The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-02-11
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (19,115 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Community and Public Safety Committee met on February 11, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., with roll call confirming attendance of all five members. After a statement of conduct was read, co-chairs opened the inaugural meeting by outlining committee structure, alternating chairing duties, and a broad scope of work amid a stated budget deficit. The first agenda item involved discussion of committee priorities, covering topics including human trafficking and massage parlor regulation, open-air drug use, sobering centers, Portland Street Response transport policy, civil holds, precinct alignment, emergency preparedness, traffic deaths, domestic violence, warming/cooling shelters, grant accessibility, overtime management, body-worn cameras, and a possible public safety taxing district. The second item featured presentations from the Bureau of Emergency Communications, Ceasefire, the Office of Violence Prevention, Rose City Self-Defense, and Safe Blocks, covering call volume, staffing, overtime, budgets, and program outcomes; figures on gun violence reduction and homicide counts were stated inconsistently. Discussion also addressed reliance on one-time and federal grant funding. Public testimony addressed police accountability commission structures, neighborhood crime concerns in Stadium Hood, and police budget comparisons across cities. No votes were reported in this transcript. The next meeting was scheduled for February 25.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Good afternoon everyone. I call this meeting of the community and public safety committee to order. It is Tuesday, February 11th at 2:30 p.m. Rebecca, can you please call the roll?
1 Novick. Here. Smith. Here. Morillo. Here. Zimmerman. Here. Canal. Here.
2 Thank you. Christopher. Can you please read the statement of conduct?
3 Welcome to the meeting of the committee in public safety. Committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at w w w dot Portland.gov slash. Council slash. Agenda. Slash community dash and dash. Public safety committee or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before that agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over, the chair preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
4 Thank you. Christopher. Yeah. Welcome to the first meeting of this committee. My name is Sameer Kanal. I'm one of the two co-chairs of the committee, alongside co-chair Steve Novick. We're excited to work with each other, with our colleagues on the committee and with the public in making this committee work to make a safer Portland for all. We expect that city council will adopt committee specific rules and procedures in the future. Until that time, as you just heard from christopher, committees will generally be following the same rules as the full city council. Councilor, Novick and I, as co-chairs, will collaborate prior to each meeting on things like agenda setting, inviting presenters and more. During the actual committee meetings will alternate who is chairing. So I'll be chairing this first meeting, councilor Novick the second, and so on. And we'll also be passing the gavel off. If during a meeting where chairing, we have an item to present so that the function of facilitation and presenting an item are separated, we have more to figure out on process, including how committee work sessions will function. But that's a general overview for now. Today's meeting has three agenda items, so discussion of the committee's scope of work and priorities for each of its five members. The first of three parts of an overview of the public safety service areas, operations and costs, including the bureau of emergency communications, as well as community safety and an open public hearing where members of the public can give us their views on what we should prioritize as a committee. Before we get into these three items, though, councilor Novick, would you like to say anything as a welcome?
5 Yes. Thank you all for being here today. Today we are going to be discussing the committee as co-chair, canal said, discussing this committee's scope of work and priorities. Councilor Kanal and I have distributed a document which identified a number of the issues we hope that we'll consider over the in the coming months. I also have to say that we're doing this work against the backdrop of humongous budget deficit, and the city basically spends general fund money in a very few things public safety, parks and housing. And so I would hope that whatever the budget situation, our work in this committee will help to inform the budget discussions in the budget and finance committee and the council as a whole. But that takes on particular urgency in the context of this budget deficit. So we will be addressing a whole host of issues. But I think what and we'll be looking at most of them not solely through, but in part through a budget lens.
6 Thank you very much. We'll move into the first item. So rebecca, will you please read the next the first item.
7 Item one discussion about community and public safety committee priorities.
8 Thank you. So this is a broad discussion of the committee's work. We'd like to understand a few things from each councilor Present. Allow for some back and forth as well. Your priorities within the scope of work of this committee, including policy questions and topics you might want this committee to take up. If there's any legislation that you're anticipating coming to this committee that you'd like to mention, please feel free to mention that as well. And any thoughts or feedback you have on the draft of the joint memo that councilor Novick mentioned, which we drafted for this committee, the memo serves as a conversation starter, building on what the council resolution defining this committee said and discussing our vision as co-chairs for the work plan for this year, I'll ask if we can share the screen for that as well, just so it's available for everyone. It also discusses which agencies we might have work sessions with and about, as well as policy questions and topics that we've drafted as a starting point to explore. So I'll stop laying out the conversation and ask if anyone would like to get us started. And you can. I don't know if we're raising our hands in zoom, you can, but I'm also happy to just have a little bit of back and forth. There's only five of us.
9 So thank you. Co-chair Sameer I really I wanted to welcome everyone here. My name is Loretta Smith. I am the Portland city councilor for district one. I've talked to a few of my constituents in district one. Public safety is a huge deal. We're having some some serious issues around human trafficking and around massage parlors in district one. And I don't know if any of you know this, but they're open 24 hours a day. And so I've been asked to have this conversation with the committee about limiting the hours of the massage parlors and to also deal with the issue around human trafficking, especially around 82nd and sandy area. It has become a huge nuisance. And some of you know, are familiar with the motels on sandy street. And I think there's some some things going on. And community members and neighborhood associations, they they want us to look into this. And so I, I wanted to get our first conversation around the massage parlors and human trafficking as, as a priority for me in district one, and hopefully for this committee co-chair. I don't know if you specifically had any of these things. Co-chair, canal and Novick, if you had those issues specifically put in your in your work plan, but you did talk about dealing with issues related to the protection of human life and well-being. And I think that that would go under that direction.
10 Thank you, counselor Smith.
11 Thank you.
12 Would either of our other colleagues like to jump in?
13 I can speak to a few things. Chairs. While I appreciate the memo, and I am thankful that you couched it in your comments as a starting point, it caught me a little bit off guard, seeing as it looked like a proposal, and one I had not contributed to. And so I reviewed it. And my largest takeaway I want to share is that I think that the proposal lacks specifics, and I think that this public safety is going to be both philosophical in our approaches, but also the public is demanding some specific outcomes that, you know, councilor Smith's comments, I think get specific. And I think if we can include some of those moving forward, I think this then becomes a work plan to get after. So I want to go through a couple, if you'll indulge me. When I think about some specifics I'd like to see on here is I'm just going to go through them reducing open air drug use, dealing exchanges and the general permissiveness that we're experiencing with drugs. I think that benchmarking and then setting goals in terms of reductions for break ins and vandalism, I am interested deeply in what future expansions of the neighborhood response teams can look like in the precincts. And in my previous comments to the public safety work group, I made comments in support of assessing whether a precinct model that aligns with district models is something that would help us, or if it would just be performative. But I want to see what that might look like in terms of aligning the way we do our work, because I do think that districts have different cultures, and we should expect some detailed work that respects those. I think this committee should be looking at how we can support providing funding to the counties sobering center, and helping the county open up a sobering center as soon as humanly possible to maximize the capacity. The county has a role when it comes to drug treatment, and I would say we shouldn't get into that line too closely. But sobering is not detox. Sobering is purely a public safety tactic. And our psr and our police will be some of the more frequent. Users would be the wrong word. But, you know, the agencies that are helping folks get there. So I think the city putting its money where its mouth is on sobering is one of the specifics I'd like to see come out of this committee related to psr. I actually think that I'd like to have this committee take a look at every single policy that is preventing psr from transporting patients, clients, whatever the correct term would be. I think it's a great bill that our public expects that psr be allowed to do more. And I think this committee is in a great spot to be able to help them do that. And I say that as one of the architects of the sobering center, I know that the sobering center will eventually be ready for psr to bring folks there. And so I think it's an important connective tissue between two governments. I think that this committee should add to its agenda and get the city council to adopt in its legislative agenda a change to the obstacles for public safety and mental health, civil holds. I think that that is a hurdle that Salem should be tackling right now, and it's not on our agenda, as far as I can tell from a city, but we need more tools there. There is some importance in the moment for a police officer or a ranger or whomever who's encountering a problem. And over the last several years, we've kind of moved into this category where the question now is, can you arrest a person? Even if that arrest results in a quick release? But there's importance in moving a person away from a critical situation. It's almost like a cooling down. But based on the capacity at the jails, based on the booking criteria at the jails, which is one of our partner agencies, I think our police, we have sent some different messages out into the community about when we arrest and when we cite in lieu, and I think that those have second and third order effects when it comes to removing a person from a situation that also helps with a cooldown period and tempers come down. That's, I think, very important, and I'd love us to take a proactive approach there. Kind of shifting to the emergency management side of our operation, I, I think that there are a host of us who are looking at the critical energy infrastructure hub, both in a mitigation standpoint as well as a, you know, future places and future preparedness standpoint that I'd like pbm's input on that, that I think can be very helpful and set some expectations with the public and the city council. And so I and then I'm going to throw out. So I think those are some specifics. And I would be a host of them and a couple of academics I'd love to go through when time permits, which I don't think is between now and June, but I think the cei hub is actually one of those more academic. So where do we go as a long term infrastructure? Because I think it's going to relate to land use. It's going to relate to other areas. And then a public safety district, meaning what does it look like if we are continually in a budget crunch? What does it look like to have a public safety district the way that Multnomah county many years ago created a library district and those Multnomah county commissioners, when they're dealing with library work, they figuratively put on their library hat and they they govern as a library board, but they are truly the Multnomah county commissioners. But that library now has a dedicated source of general fund dollars to take care of those services. That is no longer a threat to other county services. That has, I think, served that government quite well. So from another academic standpoint, and I know that councilor Novick and I will nerd out on some tax policies here. I'd love to have that conversation about a public safety district as well. Thanks.
