39 Thank you joe. Good morning, chair Clark and councilors. I'm jody yates, PBOT, deputy director of maintenance operations. Pbot's focus is to ensure people and goods can keep moving even in an emergency. Similar to our public works partners, our work centers on infrastructure investments, partnership outreach and operational readiness. Next slide please. Building on what my colleagues shared about investing in infrastructure resiliency, PBOT bridge work is one of the clearest examples of resilience in action. For example, the blumenauer bridge, completed in 20 2022 over I-84, was designed not only for bikes and pedestrians but also strong enough for emergency vehicles during a crisis. Two other bridges, the northeast 42nd avenue bridge and the bridge, are slated for seismic retrofits, but the scale of the need is enormous. Over 133 bridges in Portland still require seismic upgrade for climate resilience. Pbot is designing streets to reduce heat and increase comfort. Every capital project now incorporates urban forestry standards for street trees, and PBOT partners with parks on projects like trees in the curb zone. To extend our city's canopy, we use data to prioritize our limited resources seismic seismic retrofit reports, heat maps and flood risk analyzes guide which projects get priority. Our partnerships are essential to this work. We coordinate closely with pbem through our emergency operations center and with police, fire, urban forestry, water bts and with regional partners like metro, TriMet and ODOT. We also provide real time road closure maps, emergency route information and multilingual emergency transportation communications to ensure all Portland portlanders can navigate safely during emergencies. Next slide please. During a crisis, pbot's top priority is to keep emergency transportation routes open. These routes are the lifelines to hospitals, fire stations and other critical infrastructure like shelters and pump stations. In winter weather, we use road weather sensors to deploy 56 plows and sanders. Strategically, we coordinate closely with urban forestry to remove downed, downed trees. Pbot also addresses landslides, detours, and downed traffic signals for floods. Pbot will install downtown flood flood wall materials, close levee gates along north marine drive to protect neighborhoods and the airport, and reroute traffic around flood prone, flood prone areas near johnson creek. After an earthquake damage assessment, teams will be dispatched to inspect bridges and slopes while other crews handle initial debris clearance. We coordinate through the city's emergency operations center and exercise these flood wall installations and damage assessments on an annual basis. Transportation enables every other part of our city's response, from getting crews to damage infrastructure, to ensuring residents reach safety and services. However, our preparedness needs far outweigh available resources and significant investment is still needed to meet our resilience challenges. Now, I'd like to introduce my colleague vicente harrison from parks.
40 Thank you jody. Good morning, chair Clark and councilors of this committee. My name is vicente harrison, health, safety and emergency manager with Portland parks and recreation and the public works service area, Portland parks and recreation staff and spaces are essential for disaster preparedness. Parks provide critical gathering spaces and Green spaces after disasters to support our city's pathway to recovery. Next slide please. Building on our public work partners infrastructure investments, park contributes through natural climate, infrastructure. Our parks and natural areas cover 15% of Portland, with tree canopy providing 30% shade, which is a natural system that absorbs storm water and cools the city during heat waves. We have also invested in seismic resilience, reducing unreinforced masonry buildings from 59% in 2021 to 28% in 2024. Our 11.8 million in wildfire prevention projects across ten sites protect both park assets and the broader community. Community centers like peninsula park, upgraded with air conditioning in 2024, serve as refuge spaces during extreme heat or smoke events. We have strengthened our continuity of operations, plan to maintain essential services and align with the city's emergency management plan. Looking forward, park sees strong potential in creating formal resilience hubs. Next slide please. Operationally, parks takes a proactive role in wildfire prevention and suppression. Our crews perform routine prevention like mowing tall grass at 29 sites and maintaining access roads in forest park during emergencies, parks activates incident command and coordinates with pbem. Our divisions handle emergency response, urban forestry urban forestry clears downed trees. Land stewardship protects facilities through storm response. Park safety manages wildfire protocols, recreation, open shelters and ranger support. Flood responses and supply distribution. Next slide please. Our partnerships extend across the emergency response network with Portland fire and rescue. We conduct joint wildfire drills and support fire support. Their firewise programs with PBOT. We coordinate citywide tree response through pbem. We integrate with citywide incident command, supporting first responders, coordinating volunteers, managing debris cleanup and restoring park sites, parks, red book protocols, guides, and ensures consistent response during crises. For our outreach, parks provides timely information when community centers open shelters for heating or cooling. We engage residents in planning resilience hubs and support public education. Parks delivers naturally. I beg your pardon? Parks delivers natural infrastructure, safe community spaces and operational support that strengthens portland's overall resilience. Now I'd like to turn it back to dca. Donna paul.
41 Thank you. Vicente, I want to close with three key messages. Before I do that, I want to acknowledge our emergency managers who are in the audience here. If you want to raise your hands, thank you for your service. And I also want to acknowledge more than 3000 staff who are in our public works service area who not only do everyday essential work, but play a key role during emergencies. So, as you've heard from the bureaus, public works builds resilience through investment operations, partnerships and outreach, and resiliency is a legacy investment. Every dollar committed to resilient infrastructure saves lives, prevents failures, and avoids far greater costs later. Our resources are limited, but if we don't invest now, we will pay far more in recovery. Next slide. So preparedness is a shared responsibility. Public works maintains lifeline systems and prepares their crews. But after a catastrophic event, restoration could take weeks or months. So both city readiness and residential readiness are essential for a stronger, safer Portland. Next slide. So this is how portlanders can prepare. Sign up for public alerts to stay informed and find your nearest beacon so you know where to connect. When phones and internet fail. And finally, build two kits one a grab and go bag for the first 72 hours that looks like this. And I think we have bags to share with the councilors. If at the end of this. And the second one is we want to prepare another kit that will sustain your household for 14 days. So prepared government plus prepared community equals resilient Portland. So thank you for your leadership and partnership. Chair Clark and councilors, together with you and public safety and all our partners, public works is committed to building a stronger and more resilient Portland. We are now ready for your questions or discussion.
