The record · Transcript

Council session — 2026-05-06

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (26,344 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.

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Good morning. It is 932. I am calling to order this meeting, this council work session on what is it? Wednesday? 9932 I said that may 6th is the word I'm looking for. Colleagues. Today is the first budget work session related to the community and economic development service area. Our second work session in the series is tomorrow, Thursday, may 7th. Today's work session focuses on housing and permitting matters within the service area. We will be starting with Portland permitting and development. Move on to the Portland housing bureau and finish with the bureau of planning and sustainability within the planning and sustainability bureau. Bureau of planning sustainability will be focusing on planning. Specifically, we have over an hour set aside tomorrow to discuss sustainability issues and specifically the Portland clean energy benefits fund, so hold off on those comments until tomorrow, please. This is a service area with a lot of programs. And so today and tomorrow we have many presentations with a relatively tight timeline. I will be watching the clock. Specifically, I'm asking colleagues to keep their questions to five minutes per time. You're always welcome to get back in the queue. But we got a lot of folks to get through and a very tight timeline. Please consider what's best for the body and the city as a whole by being brief and to the point with your questions, so that everything and everybody can be heard today. With that, I'm going to turn it over to dc a donnie oliveira welcome.

You can join us.

Oh, and we will be holding questions until after the presentation. And colleagues, for this first section, we have about 40 minutes to ask questions for permitting.

All right.

Take it away.

Thank you, council president. Vice president. Good morning, city council. My name is donnie oliveira, deputy city administrator for the community and economic development service area. I'm joined by directors Eric engstrom, michael and Eric couch. Next slide please. I will flag that as the council president focused on. We're going to target these three bureaus today with coming back with a whole different suite of topics for you tomorrow. Next slide. All right. So the city's community and economic development service area focuses on housing, planning, climate, culture, art and economic development. Together, we make portland's community and built environment more vibrant and sustainable. We focus on delivering programs and projects that create efficient, transparent and just solutions to the issues we face. The service area leans into its stakeholder engagement efforts to work with our communities along the way. Our best policies and programs are those that center collaboration with the people we serve. One note for council on this particular slide, the number of fte is inclusive of prosper Portland staff, and while they are not formally city of Portland employees, they are every bit a part of the service area team, working in collaboration and partnership to meet our city's goals. Next slide please. Just another way to look at it. The service area is made up of the bureaus and offices you see represented on screen. We've highlighted again prosper to denote the distinct reporting relationship with the city. But again, while not a formal city bureau, their efforts supporting our small business community, activating economic and real estate development, and functioning as the stewards of the city's economic development strategy, advance Portland are significant. Next slide please. So as a service area, our mission is to ensure portland's future is resilient, sustainable, equitable and prosperous. We are both designing and planning for the future while providing resources and tools to deliver the results. Importantly, importantly, 70% of our operating budget goes directly to community through grants, loans, or other forms of support from our various funding streams. Across our bureaus and offices sits a leadership worked hard to build a responsible, responsible budget proposal, ensuring that our cuts prioritize core and mandated requirements and the priorities of the executive and legislative branch. At the same time. The past few years have been very difficult when it comes to managing our general fund dollars, because over the years we we've taken cuts, and that's reduced the percentage of overall higher discretionary dollars. Next slide please. The last slide that I'll walk you through briefly before we get to the the core details from our our directors is the breakdown of beer by bureau and by fund of the service area. Substantially. Pcef makes up a significant portion of our budget, but that includes the the reserve contingency budgets that are planned for out years. You may notice a drop from this year's revised budget to. To this, which is just sort of a function of the budget as we know it today. Last, I'll just say for your situational awareness is as we look at these dollars, as a reminder, some of them are dollars that are programed for future years, whether that be in tif or some of the conversations we had around the housing bureau dollars, not all the 1.2.4 proposed is designed to be spent in 2627 all right. And we're going to. The order of the presentation is we're starting with permitting development and housing and bts. And so with that, I will turn it to director Eric couch.

Thank you john. Good morning council. My name is Eric couch. I'm the director of Portland permitting and development. Today I'm here to walk you through the proposed budget and how we're working to preserve core services and challenging environment at a high level, and plays a critical role in supporting development and economic activity across the city. And like most service based organizations, our ability to deliver on that responsibility comes down to our people. Without adequate staffing, we cannot provide timely, predictable permitting for customers who are trying to build in Portland. At its core, this budget is about maintaining staffing so we can continue delivering the level of service our customers and this council expects. Next slide please. At a high level, what this budget reflects is the reality of the resources available to the bureau. Most of the impacts you'll see are within the tree permitting program. That's where the available funding does not fully support maintaining current service levels. As a result, the changes reflected in this budget are driven by those funding constraints. I'll walk through what that means in terms of real impacts in just a moment. Next slide please. This budget proposes 300.9 positions, down from 337.9. In the current service level. That change is driven by two factors. First, 23 positions are being realigned as part of the core services realignment. Second, 14 positions are being reduced within the tree permitting program due to resource constraints. Of those, 14 positions are currently filled and eight are vacant. One is a supervisory position and the remaining are non-supervisory. It is also important to understand how these positions are funded. These positions are not funded by general fund dollars. 12 are supported by funding which, while not reduced, does not fully cover the cost of those positions, especially when factoring in inflation. The remaining two positions are supported through a previous interagency agreement with parks. So when you step back, what you're seeing here is a funding structure that does not fully support maintaining the current level of service. Next slide please. That context really drives the approach behind this budget. Our primary objective going into this cycle was preserving core services. Over the past several years, the bureau has taken on additional responsibilities while also reducing staffing, all within a slower development environment. Despite that, we've continued to make progress, improving our processes and maintaining performance. But after multiple years of reductions, we're now at a point where additional cuts will have noticeable impacts. The reductions in this proposal will have an impact on permitting timelines, and any further reductions would make it harder for us to keep projects moving efficiently through the process. That is why preserving core services is so important. It allows us to maintain stability now and to be ready when development activity increases again. We are also continuing to support key customer facing programs, including process management, which provides a single point of contact for complex projects. Simple bathroom permits which offer expedited permitting, and the empowered communities program, which supports historically underserved customers navigating the permitting process. In addition, we continue to provide early assistance and consultation services to help customers before they submit applications. Next slide please. The most significant impacts in this budget are within tree permitting. This program was transferred from parks to pnd. Over the past two years. What we've seen is that both the fee structure and the funding that came with the program do not fully support the level of service expected. As a result, this budget reduces the program by 12 positions to better align staffing with available resources. Of those 12 positions, six are currently filled and six are vacant. One is supervisory and the remaining are non-supervisory. This is a significant reduction and will have real impacts. We expect longer permitting timelines, slower response times to customers, increased compliance challenges and delays in inspections and permit issuance. Given those constraints, the city may also need to evaluate how the tree codes implemented moving forward, including potential prioritization or future adjustments. Next slide please. In addition to that, this budget also reflects the elimination of interagency support from parks. Historically, a portion of this program was subsidized through parks general fund. That subsidy is being removed as part of the mayor's proposed budget. As a result, this budget includes an additional reduction of two positions, both of which are currently vacant and non-supervisory. This further reduces the program's capacity and adds to the impacts we just discussed. Next slide please. Stepping back, all this is happening within a challenging development environment. Construction activity declined during the pandemic and has not fully rebounded. We are seeing the effects of high interest rates, lower investor confidence, declining property values and broader uncertainty in the markets. There's also an ongoing perception challenge around building in Portland. At the same time, our costs continue to rise. This budget is designed to maintain service levels where possible, by aligning fees more closely with the cost of providing those services. As you know, those fees have not yet been approved, which is why they are not reflected in this budget summary. I'll walk through that proposal. Next slide. At a high level, the fee proposal is structured to be both balanced and targeted. Most programs will see a base increase of about 5%. Some programs are higher where there are clear gaps between costs and revenue, and others are unchanged. Programs with no increases include facilities, permits and cannabis licensing programs with the base 5% increase include electrical, plumbing, remodel, site development, zoning, enforcement, land use services, neighborhood inspections and signs. Building mechanical is proposed at 9% due to reduced cost recovery tied to fewer larger projects. Environmental review, water review and urban forestry are also at 9% because they are below cost recovery. Transportation review reflects a larger increase due to a shift away from interagency funding and toward a fully self-supported model accessory. Short term rentals are proposed to increase by 26% and noise by 41%, as both are currently below cost recovery. Next slide please. Finally, this slide provides a comparison of our fees to other jurisdictions. While no comparison is perfect, it does provide a consistent point of reference. One important, important distinction is that Portland funds more of its permitting work through fees than many other jurisdictions, which rely more heavily on general fund support. So to keep the comparison consistent, this focus specifically on building permit and plan review fees. Using a typical single family project, Portland falls within the range of comparable jurisdictions and in some cases, below them. We understand the importance of keeping fees reasonable so they do not become a barrier to development. At the same time, predictability and permitting timelines are just as important, if not more important, for project feasibility. Our goal is to strike the right balance between those two priorities. We look forward to continuing this conversation with council. Thank you.

So would we rather get through all the presentations and do it all questions at once, or do you want to stop and go?

I think if you have questions for specifically for pnd would be appropriate right now. And we manage time. Great.

Let's colleagues, we have a few minutes here to talk about questions that. We can also ask more questions after all the presentations are done. But for now. Councilor. Novick.

Thank you, mr. President. So I'm going to focus on tree permitting, and I'm confused in a number of ways. One is that if we gut the tree permitting program, that it seems to me that we've got all sorts of permit requirements out there that people are supposed to follow in terms of like cutting down what they think are dead or dangerous trees on their property. But when they submit their permit request, it'll take years for them to actually get it acted on. Is that right?

What's your question? Again?

I'm saying that the I mean, the permitting requirements will still exist. So people will still have to get a permit to remove what they think is a dead or dangerous tree, but they'll submit the permit request, and it's going to take forever for it to get processed.

It will take longer due to the cuts, correct? Okay.

Yes. So I wonder if you've given any thought. It seems to me that if you're going to gut a program like that, then it should probably go along with the suggestion to eliminate the underlying requirement. Did you consider that saying people can cut whatever trees they want?

Yes. Councilor we are looking at the the code and the regulations around title 11 to see if there's anything, you know, any changes we can make to help offset the the additional time that will come along with the, the cuts in those positions.

Okay. But it kind of seems to me that if that those two should. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it kind of seems to me those two should go together. If you're saying that you're gutting the the permitting program, then the proposal to offset that by reducing some of the permitting requirements should go along with it. The other thing is this seems like pretty piece of work, and I don't understand why the administration hasn't given more thought to using PCEF to fund this work. And I'll just be blunt and say that if we think we've got $75 million to a piece of money to spend on the moda center, I don't understand why we don't have $2.9 million to maintain these jobs. And I have been I mean, I am looking for a source of PCEF money that either I think is inappropriate or underspent to offset to offset this and fund these jobs. But it's been that's been a bit of a frustrating process, because I've asked both PCEF and jonas's office to identify PCEF programs that are that are underspent, where it looks like we might have extra money, and they said they're not really in a position to identify that yet. So that's just sort of a generic complaint. But I just I actually like to ask the mayor of this question, if we have $75 million a piece of money to spend in the moda center, why don't we have 2.8 million to spend maintaining the tree permitting program?

I think that's a false choice. If we're looking at that councilor, we have to look at funding our tree program, which is pcf driven. But if we're looking at the moda center, we're looking at the upgrades that are focused on making that platinum lead to make it a state of the art facility. I think we have to look at both together. I don't I don't think that that's a choice. I think that's a matter of let's look at what funding we have value the moto, we have to renovate the moto one way or another. Let's look at the available funding and capital. We have to get that project going.

But mayor, you have made that choice. You have said that you want to spend $75 million a piece of money on the moda center, but you have not proposed spending $2.9 million, a piece of money to continue the tree pruning program. And you're proposing slashing the tree permitting program. So I submit, sir, you already have made that choice, right?

This council last year determined to move the tree program over to eric's shop. So we're following that through. There was some funding disparities there that we're trying to fix. We don't have all the money to do it. Let's go back to moda, though. I've contemplated ways that we can fund the renovation. This council will be the arbiters and the final decision makers. What I'll provide to you is a discussion point and an opportunity for you. I'm not proposing that you take it or leave it. I'm asking for partnership with this council to find a way to renovate the moda center. That is one of the funding methods, but I'm absolutely open to any method that dca oliveira and this council chooses. My overall focus with moda is, let's renovate the moda and get that project moving forward.

Okay, councilor, may I? Yes. Thank you. May I respond to the specific to the tree program related to PCEF? Is that is that okay? Because I think it's a fair question just for context for everybody here. We got the directive through the last budget to move the program over the teams at parks. And, and, and I think did a great job of landing that plane with, with sort of constraints around the funding that only came over with PCEF, right. There was a much more complicated braiding of funding that the parks was managing for. Totally understand that. To answer your question, why didn't we add PCEF dollars to make that whole? Frankly, because parks also is is sort of the manager of the piece of funds related urban forestry. And to their credit, they have been looking at ways to move some of those dollars from piece of or from parks that are piece of funding to pe. And that's just going to take a little bit more time. But as we were building the budget, it wasn't appropriate to go into parks and pull out resources for programing that was staying behind. Right. So we move the program over for for permitting and enforcement for title 11, 3.5 million, which they roughly was what came with it. And we did our best with that dollar amount.