14 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Neither councilor Novick or councilor Morillo like to go.
15 First of all, I wanted to say that we're all navigating the impact of the public meetings law, and I at least have been very, you know, conservative about it. And I kind of thought that although we could have I think that we could have given this document out earlier, I was worried that actually sitting down with each of you and discussing your priorities and putting them in the work plan might be a violation of the public meetings law. So there was this that was a specific I mean, but in the in the abstract, it would have made more sense to consult everybody before putting a document out. But I was just worried about whether we'd be subject to $1,000 fines. There's I mean, there's some things that you're right, this is sort of an academic list of list of topics. I mean, if I were going if I had been going to put down some specifics myself, one of them would be to talk about how we can rebuild some investigation of property crimes, which is dropped to almost nil in recent years. And also, I want to explore why in Multnomah county, the red flag law is used to remove guns from the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others at a much lower rate than the rest of the state. So I think that we I recognize this is fairly abstract, but we probably all have some specifics. We want to throw in one thing that you just mentioned, councilor Zimmermann, that where I think that I'm in agreement with you is taking a look at civil holds, but it occurs to me, I mean, how do you I mean, given that the legislative session is already going on, given how seldom we have committees, etc, do you have some thoughts about how we might move that idea forward quickly, assuming obviously not everybody might agree with us, but what are your thoughts?
16 Thanks. I would love it to be quick. I don't think it will be if I'm being practical. I do think it could be worth a conversation with with our director of government relations. But if I'm being realistic, I think that this committee doing work this year on that topic, gaining input from our community and staff to help us know what we'd actually be asking for, not just we want change, I think is the earliest we could ever think about it as a short session. If I'm being practical.
17 Thank you, and please feel free to. If anyone else has anything you'd like to weigh in on, you're welcome to. And I also don't want to shortchange councilor Morillo as well on time.
18 Thank you for that. I can go next. I think to me, the this committee is actually quite broad. We often think about public safety solely in terms of policing, but this committee encompasses all of public safety. It encompasses pbem fire, Portland street response. And I think that means that we have to look at public safety in a holistic way, which is what I intend to do. To me, public safety means a reduction in traffic deaths. It means a reduction in the deaths of unhoused people on our streets who are dying of frostbite or freezing in the cold. It means that our community has their economic needs met so that they don't have to turn towards crime or other things in order to make money in this city. It means safety through environmental design, and police are one piece of that pie. So that's sort of how I'm going to be looking at at this. And as far as specific things that I want to really hone in on, some of it was already outlined in the proposal or the agenda that you guys have brought forward. So call type restructuring is going to be a top priority for me. I think that at the end of the day, we do not have the data right now to make an educated call on what types of personnel and structuring we actually need in order to address the issues on our streets. We're all having kind of guesswork about what's needed. Until that call type restructuring study is completed, I want to see a breakdown of the calls that we're getting and what is going to be the top priority. If the calls are primarily people who just are in need of assistance on the street, if they are just unhoused, but they're not necessarily committing a crime, we need to make sure that we are adequately funding and staffing programs like Portland street response chat. Et cetera. To make sure that the right call responses, the right personnel are going to the right calls. Really. I also think it's really important for us to take a look at the financial matters of prevention work. I think oftentimes organizations that we as the city give money to do violence prevention work, they don't have long term funding, which makes it really hard for them to lay out goals that are going to be going on for the next few years. They have very, you know, short term planning that you can do if you have such limited funding and time laid out for that. So that's something I think we need to prioritize as well. I'm also very interested, especially in district three, to look at public safety through environmental design, which I think is going to be a marriage probably between this committee and the transportation and infrastructure committee. I think that the way that we can design our roads, the way that we can make barriers to stop people from speeding, to reduce gun violence, are all creative ways that we are going to have to look at public safety, especially considering that the police bureau has struggled for a variety of reasons to fully staff the bureau. With all of the fully funded vacancies that have existed in that bureau for a few years. So I think we're just going to have to be more holistic and creative about how we address gun violence, speeding, traffic, deaths, everything in our community. I'm also really invested in looking into how we address domestic violence in our city. To me, that is a big public safety issue, and it's one that we don't talk about enough because it's something that happens behind closed doors and not as often in the public eye. So it's not as big of a focus for most people. But it's a also an economic issue, right? The fact that rents are so high, the fact that people cannot afford to live in an apartment by themselves, that is a public safety issue. The fact that people can't leave their partners if their partners are being abusive, that's a public safety issue to me. And that's something that I think needs to be addressed in this committee. I'm also very invested in what a pbem and other agencies are going to do to help us with emergency preparedness in case of an earthquake, in case of an oil spill, in case of a lot of the big issues that could potentially face our city. I think that's going to be a large part of public safety. And I know in district three there's a lot of constituents that are very invested in hearing about how they can be a part of those net emergency preparedness teams. So that's something I've heard a lot of interest in from my constituents. I think that's that's in large part some of the things that I'm going to look at. I also think for some of the grant work that we do within public safety and violence prevention, we know that folks who are closest to the pain and need access to the grants, it's very difficult at the city if you are someone who is new, who might have the most connection to community to apply for grants, because our process is very confusing. There's a lot of barriers, and so we might not be getting the right people, those grants and making sure that they're actually the ones leading us instead of the other way around. So I think making sure that we're streamlining those processes, that we're hiring folks with lived experience who know what it's like to navigate those systems so that they can help other people navigate those systems and help us create policy is going to be absolutely crucial. And I will stop there. Thank you.
19 Thank you. I'll just speak for myself for a minute here on a couple priorities. And I think what councilor Novick brought up is really relevant in terms of why this was less specific as a starting point and allowing each of us to kind of build into that with the specifics that that we have. I first want to just say I a lot of it has already been said, so I'll just mention the crime prevention through environmental design, a focus on traffic deaths, a broad focus on prevention as a priority, agree on the sobering center being a priority for us, as well as shuttling, which is often referred to as transport. Prioritization of investigations exploring civil holds, pbem and emergency preparedness broadly, including in the context of the cei hub and the liquefaction zone, all of that. And then I'll just add a couple other things in as well. So over time management and understanding the reasons for it, sometimes that's that's justifiable. I don't mean to imply that it's always a bad thing, but just understanding that and making sure that there's education for the public as to why that might be and making sure we're at the sweet spots, ensuring that the body worn camera program is fully implemented and able to continue, due in part to threats to funding from the federal side on that police accountability. In the broader context of the settlement agreement between the united states department of justice and the city of Portland, crowd control and how we deal with that as well. And then I'm sure there's many other things that were mentioned by colleagues that I did not mention, but which I also agree with. So now that we've all kind of laid out a little bit, is there anything else anyone would like to talk about in this context before we continue forward? We do have about we've scheduled about 45 minutes for this conversation, where we still have plenty of time for it.