42 Thank you so much, donna paul and members of the team really appreciate the presentation. I've got several comments and questions for you, but I'm going to turn it over to counselor Smith. She has a question.
43 Thank you. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed today's presentation and I learned quite a bit about how you all handle those thousands of requests each year and whether it's pedestrian or biking safety, mass transit, potholes and street conditions, driver speeding down residential streets. The city should be responding to all of these safety needs and disasters that we have in our city and future disasters, and I'm glad to see that we're doing pretty well in that department. I have a question, and I looked at your presentation on slide three, and I see that PBOT receives about 3000 traffic safety requests, and you answer about a third of them, about 900. So can you tell me how do you prioritize which ones to to look into?
44 I will let PBOT answer the question, do you?
45 I'm going to ask my director to come up because I'm not the priority on this.
46 Perfect.
47 Stay right there.
48 Good morning. Council and chair Clark and councilor Smith. I believe the question that you're asking is relative to the next presentation. And we'll be able to provide that information.
49 Okay. So that is that is what I was trying to to figure out. But the other thing is, in terms of preparing for the disaster preparedness, how is it that we, the commissioners, I think that we should should have some of that training? If I wanted to to do that, how would I go about doing it?
50 I think we are welcome to invite you for our tabletop exercises, our bureaus, you know, do drills and tabletop exercises frequently, and we're happy to invite you, along with a coordinating in coordination with pbem, to our exercises. And if you want to volunteer.
51 Yes, I do. This is this is very important. Other question have we I know rpo, they usually do like. They'll do a a disaster and prepare all the different. Bureaus. Do we ever have a like big disaster you know reincarnation or how do we do that. Is there anything like that coming up? I don't know who our rpo person is here.
52 Thank you for your question. The city. Council. To our director, operations directors or our emergency managers who can.
53 See our emergency management.
54 Come on up.
55 I can try to address the question. I'm sorry I got distracted for a second. Are you asking for large scale disaster preparedness exercises?
56 A live exercise with all the bureaus? Is there anything like that that we do.
57 City wide?
58 Yeah, we have one coming up, actually for johnson creek flood. So we and then we have one coming up for a cyber preparedness.
59 And is that with every bureau or just.
60 It's we usually do it for in scope bureaus. So like for example for a flood tabletop exercise, a city budget office might not have a specific role in it, but transportation and environmental services might. So in the scope of the exercise, we identify what bureaus we should invite. And that's how we make that call. So but we do call these city wide tabletop exercises. But we can invite we can check in with your office.
61 Thank you. Please check in with my office. And I have space on my on my calendar this week. Can you make sure that we meet this week?
62 Sure. Yes.
63 Thank you so much I appreciate it.
64 Thank you.
65 Thank you, thank you, councilor Smith, I have a couple of comments. Just generally, given the overall presentation, I think that one of the benefits of the new form of government is that we are cooperating across bureau now, and that's important to our response to emergencies. So I'm I'm glad to see that's actually happening, that facilitation or that coordination. The second thing I want to say is this also makes me think that we're really on the right track with asset management, because this is really critical to our preparation for any kind of disaster or emergency. And we'll want to know which facilities are really at risk. I saw in your presentation, vincente, that you've been working on some of those things, but I know we have a lot more to go, and not just in this service area, but in the others as well. So evaluating risk, there is going to be very important in terms of emergency preparedness. One comment I another want to make is a PBOT is I'm very concerned that with the cuts we've had over the last seven years, if not longer with PBOT, that that's going to affect our ability to respond to disasters. I hadn't really put two and two together until today. That that's a vitally important that we find the resources for PBOT to be able to ensure that we're ready for disasters. As you said, we're sort of PBOT is really the lifeline to getting everybody where they need to go when there's a disaster. I did want to ask a question, kind of riffing off of councilor Smith. I just wondered, and this is not necessarily a question for you all. It could be. I don't know if director causey is still here, but somebody can answer this. I'm sure that if there is a when there is a large event, where is incident command or where who organizes the the kind of coordinated response. Rishi, can you answer that question for me?
66 I'll try my best. So if it's a planned event, the incident command post can live with. So. So we have emergency operation coordination center. That's the eoc. That's that's where that's in our southeast. That's where if there's an incident that happens, that's likely where we'll be activating citywide. That's where we'll invite public works folks to come in and set up for a a public order event, particularly, I think right now where we are is Portland police bureau activates their incident command post and they would activate invite any agency. So, for example, if they need a transportation person, if they need an emergency management agency, they will invite them to their incident command post. But once the incident grows up and becomes more complex, we activate the eoc.
67 Okay?
68 Okay. Great. And and it sounds like you're regularly doing tabletop exercises as well.
69 Yes. We have two coming up.
70 So great. Thank you so much. Do we have any other questions or comments. No. Okay. Thank you so much for being here today. It was amazingly informative. So appreciate knowing that you are prepared that our bureaus will be resilient. So if the water gets cut off to my condo association, there's going to be backup and I will go back and get some more water, I promise you on that. But thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. Very much. So do you mind reading the next item? We're going to change gears significantly.