But, but you don't need parks permission to say that PCEF money should go in addressing this more to the mayor to say that some money should cover something. I mean, I don't think that it did. You're talking about moving some money to pmo. I don't think you needed the permission of the bureaus that money would come from in order to do that. So I don't understand why the same procedure couldn't have applied.

And councilor, you're at six minutes right now.

How many do I have?

You're at six minutes.

Okay. Done. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor. Vice president.

Thank you, council president, just a quick comment on your comparison chart on page 15. I really appreciate that you did that. And I'm just wondering this does not include the fee increase proposals, does it. This is the current correct. It would be helpful to see, you know, if we change the fees what the comparison would be. Do we still rank in the middle like that councilor.

The issue the reason why we weren't able to do that is we don't know if the other jurisdictions are going to change their fees as well. So we wouldn't know where their numbers are at currently.

Okay. Well, in any event, I really value that comparison. Thank you.

Thank you, vice president Clark councilor Pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, council president. I have a couple of questions. Maybe going back even before the line of questioning that councilor Novick was on about the tree permitting program. It sounds like what happened is we didn't move enough funding over last year. Is that correct? We thought there was enough funding there and there was not.

Yes, councilor.

Okay. Separate question and then I'll ask about the funding. How much of a delay should portlanders expect with this level of reduction?

That's a that's a great question. I don't know the exact the exact additional time it's going to take, but there will be increases in the amount of time for customers to get a permit.

Are we talking about an increase of a week or two or an increase of a month or two?

I don't want to lie to you and give you incorrect information. I was trying to have that information in front of me before today's presentation. Unfortunately, we're still working on that, but if it's okay, I can provide that information to you at a later date.

It would be helpful to have that before we make our final budget decisions, because if this is a matter of a week or two, I'm frankly less concerned if this is a matter of two or 3 or 4 months delay, then I get a little bit concerned about the program actually working and portlanders being able to move forward with their plans.

Yes, councilor. We'll get that over to you.

Thank you. I appreciate it. On the funding side, I, I know I have other colleagues who are going to be going to dig deeper into what our possibilities are here, but I want to understand a little bit more what went wrong. So we thought that there was enough money moving over. There wasn't was that because we did not take enough saf dollars, or was that because there were more funds of other types supporting these programs? What happened?

Yeah, that's a great question. To my understanding, what happened councilor is that whenever they decided to send those funds along with the positions, they only included the amount that the positions would cost. They didn't include our indirect costs at p and d. So, you know, for example, the overhead that's that's calculated as well into those positions.

What are those indirect costs.

It would be things. It would just be, you know, typical things that are overhead. So it would be like, you know, the cost of maintaining our facilities, you know, electricity for the building. Things like that. I could get you a more detailed list later when we send you that other information.

So do you.

Split the way that you budget at p and d? Do you split things like the cost of electricity in the building per person working in that building, as opposed to having a separate line item for facilities costs?

Councilor if I just jump in. Thank you for the question. The fundamental like step that happened is when council adopted the amendment that moved the program over isolating piece of that wasn't the full funding for the whole program. So parks had other resources that supported the full suite of of funding budget needs, right? So whether it be general fund and actually director szymanski's in the office, the room to maybe help out here. But the bottom line is what landed in terms of resources was just the pcf amount. And so because there is a fee based bureau, they didn't have like the sort of discretionary dollars to make the whole system whole. Think about office space vehicles, all the things the staff need to do their jobs. Right? So there's, there was just a fundamental difference of how the accounting landed at p, p, and d.

What I'm trying to understand is we worked pretty hard last year to make sure we had the right number here, and there were a lot of iterations of this amendment and some back and forth to get those dollars right. I think I'm hearing that we did move over enough funding for the positions, and I'm trying to understand what the other funding is so that we can think about, if we want to address this, how we do that, because if this is a matter of electrical costs, I'm a little bit confused of how moving a new unit increase those electrical costs. And I'm wondering if we're subsidizing between divisions in a different way than we had before. If the issue is vehicles and vehicles didn't get moved over with, the positions that we might address differently. So understanding if we moved over enough money to fund the positions, why we don't now have enough money where it is that that gap is is helpful.

It was about the the answer is pccep was predominantly funding personnel. Yes. So the the money came over for the personnel, but all the associated costs of running that program did not. And those per the notes, were generally general fund and parks levy dollars at parks. So when if hypothetically, a scenario would have looked like if you were going to move the program, you would have taken all the pieces of dollars and general fund and parks levy and moved it all with to make them keep the program whole at p, p, and d. But because p seven is the only amount that came over, we were left to manage the program just with PCEF dollars.

So we're cutting personnel so that we can cover those other costs that are non personnel related, that.

Are essential to do the work. Right.

So if we want to restore this, we need to either think about restoring positions or think about as we think about buckets that can cover different things, funding for what cars, office space, electricity.

If you're talking about funding the program, we would be adding resources to keep the staff, but inclusive of all the tools they need to do their jobs. Okay. We we really want to shy away from isolating staff and space and computers and vehicles that the tools they need, if you just fund the staff, but they don't have the tools, then we don't have a program either. So basically what you're asking is the resources. The gap that we have now is all inclusive of the thing. We need to run the program holistically.

Councilor you're at six minutes.

Thank you. Thanks. Council president.

Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney councilor Green.

Thank you. I'm going to pick up where Steve Novick left off. Councilor. Novick. Apologies.

Nov is fine.

Nov. No. So when council made that decision to move these people over from one part of the city to the other, the the intent was not to erode a program capability. The intent was to sort of say, and maybe it was a bad idea. But this the choice that we made was to say, we think it should be in a different part of the organization for reasons that are about a management oversight, control and all that. The intent was never to say, well, we also want to envision fewer people operating at a lower level capability. And I'm extremely troubled to hear that our solution to this might actually be amending title 11 code to take away some of the compliance requirements. And so that's going to be a nonstarter for me. I will note that this council also approved an amendment to the cip earlier this year, just maybe a month or two ago, that increased the funding allocation to strategic program 22, which is the Green stormwater infrastructure and watershed health program, by $5 million, $5.5 million, roughly. That's the program here that envisions things like natural systems. O&m program manages over 800 acres of natural areas and stormwater facilities, planting millions of trees, other plants that significantly contribute to carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and on and on and on and on. So this bucket of money, which is now a total of $75 million, envisions taking care of trees as part of our bts system. Now, what the mayor has done in the budget is take that $5 million and move it to pmo. And I'm not sure that the intent was to raise this by that much. So you can then move it to pmo. But that's what happened. And so the idea that we're going to cut the tree code, which is a direct nexus to strategic program 22, which has PCEF money for it, while also making an extremely strained argument of a connection to this program to pmo is frankly egregious. And so as we approach the budget amendments, colleagues, this is an area that we need to be looking at very closely. I'm not going to tolerate cuts to the tree code people in this budget, and we have money in the fund to do that. So we'll be looking at amendment there. I think that's about all I want to say right now.

Council president, may I, counselor Green, thank you so much. I'm going to just talk about high level and then donnie, correct me if I'm wrong, but Portland solutions will have this in their. I believe the pmo is being funded through package two revitalizing urban walking routes and the three particular tranches are pathway and sidewalk lighting enhancement, Green space cleaning and urban realm activations and biking and walking. Donnie, can you correct me or do we defer? I just want to make sure we correct the record. I don't think it was sp22, but I just want to make sure that we're providing the right information. I noticed sam's not here, so.

I'm I'm looking I'm pulling it up right now. It is predominantly coming out of s p excuse me out of funding from bes and PBOT related to. Sp5. There's a portion perhaps I'll get back to you. Councilor.

Yeah, let's provide that information. So we're really consistent. This is obviously going to be a germane topic. So we want to.

Make sure that would be helpful. I didn't see that description in the program offer and decision package. And so all I had to go on was the documents that were released on April 3rd, which were the original concepts that did reference to 22. So it's going to be really important that you guys update that for the public. But nevertheless, if it's not coming from 22, that means there's five more million dollars there now than there was last year. And so, colleagues, we have money in this budget to allocate to these positions being cut. Thank you.

Now, actually, counselor mayor, I do have the answer. So the broadly speaking, and I want to just acknowledge that we're still working with the cbo to get this actual information to you. So the draft understanding is the the five point x million would roughly come from sb 32, sb 22, and sb 31.

Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Koyama Lane.

Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, council president, I'd like to know how often the permitting bureau accesses or pursues funding through the Portland clean energy fund. So like, what capacity or experience does this department have in navigating that process?

That's a yeah.

Thanks for the question, councilor. In the past, there has been a program that baps worked with p d on a solar like efficiency, like to improve solar permitting, but this is the first time that ppd has received pcf dollars.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that and thinking about councilor Pirtle-guiney question about the funding and how we're in the place that we're at, how much of us making the cut to those? I think it was ten fte before moving them over. How much of that plays a role in where we're at right now?

In a role? Can you clarify councilor the role of in terms of our our gap and permit timelines?

Yeah. Yes. And not having the right funding.

That's I mean, we are the proposal in front of you is directly correlated to landing the program in the bureau and the results of that.

So I do share concerns that my colleague shared about how it just makes so much sense because pcf has so much alignment with canopy and equity goals that I'd like to see all these positions fully funded through pcf, and hope to see a plan and timeline to help make sure that that does happen.

Councilor. Thank you. And I just want to reiterate, I want to give parks leadership a lot of credit. They have been leaning in to figure out how they help us bridge this gap. They're aware of it too. It impacts them as well. But again, you know, a lot of the resources from pcf or the urban canopy live with parks because they do most of the planning. I mean, most of those dollars that went to parks wasn't for regulatory elements. It really was to, you know, have people protecting the trees, planting trees, maintaining. So the portion that was funded that was on the regulatory side moved over to ppe and which was a very small percentage, but kudos to parks and their willingness to, to partner with partner with us to figure out how to get more of those dollars over to help.

Thank you. I'm glad they've been great partners. And I, it makes sense to me that it's been challenging just moving that part out of it. And director, I just wanted to make sure that I clarify. I recognize that you are very new here and appreciate you. Appreciated you coming to our committee yesterday and hope, you know, none of this is a referendum on on your work at all.

Thank you councilor.

Thank you, councilor Koyama Lane councilor Ryan.

Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, president Dunphy, and thank you, danny, and permitting Eric for this portion of the presentation, looking at the staff reductions and hearing. Most are from tree permitting and core service alignment. Then I look back at the slides that compare us to other markets and what's up on this screen right now. So, you know, it's not it's tolerable. And when you look at it this way, but we all know that time is money. And you mentioned that I do wish there could be a slide, another data point next to it that has something to that could measure time, like issuance of permits to whatever apples and apples with the other markets, because I know there's several data points after that. Anyway, my question is this. When it comes to staffing, the reason why, after going back to the last century, people being very upset with Portland in terms of customer service for permitting, and then we started a very difficult reform journey. It was the first one that's been successful. After several failed attempts from previous councils. And one reason that I know the reason it worked worked because we put staffing into the equation. So we had a continuous improvement staffing led by terry tyson and her team. And that's the reason why we've seen movement over the last three years. That's exactly why it wasn't because of elected officials. We passed policy before, but nothing ever moved. So the culture change was because we had those patient and persistent professionals working with those folks in permitting. Is that team going to remain intact as we go forward?

Well, that's an excellent question. We're actually working on cap two and cap two kicked off last month, and we look to build on that momentum.

Would you explain that acronym.

Cap two.

Code alignment.

Yeah. Code alignment project.

Thank you. People do ask me all the time. What does that mean? Thanks.

You're welcome. And yeah, like I was saying, so we're looking to build on that momentum with cap two to continue to better our processes and looking at areas to right size, our code.

That's exactly what I'm asking the question. So you have staffing so that can continue to build that momentum can build. And we can continue to get results that go the right direction.

We, we, we plan on going to council later to ask for funding to, to build a team that we can have help support cap two.

Have a team, but we're going to eliminate a team. And then you're going to ask us to rebuild that team.

I'm confused. Sorry to clarify.

Five minutes. So yeah.

Sorry real quick. So we have staff at bts who are leading cap two staff that came from the pit team. They're coordinating, but it's actually going to be a multi-year effort. So we have staff at PBOT and water parks, pd and bts that are all working on cap two. What the director is referring to is we're working with the council president on a resolution that will look to broaden beyond cap two.

I'm getting involved in that resolution. That's why I'm kind of asking the question. I realize that's separate, but I just don't want us to get rid of the muscle memory, if you will, and, and strength that we built to do this culture change work.

We definitely have, we've maintained momentum on the code alignment work. Absolutely. That has not.

Stopped answer to my question. Those those positions have been eliminated.

Yeah.

That's what I was trying to get at.

No sorry, councilor. They've just been dispersed in different places. So there's a position in p p and the code leadership is at bts now they're just not at the service level. That's what changed.

Okay. Can I get more information offline on that? Sure. It's it's not making total sense. And I'll go ahead and stop at 333. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor councilor Morillo.