20 If I may. Chairs. I had a note on here I didn't really mention, but I've mentioned in some other forums before is just a general realignment of a variety of what I would call public safety related services that in our old form of government, had duties to their bureau and to that service area. Only that I think now we need everybody rowing in the same direction in that sense. And I'll use the example of and I and I think we have grown a lot, but I think there were a few years where you could say that the Portland police, perhaps even ps3's park rangers, psr, private security was was disjointed in how it all fit together. That I think, makes this conversation very difficult because each of those brings a certain set of skills. And a couple of examples that I've always felt were strange when I was at city hall before. Where, you know, a park ranger told me that they could enforce smoking laws in the park but would not enforce fentanyl. That's wild to hear that. I don't think that's the case anymore, but that's one of those it doesn't help us in the in the grand scheme of our telling our story as Portland. Do we make sense? That kind of example doesn't. Whereas Portland police have a different ticket book than TriMet police, which are, by the way, just Multnomah county sheriffs and how we interact with with laws that are broken on the bus versus laws that are broken out of the bus. Those things, I think if you're a normal member of public, you go, what the heck is this? I think we have a great opportunity to align all of those services to know how they fit to. And frankly, I'm looking to them each actually to be working for the same boss. Meaning, I think that there is an alignment under a public safety dca that gets all of this to be supportive of one another that doesn't have them in multiple service areas, even if they are providing a service in a different service area because they are the ones calling one another. And I think right now that's really disjointed and I think we have some opportunity there. Water security rangers, ps3's these are the kinds of things I'm talking about. And then related to that is I know that there has been some belief that by those services looking less like a public safety service, that it had a positive impact. And I'm not sure I am buying that hook, line and sinker yet. Meaning, I've worked in communities where I had non-sworn police officers, but the truck that they they rolled up in to take your report about a broken in car, which is, you know, it's the crime is over, it's really crappy for you as the, as the victim of that crime. But the crime is over and it's gone. But you need to file a police report. But how we how we send a message that there are public safety entities out there in the community, I think does affect how portlanders interact in all of our public spaces. And so I'm actually interested in seeing what does a park rangers truck or a ps3's truck look like. If it looks a little bit more related to the public safety apparatus rather than a PBOT truck, right now it looks like a service truck versus a public safety truck. And I say this not just to create some sort of large thing, but I say it because so often in my work, I have come across the public who feels like they have no public safety around them in their neighborhoods. And yet we're seeing we're seeing these groups drive by and be part of it. I think we can send some messages. So I just want to add that to a priority for tomorrow. Of course not priority in the longer term. I think there's some alignment that we should make some recommendations to our overall council on maybe a new direction on those areas. Thanks.
21 Thank you.
22 I had one more thing that I wanted to add that I failed to the first time around, which is that I'm not sure if this should live within this committee or within the housing and homelessness committee, but whatever we can do to work with our county partners or federal partners or whoever is in charge of the issue of when our warming and cooling shelters actually open up and the temperature threshold, and how often they stay open to me as a public safety issue as well. The fact that we have unhoused people who are freezing to death on our streets, because sometimes those warming shelters, you know, they it's not cold enough quite to meet that threshold, but it's still cold enough for people to pass away outside. I think that is a public safety issue to me. And I think in general, the those are some of the. You know, it's also a legal threshold and a funding threshold because we don't always have the funding to keep shelters open as often and as long as they need to be. But I was also very concerned to learn that part of the reason an unhoused person recently passed away in district four during the last freeze was because we didn't have any warming shelters open up there, and I know that that's a county issue, not necessarily a city issue, but I think that that is something that we should work on with our county partners to address as well. Thank you.
23 Yeah. If I can actually just add to that, because there is the direct part from the county, but there's also the question of what facilities might be used for potential shelters. And that's been a conversation that's included among many other groups parks. So I think that there's a nexus there for sure. In addition to the obvious ones. Yeah. Anyone else like to go before we move on, please? Councilor Novick.
24 I wanted to follow up on a couple of the points that councilor Morillo made about issues that where there's sort of long, long term goals that we should start thinking about now, for example, and, and trying to determine which person goes to which call is a big deal that has budget implications. But as councilor Morillo said, it's something that it's not like we have a playbook to go to tomorrow. So that could have mean what we do and that could have some budget implications this next year. More realistically, it might have bigger budget implications next year. I also wanted to comment on the idea of relying on community organizations to address violence. There's a sociologist at princeton named patrick sharkey, who has done a lot of work on both police and community organizations, and his position is that he says police do help prevent violence. But the community organizations do as well. He says one of the major reasons for the drop in crime in the 90s and early 2000 was the proliferation of local nonprofits, and he thinks that government should invest in those as well as police. But he also says that it'll take a while to scale, so he'd be wary about, you know, slashing the police now in order to try to build up those budgets quickly. So in the I mean, in the context of our constrained budget environment, there's a lot of things I think we'd all like to do to build towards the future, but we're in a context where we are going to have to be making cuts, so hopefully we can make some progress towards the future even when we're making cuts. But it's going to be tough. I also wanted to comment that on the sci hub, councilor Morillo and I co-chair the climate, land use and resilience committee, which is also planning up to take up sci hub issues. So that's something that we probably might want to do some back and forth on what issues we address in that committee as opposed to this committee, although I think that back and forth has to come, has to come in public. So make sure we don't violate the public meetings law. Finally, this is one of my personal hobby horses, and there's not much that this committee can do about that. Although I will be soliciting my fellow committee members for their support of the idea. In my view, one way to get money to invest in effective ways to prevent and reduce crime is to steer money away from the prison system. Prison is an extremely ineffective tool to prevent crime. There are some people that need to go to prison, but it's not a great investment in terms of public safety. And it's something that our current system prioritizes because prosecutors are able to send people to state prison without worrying about the cost, they have no budget for prison. So I've talked to a couple of legislators about considering the idea of having the state give each county a public safety budget, an overall budget, which includes. And the counties would get to decide how much they want to spend sending people to state prison and how much they want to spend on additional law enforcement, on drug treatment, on investment in community anti-violence organizations, on parole and probation. So that, again, is a long term thing. It's probably something that if it ever happens at all, take like six legislative sessions to address. But that is I mean, one of my long term goals is to make more investments in meaningful public safety strategies and less in prison.
25 Please councilor Zimmerman.
26 Sorry to keep coming back to this mic. It's just so attractive. I said this in my other committees, and I do think just given the timing of where we're at with the budget season right in front of us, that the more this committee can use staff reports or briefings to get an alignment around some priorities, the more I think we can speak as a coherent voice, either in support of the mayor's budget or to ask our colleagues to restore something. If we're if we're out of sorts with something we see come out of that. I think it's a hard lift. It's going to be a heavy lift. But the funding for public safety related matters is up for up for interpretation on what the best approach is. While I don't think that we're going to agree on everything, I think the things we can maybe this council or maybe this committee can help. Our council make the easy decisions, and then the 12 can argue over the last three hardest, if you will. But we can spend some time here on the easier ones. And you know, we've got everything up for grabs. Future of psr, future of chat, number of police officers, rangers. Those are all up for this year that we've got to talk seriously about. Thanks.
27 Thank you. Would you like to respond, councilor Novick?
28 I just have to respond that I agree we should consider all those things. We have to consider them now. I also think that absolutely none of them are easy.