71 Item two bureau of transportation small traffic safety improvement projects.
72 Thank you diego. Councilors, we have an opportunity today to move from we've been at the 30,000 foot level in terms of transportation planning and looking at the major projects like ibr. And now we're going to go down to the 5000 foot level, and we're going to talk about small changes and improvements in traffic safety in areas around the community. And I know there's a long waiting list for these kinds of things, but I wanted to explore it. We're invited PBOT staff to talk about this community community requests and how they process these requests and the funding decisions that are made. And then we're going to hear two examples of these kinds of very small safety projects. So dca is here to kick us off, and we have the rest of PBOT here with us too. So thank you.
73 Good morning, chair Clark and councilors, I'm the deputy city administrator for portland's public works. So as you know, the public works service area is the foundation for how portlanders experience our city through water, sewer, transportation and parks and the spaces that connect us. Safety is at the heart of our work. So within public works, PBOT plays a direct role in addressing one of the more frequent concerns we hear from community members traffic safety. So from slowing down cars near schools to adding a crosswalk or a stop sign, these small projects may not always make headlines, but they make a big difference in daily life. So today, you'll hear from PBOT director melissa williams and her team about how PBOT prioritizes and delivers these improvements through traffic investigations, the quick build program, and partnerships with neighborhoods across Portland. And with that, I'll turn it over to director williams.
74 Thank you, donna, for the record, I'm melissa williams. I'm the director of the Portland bureau of transportation, and I'm delighted to be here this morning. Thank you for inviting us to talk about small safety traffic projects today, our ability to continually improve the transportation system and respond to community identified needs is foundational to building trust with portlanders. These projects are small, but they collectively contribute to building a safer transportation system. The scale of need far exceeds our capacity to respond. However, with our limited funds, the PBOT team has developed systems to evaluate and prioritize the requests that we receive so that we can advance requests that will have the greatest benefit to the citywide system. Today, we will provide an overview of how we receive and process requests from community, and a deep dive into two programs that deliver small scale safety projects. Finally, we will talk for a few minutes about how PBOT accommodates community led projects in our right of way through existing permit programs. I believe you'll also hear a bit from community partners about ideas that they have. Next slide please. Pbot identifies projects in many ways, but one source for traffic safety concerns is directly from community members via the 311 program. Community concerns about things like speeding, the need for stop signs or intersection daylighting are submitted through the 311 program and reviewed by intake staff. Intake staff review about 3000 items a year. About 900 of those warrant further review by traffic engineers after review by an engineer. There are generally three paths. Some concerns are closed out with no further action. For instance, some requests for stop signs would not meet traffic warrants, meaning there are simply not enough traffic on a street for stops for a stop sign to be recommended. Action. Other requests are implemented as small safety improvement projects. These are typically improvements that can be implemented for less than $5,000 by our maintenance crews, and that have pretty localized impacts and outreach needs. Finally, some projects require greater investment in design, outreach, and funding and are therefore sent to what we call our quick build reference lists. These are projects between about $5,000 and $1 million, and are still considered quick, small projects, but we can deliver relatively quickly if funding is available. Next slide please. When we talk about quick build projects, we're talking about crosswalks, stop signs, warning signs, daylighting, neighborhood greenways, small bike Lane projects, safer shoulder or small sidewalk projects, and the like. You can see on this slide examples of some of these completed projects in each district around the city. I want to take a minute to highlight one of these projects. On the lower right corner, you'll see a photo of a neighborhood greenway crossing project that we were able to complete earlier this year on 52nd and gladstone, close to creston school. This is a project that was recommended to us by community members during safe routes to schools outreach. We were able to mark two crosswalks and make curb ramp improvements, upgrade the bike facilities, and install street lighting. During the design process, we had significant engagement with the. During the design process, we had significant engagement with the school community, and we heard that this project is now helping to make schools safer. This is just one of many examples of the ways we work in collaboration with community, as we identify and implement projects. Next slide please. On this slide, you'll see an overview of the types of ideas and concerns we hear about from the community through our 311 traffic investigations program. We hear a lot of concerns about speeding about 46% of submittals. This is one of the areas where we have very limited ability to respond, because we don't currently have the funding for a neighborhood traffic calming program at the bureau. And I'll also mention that speeding is not something that PBOT alone can help to control. We also get requests for things like pedestrian crossing signs, stop signs, and parking setbacks. Other requests are less specific concerns related to pedestrian and bike safety. Next slide please. Very small projects resulting from traffic investigations are paid for through general transportation revenue and delivered internally by PBOT staff. As the bureau has faced budget shortfalls, funding for this program has declined. The quick build program delivers larger projects. Gt-r or general transportation revenue for quick build has largely been eliminated. The program is now largely funded by fixing our streets, the ten cent local gas tax and the Portland clean energy benefit fund. This means the bureau must match quick build projects to specific funding criteria, rather than having flexible funding. I'm now going to hand it over to will to honda to go into more detail about the traffic investigations program. Will.