Angelita Morillo: Thank you, council president, thanks for this presentation. I want to follow a little bit on the line of questioning that councilor Novick had, and councilor Koyama Lane had. Yay! District three, can you describe the impacts to the cuts in urban forestry that we had last year, specifically on customer customer service, tree canopy preservation, that sort of thing?

So the question is, how did the cuts to tree permitting last year affect our timelines? I'm sorry, can you can you repeat the question?

Yeah, I think I, I want to hear about the impacts of the amendments to gut urban forestry, how that has impacted us. Now that we've had time to take a look at it on customer service, how quickly people are getting their answers, tree canopy preservation, the whole point of the program.

Gotcha. So I will say that since since that program has moved over to ppe and the timelines have increased. But what I want everyone.

How much.

I don't have those numbers in front of me, but they've definitely increased. And what I will say though.

He said two weeks to eight weeks. Where'd you get those.

Numbers from two weeks to now. Eight weeks.

I think one important thing to remember is that within tree permitting, there's multiple programs. So I wouldn't know, you know what, those two weeks to nine weeks numbers, which program and tree permit that is. But what I wanted to say real quick, councilor, is that, you know, I've been a part of. Multiple permitting bureaus or permitting centers where we've had realignments, where outside disciplines have had to come in. And that process is never perfect, right? You're bound to have some hiccups along the way. So while you know, those timelines have increased, we are working to improve them. And I know that within the next year, we can continue to improve those timelines to make it better for our customers. However, with that, these cuts, you know, will make it more difficult to improve those timelines. But anyways, I hope that answers your question.

It doesn't, but I suspect you will find me more details later. And that's not I want to be clear. That was a council decision that you were forced to live with. I personally did not approve of gutting urban forestry. So this is more of a caution to my colleagues about us bringing amendments and drastically changing programs, because the reality is the reason when people come to Portland, they talk about how verdant and beautiful our city is and how Green and lush. And that is in large part because of the work that urban forestry does. So I am having an eye to those cuts as well, and it is not lost on me where we are choosing to use PCEF dollars and what we're choosing not to use it for. So thanks for your time. I hope that we can get more specific details on how, what the long term impacts of that change was.

Councilor. Sorry, I do have an answer for you now, and I just want to preface it by saying we are general. What I'm generalizing here is all types. There's various types of tree permits and actions. So this is just a generalized number, but it is accurate. Prior to the move to ppe. And a turnaround time for an inquiry was about two weeks. And we're we're closer to about 6 to 7 weeks now.

Oh, that's a terrible change. Councilor Koyama Lane did you have something to add?

I just wanted to share that we have a letter from the urban forestry commission about some of the impacts that I am happy to forward to you.

Thank you. Councilor. Morillo councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you, council president, thank you for the presentation. I'm looking on slide four, and it says community and economic development. 695.3 proposed staff with a 1.23 5.5 million proposed budget. I imagine that that should be a billion, because I cannot imagine that we're paying 1.2 million proposed budget for 695 employees.

Yeah. Councilor, thanks for the question that that represents a 1.2 billion, but that's inclusive of all the resources in the service area, including PCEF art tax, children's levy fund balances that we won't spend next fiscal year that are just, you know, in our balanced budget. We, you know, we show them.

So the reason why I wanted to see specifically how much were we spending in the community and economic development, that 1.235 needs to be changed, and I'm sure the public will look at this and say, how are they paying for 700 employees with $1.2 million? Do you see this on on slide four?

Yeah, we're looking at it.

That doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't add up.

Yeah.

I can barely pay for my five employees with with 1.2 million.

Yeah. Councilor that that number is representing 1.2 billion. It's just framed in millions. But you're right.

So it's wrong. It's not 1.2 million. It is 1.2 billion. Can y'all can y'all go back and change it? That's what I'm asking because.

I will defer to cbo in the room.

This is the second day. This is the second day that we have wrong information on our on our documents that are seen by the public. And it is the second day I still can't item see the itemized costs of a bureau in an excel spreadsheet. So I can see what was paid for the year before. I know our budget office and our cfo is in here. This is why we asked for this because it. It makes it clear on what we did and what we took away. When you have these narratives that you put up here, it is so hard for us to understand and not to understand. I have a lot of questions about what we did with the the forester stuff, and my colleagues have they have asked the right questions. And my issue was going back to councilor. Pirtle-guiney was is it the materials and services budget that didn't come over with those employees? That's what it sounds like to me that the material and service. And why didn't it, you know, why did it not come over? And the thought that you all are going to present us with something and Eric, is that is that your name?

Yes, councilor.

Good to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

And to think that Eric is saying that we're going to put one thing forward, and then you're going to come back and ask for more money. And I'm trying to figure out where are you going to do that from? Are you talking about the tao? Is that what you're expecting to get additional resources from the tao?

No, no. Councilor. The one of the slides conveys the the proposed fee schedule. That would be an increase to sustain service level in the in the fee programs. And then the other conversation around urban forestry is just a proposed cut. So we weren't asking for resources for that at this moment.

Okay. But I know you said something. We'll come back. We're going to have a group and then we'll come back and get some more money as if we're going to have a bump or something. Somewhere.

I was whenever I think what you're referring to is whenever we're speaking about cap two, which is a separate initiative, and I probably kind of jumped the gun on that one a little bit. But essentially, we, we already have a team in place that's driving cap two right now. Right? So I misspoke a little bit, but in order to implement a resolution, if it does move forward, we would need a larger team to help drive that project.

And so you said you were going to come back and get the money where you're thinking that was going to be in the tao, or were you thinking later in this budget session?

Councilor we're working with the council president's office on that, and we'll we'll work with them to contemplate a strategy for resources.

No, no no no no no no dca oliveira no no no. You do not get to isolate everybody else and say you're just going to work with the council president's office when we're talking about the budget right now.

Sorry, councilor. I, I was only the project that the director was referencing is something that's in the future. It's not it's not it's being drafted.

Not going to happen in the 26, 27.

It may happen in 26, 27. The details of that resolution are directing the bureaus to come back with a plan. And that plan would likely need resources. We haven't gotten we haven't gotten that far yet, councilor This is we're.

I don't.

Know very much.

I don't know how y'all think y'all going to talk about something, dealing with money and put it in a resolution, and it's not in our budget document. Unless you're doing something outside of this that we don't know about. And it's not dca oliveira. You know how I am.

Yes, ma'am.

And you can't do that. It is again, this, this particular bureau has a history of spending money before it is authorized. And I'm going to go back to it again. Yes, yes, yes. Don't don't give me that look like you don't know what I'm talking about. Because we just finished the towel where we spent $56 million. That that was hidden by the Portland housing bureau.

Councilor for the record, this is the permitting development bureau.

I know, but it's over the whole thing. And you give me this look like as if.

Councilor was six.

Months now. Yes, but please bring us something forward and stop doing stuff offline.

Thank you. Councilor councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Hi. Good morning. Apologies for being a little late to your presentation. I had to deal with a personal matter, but great to see you all. And I just want to. I appreciate the presentation. I appreciate the direction you're taking the bureau in terms of permitting and development. It seems that and I and I too, I share it with my colleagues. Seems some confusion around the the tree code changes. Right. I just want to reiterate what we did last year, which moved the. 27 fte and the $3.6 million that the parks bureau, the parks bureau told us was what paid for the tree code. Compliance staff. Right. We don't make up those numbers. We took that from the parks bureau. The people who are sitting in the back right now, who are not sitting in the hot seat right now. So I'll just remind folks. So we used their numbers that they articulated in their budget last year that 27 full time employee equivalents and $3.6 million of PCEF money moved fully over to ppe. And. All right. So I say that because that $3.6 million, because the parks bureau said that's what it takes to run this aspect of the program. And I think that I agree with some of the comments were said. And I know there's there's disagreement on whether it was a good move or a bad move. But the idea was that code compliance needed to happen in a larger code compliance atmosphere. And it goes to the idea if, if your hammer, you only see nails. And so the idea of code compliance is a holistic look at everything. And we have different codes. And since p and d takes care of so much of that code compliance, that was really important. So using parks bureau, their words, their dollars, their numbers, their fte and moving it over, I just want to I'm not sure how many members of the council are aware that in August of last year, the city administrator, not our current one, but the last one, the ppe and staff and the parks bureau staff came to me hat in hand, deeply embarrassed that they had wrong numbers, that when they said 27 people got paid for by a certain fund, they forgot to count. And so I want to highlight this. It's a great example for a first year city administrator to understand that. When you hear frustration, mr. Lee, about what numbers are or are not accurate and whether or not we have spreadsheets or don't, to look at this, this is the type of thing that that bubbles up and becomes frustrating. And so this is a great example where, you know, Eric and donnie, frankly, in my opinion, taking on the move that that we passed as a body with the best knowledge that we had and the best information we had. But at the end of the day, we were given bad knowledge, bad information. And a director, I think pretty much is not here anymore because of it. So here, here's the the better side of it. You all are problem solving to figure out what do we do? What. What I'd like to know is of the $3.6 million, and this year it's growing to $3.8 million of clean energy fund that was designed to be part of the tree code enforcement. Is that still in p and d? Yes it is. And how many fte does it pay for now?

So right now that is funding 14 fte.

Will it continue in the upcoming budget if we pass this?

No. Okay.

So yes. Yeah. Yes it will if you if you pass this budget, the 3.8 is still.

The funding still continues. Yes. If the budget passed. Yeah.

So it'll be 14 people who are part of that crew of the larger code compliance, but 14 are dedicated.

I'm sorry I misspoke councilor. Sorry about that. I I'm looking at trying to find the total positions in tree permitting and I apologize if it's okay. I'm going to phone a friend real quick.

That's okay. Another reason, mr. Lee, why when we look at program offers a basic function of budgeting should be how many employees are to each program offer. And yet I have to go back to page one for the entire service area. That's what happens when you put the mic too close. I have to go back to page one to see the service area to see how many employees. And so from a decision making perspective, I will continue to highlight that we do not have a centralized budget office that has the tools to show us per bureau, per program, per program offer how many employees are associated to the funds that were being asked. And in no government that I've ever worked has this gone on, this long being unaddressed. So marching orders, if I've ever said marching orders.

So councilor It is 14 staff that are in the budget funded by 3.8 million. And just to be really clear, I just want to acknowledge part of the challenge of the transfer is that parks is a general fund bureau, right? So their structure is different than paddy's, which is a full cost recovery model. So what was probably legitimately coming from parks accurate about what it cost to run the program once it landed in a different financially structured budget? Looks different on on paper. Yeah. So I just want to acknowledge that we, we, we got the information that you all adopted and we landed the program in ppe and to the best of our ability, which resulted in 14 fte.

I'm not actually, I'm not taking any hits at p and d on this. What I am going to highlight is if, if a program cost. Let's just use round numbers here. $1 million in one bureau, but it costs $2 million in another bureau, the normal guy math starts to get real drunk real fast. And so I highlight that as when the parks bureau says, I have this many employees, if you'd like to move them to another bureau, this is the money that we allocate for them. You can move them with funding attached not being fee fee based. There's some basicness that needs to happen as we move across bureaus. So I think I have beat this horse. Others have beat this horse. There's a strong opinions, but I want to end on a high note. Let me let me say this two weeks to six weeks, two weeks to eight weeks. That is certainly a metric we can talk about, about whether or not we are doing title 11 at its at its highest and best use. I want to add another metric that's really important and is actually about the heart of the matter, and why we moved for this last 8 to 9 months. My interactions with people who interact with the tree code employment compliance branch of our government now are reporting deeply improved customer service interactions, a highly improved philosophy and approach to to how they do their work. And that was largely the point insofar as there is an expectation when we work with our public and the way that our code compliance works with our public, that is about problem solving. And I think that the tree code compliance has deeply improved from where it was a year or two ago, and I don't think we'll see as many terrible media stories about what I editorialized were abusive practices. And so I'll take eight weeks with a path toward improving that. If we are doing it in a more respectful way, in a way that meets portlanders, needs better in a way that that you all can take a look at. How does code compliance in our community happen in a way that can be more working with the public? Because that was the grand concern that I had last year, was that tree code compliance was operating in a way that I think had been hamstrung, frankly, by a certain director's perspective on the the other aspect of urban forestry, which is really, really important. And by the way, we touched not at all all the planting and the science.

I got it. We're at 8.5 minutes.

What was our number?

Five.

Okay, great. That's why I was late. So I didn't have to hear you say that. I'll wrap up. No, but I just I want to end on that high note tree code. Compliance is going better. The interactions with the public is better, and I appreciate it. I want to make sure that pcf dollars stay with these employees and stay with this program. And if there's anything I can do to make sure that the pcf always does, I absolutely will. Thank you. Sorry, mr.

President, thank you, counselor.

Point of information. Council president, the decision package from the mayor on page 138 says there are 26 fte positions. And then the mayor's proposed is reducing it by 12 fte.

So 14 will remain.

So. 14 but right now we have 2026. Vacancies.

Yeah. Councilor some of those are vacant positions. We can get you the exact number that's actually in the, the the program right now.

People were mad that they had to move, so they just quit.

So okay, clarity on those numbers would be great. Thank you.