29 Those were the hard ones. Yeah, yeah.
30 And I think it's worth mentioning, it's been mentioned that councilor Morillo and councilor Novick co-chair, the climate resiliency and land use committee, and there's a nexus there. There's also that councilor Zimmerman chairs the finance committee, and there's also the labor and workforce committee, which relates to many of the issues around the procurement and things of that nature, which councilor Smith co chairs. Sorry. And so there is actually quite a bit with the other committees as well, but just within the five of us as well. I will mention one other thing as sort of a segue into the next topic, if that's okay, which I forgot to mention earlier, which is I would like to have this committee work to support the bureau of emergency communications and ensuring that every call that comes in is able to be answered within the industry standard timelines. And we're going to hear about that, I'm sure, in a in a little bit here. So that's my segue. And I will ask if rebecca, if you can read the next item please.
31 Item two overview of public safety service area operations and cost.
32 Thank you. So we're doing this in three parts over the three meetings kind of talk while our presenters come up. And today we'll talk about two parts of the of the public safety service area. Joining us today online is deputy city administrator for public safety mike myers, as well as many other of the leadership at the public safety service area, dca myers. I'm happy to turn it over to you to introduce the panel.
33 Thank you, councilor Kanal, and thank you, counselors, for having me here today. It's certainly an honor to be present for you. And congratulations on making the first step here as our with our community and public safety committee meeting. Next slide. Team, we've got a few minutes with you today. Next slide please. Thank you. Few minutes with you today. And you're going to be hearing from a number of team members that are seated in front of you. We'll go over that in just a second. Behind the scenes we have some business partners as well that will be here in case you have questions about the budget, but you'll be hearing from bureau of emergency communications today, director, bob cozzie and community safety lead stephanie howard. Next slide, team, just for a quick refresher, this is the public safety organizational chart as it sits today. I am your interim deputy city administrator for public safety. My name is mike myers. I have the opportunity to supervise six very talented individuals, and you're going to hear specifically from at least two of them today. But let's start in the far side of the purple color, their enterprise services, that is led by elizabeth perez. Elizabeth perez will be present at every one of these meetings. And her team, the business operations team largely manages our budget and finance group will be present with her. And so we know that over the next several weeks, we will be talking in depth about the budgets, overtime, staffing, what drives costs in these different bureaus. And elizabeth and her team will be available for us to help us through some of those questions. You'll also be hearing from our bureau of emergency communications director, bob cozzie. That is the yellow box. And if you move all the way over to the Green box in community safety, you'll be hearing from stephanie howard today. She is the lead for that community safety area. So team, thank you for joining us today. And let's get started. I would like to introduce director bob cozzie for the bureau of emergency communications. Bob, if you can get us started.
34 All right. Thank you. Thank you mike. Good afternoon. Co-chairs and committee members. It is a pleasure to be here today. And it dawned on me that I'm the first director to be able to present to this committee. So that's kind of kind of a cool opportunity. A little bit about boec. And I know I've shared this information with all of you in various ways in the past. However, I do want to reiterate what the boec mission is. It's really very straightforward. There's two components to it. We answer 911 and we dispatch help. But there's key phrases within our mission, particularly that we work collaboratively with our community and public safety partners. And I wanted to introduce kind of a list of, of representatives on our user board. Our user board is comprised of public safety partners, user jurisdictions, as well as three community members. As far as public safety partners Portland police, Portland fire, as we would expect, but also Multnomah county sheriff's office, Multnomah county ems, Gresham police, Gresham fire, corbett fire district and sauvie island fire district for the cities in our county that don't have their own public safety agencies, they contract out primarily with Multnomah county sheriff's office or Gresham fire and the user jurisdictions that also partner with boec are the city of fairview, maywood park, troutdale, and wood village. And I mentioned our three community members as well, one from west Portland, east Portland, and one from east county. Now, the representatives on the boec user board typically would be the police chief, fire chief, the sheriff, and if this or their designee in user jurisdictions, typically it would be the mayor or the city administrator. Oftentimes they have a designee as well. And typically what you'll see in boec user board is people associated with the finance offices from their jurisdictions. The community members that we have are very, very active and provide a community input, particularly the east county community member. He is extraordinarily interested in boec operations, and he provides a lot of input for us. Next slide please. So the call volume that we've experienced, I like to start in 2018 because that's when I started as the boec director. And kind of look at 2018 as the normal year. Back in the day, this was what normal felt like. And over the course of time, we know what has happened. There's a huge increase in 2021 with 911 calls, 21% increase, and thankfully we leveled off to a new normal. And last year calls decreased about 5%. But in general, you can look at a 35% increase in 911 calls to our agency since 2018. Next slide please. So as far as staffing, you know, when calls started going up, we also implemented proca which is a medical and fire dispatch protocol that was new for our staff. We experienced a lot of the civil unrest in our city. A huge increase in 911 calls, and ultimately that resulted in significant staff burnout. And we lost about a third of our staff during that time frame, which contributed to the high amount of time it was taking us to be able to answer 911 calls. So I want to put this in a frame of reference. Two years ago, what we experienced and today, two years ago, we had 62 senior dispatchers. Senior dispatchers are those dispatchers who are fully cross-trained in all the disciplines. They answer 911 dispatch, police and dispatch fire, basically, but with fire is also Portland street response. Two years ago we had 62 of them. Today, as of January 1st, we had 82. Two years ago we had 90 certified call takers. Today 108. Two years ago we had 99 total operation staff. Today we have 127. And two years ago we had 37 vacant positions. Today we have nine. And I'm happy to say that we have 12 starting in our academy in just a couple of weeks. And one additional employee who's starting at the same time frame, who had left boec and has chosen to come back. So a total of 13 new folks back in our bureau. So that means we're going to be technically overstaffed. And what does that mean? When we are overstaffed? We thankfully, because of vacancy savings and previous policy decisions that were made, we were allowed to keep that money and create a training pipeline sub fund. And the intent of that money really is to overhire so that we can stay ahead of attrition, because we don't ever want to be in the hole we were in a few years ago. Next slide please. So wait times, they are continuing to improve. And there's a lot of spaghetti on that on that picture. But I'd like you to draw your attention really to the red line. And that when you look at the far left in 2018, we averaged about 22 seconds to answer 911 calls, and that improved a lot in 2019. After my first year at boec, we were averaging 12 seconds, and then we all know what we experienced as a city and as a region, actually. And you can see how calls increased the amount of time it took our staff to answer 911 calls, averaging over a minute in 2022. Since then, we have been onboarding a lot of new staff. A third of our staff is in training at this point, and it takes a while, about a year and a half, to get them fully certified. But through that process, they begin helping in incremental bits, helping every staff member be able to meet the national standard. And you can see by the end of the year, we were significantly better at 43 seconds. That was the average for the year. But I am going to show you another slide that that demonstrates where we're at at this point in time. Next slide please. So the number of staff we need at any given point of the year varies depending on our call volume. And what this graph shows you is the number of staff we had fully certified and call taking as 911 call takers. And then the gap or the delta between what we would really need in order to answer 911 calls within the national standard. So back in June, we needed 142 staff to meet the call volume, and in December 136, which, interestingly enough, is exactly what we're funded right now with some limited term positions that are already in our budget. Next slide. So the last week, this is just a snapshot of last week. And you can see 911 calls when I do a weekly comparison. And I get these reports every week from our data analyst so that I can kind of stay ahead of trends and see if there's anything that might be alarming. And then he puts a weekly report into monthly reports and that is published on our website. But this weekly report shows back in, you know, 2020 9640 911 calls this year, 11,273. In that same time frame, same seven day period. And what you see on the right then is that average call answering for the week. 10s back in 2020, 67 seconds in 2022, and thankfully we're down to around 21 seconds right now. Next slide. So as far as boec budget, you know there's a lot of numbers. I'm not going to go over every single number here. But I do want to mention that our total budget is about 39.5 million. We are looking at pretty significant increases in internal materials and services, particularly facilities is 12% increase, bts is 9% and risk management is 31% increase to what they've been charging us, our training pipeline I mentioned earlier that is at the bottom under contingency, and we are looking this year to spend it down so we won't have any funds available after this next fiscal year in a training pipeline because we are going to be over hiring. Like I mentioned earlier, our overtime has been reduced and it's continually reducing because we are seeing more and more certifications. And because of that, next year we're anticipating about $483,000 reduction. It's 26%. But when you look at the previous year, that's about a 40% reduction from 2024. Next slide. So the you know, the pretty colors here really I wanted to point out here that 90%, more than 90% of the boec budget is tied to personnel. Most of what we do is operations. We do have components that are technology related, and the small corner area is really tied to administration. And that is my presentation. I'll hand it off to director haley.