75 Hi.
76 Good morning chair. Councilors. My name is walter honda. I'm the supervising engineer for our traffic operations group. I'll walk through how PBOT responds to these non-urgent traffic safety requests. We take a three step process first, intaking the requests and prioritizing them, with the highest priority locations being those with demonstrated traffic safety needs. This means locations that have reported crashes are on a high crash network location, or involve vulnerable users. Once a request is assigned a traffic investigation, we reach out to the community member with an outline of what to expect. The second step is a traffic engineer will conduct a site investigation and make a recommendation based off of review of city policy design guidelines and best practices. Some investigation activities include reviewing site conditions, assessing visibility, reviewing collision records, and determining crash mitigations. The engineer will contact the community member with the investigation's findings. And finally, if a site review results in recommended changes, a work order will be sent to our maintenance operations group for implementation. These are some examples of smaller scale traffic investigation projects that we're able to implement. So these could include things like updating existing crosswalks at signalized intersections, installing curved warning signs where we see run off the road, crashes, installing intersection bike Lane treatments that help guide people through complex intersections, or installing crosswalks on our streets that require low level, lower levels of treatments. Just crosswalks and warning signs. And finally, our traffic investigations look ahead. As director williams noted, we are receiving about 900 requests for traffic investigations per year. Last year, we were able to respond to 975 of those. So keeping up with new incoming requests. However, due to prior year funding constraints in recent years prior, we had only been able to address about half of those. And so currently we have a backlog of about 1500 requests, and we're prioritizing those working through those, along with new incoming requests, work that can't be completed through our traffic investigations is referred to our quick build program for continued project development, funding, identification and outreach, and kristen will help discuss those.
77 Thank you.
78 I'm kristen hall, I am PBOT group manager for planning and project delivery, and our capital projects program picks up where the traffic investigations leaves off. So the quick build program is foundationally rooted in maintaining a set of reference lists of candidate projects for a number of program areas. Those program areas are things like bike network completion, sidewalk completion. Freight program reference lists are intentionally developed with community, either through direct community requests. So things that flow through the 311 process that we'll described or other neighborhood input, or through discreet planning processes like the development of in motion plans, area plans, citywide planning efforts like modal plans, or strategic planning efforts that are completed for safe routes to schools or vision zero. With those reference lists in place, PBOT staff develops quick build projects, which means we evaluate solutions, engage with community members, develop preliminary designs and cost estimates. With those foundational elements in hand, we prioritize projects and match them with funding sources. Finally, we're able to design and construct projects. I wanted to touch on the prioritization process because it has become very robust in the last few years. The early steps are really defining whether projects are ready in terms of completed public engagement, adequate design and cost estimating, and those are common across the quick build program and subsequent steps. We prioritize projects based on specific criteria for each funding source. They could include safety, climate impact, geographic representation modes served. It's all dependent on the funding source. We don't have nearly enough money to build all the projects on the reference list, but this program approach helps us match the funding to the highest needs and make sure that we are meeting overall city goals. We also have some programs that are allow us to work with the community directly on projects that the community actually implements. We have a long history of partnership with community to implement small scale, community led improvements to our streets. Street painting permits range from community building installations and residential neighborhoods to artistic curb extensions to improve pedestrian crossings. Pbot demonstration projects are intended to test a concept, evaluate that concept, and allow for some modification led by community. These projects are co-designed with community members, PBOT engineers, and community use, permitting staff using pre-approved materials, approved implementation methods, and agreed upon evaluation period to test future capital projects. And in all cases, we use project agreements or permits for any community led implementation to protect everyone involved. We have some tools for partnering with community, but we lack sufficient staffing and funding for material costs to fully realize the potential of these partnerships. I'm gonna hand back to director williams to close this out.
79 How can PBOT improve this work? The first thing we can do is to steer community members to three, one, one. The more concerns that go through this program, the more efficiently we can respond. The second is providing adequate funding for traffic investigations and maintenance operations to ensure timely responses for assessments and delivery. When fully funded, we could go from concern to closeout in 8 to 12 weeks for traffic safety concerns. We are not staffed to provide this level of service today, unfortunately. Finally, we must continue to collaborate with all partners to identify the most pressing needs and to deliver to advance safety, traffic safety and build trust with community members. This concludes our presentation. We did cut a few things short to make sure that we had opportunity for conversation.
80 Thank you so much, panelists. This was excellent. I learned a lot and I know we have questions and we also have some examples that we're going to explore following this panel. But I want to see if councilor Smith is your hand up. Is that a legacy?
81 Yes. My hand is up. Thank you so much. I want to go back to the original question and thank you all for for this presentation. It's it's important and it is critical to all of our residents and all of our neighborhoods. The original question was, we have about 3000 safety, traffic safety. Comments that come back to us, and we do about a third of those, about 900. So can you tell me how you determine which calls that? You answer and and go in and research versus the ones that are that are not answered?
82 Sure. Will and christine can help with that.
83 Thank you.
84 Councilor Smith. So of the 3000 requests that we get in, some of those are just general requests for what's happening around the city. So some people might have a request about a project that's already happening. And so we can actually refer those types of requests to a project manager, and they'll address that concern for us. And so the ones that make it to that 900 are typically those ones that a project is not addressing. That's not on our quick build reference list. And that need that determined that a traffic engineer should investigate the concern further.
85 Okay. And the last question, director williams, you just talked about the general transportation revenue has been eliminated from this program over the past. I think it was the past five years. And I'm trying to figure out this is so important and why why is that? Why why have we chosen to do that? Was that a PBOT decision or was that a city manager mayor decision?
86 Over the course of the past several years, we've submitted recommendations to the budget about how we would ensure that we could cover our needs based on the existing funding. Unfortunately, as we prioritized internally, the work that we would be able to do, this is one of the bodies of work that saw the decrease based on other areas of need in the bureau. So in an ideal world, we would have to make that choice. But that has been the case.