Thank you, counselor councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. I have a couple questions and I also apologize. I was a little late. I think I this wasn't in there, but I'm just checking 23 positions being realigned from p, p and d is 6.8% of the workforce. 30 positions from p s is 18%. That both. Seems like a lot. Where are they going? Can you speak a little bit more to the particular places they're being realigned?

You know, councilor You know, for realignment questions? Definitely want to defer to my colleagues at business ops, but there are.

Wait till that work session on Friday.

Yes. Yeah. Thank you. But a couple there are things that are outside of the realignment project that are happening. So for example, so a couple positions as a part of the creation of the data office are leaving bts as an example of some smaller, smaller things. But yeah, the other larger realignment stuff is will be covered by business ops.

Thanks. This may be hard to answer on the fly, so let me know if you need to get back to me. The turnaround time for an inquiry going from two to 7 or 8 weeks. Can you speak to what portion of that has to do with the workforce reduction, and what portion of that has to do with the physical bureau? It's in question. I think that's an important distinction here, and I don't know if we've teased that out. And I imagine it's a little bit of both at least. But if you can speak anything to that or get back to me, it's fine.

Yeah. If it's okay, I'd like to get back with you with, with, with more data behind that, just because I'd like to better understand the numbers fully with how many staff that they had prior to the move to now so that we can quantify it. So if it's okay, I'll get you those, the data behind that at a later date.

Thanks. One other question is just to what you just said here. And then I have a comment. There's 27 positions got reallocated in the amendment. And you just said that there were 26. What happened to the 27th position?

That's a good question. Council will have to figure out where the math landed on that.

Okay. And I, I appreciate that. I just think that that highlights sort of the this. And I'll note last year we had a tables in the budget that had the ftes at the beginning, what was added, what was removed, what was being realigned, and what the proposed budget would do by classification. The roles were classifications. And this year, most of the tables I'm seeing is classifications and number. If you accept the budget. But there's not all those other columns. So we're getting less information. Even as the budget has nearly tripled in in length. And we've talked about the narratives there too. But I agree on all the issues about tables, math numbers, spreadsheets. I do want to take a moment to defend the Zimmerman 15 amendment from last year, which is the amendment we're talking about here. That amendment had some consequences we anticipated and some we didn't. We are talking about some of the negative consequences here, reducing from 37 to 27, number of code enforcement personnel, perhaps a negative outcome regarding the move to pa from parks. But I don't think it's been mentioned yet that there was a cut of ten fte to parks maintenance in the mayor's proposed last year, and that the Zimmerman 15 amendment saved those jobs. And these are the people that plant and help trees. I'm oversimplifying here. Planting and helping trees grow. And that also involved reducing the tree code enforcement by at least as far as we knew at the time, ten, maybe 11 positions. We picked winners and losers. That was, I think, last year. I used the quote that our job is in large part to pick winners and losers. This is a compelling argument to me about our not just ability, but frankly, responsibility to make a decision like this and not solely defer to the administration. And the mayor's proposed about it. And I think that was a decision we had to make as council. We could say it wasn't our responsibility. The mayor put forward the proposal. Mayor had to make tough cuts. He has the sort of misfortune of being the first to take the crack at it, and we had to then react to it. I'm really glad that based on the information we had, there wasn't a net reduction. But I do want to just point out there are ten people who are unemployed now because of that decision, and there are ten other people who are employed now because of it. And that's a really important piece of this conversation. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to cut further. I do support the lines of questioning around PCEF money being here, or instead of areas that I agree are stretching like pmo, but I just wanted to make sure that that other consequence, the positive consequence was also discussed there. And I'm looking in parks and urban forestry. Thanks.

Thank you. Councilor Kanal councilor Ryan.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. I have one minute and 30s remaining in my five minutes. So I thought I'd get back in and go back to the conversation about how we can continue to improve customer satisfaction. One reason why councilor Zimmerman was able to make that comment is because of the hard work that was done starting in 2021. That was the focus. In fact, that was the number one issue that that came up. In addition to thinking it's wise to have some internal cat herders continuous improvement people, it also was so important that the drakeford and external partners that are high users of our system were at the table. That table of active advisors was the main reason why we had some tension to get started, and allowed our culture to be shook up a bit, to focus in a different way, to listen in a different way. And so I urge you, as you're working with the council president, I'm trying to get on board to be a co-sponsor of this, to make sure that you lean into that. If you dismantle your internal cat herders, and if you dismantle the external feedback loop that was very active in this process, you will not see these reforms implemented. We all know this will take some time. It took us decades to get to this place. It's going to take us a little while to get out. We're on year five, so I'm attached to it. Obviously, it was really important that the last council was able to bring in each office and made this an all in effort. All right. Thanks.

I just want to say I agree 100% councilor. And we'll definitely continue to engage with our external stakeholders as we move forward. Thank you.

That was me to shut up.

Okay.

Council president, I have the answer for both councilors Koyama Lane and councilor Kanal councilor Kanal the 26 versus 27. You are correct. The original number was 27. But upon further analysis, it was only 26. That moved over one position, stayed at parks. So that was the decision. It was basically a understanding of people's roles, like what was appropriate to move over so that the difference between 2726 councilor Koyama Lane today, as we sit here today, of the 26 that moved over there, 20 positions that are filled, six are vacant. And so in the proposed budget for next year, there would be 14 filled positions, 12 would be cut, six of which are are filled positions. So those are the numbers to to close that gap.

Thank you donnie councilor Smith. And then we're going to move to the housing bureau.

Okay. Thank you. So I don't know if you all heard about chris bolton. He was in the paper a few days ago, and he lives in my district on 89th street in southeast. And he was complaining about a lot of tents and trailers outside of his house, and he was trying to get some support. And then he reported this. And I don't know if it was someone from pa who came out or from the somebody cited him from the city of Portland and said that he needed to cut down his hedges. Can someone explain this to me?

Councilor. I'm not familiar with that. That particular issue I would need.

It was a may 6th article and he was on the front page.

Councilor my understanding that that was a citation from the bureau of transportation.

Oh, okay. So that's what I wanted to find out. If there was a permit who came from your office. But it wasn't.

I thought it was all integrated. Oh.

It could be people. I don't know.

It was all integrated. Okay. Yeah. So I'm just I want to follow up offline because I know we don't have enough time and I'll shoot you the, the, the newspaper article. But it was disturbing to me that someone tries to get help and get those unsanctioned homeless shelters that they have outside of people's houses and camps. And then then they get cited and have to spend a lot of money for some. Basically, we just ignored what their concern was and then gave them a bill. So that was a problem.

Councilor, I look forward to working with you to help resolve this.

Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you councilor. To the housing director. I want to start by thanking you for your service here in the city and the interim role. And we understand that, you know, you will be leaving us soon to go fix another problem somewhere else. So thank you for the time you've given to us and take it away for the presentation on the housing bureau.

Thank you. Council president, vice president. Clerk. Councilors. Good morning. My name is michael buonocore. I am I remain the interim director of the Portland housing bureau for another week and a half. It's a pleasure to be here this morning. The mission of the housing bureau is to foster an inclusive and sustainable city by creating stable and long term housing opportunities for Portland. We fund affordable housing, ensure protection for renters, preserve existing homes and create homeownership opportunities. The housing bureau regulates a growing portfolio of 19,000 apartments of affordable housing throughout the city, with a dedicated team of 86 professionals. Our proposed budget is 276.3 million. This is an all in number that includes 86 million planned, both for committed and planned future investments beyond the upcoming fiscal year, which will be categorized in the budget as contingency. Next slide. So forgive me, I'm going to jump past this slide, and then we'll come back in just a minute. So next slide please. So the big takeaway as you look at this slide is that the general fund continues to comprise a relatively small proportion of fb's overall budget. That's the $1.2 million shown as a reduction, which means that we will be able to absorb that loss without layoffs or reductions in services. And I'll provide more information about that in the slides ahead. The number you see for the reduction related to realignment largely reflects the pass through of funds that has typically gone to Multnomah county homeless services division. And this year we'll go to Portland solutions. So this has no impact on fb's service levels. Next slide. With respect to staffing, we have the movement of three fte from the bureau to the service area under core services realignment to. In comes one in community engagement and the cut of two vacant positions, which I will describe in a moment. Next slide. As I mentioned earlier, all of Portland housing bureau's existing services will be maintained in the upcoming budget year, and the work we do falls broadly into the four buckets that you see in front of you affordable housing development, renter protections and stabilization, home ownership, access and home repair and safety programs that help portlanders stay in their homes. So now, if we could jump back to slide 17 with apologies again. So here you see some of the impacts through our proposed budget. About 85% of our budget directly supports housing investments and services. In the upcoming year, we are looking at investing in 18 projects representing more than 1800 apartments and homeownership opportunities. We will provide education and counseling to about 1000 households. Landlord and tenant education referrals to more than 6000 folks, legal services for more than 1500 households and again, $86 million. That is categorized in contingency. And again, those are for committed and planned future investments, not technically contingency. That's just the accounting label that we use. So if we could now jump a couple more to. Yes. So now we will talk about the the various reductions. So again, there's a reallocation of the pass through that has traditionally gone to homeless services division at the county. So that will now, in addition to an elimination of 263,000 from the recreational cannabis funds, support Portland solutions. And again, there's no this has this historic pass through has happened for many years, and there's no impact to the Portland bureau's Portland housing bureau's service delivery and no expected staffing impact. Next slide. Reduction of external materials and legal services. So this removes general fund that previously supported legal services. There will be no reduction in the legal services that support the bureau. We'll just use other funding sources to make up for that reduction and reduction in things like supplies, meeting costs, advertising. We will also decrease the discretionary external materials and services budget again, all without affecting core services or service delivery and with no expected staffing impact. Next slide. We are proposing to reduce funding in our agreement with bts that will remove one embedded bts applications analyst at the bureau. That person supports some of our specialized software solutions related to our loan subsidiary portfolio. And so we will we will lose that embedded employee through this cut. Next slide. And then the elimination of two vacant data analyst positions. So the bureau currently relies on a small team to provide data analysis that supports multiple high priority policy initiatives. We'll be able to maintain our current service levels with the existing team. This is more of an opportunity cost in terms of how much bandwidth we have for research or analysis on new policy initiatives, but again, no loss in the current capacity. And I believe that is all. Next slide. Yes, those are all that's our presentation.

Thank you very much. All right. Please feel free to jump back in the queue. Councilor greene, kick us off. Okay. Councilor Kanal. Okay. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Council president, if this is not an appropriate time, I don't have to ask this now, but I want to use the opportunity because of something in one of these slides to ask the city administrator a broader question.

Sure.

So, mr. City administrator, one of the things that director bowen said he's cutting is advertising, and there are a lot of bureaus that do a lot of advertising and sponsorships and things like that. And some of those things are recruitment opportunities for new staff and making sure that members of our community know the city is a great place to work, and that that's a good thing. Some of those opportunities sponsor community events that many of us up here and many community members absolutely love, and events that depend on city sponsorship in part to be able to move forward. But I don't know that we've asked any questions about this before, and I'm wondering if at some point we could get some information about across bureaus, how much is actually spent on advertising and event sponsorship, where we have 4 or 5 bureaus all sponsoring the same community event, and that looks like about half the sponsorships for that event. If we're really looking under every couch cushion and turning over every rock and trying to not cut a fire engine and front line services, could we get some broader citywide information about this?

Yes we can.

Thank you. Is that something we should expect in time for this budget, or is that something that will take a little more time? And we need to ask you to do a deeper dive over the next few months.

I would want to do a deep dive on that, but let me get back to you and see if it's something we can talk through this budget cycle. But I have a feeling this is a much bigger, bigger topic.

And I recognize there may be some impacts to asking this question that we don't want to see, and that could concern a lot of folks in the community. I'm not asking for any big changes, but it seems like a space that we need to understand.

Most definitely.

Thank you. Thank you, council president, for letting me take that tangential opportunity.

Absolutely. Thank you, councilor Pirtle-guiney, councilor Zimmerman.

Eric Zimmerman: Thanks, michael. My question is really just kind of go to, you know, given a a a budget moment that we're in and where everybody else is, is taking significant cuts. You know, I think the last time we spoke from the dais, I said, I would be comfortable with you if you cleaned house in that bureau. And what I really want to understand is, given the challenges that we've seen come out of that bureau and the way that they have or not administered programs, is this not an opportunity to dig deeper and maybe reset in ways that can be foundational in terms of where the housing bureau goes in the years to come? Because if that if this is that moment, I don't see that reflected in in the budget. I kind of see a status quo, and there may be no bureau that I'm more uncomfortable with status quo than the housing bureau after these last six months. And so I just want to give you an opportunity. One, you can say, you know what, no, councilor We're on the right track. We're going the right direction. That's why I'm doing minimal amounts of cuts. Or perhaps you'd like to. You just don't don't know that since you were in the interim role, it would be good to propose it. I'm just trying to understand because, frankly, I would have expected to probably see a more aggressive realignment re-approach redesign for bureau, who frankly, has only existed since 2009, which, by the way, is when Portland kind of stopped building housing. So that correlation causation, I'm not going to try and make a connection that's not there. But there's I have deep concerns that whether or not the bureau has been built on a correct foundation to be successful by 2030, 2035 and 2040. Thoughts?