35 Before we do that, I think our question was to keep q&a to the to the end, but I'm not sure if the question was for the end of the overall presentation or for each section. So if councilors, are you okay waiting or would you prefer to just get some clarifications? I see two hands are up right now.
36 I can okay.
37 We'll pass it over to director howard.
38 Thank you.
39 Thank you director cozzie.
40 Thank you all. Great to be here today. For the record, my name is stephanie howard. I am, as mike mentioned, the director of community safety for the public safety service area. And I have the great privilege of working with teams of really incredible people who do work in a lot of different spaces that you'll hear about today. I do just want to say that it is really encouraging. We're really excited to be here. We're really eager to engage with all of you and talk about the work that we're doing. And I'm encouraged listening to the priorities that that you're all raising here today. I think we have tremendous alignment in the things that we prioritize and that we're hearing from you. And I think this is a great opportunity that we're excited about to really leverage this new form of government and see what we can do and how we can make this city work for everyone, which I think is all of our goals. So that being said, in my in my unit here, we've got a three units, three programs, the Portland ceasefire program. And I'm here with director sierra ellis to talk with you about that. We've also got the office of violence prevention, which includes the safe blocks program and rose city self-defense. And we've got great folks to tell you about that. And also, we've got Portland street response. We are scheduled to come and talk about Portland response with you on March 11th, and I am eager to have some report outs on some of the things that that we heard about today, which I think will help shape some of our conversations going forward. So again, thank you so much. And I will hand it over to director ellis.
41 Thank you stephanie.
42 Good afternoon, councilors, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today about ceasefire's work and its profound impact on our community. As you may recall, last year we were tasked with reducing gun violence by 10%. And I'm proud to report that not only have we met that goal, we nearly doubled it. A nearly 20% reduction in gun violence is more than just a data point. To put it into perspective, this time last year, our city recorded 11 homicides, and today we're at just two. Well, life is a loss and a significant tragedy. We must acknowledge the progress we've made in saving lives and protecting those most vulnerable communities. Earlier this year, director howard provided a high level overview of the ceasefire program. And today, I'll take you a bit deeper into the program's work and its real world impacts. Next slide. So ceasefire is built on two primary goals enhancing public safety by reducing shootings and homicides, and minimizing law enforcement interactions with the black and brown community by focusing on engagement, resources and intervention rather than incarceration. The success of ceasefire is rooted in collaboration with public safety partners and specifically community based organizations. A key pillar of our strategy is the intensive case management program, which employs over 40 individuals with deep ties to the community and firsthand understanding of its challenges. Our credible messengers work directly with those at risk, offering real alternatives to violence. They connect clients with job opportunities, housing, mental health services, and other essential resources, meeting people where they are and guiding them toward stability. So what makes this approach most effective? It's the lived experience. Every one of our messengers has walked in the same difficult path as those they now serve, and that shared experience builds trust, fosters relationships, and most importantly, it creates hope. Similar, our street level outreach team employs another 40 individuals with deep community ties. Street level outreach is the first point of contact or the first point of engagement for high risk individuals assessing their needs when necessary and transitioning them into the intensive case management program. They focus on proactive outreach, engaging people in hot spots, schools, community events, and much more. We've also recognized a growing crisis among our unhoused individuals. Nearly 40% of last year's homicides involved individuals experiencing housing instability. And to address this, we've partnered with poic to launch the peer to peer program, providing mentorship, outreach, workforce development, addiction recovery services, housing, and support for unhoused individuals at risk of violence. Ceasefire is not about traditional law enforcement responses. It's about community engagement and resources. We collaborate with law enforcement and our focus is deterrence, respectful engagement and restorative justice, not just mass incarceration. Our goal is to reduce gun violence without criminalizing marginalized communities, instead addressing its root causes through intervention and support. Next slide. So as far as our budget, ceasefire operates on a $9.1 million budget, the majority of this funding is temporary. Only 179,000 comes from ongoing general fund. Over 8 million is from one time ARPA funding, which expires in June, and additional 300,000 is a one time general fund dollars, which supports two fte. This is a small investment compared to the cost of violence incurred by the city, county and other health care partners. And thank you. And with that, I'll pass it to my colleague rachel fetters with the office of violence prevention.
43 Great.
44 Thank you. Sierra. Good afternoon, co-chairs and committee. My name is rachel fetters, and I'm the operations manager for the office of violence prevention. I'll be kicking off the office of violence prevention section of this presentation. So our office was created in 2006, and over the years we've seen many changes, such as the inclusion of our safe blocks and rose city self-defense programs. But our mission has always remained the same, creating a more family friendly city by increasing public safety and reducing violence. Ovp recognizes that not only does gun violence cause injury and death, but also erodes the physical, psychological, social and economic health and development of nearly everyone in affected communities. Gun violence reduces life expectancy, inflicts trauma limits, opportunity and achievements, and further entrenches inequities. övp's efforts are shaped by elevating the voices of those most impacted. This includes our bipoc community, youth, community, residents, key stakeholders, and many others. Slide two please. The office of violence prevention efforts are currently focused on three areas gun violence reduction, youth and family services, and community collaboration and engagement. I want to highlight a few of our programs now, but you can find information on all of our programs on our website. I'll start with our safer Portland grant. This is an annual grant offering that funds organizations doing gun violence prevention work. This year we were we were able to grant to eight organizations and so far have served over 900 portlanders. These programs range from mentoring to wraparound services, recreational programing, victims assistance, and more. Next, I'll highlight our spring break youth safety initiative. This is a grant offering that is currently open and aims to provide at risk youth, ages 11 to 19, a safe, alternative way to spend their spring break. We know that when school breaks come around, we see an increase in youth violence, so we want to ensure that kids have a fun and safe opportunities to keep them busy. Finally, I want to speak about the community peace collaborative or cpc. The cpc has been a staple meeting in our office since its inception, but went on hiatus over the past couple of years. This year, we made it a priority to bring the cpc back, and ever since, we've seen 60 plus attendees at each of our monthly meetings. The cpc allows us to foster positive connections between government partners, law enforcement agencies, cbos, and community. It's a space where people can mourn, collaborate, share information, receive stats, and build community. Again, you can find information on all of the listed programs on our website. Next slide please. This is an overview of the ovp budget. As you can see, the majority of our funding is spent on program expenses, with a large percentage of that coming from one time general fund allocation or ARPA funding. Also, please note in our personnel column, we currently list four employees. As of right now, our director position is vacant, but we'll be working on addressing that vacancy this year. I'm happy to answer any questions at the end of the presentation. With that, I'll pass it to rosita. Self-defense.
45 Thank you.
46 Hi. My name is sarah johnson. I'm the program director for rose city self-defense, and I just want to share that I'm celebrating 20 years with the city this year. So I wanted to share that with you. Next slide. Thank you. So rose city self-defense was founded in 1979 as a primary prevention program. We currently have two full time employees and a volunteer staff of 50 self-defense instructors. We meet portlanders where they're at when it comes to community and personal safety. We offer programing and workshops specifically on personal safety, safety and self-defense and de-escalation. We offered women centered introductory and intermediate courses for ages 13 and up. We offer a specific class for our queer community members and also youth programing that starts as young as fourth grade and goes all the way up to college. Next slide please. We wanted to give you a little snapshot of what we've done over the last six months. So in six months we've offered 60 private gender inclusive workshops, training more than 1300 community members. We've also offered nine community based and youth classes, training over 175 public participants in empowerment based self-defense. With that, we actually have utilized 205 volunteer hours, which really saves the city over $8,000. So we're in the middle of a new volunteer training that we're training 21 new volunteer self-defense instructors, which will total us to 50. Next slide please. So we wanted to tell you that over 60% of community participants who take our classes are survivors of violence. We also know that 85% of our participants feel more confident to prevent an assault, and 70% feel safer after the course is done. Next slide please. We wanted to highlight the fact that our community based programing is in all districts. So what you'll see overlaid on the districts here is where we're offering community and youth based programing. I wanted to highlight that we've partnered with other city entities, including parks and rec, PBOT planning and sustainability and civic life. We also are reaching community members who are unhoused. We reach them through programs such as rehab sisters, new avenues for youth, salvation army and bybee lakes hope center, training more than 500 folks. Next slide please. Finally, our budget, our small but mighty team of two takes up most of our budget. We have a very small operating and program cost. And with that, I will pass it off and say thank you for having me. Pass it off to andrew and say, flocks.