87 So I can guarantee you, if we have a disaster here in Portland and we have not adequately prepared for it, it is going to be people are going to call us. Not only they're going to call 311, they are going to call their counselors and say, why don't we have this or that? And so I want to be helpful and try to figure out how can we ensure some of those training resources are put back into the budget. Because this is something that I think is important. And I and I think every single resident of the city of Portland should know that there are future disasters that will be happening, and we need to educate the public on it. We cannot sit by and stand by. We can train some of the the folks from the cert team and and all of that. And I'm looking at my district and it does say that Portland parkrose and rj. But we don't have anything in wills. We don't have anything in sumner. We we don't have anything in russell or even Portland heights. So I want to make sure that everybody is has access to the same information and that we're all not just, you know, so unprepared. It's not a fact of if it's going to happen. It's it's a issue of when it's going to happen. So I think being prepared for it is is going to be important.
88 We agree. Thank you so much for your commitment to ensuring that we are able to invest appropriately across the board and ensure that the programs that are critical and that portlanders not just expect, but deserve, are funded in a way that ensures our ability to be resilient and to provide continuity of operations.
89 So, councilor Smith, there is no question that we need more resources for PBOT. There is no question. And that's why we passed that resolution to ask PBOT to come back to us in December with some ideas of how we might find more resources, and we're all waiting with bated breath to see what the legislature does next week. Hopefully that's going to help fill some holes, but there's no question that we need more resources for PBOT. And today we've learned about the importance of emergency preparedness and PBOT, as well as these small projects, which really are about safety and livability and and also really reinvest people in their community and know that government is working for them. Councilor Koyama Lane you have a question or comment?
90 Yes.
91 Thank you so much for being here and for the commitment from all of you. I echo what councilor Smith is saying. I also have constituents that reach out about specific potholes or concerns, and I do feel prepared. I think my team has a copy and paste of how to say, here's how to report. Go this way, use this website. Go to 311. I also have members of the community who come to me and they want to. They're sharing data and trends with both myself and with my staff. Some are subject matter experts, others are part of community and neighborhood organizations. How would you recommend those types of community groups? With a lot of excitement and energy and expertise, how do you recommend they connect with PBOT when they're wanting to conduct research on things like traffic patterns, safety concerns, other transportation related issues?
92 Sure, there are any number of ways that folks can connect directly with the bureau. You can send an email to me, and I'll make sure that it gets dispatched to the right staff. You can go on to info at is it what is our email address? The bureau's email address, the general director's email address. That information comes directly through our communications team who can help to dispatch. Then we have a number of subject matter experts depending on either the project, the plan, the program. If folks look on our website, you can see the contact name and you can write to those folks directly. I know that kristen probably gets twice as many emails that I get on a day, a daily basis regarding how people want to be involved in help. We highlighted a couple of the spaces where community has reached out, within interest in ensuring that they're able to help us to solve problems, and we used the permitting process to do that. But you reach out to our activations team, our plaza team, our team. There's any number of ways that folks can connect directly. We do appreciate that folks are reaching out to you as well. And we track those. We track all of the requests that come into the bureau. 311 is the central space. We often say 823 safe. 823 safe connects to 311. So those are ways that people can connect to us. We want to make sure that we're letting folks know that they have an opportunity to provide us with feedback and insight. We recognize that there's a lot of interest, energy, concern. And actually, frankly, in some instances, some disappointment in that we've not been able to do more. We really do want to do more. And as councilor Clark has mentioned, we are waiting with bated breath on what happens with the state package, because that would not only provide us the opportunity to meet the basic budget goals that we have, but actually begin to work toward addressing the backlog in some of our work that we need to be doing. So. And then that, coupled with the hope that we'll be able to identify some alternative funding sources, will help us to be able to do more. But people can reach out in any number of ways. We have lots of tentacles out there. There are lots of relationships that people have with us. When they see us out at dinner, they let us know what's going on. And so we bring that back to the organization and hope to be able to address that through those means.
93 And I think I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we are in the middle of a cycle to update our long range transportation system plan, and so it's a particularly good moment for folks who are interested in data and trends and the bigger picture items to connect with PBOT staff and get plugged into that program, because it only that opportunity only comes along once every six or so years. And right now we are in the early stages. So it's a great opportunity to connect interested folks back into our process.
94 And we've already selected the committee that will work on that. However, community members are able to come and share in the process from the gallery, even providing input and updates.
95 Great.
96 Sure.
97 That's really helpful. Thank you so much. So I'm hearing there, keep an eye out for different opportunities to engage that pop up. And then also feel free to just email. Reach out, keep reaching out. This feels similar to what I experienced as a counselor getting hundreds of emails each day. And sometimes I tell people, don't worry about bugging me, just keep keep kind of poking. So that is really helpful and I'll share that along. And thank you for being so open.
98 I just wanted to mention one thing, and I know we've had some conversations and I will add folks from his team have engaged with at least councilor Green and several others about the prioritization or the collection of information about projects that folks are interested in seeing happen in their community. We, as has mentioned, get thousands of requests. And it's not that we want to add folks to a long list, and just the list keeps growing and growing, but we do need to make sure that we're gathering the information and centralizing all of that as they come in. So while you councilor Clark might know about 20 in your district that folks have come to you directly with, there are another 7580 that have come from your district that you're not aware of. And so we're going to be working to make sure that we're providing the list for all councilors. The number of requests that come in, the types of requests that come in according to your district, so that you can have some insight as to what the asks are.