Yes. Thank you, councilor, for the question. I appreciate it. Maybe I'll start with the idea that the the bureau has been in existence since 2009. The bureau has, in fact, gone through a number of evolutions, and it's existed in its current existence is a breaking off of being part of a sort of a larger entity. That was the bureau of housing and community development. So, you know, I think that's reflective of a number of transitions that the bureau has gone through over the years, including a very intensive period of years recently in which there has been a high

A degree of turnover at the executive level. And as we chatted informally about any organization can't sort of go through that degree of upheaval at the at that level and not expect to see implications on, you know, how it's functioning and its ability to sort of be fully, you know, accountable when, when folks are understandably asking questions from the dais that I have a six month perspective on, you know, that's really challenging. And that's not just me. That's the shallowness that has been there, you know, from the beginning, as all of that turmoil has happened, what I have seen my first time around and, and since I've been back is that the, the folks who keep the bureau running. And the reason that there aren't more challenges is that the the staff of the bureau do exceptional work. And they have. Again, thank you for this opportunity because they have heard in the press and in these conversations, you know, questions about their their their competence and whether the bureau is, you know, sort of doing its its work appropriately. And anything that has gone well, I think deserves a lot of credit to the represented staff who show up every day and keep their heads down and are listening to all of these conversations and their earbuds as they do their work. I do believe there's a good deal of internal stabilization and some structural realignment in the bureau. That has to happen periodically no matter what, and especially because it needs leadership that has the ability to settle in and really focus on that. And I think the, you know, this construct and the accountability that is driven by needing to demonstrate all of the funds to counsel and not just sort of what we're asking for in a given year. Like these are all steps that are going to shore up the bureau's ability to really do the work that's needed. But I I'll say it a third time. The Portland housing bureau staff have been waiting for someone to kind of stand up for them and say they, you know, they are an exceptional group of professionals. They have my support and I will pass that on to whoever the next leader is.

Thanks. I had a feeling you might say that, and I'm glad that that you had the opportunity to say it. And it is. And I agree with you. And I think that it is just foundational, bolded, underlined italics that the need for deep visionary, but also type a leadership to come into the housing bureau as you step away to go resuscitate another failing organization is so needed. And so for the city administration leadership that's in the room, I hope that we really grab the words of the director that he just shared with us, because, you know, there is taking care of stuff behind the scenes. There is bailing water out to make sure the ship doesn't sink. But all of that is fruitless if nobody is giving orders from the deck. Right? In terms of what where we overall, what are we doing? Where are we going? What is the overall plan? And I think that we have largely been bailing the water out for a while without an idea of, are we going to hit land soon? So I really look forward to. Bolstering what can be possible in the housing bureau with clear eyed leadership. Who knows that the most important thing that we do is we create an environment for more housing to exist, that we create an environment that that enables all types of housing to exist, and that creation of housing is first and foremost. And everything after that is a byline. So thanks for your work. I know you're in the last few days, weeks of, of your interim position here and to the housing bureau employees. I hope that you have heard what your director just said, because I think he nailed it on the head. So thank you for that. And I appreciate the budget presentation. It was less important to me than having an opportunity to hear from you directly. So thank you.

Thank you, councilor.

Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Ryan.

Dan Ryan: Yes, thank you, council president. Hi, michael, I want to I'm looking at slide 17, explains what Portland housing bureau does. And it's really missing something that's been become painfully aware, thanks to some investigative reporting by the Willamette week. Where's the oversight part of this bureau and where is the longitudinal data that we must look at? So when we build something, we help build something. When we're the leaders of that, where's our responsibility to have metrics that follow for three years? How many people are living there? What's their satisfaction? What are the challenges, which we're hearing many about? Like, where is that oversight and where I know I couldn't attend the meeting that I'm not a member of anymore yesterday. Maybe we got it some of this, but I think it's strange that's missing from what the housing bureau does.

Sure. And these are absolutely, you know, just sort of high level outputs as opposed to outcomes, I would say is a great question in the context of, you know, the reality that we will eliminate some data analysis capacity. You know, what we are able to do in the bureau is particularly make sure that the funds that we are investing in capital projects, as you know, as it relates to folks housing councilor That that money is being sort of diligently tracked and expended as it's meant to, and that that there is compliance with the regulatory agreement on the other side of completion of the of the property. We don't have, you know, any any capacity to do more evaluation based work. You know, we do have a renter hotline in which people can call in and, you know, a express concerns that we can sort of help route and follow up on. But in terms of, you know, sort of what is the quality of life of folks experience in the housing that we help fund? That's not a line of, you know, sort of outcome measurement that we currently provide, but in terms of our ability to provide a deeper level of what sorts of things do we track? You know, there's opportunity to present more on that.

There is opportunity. I think councilor Zimmerman spoke to that. There's an opportunity to rethink the structure of this bureau, and we have enough information to realize that this is a need. There's so many reasons for that. What is the vacancy? What are the major maintenance issues? What's the quality of life for residents? We should be tracking that for at least three years. And it's not just the home forward issues that keep coming up in district two, it's with others. So we were at a budget hearing on Monday night, and I had the third person from a unit explained to me very similar stories of what we're reading about some of the units and some of the buildings of the home forward. This is yet another elder who says they don't feel safe in their building and they pay their fixed income is is given to this organization so they can live there. And they assume there could be a high quality of life. So I think that we really need to get to the bottom of this, and we need to be proactive and not continue to look like it's not our issue when it is. I'm curious about the a couple other things. One is I appreciated when chair Avalos in early this year had we had a great discussion about the roles between the city and the county, and we kind of landed in some places. The city is about building. The city is about building. That came up over and over again. The county is more about rent. The irony of that is then we listen to advocates say they want to rent vouchers. And then after two minutes of discussion that passed 3 to 2, that we should do what we said. We really isn't our role clarity. But anyway, I'll try to get over that. My point is, what is our role? And this is a time maybe to rethink that, because the county exists and so does the city, and we're duplicating some of our efforts, and we don't have time for that now with the with the reality of the local budget crisis, because of the lack of revenue that's coming into both the city and the county. I was curious about the 230 4k from the cannabis fund going away. Where is that going? Or is there just not enough money in the cannabis fund coming to us anymore? Do you know the answer to that question?

I do believe it's a reduction in revenue that's available. But yes.

That is correct, councilor.

And so I wish it was there because actually I think it's going to some strange places. Now. I think that if the housing bureau was using it for behavioral health specialists in these same units where everyone's complaining, those services were promised, but they're not receiving them, that would be a start. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Ryan, councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Yeah, thank you so much, director buonocore. Thanks for your service as well. Wish you all the best in your your next very difficult job. Just very briefly, I just was hoping to get some sense of whether or not these two cut vacancy positions are going to impact the unified housing strategy work and the social housing work.

Thanks for the question, councilor. Again, I think it's more of an opportunity cost. I think if there was more if those positions were there, our ability to do more would exist. But we're not in a position where we're saying the unified housing strategy can't be supported by the bureau or the social housing study can't be. And I think hopefully you're seeing good progress on both. And we feel like we can, you know, continue to stay on that track. There could come moments, depending on what the next iteration of work looks like or what implementation looks like, that in future budget cycles. We might say, if we're going to pull this off, we would need x, but as it stands now, that work, you know, we're we're staffed to continue moving that work forward.

Okay. I needed to hear that. Thank you, thank you.

Thank you, councilor Green, councilor Smith.

Loretta Smith: Thank you council president. Thank you, michael, for all the work that you've done for us. I work with you when I was a Multnomah county commissioner, and I appreciated your work. But as for this budget, I want to know more about the home share program. There was $500,000 put in the budget for 20. What was it, 25, 26 and I believe we're also putting another $500,000 in.

No. So the the initial $500,000 rolls is requested to roll into this budget year.

It will be the leftover money. Yes. And so with the mayor's budget, he's asking to have that rolled over. Yes. To be able to pay for it. So tell me what happened. Why didn't that that program get off the ground in a year?

It did get off the ground in a in a year. So there was a process of designing the program, finding platforms that could sort of make the connections between renters and homeowners sort of developing the policy of how that works. Legal review. So some of the, what we wanted to be sure of here in Portland was this program work, you know, is in other markets, but are the sort of protections that folks will have adequate as they are in other places, or do you know, are there other pieces that need to be put in place? So the program's up and running now, and homeowners and renters can now be matched.

How many renters will we help with that? $500,000?

I believe there is funding for up to 350 renters.

Who actually does that program? Who's the coordinator, director of that program? That program? Who does that?

Sure. That is under the direction of josh roper, our policy and planning director.

And planning director. That was one of one of the one of the new programs that I was really excited about in terms of making sure that people got into homes. And that was something different from what we were doing. Will you all. Because I know it started the process in February and it was approved in June, but I'm just trying to I'd like to have a report. I know you're not going to be here, but it would be great to have a report out on in the housing and permit or in the committee of the whole just, you know, what's going on with it. What kind of folks are we putting in? Are these people from shelters? Who are the folks that are using this particular program?

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Smith. Colleagues, no one else in the queue. I'm going to give us a thought. I was oh, councilor Ryan and then we're going to go bathroom break.

40s question what was the fte of the housing bureau before the 26, the 2016 bond? What was it at peak of the bond and what is it today?

We will get you we will get you factual answers to that question. Councilor. I can tell you what I what I understand anecdotally is that as resources swelled into the bureau, there was not a significant increase, if any, staff to to manage those resources. So we haven't seen.

You're telling me I'll see numbers for fte prior to the bond, similar to the number of ftes during the bond, the peak of the bond.

You know, I honestly actually, councilor, forgive me. I was thinking of the ARPA resources and not the bond. So we'll just get you that. We'll get you that information.

And you can include ARPA that my point is we had a fte rate prior to during the peak. And then you could tell me the sources and then where we are today. I think I'm looking at what what is the housing bureau today, post bond. And of course, I'm advocating for more oversight with metrics so we can be more accountable to the good people in Portland that are living in the units that we help build.

Understood, councilor.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Ryan. Okay, colleagues, we're going to take a quick 15 minute bathroom break back here at 1115. We'll come back and finish the planning section of bureau of planning and sustainability. See you at 1115. Well, that's 12 minutes. It's 12 minutes. But I know everyone's going to roll in at 1120, so it's fine. And we are coming back. Thank you very much, friends. I'm going to we're now turning over to the bureau of planning and sustainability where correction, we're not just talking about planning. We are also talking about everything in the planning and sustainability bureau except for pcf. So hold your pcf questions till later. But otherwise I'm going to turn it over. Back over to dca oliveira and director engstrom.

Thank you, council president. Actually, you said the thing that I was just going to say. So I'm just going to get right over to director engstrom. Perfect.