47 Thank you sarah. Thank you. Co-chairs and committee members. My name is andrew culberson, supervisor of the safe blocks program in the city of Portland. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. Safe blocks has evolved from a traditional crime prevention program to one focusing on long term community building, placemaking, violence prevention, and community transformation. Our primary programs include place based interventions and placemaking, which is the process of improving public spaces to make them more inviting and connected to the community. The goal of placemaking is to create places that people can be proud of and invested in, leading to improvements in feelings of safety, increased economic opportunities, as well as decreases in crime. We host resource fairs, providing education and connecting to crucial resources for underserved members of our community. We provide security assessments using crime prevention through environmental design or septet. Septet is a concept rooted in changing the physical environment to reduce opportunities for crime to occur. We offer trainings and meeting facilitation to empower community members to become active participants in their local public safety system, and we partner with many other agencies at the city on popular programs such as party on Portland, formerly national night out, and drug take backs. Next slide please. Now this map highlights our our most active locations. While we serve all portlanders with septet assessments, trainings, pop parties and drug take backs, a federal grant now funds our placemaking activities in three neighborhoods, each neighborhood having its own dedicated staff. Those would be elliott, hazelwood and powellhurst-gilbert, with a current staff of eight, down from a historical high of 17. We now focus our work in these neighborhoods, which have suffered historical disinvestment, high levels of social vulnerability and high levels, high rates of violent crime. These same criteria will guide the selection of future placemaking areas of focus. Next slide please. At safe blocks, our programs are evidence based and data driven. Our work is also community led, centered on the voices of those most impacted by violence. We build long term relationships with constituents to catalyze sustainable neighborhood transformation, responding to public safety needs identified through extensive qualitative engagement with residents and community based organizations, annual community safety surveys in our program neighborhoods, and data from pbs's crime statistics and the gun violence archive. Next slide please. So following form here, I'm now presenting our budget. As you can see, I'm we've presented the budget to highlight the two sources of our funding right now, our total ongoing general fund commitments are $1.7 million. As you can see that primarily funds personnel. Seven of our eight fte, along with a modest amount of operational expenses and a small allotment for program expenses. We the bulk of the funds that we spend out in the community for the next few years are derived from our federal burn grant. As you can see on the right side, this this allows us to spend approximately $400,000 a year in program funds out in the neighborhood on community events and neighborhood improvement projects, and also funds a full time staff member. Thank you very much. I know this presentation was very brief. We have more information available on our website, including activities, survey results. I'd love to talk to you about that at a future opportunity. Thank you very much.
48 Thank you. Does that conclude the overall presentation? Okay.
49 Thank you very much.
50 Thank you. We have some some questions here. And before I pass it over, I just want to say thank you for keeping it to time as we asked. I appreciate it a lot. We'll go to counselor Smith, followed by counselor Zimmerman.
51 Counselor Smith.
52 Thank you. Could the boec. I just want to say that this is probably one of the most inspiring presentations that we received. I am the chair of the workforce committee, labor and workforce committee, and I was going to be bringing you before me on the 27th to give me an outline of your workforce and what you're doing. It was amazing. The, the, the strides that you made between a two year process and how you got your, your calls down, you know, back down from a to a 10% to a ten second. That was huge. And I was impressed. And then I was impressed by ceasefire. Of all the folks that you've helped to prevent violence. So you never you can never really tell that because you don't know. You can go by by the numbers that you had the previous year. But those numbers, they have a nuance that there's more than that, that you probably prevented as well. So I was really pleased to hear that our public safety dollars were being used really well. And then when I looked at your budget in that the majority of your budget came from ARPA money, I was like, oh, no, but you did some really good stuff. And I also want to say the self-defense and the safe blocks. Every single presentation gives me hope that this city is going to be safer with you all in it and doing the programs that you do. It was it was it was huge to be able to look at some numbers. I think we were kind of, you know, sensing that I wanted to see these numbers and I don't have to call you back on the 27th to, to give me that. But question your your overtime numbers. They went way down. And so I'm trying to get other departments to that point where we're not spending as much on overtime because we if you're not spending that much on overtime, you can't help the people. So I really appreciate that. And I think you need to teach a master class on how to do that, because we have 845 current vacant positions across city bureaus. And so I think our overtime costs would definitely go down and we would have more to be able to fund programs like your program that has $9 million worth of worth of ARPA money that's gone away. So I just wanted to thank you for this presentation, and thank you for all the work that you do, the self-defense. You only have two people in your in your office. And to be able to reach out to that many people was huge. And those are the things that I was looking for. Everything that I was going to ask you a question for, it came up it, you know, you you gave me the answer in your presentation. So I was extremely pleased about this. So I just want to say keep up the good work. And I know ceasefire came in in 23, but the work you all have the receipts, what I call receipts, you have the numbers and you have it to prove to us and what you've been doing. So thank you so much for giving us this report, and thank you for bringing them co-chairs. This is this was really insightful today.
53 Thank you.
54 So would you like to respond to the part about how you spoke to how the overtime reduction happened?
55 Yeah. So there was a lot happening all at once. And when we were in the deepest part of the hole, we recognized that we were obviously not answering 911 calls fast enough. Our community was suffering, our staff was suffering. They were they were really struggling. And I don't know if any of you saw news coverage a few years ago. I was I was interviewed a lot. And because of that, the tough questions that were asked, you know, I was up front. I just told the truth and explained what we were experiencing. And, you know, I'll tie overtime into this in a minute. But really, a lot of the success we've had in recruitment is because we got the word out.
56 Yes.
57 We were able to resonate with our community members, and there is not an academy that goes by now. When I meet the new trainees on the first day where I ask them, you know, why are you here? What what interests you about this career? And for those really dark years, they would look me in the eye and say, bob, we saw you on tv and we want to be part of the solution. So because of that, not all 911 centers across the nation are seeing this kind of success.
58 Right?
59 But those that have been upfront and embraced the difficulty and just be honest with the community, they're the ones that are seeing success in their recruitments. So as far as overtime, when we were really in the in the deepest part of the hole, we recognized that we couldn't entice our staff to be there. They were burning out. So there was a premium tied to overtime for a year and a half, I believe, where for that specified amount of time, they were paid double overtime for voluntary overtime operational only. So it didn't count for, you know, in-service training or anything like that. But we were paying double overtime. So overtime. Of course, was very.
60 At the time and a half.
61 Right. That's the only time and a half. Yes. And paying double overtime with the intent that it was going to end and we knew it was going to end, but it gave us enough of a shot in the arm for staff to feel supported and to recognize that, you know, they have to be there. We're going to pay them to make them feel valued. And then as we onboard, all of the trainees get them certified, we'll be able to cut away from that. And we have. And that's one reason why overtime has gone down significantly. The other reason is just the fact that we have so many folks certifying, and we quite literally will celebrate some form of certification every week or every other week right now, because we celebrate when they're certified and call taking, then they go into police dispatch training. We celebrate that when they're done with police dispatch. Then they go into fire dispatch training and we celebrate that. But every time they certify in one of those disciplines, that makes them a more usable employee in those disciplines. Yeah.
62 Thank you. Thank you so much.
63 Thank you. We'll go to councilor Zimmerman next.
64 Thanks, chair. I forgot to write your name down when you started. Bob cozzie bob cozzie bob cozzie.
65 Yeah.
66 I haven't gotten all 7800 employees memorized yet, so I apologize, mr. Director. That was an inspiring description of your experience through some hard years. I just I'm adjusting my comments slightly based on on what we're hearing, and I really appreciate it. And I'm sure that over your career, you've probably had a bad apple at some point or another, you've had to let go. But we don't let that one bad apple. Describe your entire agency, do we?