99 That's terrific. Yeah. Director williams, we really appreciate that. I think we'll all be very interested in seeing that. So today I was really interested in hearing you talk more about partnerships. And that's what we're going to explore with the next two panels, I think. And I've actually heard from people in my district that if we don't start to address some of these, we're going to have some vigilante pothole fillers, you know, or vigilante street painters around the city. So we've got to get on it. And I really appreciate your commitment to the community partnerships. Thank you all for being here. Really appreciate the information. And we're running up against a time. So I'm going to ask the next panel to come up. We've got a panel of community members who work together on a very exciting potential project on sheridan street near the international school, which I had the privilege of touring with some other folks. So I think this is all about reimagining. Reimagining sheridan street. And I know we've got a good, good community based panel here to hear about it, and hopefully we will have time to get to. Councilor greene has worked with the community group, and we're going to share a video on the project that he worked on at the duniway school in Eastmoreland. Hopefully we'll have time for that. So I'm going to turn it over to bodo, who's the head of the school, and take it away.
100 All right.
101 Thank you very much. Good. Good morning, chair Clark and councilors Koyama Lane and Smith. My name is bodo heyliger and I serve as the head of school at the international school of Portland. For 35 years, our school has been rooted in downtown Portland. Over the decades, we've transformed condemned apartments into state of the art classrooms serving almost 400 students. What once was an old auto body shop is now home to one of the largest and most vibrant preschool programs in the county. We've consistently partnered with our city's and neighbors to make sure this part of Portland is more welcoming, safer, and more beautiful. We're also proud to be one of the most diverse independent schools in all of Oregon, both in our teaching faculty, student population and in our families. That diversity shapes our mission, our values, and our daily life, and it reflects the community we are working to make safer and more connected. South sheridan street, however, which connects downtown Portland and isp to the south waterfront and south Portland neighborhood, has long been the street that time has forgotten. As downtown and the south waterfront have grown, the conditions of sheridan street have only worsened. A jumble of incomplete sidewalks, missing bike connections, a freeway exit ramp, and minimal traffic control right in the heart of a school zone make this area treacherous for our three year olds walking hand in hand to school for our families and staff. For the graduate students and healthcare workers at OHSU, safe access is not optional. It is essential. That is why we are proud to be here today with our partners OHSU, PSU, transportation research and education center, better block pdx and our neighborhood associations. Together, we've developed an actionable plan that is similar to the work of william honda, patrick wong and scott cohen of PBOT PBOT quick build team, and it provides city council with clear, achievable solutions. South sheridan street updated with continuous sidewalks, safer crosswalks and all way stop sign, and a dedicated bike connection that links downtown to the south waterfront. Excuse me? This project and others like it represent more than city infrastructure. It represents our collective belief in safe routes to schools and revitalizing busy but overlooked streets. And in building a Portland that works for every generation. On behalf of the international school of Portland and our 400 students and 100 employees, thank you for your leadership and for helping us bring south sheridan street and projects like this back to life. I'll now hand it over to paolo, paul, paula canal us to speak more on behalf of isb and OHSU employees.
102 Good morning, council members. My name is paula cano and I serve as the head of early childhood at the international school of Portland. I have been with the school for almost ten years. I'm also a parent of two children at isp, a three year old and a seven year old. We are originally from colombia and like many families in this community, I bike with my my kids to school every day. South shannon street is central to our lives. My husband works at OHSU, and many of his colleagues park and walk along sheridan to reach the hospital. For us, this street is part of our our daily routine and right now it is not safe. Our own faculty and staff often share with me the fears of simply walking down sheridan to get a cup of coffee. There's blind curves, missing sidewalks, poor lighting, and a lack of bike lanes and make it frightening for adults and let alone our young students. This project and projects like these across the city will make a real difference. Difference. Continuous sidewalks, safer crossings, and better bike access will protect my children, my spouse, his colleagues, and the families I serve every day. I urge you to support these improvements so sheridan street can finally be a safe connection between downtown, our school, and OHSU. Thank you. Now I would like to welcome Ryan mehan to speak about the process to get here today.
103 Thank you. Good morning councilors. My name is Ryan meehan. I'm the father of a student at isp. I also serve as the alternative transportation coordinator for isp volunteer Green team committee. South sheridan serves as a vital connection between the downtown and south Portland neighborhoods. However, its current car centric design is dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists as a key gateway to and from the isp campus, we have long sought to create safe space for active transit along the block. How to achieve this goal was unclear to us until we learned about trex better block PSU program, a partnership between better block pdx and PSU that engages students and faculty in a three phase series of coursework to imagine spaces that are designed for people. In the spring of 2024, we submitted a successful program to trec and became the proud community partners in the reimagining south sheridan street project. In phase one of spring of 2024, students from the school of urban studies and planning developed project plans for upcoming classes. In phase two, students engaged both the isp and OHSU communities in user studies and engaged PBOT for data, which was used to synthesize design concepts for the reimagined street. Finally, master students from the department of civil and environmental engineering used their capstone project to transform our design concepts into a 30% traffic control design work that benefited from the generous support of PBOT members, including jeremy finkel and the quick build project members scott cohen, will and patrick wong. In efforts to turn these designs into reality, isp has recently welcomed councilor, Koyama Lane and Clark to observe south sheridan during our campus tours, and we look forward to welcoming councilor Zimmerman soon, and we've strengthened our community network by welcoming OHSU, the dna and the spna as supporting partners, asking for a reimagined, shared and street as envisioned in our 30% traffic control design with crosswalks, stop signs, a continuous sidewalk, and advisory bike lanes to improve safety for all users. Thank you.