Good morning. For the record, my name is Eric engstrom. I'm the director of the bureau of planning and sustainability. Bts collaborates with partners, organizations, and community to help design and implement the next generation of urban strategies to achieve our city wide goals. Bts work is externally facing and fundamentally about setting direction for the future. The bureau includes urban planning, climate and energy program, solid waste and recycling, franchise utilities, and the Portland clean energy fund. Pcf is being discussed tomorrow. So today we're going to focus on the rest of bts. Pcf is more than 90% of its budget. Next slide please. So I'm going to help you understand what what you see with this is the whole bureau when you see this slide. But I'm going to walk you through what the elements of the non pcf parts are. Again, 90% of the bureau's budget is pcf. This total includes roughly 425 million. That's pcf ending fund balance or future year cip spending, if you want to call it that. Without that fund balance, the bureau's budget is closer to 300 million. And without pcf, the budget for planning, community technology and waste programs together is about 41 million. A chunk of that is in the general fund, and a chunk is in the other funds. The general fund is about a third of bts non pcf funding, which supports planning, community technology and graffiti abatement. Other revenue comes from the solid waste fund, intergovernmental agreements, the state and some grants. Urban planning is primarily funded by the general fund with some secondary grant funding. The climate and energy programs are supported by pcf and the solid waste funds community technology, the largest component of which is the franchise utility team, is funded by the general fund and historically, with some interagency revenue from the mount hood cable regulatory commission. And we'll discuss the mh crc in a later slide. The franchise utility program. Just a reminder that that brings in about 90 million annually into the general fund. It's one of your primary revenue sources through franchise that we grant to private utilities to operate in the public right of way. This includes things like power companies, the gas company, pipelines, and telecommunications, the solid waste and recycling utility is funded by the solid waste management fund, which is generated when you pay your garbage bill. And we'll discuss the waste rates a little bit later in this presentation. Bts also supports its internal service functions with an overhead pool that includes contributions from all these sources that I just mentioned, including pcf and waste. That pool pays for things like communications, hr, procurement, tech services, engagement, finance, and the director's office. That that pool is shown on this chart as part of the general fund budget, because that's where we budgeted. But some of that revenue, I just want to note is coming from pcf and waste. So the actual general fund total is a little bit less than what you're seeing there. The general fund column also includes some one time money going to graffiti. Next slide please. Most of as you can see here, one of the biggest changes in our fte count is through the broader citywide internal services realignment that most of that team is being realigned to join the internal services team, now serving ppe and housing, as well as PPS. And you'll learn more about that with the realignment discussion in a few days, I believe. But that includes our hr, procurement, tech services and engagement teams. Two other positions, as was noted earlier, are being realigned to support the new city data and privacy office as well. That's that's within that realignment number. Next slide. So despite this being a difficult budget year, bts will continue to prioritize working with other bureaus, especially ppd and public works, to streamline and improve regulations that apply to development. In coordination with Portland permitting and development, we will be launching several regulatory improvement initiatives in the coming year. You already hear a little bit about the cap two project being one of those. Portland also has a solid world class solid waste and recycling service, and we'll we're well positioned to continue making that better. Our biggest push this year will be aimed at apartment buildings as we evaluate options to improve recycling and composting services for those customers. Finally, although the chief sustainability officer is now housed with the city administrator, we continue to be one of the key pillars in the city's climate work, including supporting energy efficiency in buildings, supporting the development of a city energy strategy, managing the renewable fuels, transition and engagement with energy utilities, working towards a cleaner grid and of course, promoting sustainable development is inherently connected to our land use and comprehensive planning functions as well. Next slide. These next few slides describe the places where we're going to be doing a bit less. One of the mayor's guidance encouraged us to look at specific functions, rather than just thinning the soup across the board, and we took that to heart. Area planning is one of the functions where the proposed budget will leave us with fewer resources. This is the team that does area specific neighborhood planning. This team has been an important part of the bureau for many years. Recent examples of their work include the. The lower southeast rising area plan, the southwest town center plan, our work to support the albina vision trust and the montgomery park area plan. In this coming budget year, we're going to prioritize delivery of the inner east rezoning project, which you all have talked about. I know as a council priority, but we're going to not have as much capacity to do other things within that team. Next slide. A second area of cuts is pausing our outgoing digital inclusion grant program in community technology. This is one of the larger buckets of general fund money within the bureau's budget. That does not is not all staff. So that's one of the reasons that cut was taken. Next slide. Third will be cutting the remaining general fund support from our climate team. This was money we used for contractors to provide technical expertise that we don't have as much of in house. This is going to reduce our ability to support, provide technical support to customers and realtors who are fulfilling the home energy score requirements. It's going to reduce our ability to do some climate related technical analysis, and it's going to affect our participation in some peer city networks. While we're reducing our reliance on contractors with this cut. And we will need to rethink some of these programs or do less with those programs as a result, in addition to the general fund reduction, this team is losing an ongoing grant funded position. Because we came to the end of a long, multiyear grant that we had over the last decade, and so that that ongoing position was cut as a not as a result of the general fund cuts, but as a result of the grant running out. Next slide. I'm going to talk now about the mount hood cable regulatory commission. As you all have heard before, the number of people who have cable television subscriptions is declining and is expected to continue declining. This means that cable franchise revenue is declining, making the existing mount hood cable commission structure unsustainable. And accordingly, as I've talked to you all before, the city has signed a dissolution agreement with other member jurisdictions that happened in 2025. The mayor's budget includes several technical decisions related to that dissolution, including recognizing cable revenue coming to the city rather than flowing through the mount hood cable commission, redirecting some staff funds that had previously gone to the mount hood cable commission that would now go to bts and then reassigning come some council specific open signal funding from bts to council operations. That's related to your broadcasting funding. Essentially, the city will continue to have a cable franchise, but the dissolution of the commission and the budget decisions we're making here mean that will be directly managing that work, rather than relying on the cable commission. Next slide. I'm now going to pivot to our waste and recycling rates. The waste and recycling utility is divided into two primary systems residential and commercial. The residential waste system generates about one third of all the waste. We handle. The commercial system, which includes businesses, apartments and construction waste, generates about two thirds of the waste the city has waste setting authority over the residential system, but not the commercial system. The residential system is a franchise utility where private companies provide the service on our behalf, assigned to specific geographies, the city sets the overall rules and the types of services that must be provided through franchise agreements. And as a reminder, the rate formulas are driven by those franchise agreements, which are negotiated every 5 to 7 years. Council reviews the rates annually as we're doing, starting now. But this is there's not a lot of discretion in this process. There's an agreed to formula in the franchise agreements, and deviating from that would put the the franchise agreements and services in jeopardy. Per the franchise agreements, the residential rates are based on the cost of service, plus an allowance for a target operating margin and incorporation of the city's franchise fee. To break that down a little bit more, about 39% goes to the cost of collection, 25% is related to the cost of disposal, 19% is company administrative costs, 9.5 is the operating margin and 8% is the city's franchise fee, which goes into the solid waste fund and supports the solid waste programs. The 9.5% operating margin, by the way, is used to establish the rates. It's not a guaranteed rate of return. Again. In contrast, the commercial system is a free market system. There's not assigned geographies. The city sets the overall rules and establishes a per ton tipping fee. But customers may choose their haulers, and we don't set those rates. Next slide. Here you can see how our rates compare to other cities on the west coast, as well as some neighboring cities. We kind of fall in the middle of that range where it says equal. It means that they provide an equivalent level of service as us in that category, where it says less means either less often or fewer services, and where it says more means that they they handle more or do it more often. And generally, the cities that provide higher service have higher rates in the cities that provide equal or lower service, have lower rates. Next slide. This slide shows our proposed rate changes this year. The rate review process begins in January, when we receive detailed cost reports from each hauler. We then send those to a cpa to vet them. We receive adjusted costs from those from that cpa, and then we work with an economist to implement our rate model and come up with the numbers that you see in front of you. In early April, we met with haulers, and we also hosted a public information session for general public interest. I want to highlight here that one component of the cost in disposal is metro's disposal fees. And in prior years, we would use actual metro fees as the calculator there, which don't become available until may in order to create more time for you all to consider the rates. We are pivoting this year to a system where we use an assumed metro rate based on the prior year present cost escalator. If metro's rates then come in differently than what we predicted, that will catch up in the following year. So other cities in the region do this backward looking rate calculation instead of forward. And we're going to pivot to that this year because it allows us more time, and we're not going to force you into an emergency ordinance at the end of the year. The proposed rates, as you can see, are a modest increase this year. Drivers of the higher costs include wages, benefits and fuel, and increased disposal costs, as I just described. Those are partially offset by declining recycling costs, which are in part due to the statewide recycling modernization act and some of the subsidies that show up there. The rate increases are very modest, and this is actually the smallest increase we've proposed in recent years. We're not proposing any increase to the commercial tonnage fee. So I'm not even showing that on the on the chart. And that is within our discretion to and is a slight deviation from our five year financial plan. But given the city's budget situation, we chose to not move a rate increase on that forward this year. If you look at the rates adjusted for inflation, the waste rates overall have been flat for the past two decades, rising slightly less than the overall rate of inflation. This means your garbage bill today is similar to what it was in 2012, adjusted for inflation. And finally, a reminder that last year we implemented a financial assistance program for qualified homeowners that comes to a discount of about $22 per month at the 35 gallon service level. And since the launch in November, we have 900 customers now enrolled in that program, which is linked to the water bureau discount program. We are working now on ways to expand that eligibility to low income renters. That's a little bit more technically difficult just because a lot of times they don't hold the garbage bill, but we're working on that. We also launched a standardized rate for bulky item disposal this year. Previous. Each hauler had different rates or sometimes they didn't even didn't even advertise their rates. We now require a consistent rate for that, which we hope will help folks understand how they can properly dispose of bulky items instead of just dumping them in a ravine or something, and that concludes my presentation.

Okay. Thank you colleagues, let's get into the queue, councilor Smith. Okay, vice president Clark.

Thank you, council president. There's a lot here. Eric, I appreciate the the information, but I just want to briefly ask you a little bit about under what you're preserving on slide 28, just about the waste and recycling services that you have. You have a project underway to improve multi dwelling recycling and composting services and develop a low income rate for renters. Can you talk a little bit more about the process that you're using to do that?

Yeah, this is a significant project and we're actually looking at the whole commercial system, the part that's not part of the residential franchise, which again includes apartments, commercial services and construction waste. And this is an opportunity to look holistically at the structure of that service and figure out whether we want to do it differently. Hypothetically, you know, should should multifamily properties be folded into the residential system, for example? That's that's a potential question to ask.

Are they commercial now?

They're part of the commercial system now. So property managers of larger multifamily buildings, more than five units can choose their hauler. And that leads. That has led to a little bit spottier service from the end user's perspective. If you're if you're an apartment dweller, you know, you're moving from place to place, you're going to experience slightly different levels of service as you go from building to building and hauler to hauler, because it's less regulated and it's not as consistent. Sometimes the composting might be missing from your service, or they might not have as much space in an older building for, for disposal of, of recycling goods. So it's a big project. There's going to be public involvement with both property managers and renters. It's going to take us much of the next year or two to to work through. But we will be bringing proposals back for changes to that system.

Councilor, I just want to offer, because this project started when I was back at bts as well. But the question we're contemplating is, what would it look like in Portland if everybody, no matter where you live and what type of building, had access to the same level of service, and that is not true today. And so that's what we're solving for.

Yeah. And I really appreciate that because I am a condo dweller. Also, you didn't mention the haulers. I imagine you have the haulers involved in this project.

Absolutely.

Okay. And I'm just thinking that at some point, Eric, you'll maybe bring this for a preview to the public works committee.

Yeah, we've we've talked about a potential check in. We're developing the objectives for the project that right now. And we were thinking that we would bring the objectives to vet through a committee sometime this fall.

Okay. And I would just imagine that you might want to talk to PBOT, since we're also looking at a different way of dealing with multifamily on the tough, that there is some synergy between the water public works and your bureau as well. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, vice president Clark, councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you, director engstrom, for the presentation. I want to kind of narrow in on the franchise utility program for a second. It is a pretty important revenue stream for the city of Portland. It's not the biggest, of course, but it's a pretty foundational one. And I'm looking at the proposed budget and it looks like it's just three ftes in the franchise utility group. Is that correct?

I might need to get I think there's some partial people who are split, but approximately 3 or 4.

Okay. That would explain maybe because what I'm seeing in the position report is one analyst for. And then two analyst twos and then some vacancies. And the analysts for is like under range for that job class. And so I'm trying to understand maybe.

It's a small team. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. You know, we're not in an add year of course. But I'm thinking when we think about where the resources go in the budget, I'm a little bit apprehensive. And maybe you can tell me why I shouldn't be apprehensive, but that we have such a small team managing such a large revenue center for the for the city. And is that a thing to be worried about? Do we need to think about as we look forward in time resourcing this? Is there a strategic vision on the horizon that I should be aware of?

I agree with the sentiment that you want to be careful about cutting programs that are generating revenue, and we did not cut core staff in the franchise utility program. We, the the larger community technology division did take a cut, in part related to the mount hood cable transition, and in part by unwinding the digital inclusion grant program. Those are in the same general program. But but we didn't cut the core team that's working on the franchise utility revenue. And I will say that the team has been doing a great job. They've increased the general fund revenue in the last couple of years by more aggressively going after people who haven't paid their franchise bills.

Yeah, and I want to recognize that. I've heard that in other settings. That's that's kudos to that team. Let me ask it a slightly different way. I have been talking about rate setting as a more sort of deliberate practice across the city, a little bit closer to a hearings process with this staff. Could you accommodate requests for different rate design proposals and different ways of thinking about the franchise utility approach, or would that be too burdensome for that staff to accommodate?

No, we have done that. Just a couple of years ago, we rewrote the right of way code, which governs the franchise utility system, and that moved us away from individually negotiating franchises to more of a standardized license approach. And then we are currently doing a project right now to modernize their technology. The portal that the, the, the customers use to pay their franchise system. So the part of the team's work is sort of system improvement and contemplating improvement.

I appreciate.

Councilor may offer this to the question about the strategy. Yeah, I think the point is salient in that. And it's maybe a cautionary tale for all the other conversation we've had earlier about moving programs from one bureau to another, the the franchise utility team came from another entity that moved into bts a few years ago. And so it's largely still landing in the bureau. It's the team's doing great. To your point and to eric's point, but we haven't had that time to do that strategic planning yet because we're still stabilizing them as an entity in the bureau. So that work is is certainly due.

I appreciate that. And, you know, as I look at this, the position report here, it looks like the most senior person in that group is an analyst for. Are they the sort of supervisor?

Correct.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Green. Councilor Novick.

Steve Novick: Thank you, mr. President. So it's my understanding, based on 60 years of consumption of popular culture, that the mafia is traditionally heavily involved in waste management. And this is really a question for the city attorney, I guess. But are we under any legal obligation to consult with the mafia before changing policies and practices relating to waste management? And if so, have we discharged that obligation?

Councilor will defer that to the city attorney when they when they're available.

Thank you. I'll follow up.

Thank you. Councilor Novick. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney.

Council president. I don't think I can follow that.

No, I don't think so.

Two questions. The first one is very small, but because you brought up the work around improvements for multi dwelling, recycling and composting services, would that change the the way that we regulate multi-dwelling units and align pickup days with residential units. Or would the multi dwelling, the commercial side retain separate pickups?

That's all on the table as as options to discuss. But but yeah, one of the, one of the options would be to align with the residential system.