67 Right, right.
68 We your story and your employees story is, I think, an example that I'm taking with me after hearing this is that you getting out in front with the media, you getting out in front and talking about the challenges that you were having in terms of your team filling the public service, allowed the public to recognize that we had a problem and it probably and I remember you, I remember some of those messages. I think we also sent a message that we were behind the 911 operators. Right? We wanted everybody to be successful because if you haven't called 911 yet, you will at some point in your life and god help you if you have to wait 65 seconds, because that feels like ten minutes. So I am taking that right, because overall, people got into your line of business because they are public servants. And I think that that is a common thread amongst all of you who have stepped up for various reasons. Whatever piece you felt you could contribute. And so that's not lost on me. And I hope that, well, one thing I've learned is there are a lot more people that watch this stream of these meetings than I ever expected, and I hope that some media will actually cover some of the good parts, right? In those types of stories. Those are helpful. I want to on that note, where my question was before. That last thing with councilor Smith is you mentioned that you are overstaffed, and I want to highlight that because it is so darn important. It is something that we don't often talk about in government, but there are some jobs we have to be overstaffed for if we want to get in front of attrition. These are no fail missions, and there are a few agencies within our purview who fall into that category, and many who don't. My office, we don't fall in that category. Right. The mayor's office doesn't fall in that category. Your office does. I you're going to be a busy man, mr. Director, because she's going to have you at the workforce. I'm going to bring you to finance, because I actually think that it's time for us to adopt some policies with our agencies who do need to have an over staffing as a standard operating procedure to get in front of attrition, or we will always find ourselves in this situation. And so I just am appreciating that you used that word and it wasn't a bad word in government. It's a good thing. It's what I'm used to in my, you know, army life in previous times. We know the number we have to have ready at all times, which means we have to hire this money to be here. Right. So thanks for highlighting that. And I'm really looking forward to kind of learning through how to achieve that in some of our other bureaus. Thank you. Your call time improvements have just been, you know, appreciate just the deep work. And I shared that with you last time, that my own experience has reflected what you're reporting here. I want to ask in terms of, you know, I've certainly experienced being in operations call in some pretty hairy situations, but I certainly never did it day in and day out. I was wondering if you could share with us, just quickly what kind of. Personal care, mental health care, that type of kind of getting right with yourself that your employees, I'm sure need to have in order to come back day in and day out after pretty hard days.
69 Yeah. So let me frame this a little bit. My office sits right on the ops floor, and when you come in for a tour, you'll walk in and you can see the back corner. That's my office. And I keep my door open, and I, I listen as much as I can, listen to call taking and 911 is literally right there. And so often our folks are taking calls that are just unimaginable to most people. And I hear them handle with poise, with grace, with professionalism. Time and time again, a variety of different types of calls for service. And some calls, you know, might trigger someone, you know, some one of our dispatchers who may have a background, perhaps with family violence, taking a call involving family violence could have a triggering effect, could impact him or her. And in those cases, they are given an opportunity to speak with a member of our peer team. We have trained within our our staff, trained peer members, peer support members to help them debrief, decompress in the moment. And if that employee needs to take the rest of the shift off, they're allowed to. And if they need the next day, they're allowed to take that off as well, with the intent that they seek some kind of help in that moment. It's not just a free day off, but something to better themselves so that they can come back whole. That's just one example, but we have a strong peer program, a wellness program within boec. And that's actually one of our part of our strategic plan to ensure employee wellness. Because this type of career, any type of career can be challenging. But in public safety in particular, suicide is very high and someone to take their life by suicide within this profession is not unheard of. I don't want that to happen under my watch, and we try to do everything we can to help our staff, to help them feel supported, so I can dive much deeper and give you a actually a presentation on what our peer team does. We have a chaplain who also assists. And of course eap and those types of resources.
70 Thank you, miss director I you're right. You know I've had I've had employees of my own who've in those first responder worlds who've taken their own lives. And it is organizationally affecting across the board not to just mention their families. But the reason I asked you that, because I, I wanted folks to know that you have those mechanisms in place so that if folks are are coming in to join your team, that they know, yeah, there are going to be hard days. And humans are incredibly resilient when we do stuff together, and we're pretty bad at it when we do it on our own. And so I just appreciate you sharing that. I want to shift a little bit to some others. One of the challenges I've had, miss ellis, in terms of just overall, the way that the office of violence prevention and ceasefire interacts together. Right. We hear a lot of gun violence reduction. And I'm hoping that you can help me, because I recognize all of these seem to be working, you know, safe blocks, rose city defense, these are all working together. But can you help me out in just understanding a little bit more of the differences and where either their specific duties or specific inroads? That would be great.
71 Yeah, I get this question quite often, and I would say first and foremost, ceasefire is a response to an increase in gun violence, specifically, it's an intervention and we focus on the highest risk population. So those would be shooters someday, shooters and shooters. And so that is something that we are entirely focused on. And so our through our intensive case management program and street level outreach program, they feed each other. And then as a body, ceasefire coordinates with all of our public safety partners from probation and parole. To oia to make sure that we are staying engaged with everyone in that realm with office of violence prevention, street level outreach was in that office for some time. However, it was restructured to focus more on high risk hotspots places. And so what we did is we moved that over to ceasefire so it could really complement our programs rather than, you know, we just wanted to streamline things. So our offices interact through different programing such as trauma, violence impacted families. So when there's a shooting and it's a family focused, we work with the program manager who oversees that program, and they coordinate with other programs that are contracted under that to make sure that family gets help. So there's a few touch points, but ceasefire touches all public safety partners. So it's not just the office of violence prevention like I mentioned. So it's very you would have to take a day or a week to fully understand how the coordination and the operations are handled under ceasefire.
72 But help me if this is a fair characterization. Office of violence prevention if I was in a an update brief, we'd be talking about locations that have been hotspots, and you might be talking about individuals or a family who needs attention because of involvement. Is that a fair?
73 I would say that ceasefire focuses on the individuals specifically. Yeah. Office of violence prevention is more preventative programing, school based programing, things like that. Got it. Not as you know.
74 To use the to use kind of the older like upstream downstream.
75 Like yeah.
76 Point at the point ceasefire is involved. We have a problem already.
77 Yes.
78 And rachel right. Yes I forgot.
79 That.
80 Yeah. Your your your area is more in the prevention the upstream side of it. And these are complementary to each other. But they are certainly different because you've pulled them out.
81 Yes. Also we want to be able to engage with the younger population so they don't get to a point where we have to intervene. So that's what office of violence prevention does. And ceasefire is really focused on that person who is already high risk.
82 Great. Thanks. Just to comment on the rose city, appreciate that. Just the amount of leverage of volunteers. So thank you for that. And then my question for safe blocks that federal money I think it's called a burn grant. Do you consider it at risk given the current situation? I think our city has about $350 million worth of grants from the federal government.
83 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. It's hard to comment on the degree of risk, but current events certainly have us doing a little contingency planning. Okay, we are counting on spending that money. It is $2 million over four years in three neighborhoods. All of our all of our primary plans right now involve spending that money in the community. Without that money to spend in the community, we would be left with left with services to provide, but we would not be able to fund activities, programing neighborhood improvements like we're doing now.
84 You've got no notice though, yet no notice yet has come that it's been pulled or anything of that nature yet.
85 No, the only news we've received so far, councilor, is to continue, continue with our plans, continue applying for reimbursement. It's that type of grant.
86 Okay, thanks.
87 Councilor Zimmerman. That's it. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to pass it over to councilor Morillo next.