104 Good morning, chair Clark and members of the transportation and infrastructure committee. My name is michael harrison. I'm director of local relations for OHSU. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today on behalf of OHSU, as well as the south Portland neighborhood association where I serve on the board. Ohsu continues to hire more employees year after year, trying to keep up with significant demand for healthcare in Portland. Wait times for doctor visits and surgeries are too long, and we're laser focused on addressing this. That said, we only have about one parking spot for three employees, making recruiting frontline healthcare staff very challenging. To address this challenge, we take a holistic view. Do we need more parking as we grow? Absolutely. But parking alone can't address the magnitude of the challenge. We also desperately need improvements to the pedestrian and cycling network, so that our efforts to encourage our employees to use those modes will be as effective as possible, given the need. I'm pleased to be here in support of the sheridan project, a project that can make our employee, student, and patient commute safer. Thank you so much.
105 Good morning, chair Clark and esteemed councilors. My name is xavier de stickler, and I'm the vice president of the downtown neighborhood association, as well as the chair of its land use, transportation and environment committee. Outside of my work at the dna, I am a student of planning and architecture at PSU. I'm here to today to represent the enthusiastic endorsement of the reimagining sheridan street safety plan, as proposed by students in the better block pathway at Portland state university on behalf of the international school of Portland. This low cost plan effectively addresses existing challenges effectively and efficiently addresses existing challenges to the community's ability to safely move through southern downtown obstacles especially worth addressing given the presence of the international school, a valuable downtown educational institution and member of the central city community. Presently, those walking and rolling to and from the campus and between the downtown and south Portland neighborhoods must navigate major deficits in the public infrastructure, including inaccessible, obstructed and missing sidewalks, poorly signed intersections, and intersections with low compliance rate for what is signed, and roadways lined with parked cars that obscure sightlines. The reimagining sheridan street safety plan provides a low investment, high reward, quick to implement strategy to meaningfully address these urgent safety issues. The valuable work done by this group of PSU students, known to the dna for the same class as quality work on our better Burnside initiative, highlights how even moderate intervention by the city can drastically improve mobility. Through this constrained corridor, improved bike and pedestrian facilities along sheridan street are essential and timely in several ways. From establishing a key east west connection across I-5 for those walking, for those walking during the frequent and long periods of disruption at the darlene hooley bridge to helping spur development in south waterfront through improved livability, to making it safer for families to access and move within esp's school zone. This proposal is critical for school, family, child and community safety. We urge PBOT in the city of Portland to prioritize this project and move forward with the proposed for the proposed modifications to the right of way. Thank you for your time and consideration.
106 Thank you. Do you have any concluding remarks? No.
107 Well, we greatly appreciate the opportunity to come in the the ability to coordinate a community based response to this challenge in our neighborhood has been remarkable. And I think the idea of bringing the community together, bringing all of us together to find ways to make our spaces safer, more welcoming, is supremely important, and we definitely would love to find a way to move this project forward.
108 Well, thank you all. You have an amazing coalition here on sheridan. As someone who's been down there, and I know councilor Koyama Lane has also been down, I stood there and watched cars just rip through the stop sign or I don't I don't even remember. There was a stop sign. If there was, they ignored it. It's really amazing. And to see small children have to navigate that area, it just gives me, you know, a nightmare. And I wanted to ask a question of mr. Harrison. When you look at sheridan, I understood that a lot of the folks that are parking and there's no no way for pedestrians to avoid walking in the street. There's there's nothing there. You saw the the sort of spider web of freeway off ramps and so forth. A lot of the folks that are parking there are probably related to OHSU. So if we were able to take parking off of sheridan so that there was an opportunity for a safe pedestrian walkway or bikeway, what would happen to those folks that we displace?
109 Well, I mean, OHSU sort of as I mentioned in my comments, we know that we need more parking. We prioritize patient space, which is very costly to build above building parking. And but over time that becomes more and more challenging environment, especially for our employees. And so, you know, but we are a healthcare enterprise. And when safety is on the line, even though it is painful to see the loss of any parking when when safety is on the line, we have to support a project like this. We don't. We don't have be happy to talk more sort of offline about ideas that we might have about trying to address that, but we don't have a specific plan for these, say, 20 spots.
110 You do have a parking lot not far from there, correct?
111 We do. Yeah.
112 Just within a block or so in the south waterfront.
113 Yeah. Our.
114 Our our employees would be feel a dereliction of duty on my part if I didn't mention, though, that as we continue to grow, I think we're up to about 24,000 employees, all of our parking facilities at this point are are overextended.
115 Thank you. Let's see. Councilor Koyama Lane did you have a comment or a question.
116 I can.
117 Okay, go for it. No, go for it.
118 I just want to say thank you for welcoming me down there. I think you have three great champions in district four who are who care about this a lot. And I know we'll be taking the lead on this. I appreciated some of my constituents send their kids here. I believe you have families from all districts that are coming to your school, so just let us know ways that we can support. I know that the district four counselors will be kind of your main point, people, but you have a lot of us on council who see the this as very urgent and care.
119 Thank you.
120 Councilor Smith. Are you a legacy hand there or did you. Okay.
121 I just want to say thank you for your presentation. It was great to learn about sheridan and all the work that you all have been doing as community organizations. Keep it up. Thank you.
122 Thank you, thanks.
123 Thank you for being here. I do have a question before we move on to the video. And actually, it's not for you necessarily. It's actually for PBOT. Can director williams maybe join us again or. Kristen, I don't know if kristen is still here, but as far as the community partnership program goes, is there the ability for community organizations or neighborhood associations or even councilors to commit some resources to making these projects move up the the chain?