Okay. As we have more multi dwelling units in residential neighborhoods with small streets, I occasionally hear from constituents about the impacts there.

And that's, that's one of the logics of doing this project is over the years, we're becoming more multi dwelling city as as our land use processes play out. And so that's we're shifting more of our waste stream and more customers into that commercial system.

So let's talk about land use.

And planning. Thank you for that transition. You're cutting two staff from the area district planning team and moving to others to specific projects. That planning work is part of what has made our city the way that it is. How many staff are retained on that team?

I may have to get back to you the precise number, but it's it's around 7 or 8 total.

So we're.

Cutting about a third of the team.

A quarter maybe. Yeah, something like that.

Okay.

And you said that other than the inner east side for all work, there is not a lot else that that team will be able to take on over the next six months to a year. With that type of reduction. What what are we losing? What are we losing in this decision package?

Yeah, we're we're losing flexibility to take on new projects. I think I feel pretty confident that we can manage the inner east project and finish the projects we have underway. As you mentioned, some of our as we've lost general fund in previous years, we've had to cover staff with grants. And so that tends to lock them into a project because the grant is what it is and we have to pay them with it. And so it takes them off the board. In terms of staff, I might assign to a project that council might come up with next year.

As we think about loss of reduction. And I this is a cuts budget, but I want to make sure that we know what we're getting.

To give you a concrete example of that, as the designs of the the the latest iteration of the interstate bridge come towards a conclusion, it's been in our mind that we're going to have to do an update to the jensen beach plan. That would be the kind of work that this team would do. And right now, I don't have a way to start in on a project like that.

That's a great example. So as we think about that project, when would that be able to come online? How long will that take? Are we getting ourselves? I guess what I'm trying to understand is, is 7 or 8 staff, the place where we can really only do one thing at a time. So if we have to do the jensen beach project, something that my colleagues in d1 would love to do, but that we're not being forced to do by outside pressures has to wait. Or will we still be able to do 2 or 3 things at a time, but maybe not 5 or 6 things at a time?

It's correct. It's you're going to the wait time to for us to start a new project that council might want us to do will be longer, and we'll be able to manage fewer of them at once. And the inner east example is a pretty significant amount of work. And I know council wants us to move fast, so we're going to put a lot of resources into it. That means we probably can't do other things at the same time with the previous team, with a larger team of 8 or 9 people, we can manage multiple streams of work. But with the team we're we're in now where we have again, I have to get back to you on the exact number, but let's say we have six, and two of those are funded by grants that have to work only on those grants. That leaves me with not very many people to do that work.

I've had conversations.

About other parts of the budget where I've asked folks, you know, what are the things that we can cut? And we probably it'll change what we do. We don't like it, but we can move forward. What are the things that we absolutely cannot cut without major impacts? And what are the things that we can cut and be okay muddling through for a year or two, but in the long run, we might need to add them back. This sounds from what you're saying, like it's in that that latter category, which is actually the middle category. Is that an accurate assessment?

Yeah, that's one of the reasons we made the decision to to make cuts here is in other teams, we have regulatory requirements coming at us from above, like the code team with regulatory improvement. That's clearly also a council priority. We did not cut their our environmental team has already tiny and has mandates related to floodplain and endangered species and things. So yeah, we're looking at trying to maintain core capacity to to do regulatory required work. And the area planning is important, good work, but there aren't necessarily external drivers forcing us to do it.

Councilor there have been times in the past where we've had external directives, like the director mentioned, an ivr. If several of those come at once, we will ultimately have to come back to council when that time is appropriate to ask for resources. And that has happened in the past. That's not unique to a budget cut scenario. It's just if the program load becomes overwhelming and we have must haves to do, we'll look to look to the council for resources to deliver.

It's a good a good example is large transportation infrastructure projects tend to need a land use partner in the work, and that tends to come from our area planning team because those projects are geographically based.

I consider myself now on notice that we'll need to add something here at some point in the next couple of years. Thank you, council president. I think that's probably my time. Is that right?

That is okay. Thank you much, counselor councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. First, just two questions related to that last line of questioning on jensen beach plan. Obviously want to make sure all three of us are consulted on that. And people in hayden island are very interested in the future of their neighborhood. And I want to make sure that we're able to represent that. Where is the full list of every plan? Is there a single place that's extant? Every now and then we'll find a be referencing a plan I've never heard of.

There is there's a planning library in on our website that gives you all the different area plans. And there's a map you can click to see where they are. And then all of our current planning projects are also in the planning portion of our website under the projects tab.

Okay, great. I will follow up and make sure that that is known to constituents as well. Can you speak a little bit more to smart city cuts specifically? I want to make sure that there's no impact to the surveillance and privacy work that's being done there. Is that is that something that will be affected by this reduction?

No. That what you see is the smart city program offer is actually the combination of the smart cities team and our digital inclusion program. When we absorbed the office of community technology a number of years ago, we merged those two teams together. And the cut we're taking is more on the digital inclusion side. With that grant program, the the smart cities program, a lot of that funding is being transferred with the realignment to the data and privacy office with that decision package.

Great. Thanks. On waste and recycling. I know there's been some interest in the idea of doing commercial franchising, which, among other things, is more climate friendly when you make areas served by a single company more compact. And I just wanted to understand if there's anything, any new updates, anything that you can share on, on that conversation?

Yeah, the, the, we are jumping into that project and there is work going on right now with stakeholders to identify and solidify the objectives of that system review. And so our intent is to come back to a council committee in the fall and, and give you an opportunity to look at what we're mapping out as the project objectives.

Great. I want to reiterate my interest and commitment to continuing our work to allow renters to directly ask for a different sized garbage bin that fits their needs and a different cadence as needed as well. This is something that is really, really small thing that doesn't affect a ton of people. You know, single family renters are still a significant population, but has a significant impact on their lives and seems that it should have been done before, but I'm glad we're working on it. I just wanted to get that on the record. I also want to continue to express concern about launching a financial assistance program for qualified homeowners without simultaneously supporting renters. I know better late than never, but I think we should always be starting with the people who need the help most, and that is renters. I'm not really sure why that that went that way. What is the timeline on that?

We're working on that right now. And we based on some discussions we've had with a number of you, we know that there's there's a few of you interested in that topic. And so we're trying to accelerate that right now.

And will that apply to multifamily renters or single family renters or both?

Don't know yet. But that's part of what we're looking at right now. And I my hope is we can bring you back something within this next fiscal year.

Okay. And I just want to close by saying I agree with everything councilor Clark talked about with relation to collaborating with PBOT bts water, obviously yourselves to have a single set of criteria and how you approach these discounts, because it will save us all a lot of energy in the long run. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Kanal councilor Ryan.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, council president. Good to see you. Eric. At a time when less money is coming into government from our bread and butter revenue streams due to our low performing economy, people are asking for reforms from government right now. They're really asking for us to really lean in and look where there could be a new way of thinking in terms of delivering customer service. On that note, would you say that your bureau specifically works closely with metro?

Yes, we work with metro closely on both the land use side and the waste side. They also have a role in the disposal of waste. And then we work with them a little bit. Increasingly, they're getting into the climate planning space as well.

Would you say at.

The end on climate they have some climate planning happening as well.

And I think that's what people are telling me, that they see that coordination and they also see sometimes duplication. Have you are you having conversations with people at metro where in fact, there's some overlap and there could be some new ways of thinking about the service of delivery, just like the city has to constantly do with the county. And of course, we can improve upon it for public safety and for housing.

Yeah, I think in both the land use sphere and the waste side, metro's role is at that policy larger scale. And we are more the direct implementers.

Where they are the direct implementers.

Yeah. We the bureaus in the city are the direct implementers, both in waste and land. Use. The spaces where there is often an interaction where we have to work out whose Lane we're in. There is always an active conversation on the waste side about metro's role with disposal and and whether they own and operate facilities or whether they have private companies doing that. That's an active conversation that the city has opinions about from a waste perspective. On the land use side, sometimes both metro and the city are involved in pushing forward strategic projects like metro, for example, gave grants to build trust. And we're also in that space. And so working out who's doing what between prosper and us and metro can. Sometimes when metro dives into a very highly local project, that can be a little bit.

I appreciate your honesty. I think that a lot of people are seeing that, and I think now's a really good time to keep having those meetings with your partners at metro to find who's on first where.

Yeah, overall, I would I want to say metro is a good partner, but there are points there that where.

Everyone's a good person, everyone just needs to see that there's efficiency that we're trying to get out of it, because people tell me they feel like they get one answer there, one answer here, and it gets confusing, I think, when it comes to land use. So that's all on land use. I think that maybe the theme I'm getting when it comes to east columbia and hayden island, our north waterfront, that we neglect quite a bit at this city is that there's a frustration that decisions seem to be made by sitting at home, looking at graphs and charts and such, and not enough walking the land like they tell me. I've never met anyone from bts, but here's the new code that they want to deliver. And then when I hear about cuts it, are you cutting those type of positions or do the job descriptions, those positions positions, not ask them to actually go out and walk the land and connect with those that are impacted?

No, I mean, unfortunately, the, the, the area planning team is the team that's most likely to be out walking the environmental team, which I think is the one involved in the east columbia planning does, of course, spend a lot of time in the field, too, because you can't do you can't understand environmental resources without walking the land literally. So they're out in the field quite a bit, but the area planning team is also out in the field a lot.

Okay. And I think some people perhaps don't realize that they have been walking because they perhaps haven't been having dialog with those folks. Code clutter, as you know, has been a big topic of mine for some time because you can't do permitting reforms without it. And after the lack of someone picking up the phone and doing customer service with frustrated folks trying to work with us on permitting that found the third email not to be that helpful. The second one was about code clutter. They would say they would get advice about a code from 1992, and then they find out another person that that's handed off to wants them to deal with the code that was passed in 2012. And then then the third person talks about a code passed in 2022. That's not right. So I starting to get impatient with this project that I know started quite a quite a while ago about how bp is helping out the permitting bureau to actually get in there and, and really scrub some of those codes that are no longer relevant, but they're still on record. And so it confuses and slows down time for those trying to do permitting any response to this.

Yeah. And as you know, councilor, I've been involved in the space of code improvement for many years and and have a lot of ideas about that. I'm very excited to be working with Eric couch to, to ramp up our efforts around regulatory improvement. And that means staffing cap adequately and moving those things forward. It means continuing to work at the with the d, c a to, to understand what the overall city priorities are for regulatory improvement and streamlining. As I said in my remarks earlier, we we're going to be taking on a number of projects. We are bringing the latest iteration of recap to council next month, and we will continue to do that kind of work as well. So I'm looking forward to bringing you a more holistic view with Eric and danny on. You know, what our next few years of regulatory improvement, what our roadmap is.

As we're working on that legislation, I'll have a definitely a lens there. I want to end with saying that it makes me sad what's happened to hayden island and the north shore of our city in general, the north waterfront. I lived in the mobile home court in high school out on hayden island, so I know it well with my mom and the neglect that has taken place over time is really sad. It looked much better in the late 70s. And then you contrast that just for our economic development. When you come across the current interstate bridge, you see such a contrast from Vancouver and the way the state of Washington and their w ort or whatever they call it, the Washington bureau of transportation, takes care of their roads and the way. Welcome to Oregon, the land of like abandoned hotels and weeds. It's just not okay. And so I'm hoping that we as a city, maybe the three of us will do a garden party with residents out at hayden island to help with that. But my point is, I hope that this city, in its planning, stops neglecting the north waterfront of the city, and just by adding more regulations without listening to the pain that they've been going through for the last 20 years, is not landing well at the moment. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Ryan councilor Koyama Lane, thanks.

I want to first start by wishing everyone a happy older Americans month. We'll be honoring this more next week. But with that in mind, doctor director engstrom, can you speak to how this the proposed budget cuts to bts could impact our capacity to prioritize and support age friendly initiatives to advance work aligned with our eden project age and disability inclusive neighborhood project?

Yeah, I'm familiar with that effort. The that document was produced, as you, I'm sure know, with help from a one time position we had in bts for a number of years, the late commissioner Fish had put in the budget some funding for us to to pilot an age friendly cities staff position, which we had from, I think around 2019 or 18 and through 2021 or so. That position was the victim of a prior year budget cut. It was essentially a cut year, and we never had the opportunity to ask for continuation of the of the one time position. And so it ended. I was involved with with helping to oversee that work when it was in the bureau. It's important work. It's not currently funded within the bureau. So that's a it's it does relate to a lot of the work we do in terms of land use and the built environment. So I appreciate the work, but I want to be clear, it's probably not within our current fte.

In councilor, I think because I was at bts when that report was completed as well. One of the things, the key lesson was some of the key priorities out of the research that was done led us to think that it was a broader than just a planning land use lens to approach the work. So where else in the city could we activate resources and partnership to, to further advance sort of age friendly policies? And so I think if we were going to evaluate next steps for that, it would probably work with the city administrator, my colleagues, to see what kind of team could we put together to really advance the work, because land use is an important tool, but it's probably not the only one that we want to do to address use to address age friendly policies.

I also want to just say we are working on some of the action items in that plan that continue to happen. So we we didn't put it on a shelf. There are a few things that have moved forward since that report was written, but it's kind of slow, incremental work rather than a dedicated position.