124 So one of the things that you will see later is a demonstration of an investment from city council on a specific project. Councilor green's office reached out to us, asked if there was a way for a problem that he saw in his community, if there was a way we could support solving that. And so he invested in that safety improvement.
125 So the answer is yes.
126 The answer is yes.
127 Regarding how we prioritize, it's a little tough. We don't necessarily want to suggest that if you pay for it, you get it first. That's one of the things that we must balance as we look at how we implement safety programs across the city and how we partner with organizations. However, it does not hurt if there is funding that comes to the bureau or to the city in order to facilitate making the things happen.
128 And those resources could also come from community organizations or other non-profits. And while you're where are you there? Let me just note that I was not aware of the PSU better block program until I toured the international school and went down to sheridan. Can you talk about do you have a partnership with them or how does that work?
129 Kristen can speak to that more, but we have a long standing relationship with the better blocks program. In fact, Ryan is right here. Ryan hanigan, who I just sent an email about another project two minutes ago. He's been working alongside and in partnership with the Portland bureau of transportation for a very, very long time. Some of the things that you see as a fruit of that labor, ankeny alley is an example of a community partnership where there are investments from community working with the bureau, and we make something amazing happen.
130 So better nato and the northeast broadway paving paint also originated with the better block partnership. We typically use our community event permit program to advance those projects. It gives us a format for an agreement, stewardship, materials, all of those kinds of selection to make sure the project is executed in a way the bureau can support, and certainly something we can continue to expand on. But we found that program to be a really solid partnership, as long as we are kind of discreet in the scale of project and the time in which it's out on the street before we're able to come through and and make it a capital project.
131 So is the better block program funded by PSU or.
132 They're a community organization that comes to us with ideas, and then we're able through our community event program, to permit program to issue a permit to them to do specific time bound demonstration work.
133 So that's really a resource for us to consider working more with. Ryan et al. Great. Thank you. With that, let's invite up councilor Green staff. I'm not sure who's going to be coming up to share the video. This is on a project at the duniway school in east moreland high. Great christian is here.
134 Yes.
135 You want to cue this up for us, christian?
136 Yeah.
137 All righty.
138 And for the record, my name is christian arciniega. I'm here in my capacity as a councilor Greens policy coordinator and here to share this video that sort of characterizes what opportunities are available to us and our community members as our council offices sort of coordinate with PBOT to deliver some of these small safety, small pedestrian safety projects. Do we have audio?
139 Right. If I take over real quick. Yeah. Go for it. Oh, I see this one. Fine. Yeah, that should be it. I'll try again.
140 We're at the intersection of southeast reed, college place and recs, across from duniway grade school. I lived on this corner for 53 years, and I've witnessed countless close calls and accidents. In this intersection.
141 We have stop signs on every other block of reed college place in this one block that has the most student traffic, pedestrian and bicycle had no north south stop signs.
142 We decided we wanted to have it a four way stop. It would be much better.
143 The city came out in July and said, we don't see a lot of traffic here. Well, July, of course, there's no school.
144 We talked to council before but never got really engaged. We have a new council and so we said we'll just give it one more try. Somebody needed to take it up and think it was worthwhile. Councilor Green did that. We needed that push. Councilor green's office and staff helped make the difference.
145 The feeling that we had in the neighborhood was that when we pushed for something, contact our councilors, something happens.
146 So here we are today.
147 It's a happy day for us.
148 We're actually celebrating the fact that stop signs have been installed. They're in place right now before the school year starts. Those are good results.
149 And there we are.
150 Chris, can you tell us what the cost of that project was and how it was financed?
151 I'd like to lean on our PBOT staff to help answer the question with regards to exact cost, but this is if we rewind back to budget season, one of the budget amendments that our office brought was about $75,000 in. Rollover office funds from previous year's budget into this year's budget to provide for projects like this one. But yeah, I'll let director williams kind of.
152 That's an easy one. It cost $5,000.
153 5000.
154 Yes.
155 And yet you dedicated how much money to the project?
156 Yeah, well, we have $75,000 in rollover office funds for pedestrian projects like this one. We. Yeah. We hadn't gotten a final estimate on this project number. And we had talked with a few other constituents about other projects.
157 So so there are other opportunities to do more work. This one.
158 Gotcha, gotcha. I thought this one was $75,000.
159 For four weeks.
160 We would never get anything done if.
161 It cost $75,000.
162 To do a four way stop.
163 So, councilor Green, there are more monies available from councilor Green's leftover budget to address these kind of neighborhood partnerships.
164 And we've continued to be in conversation with the counselor's office.
165 Great, I appreciate that. Super. Thank you for sharing that today. Thank you for being here today. Really appreciate it.
166 Thank you.
167 So I think that brings us to the end of our meeting today. It's been quite a lot to digest today. Yes, a lot of good information, great panels, great presentations, appreciation to the community members who showed up today, who took time off to come and share with us. We really appreciate it. We'll we'll see what the next steps are. Our next meeting is Monday, September the 22nd. And at that meeting, we're going to have some information and action items on PBOT street plaza program. Some of you may be interested in that. I think we're hoping that councilor Maria, who's not here today, is going to bring in some community members to talk about innovative things we can do with the 30% of the city that's covered in asphalt. Maybe we can talk about some alternative approaches, including repaving and alternative uses of the right of way, some creative responses to to our assets. So with that, I will adjourn the meeting of the transportation infrastructure committee. I'll stick around if anybody wants to chat in the hallway.