And when you're saying there's not capacity to really dig into this, that's at where we're at currently.

That's before the cuts. Yeah. The cuts don't really directly affect our capacity to do this work, but doesn't help.

And then what would the capacity need to be to be able to focus on this more?

At the time, we had one fte devoted to a age friendly cities work and that that was at the time it was thought of as a pilot project. And we just never got to move beyond the pilot stage because of funding.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane councilor Novick.

Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you, mr. President. I forgot that I actually had a serious question, which is about the cutting funding for the climate team and particularly the home energy score program. And I actually just ask you to like, remind people what the home energy score program is and what would be the effects of that cut?

Yeah, the home energy score is a code requirement that when you sell a home, you have to get an energy score essentially kind of like what you'd see on a washer and dryer if you bought a new washer and dryer. I went through that actually myself last year when I sold the home and sadly got a poor rating. It was an older house, but you essentially the realtor has to hire someone who writes a report that's a few pages about the. They go out and do a test of the home and look for energy leaks. And they look at your windows and things and it's. So it's a it's a code requirement. It's implemented by the private sector. But the funds that were cut are to a consultant contract that was providing technical assistance to the realtors. So it was like a helpline that you could call to get help with the technical work to comply. So the code continues to apply. We didn't we're not proposing to delete the code from the city code, but there would be fewer resources for technical assistance with this cut.

And how well utilized was this technical assistance that a lot of realtors call up to ask ask questions.

I will have to get back to you on the volumes. I'm not sure.

Because, I mean, this is of concern to me. If we have reason to think that it would undermine the program not to have this technical assistance available. And I think that actually I think vivian satterfield just saying to me recently that she thinks the home energy score program has been really effective. I'd like to see if it really is going to have an impact. I'd like to see this cut avoided. And actually, this is another example of where I think PCEF funding would be appropriate and would be reasonable to look for, to staff to make up a rather small amount of money. Thank you.

I can look into that.

Thank you. Councilor Novick counselor Ryan.

Steve Novick: Yes. Thank you. I didn't ask this one question, and it's something that since we've moved this form of government, we have more time to listen to neighbors. And one consistent theme is they start off by saying, I'm all in for density and housing, and my streets only this big, like it's narrow. And when you put these complexes in with no parking and you have parking on both sides of the road, the little car can barely get through, let alone kids on bikes and roller skating. And then if there is a fire, how are they? How's the emergency trucks going to get in? So I'm just keep hearing about this over and over again. And these again are people that are not your typical. I don't want like they'll say, can there just be four units instead of eight? Like, can we maybe consider one Lane, one side of the street for parking? So it makes me think, are you working with PBOT when you're doing the planning, when we're doing code work, are we getting outside of the building? But actually looking at the right of way and knowing that in Portland, you can go one block over and it's a completely different street size. And everyone knows that in both throughout the city. So I'm just starting to wonder if we're if we're looking at it, big picture, which is why I put an amendment in recently for the inner east side to make sure that we're that we're focused on safety as well as density.

Yeah. Pbot is an important partner in most of our area plans, and the inner east is an example of that, where they're going to be a critical partner at the stage we're at right now, we're still talking about conceptual zoning bubbles and general direction, but when we actually produce a zoning map, we do start thinking of it on a street by street basis. And it's not uncommon that we will get testimony about things like dead ends without turnarounds or narrow, particularly narrow streets in some cases. And that's the kind of situation where we do fine tune the zoning map and consult with fire and PBOT and others around some of those potential constraints. I recall during years ago, when we rewrote the comp plan and remapped another part of town there being examples where we exempted certain cul de sac or certain streets from the increased density because of the lack of a turnaround or things like that. So we do work in that way and try to fine tune the proposal.

With respect, authority. So who on your team and if it's you, that's fine. Can we guide constituents that have those concerns when the projects going in?

Yeah. I mean, with any given project, we'll have a contact point and that's the appropriate person to talk to about it.

Okay.

Thank you. It just keeps popping up.

In the case of interest it's bill cunningham. Yeah. All right.

Thank you. Councilor Ryan councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Just wanted to use my last minute here to build off of two things, councilor Ryan said one with relation to to hayden island on east columbia. I do think that the capacity being retained for actually walking around makes sense. I was doing some tours out there with relation to the proposed zone changes out there, and it there's nothing like seeing it. And so getting out there in person is, I think, really helpful. As for the the other piece around density, I think I would love to hear when we get into that conversation, not now, how we're not only connecting with PBOT, but also the conversation around transit broadly, because the, the density to parking issue does not get solved until we have the real conversation we have to have around transit as a city. And one of the challenges we're facing is, of course, that we don't directly control it. And so sorry.

The ones I've been there like a block from a bus.

Yeah. So that's a yeah, that's another conversation as well. Is, is to what degree can it not just be street by street, block by block though? Obviously it is, but sort of the middle layer of what's the distance from the nearest max stop. Right. And you see how that has played out on in other cities based on major arterial roads from a driving perspective. But I think if we're able to do that and scale it to distance from a max stop, for example, that's going to have better impacts for us and allow for that density increases without seeing as much of a strain on parking.

And councilor. We actually have two bites at the apple as a city, right? So we have the area planning that bts leads, but also we have the transportation system plan that comes out of PBOT. And they're actually in the process of looking holistically at our 2045 vision, where they'll contemplate those very things like what is the appropriate distance for density to transit access, like a, you know, a bus stop. All those sorts of ideas are contemplated in the tsp. So they kind of set the, the city wide parameters for that. And then will implement locally in an area plan.

Yeah. And I would it's hard because I, there's a lot of things that could go in the tsp, but I think the big one there. And thank you for bringing this up. Dca oliveira. Because it relates to bts too. We don't have the density for the number of road miles we have in the city. We just don't, especially as material costs go up and weight goes up and the wear and tear goes up. We do not have density for the number of road miles we need to maintain. Even after all the tough and all that other good work that's been done to help stabilize PBOT funding, it just is. It's out of sequence. So out of proportion, I should say. And so as we get the the density increased over the course of the next. I guess we're looking at what, 19 years that that's going to be something where we are also assessing that relationship and also looking at where we can d pave or do something maybe a little less drastic than that, like car free streets. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Councilor Koyama Lane, is that a legacy? Okay, I have a question that is not strictly budget related, but Eric, maybe you can help me out with this when when your teams are going through like thinking about the area planning teams versus all the other different kinds of teams as they are creating their plans, is there a cost as a consideration for the final regulations? Meaning like a sort of riffing off of what councilor Ryan was saying, like thinking about site specific problems or unique challenges. But do we also have like, here's the bells and whistles version of it. Here is a bare bones, like kind of area plan. How do we, how do we think about that?

Yes. To give you an example, when we did the southwest town center, as you probably all know, that's a challenging geography with a lot of unpaved streets and lack of stormwater systems. Sidewalks don't exist. It's a challenging place to put a town center, but it is a town center. On the metro plan. When we developed the plan for that town center, we had to think about several different options because the the gold plated town center was was going to be very expensive. And we have to think about that in terms of the time scale and what kind of capital improvements might be possible within a 20 year period. And that's where the tsp and the land use plan are critically linked together, because we need to make assumptions in the land use plan that are backable by a financially realistic tsp. And so in that case, we rezone some land, and then we left some land that we might want for higher density in the future, but we didn't immediately rezone it. We gave it a comprehensive planning designation, and that was a signal that we want to go there in the future, but we don't have the resources yet to build those streets. So yes, that is important.

Thank you.

Council president, also add on a project like something like significant, like the residential infill project, right? We're working with our partners to see like what we're designing. Is it even buildable? Can we actually, you know, like, so if you look at some of the, this is really wonky, but humor me for a second. When we start looking at some of the f.a.r bonuses for affordable housing, we worked with our nonprofit developers to ensure that we were creating a product that they could actually get to pencil out, right? So those are different kind of economics, but they are meaningful because what's the point of going through the process if we build a tool that won't get used? So we'll also look at that level of granularity as well.

Thank you, councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you. I'm back in the queue to ask a I guess it's not necessarily related to this specific budget, but it is about positions in budgets. A lot of times, you know, you'll see a city say, hey, we're rolling out this, this new initiative to we're going to, we're going to waive this. We're going to do a temporary waiver on a certain set of permit and code requirements to try to accelerate housing production. You've heard some councilors talk about that. I've talked about that at times. Is it is the what what position does that type of code update work, that sort of strike team work? Is it a planner?

Yeah, that's been typically the bts code development team. And but we work closely with ppe and staff as well because they have the direct front counter experience that will understand how it will get implemented.

That's exactly where I was going to go next. Is so really at your level, do you see a olivera? It's like if we if we were to, it's probably not this budget. But if we were to contemplate like a. I'll just give you an example. If we wanted to expand our book of pre-approved plans that are just off the shelf, self-certified. Let's go. And we want to take it from just for adu designs to like a whole menu of stuff. Like I would imagine you'd need to get a term like a five year lte kind of position set of position descriptions, and it would be sort of matrixed between s and p. And is that the right way to think about that type of thing?

Yeah. Councilor and I just want to echo something councilor Ryan had said when the permit improvement team that was started, the old form of government was successful in the new because we kept it at the service level area, mainly because so many different bureaus have to contribute. Right. And so even in your example that you framed. Yes, it would largely be led out of p, s and p, p, and d, but we might need to bring in fire. We might want to bring in PBOT to ensure that from their line of sight, we're hitting all the notes that they want to hit. And then again, just to share this, if we're looking at broader, larger reform, absolutely would want to be at a higher level for two reasons. One is when we tap staff that have ongoing work plans, we're taking them away from their core functions to do something new, which is important. But but by creating a new team that's distinct, we can really isolate them from a perspective of, you know, work creep to work across the city. So I think you're touching on something. Yeah. If we were going to do something significant like that, we would create it at a at a service area level.

I appreciate that, and that's something that I'm kind of signaling to maybe the next budget that might be a budget note that we try to craft or something going forward, but I wanted to make sure I talked to you guys. You're in the trenches, so.

And councilor the model that's been working really well, and I've said it in many spaces. So broken record for those who've heard it, is the vision zero structure that's been that's been led by a staffer out of the public works service area, but they coordinate across all the bureaus that are engaged. And that seems to be a model that has engagement from the dc level directors and of course, the staff that are doing the work. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Councilor Ryan. Yeah, I just want to get this question in. I first of all, colleagues, I think it's fine when we don't just talk about line items, but that we look at the function of the bureau, what our priorities in 2627, if you know what that is, and we adjust ftes accordingly. And so with that question, I'm always curious going ten years back. So in 2627, we're projecting 139.5 ftes according to one of your charts. Right. I got this from you.

That's correct.

Yes. And then I would like to have information on where you were ten years ago in 2016, 2017.

Sure. We can get that follow up information. The, the two trends, I would say in that response is that we have we are bigger than we were then, but most of that is pace of growth. Pcef didn't exist in 2017, and now it's close to 50 people.

And that would be helpful to have that really clear.

Yeah, the the general fund programs have faced some percentage cuts almost every year since 2017. So most of those are going to be, you know, a third smaller than they were at that point. And the waste functions, I think, have been fairly stable, although we had a lot of turnover during the pandemic, but that wasn't necessarily budget related.

Give us some vision on what are the big projects that bts is working on that portland's known to. It used to be known for doing bold things that others would want to study years later. What what is that today?

I think the the inner east project is exciting and bold. We continue to work in partner. The inner east zoning work is one of our priorities. We continue to work in. Partner with prosper and housing bureau on various central city strategic projects, whether it's omsi or albina vision trust, the broadway corridor projects. Those are important in terms of portland's image and and economy. On the waste side, the. This commercial system overhaul is an opportunity to significantly improve recycling and composting across the city, and so that's a big deal. We're supporting the chief sustainability officer in the next generation of the climate action plan. That's huge. And of course, pcf is doing at least 5 or 6 big visionary things right now. And we'll talk more about that tomorrow.

I'm glad you brought up omsi broadway corridor. And you didn't say montgomery. Maybe I missed it. The montgomery.

I didn't, but that's in that category too.

And that was one of my tongue because that's been what we've what we've been focused on for over five years. And so I'd hope that we're persistent in focusing on such big projects like those three.

Yeah. And in fact, I think p, p and d is now working in the early stages of permitting assistance for the first building that's coming into the montgomery park project area. So that's exciting.

When people hear about these big projects, they get excited and then they start to say, well, you vision and you plan a lot, but what's happening? Like what's going on at broadway corridor, what's going on with omsi? So anyway, it's important for us to continue to help constituents see that we're not just planners, but we also do things.

Yeah. And we are trying to, as a group of directors that are involved in development review, we meet monthly. And one of the things we talk about in that meeting is accountability for those major projects. So we're just not forgetting about them that we're asking about what the status is and what the what's, what's what, what, what's the bottleneck right now on any of those.

That's fair. Thank you.

Thank you councilor. Colleagues, seeing no one else in the queue is a councilor. Is that a legacy? Okay, okay. That concludes our questions from our councilors. Thank you very much, staff, for all the great questions and answers. Colleagues, we are adjourned. We'll see you back here at 2:00 for our regular meeting of the city council.