88 Thank you.
89 Thank you. Councilor Zimmerman did ask some of my questions already, so that's good. Thank you all so much for your presentation. It was so informative. It's great to hear about all the work that you're doing, and I think I'll have to pop into a rose city self-defense class myself. Maybe make it a district three activity. I feel like a lot of folks in my district would be really interested in that, and I've heard about that program for a long time, so it was fun to get a presentation on it. On on this end. Director cozzie good to see you again. Thanks for all the work that you do. It was incredible to hear about how you guys have been cutting down on the 911 call time, and all that work that you're doing to keep the bureau up to staff. It's just tremendous to hear how all of you are working together to make our city more safe. So big gratitude first. And I just had a one quick question for you, director cozzie. Or maybe not quick. I don't know if you have any plans to incorporate mental or behavioral health professionals, or maybe even a Portland street response staffer to help in the call center to triage calls and make sure that the right responder is going to the right call. That's my first question.
90 Yeah, we already have a partnership with Multnomah county behavioral health. We have an embedded call taker who works at boec right shoulder to shoulder with our dispatchers.
91 And will there be any specific coordination for Portland street response, or does that individual handle, you know, Portland street response triaging as well?
92 You know, we're open to any ideas. A big problem is the footprint of boec and space. So really having space, especially with the number of staff that we have and the trainees as they start certifying, it's not uncommon to see folks kind of wandering around with their chair looking for an open space to be able to sit. That's a great problem to have, but we have to figure out where we would put folks.
93 That makes sense. I suspect our offices are going to start looking a little bit like that here soon as well. So a lot of empathy for a good problem to have. I would also this is a question for the office of violence prevention and ceasefire. What needs do you guys have in the work that you're doing from us as council to continue decreasing gun violence? From a prevention and intervention standpoint, what support do you guys need from council as a whole to continue doing that work?
94 So I'll start with stephanie.
95 Well.
96 Obviously funding and creating sustainable funding models is a huge piece of trying to ensure the success of all of these programs. I think gun violence, it's there's a lot of data around that, and there's a lot of different contributing factors because it's incredibly complex. But I think the and this point has been made, but I think the demonstration of a commitment that there is a long term plan, that it is not a year by year budget cycle discussion is a really important piece of that, not only for the folks in this room, but also for the contractors that we work with, the people who are out there, you know, doing this, this work in street level outreach and intensive case management to help to, you know, help them to have some sustainability and predictability in the hard work they're doing. So that that is the blunt answer of that. I think there are lots of other nuances in terms of policy support that I think cierra and rachel and others could speak to if they want.
97 I'm more focused right now on making sure our like stephanie said, our funding is sustainable and it gets us through the next year just because the impact that if that funding goes away, it's going to be severe and we interact and engage with, again, the highest risk population. And so that can be very challenging for the city of Portland if we do not have continued ongoing support from council for our programs.
98 I agree the funding is a big piece. As you saw the ARPA money and the one time general fund allocation was huge in us being able to scale, and now we're looking at that funding gap, and that's the conversations we're having with contractors and grantees. And then as well as we are trying, we are the community hub in terms of collaboration with violence prevention. So it's rebuilding a lot of relationships that may have been broken over the past few years, and making sure that community knows that we're here and that they can participate in these conversations with us.
99 If I could add just one more thing, I think in the work session that we had a few weeks back, I mentioned a budget note that will be coming to you all about kind of this philosophical question how does ceasefire and ovp, how can they work better together? What is the structure? And so our team has put together some recommendations, are finalizing that this week and that will be coming to all of you. And one of those key points I think is unifying these pieces under sort of a central structure, so that all of the work that's happening in these different lanes can be coordinated, can be, you know, complementary and to make sure that what we're doing in this effort as a whole is, is part of the larger public safety strategy. But again, in a way that is sustainable. So more to come on that that we'll go a little deeper on some of those issues.
100 Thank you for answering that. I'm also curious, and I just have this question for all bureaus and programs as a whole on how decisions are made when there's one time funding coming in, how that money is used. I fear that sometimes at the city we have a tendency to use one time funding for ongoing programing, and that has put us in a really painful position right now. And so I'm just curious what what that one time funding was used for? Was it used for ongoing programs? Was it used for temporary things, and if so, how how do you strategize when you do use one time funding for ongoing programs, knowing that it might not come again?
101 I can oh go ahead mike.
102 Yeah. So councilor, this is a very complex question. At every bureau there is a component of one time funding and impacts for the police bureau. Out of their total funding. They have the current allocation level, which is a general fund, to get them to almost all of their funding needs. The last $10 million is one time funding, and every year they have to go in and ask for that one time funding to close the gap on total costs. Fire has about a $3 million funding gap. We call it a structural deficit. That's an example of how it works with those two bureaus in office of violence prevention. When gun violence took off in 2020, we had a 200% growth curve in gun violence. We weren't the highest homicide rate in the country, but we certainly were the fastest growth in homicide rates in the country. In 2022, mayor wheeler declared an emergency around gun violence. That's when I took over as the incident commander on gun violence. And we put a strategy together, which at some point we will be able to present to you the total strategy on gun violence. But we were offered at the time the difference in like, I think we had $800,000 in, in general fund. We were offered up to 3 to $4 million a year in one time funding, which made an absolute complete difference in in getting this gun violence down. We were able to hire contractors. Chris sits in front of you today on limited term, one time funding. 80% of the dca's office is one time funding. And so if you're you're absolutely correct that a lot of the ongoing funding needs for the for, for our organization is funded on one time funding, which means we have to come back every year with what we call ad packages just to keep the operation moving forward. And then this year specifically, I think councilor Smith said when she heard about the one time funding and ovp was, oh, no. And that's exactly what we were feeling. This, this, this promise that we've made to these families around that are impacted by gun violence, that we will find the money and we will use it to get gun violence down. It's working. And I'm desperate to keep continuing gun violence going down. These are lives that we're talking about here. So it is very impactful. Councilor I think it deserves its own time with you in front of a session like this to talk about the strategy and the impact of this one time funding. And we're not the only ones. You're going to hear this in probably every, every committee that that you attend. But I appreciate the question. It is high interest us and a very high gravity situation.
103 Thank you, director meyers. Yeah I'd love more information on that. But we can get that at a later time. And again, not a question just for this group. This is a question that I have for all bureaus, because we have heard this across our many work sessions and briefings with pretty much every every bureau and agency. So I appreciate your time. Thank you.
104 Thank you.
105 Councilor Morillo. I'll pass it over to councilor.
106 Novick.
107 First of all, I just wanted to thank all of.
108 You.
109 The presentations and to follow up on what councilor Morillo said in the abstract. It's irresponsible to be relying on one time funding for things that you want to be ongoing. But in the concrete, when we hear what you're doing with the particularly director ellis, director fetters, what you're doing with the one time funding, it's a reminder that when we hear about the general fund deficit plus the larger deficit, when you talk about things that are one time funded, we do need to think about that larger deficit. We should not be assuming that we'd let the one time things go. So it's a it's. So thank you for elaborating on the both what you're doing and the fact that it's one time funded director cozzie just had to say in response to your comment about how you rebuilt boec. I remember ten years ago, a dispatcher telling me, you know, the problem with our recruitment is we get so many people who come on who want to help people, and they find it very painful because they can only deal with people for like a few seconds at a time by design. And she said, we should really be recruiting people who are really good at video games, because that's what largely the job is. And I don't know if you've been recruiting people who are good at video games, but it sounds like you've been able to do quite well with people who did just want to help people.
110 We do have some gamers.
111 Thank you. Not seeing any other hands. So I I'll just ask two quick questions if that's okay. Director cozzie did I hear you correctly that risk management went up by 31% year over year?
112 Yeah, I talked with ginger, our our finance guru, and I confirmed that with her 31% for risk and significant increases for facilities and pts as well.
113 Wow.
114 Thank you for that. And then dca myers, I think you've given one of the most concise explanations for why the ideal for overtime is not necessarily zero. Could you speak to that for a minute please?
115 Yes. So in especially organizations around public safety that have demand a certain number of staffing to operate, I know fire best. You know, fire chief for most of my life. And so when someone calls in sick on a fire apparatus in order to keep that apparatus running at full staff, you you hire somebody back. And if you have 100 staff members, there's a budgetary level they're on. You're paying somebody fte straight time plus benefit, and that cost you about usually it's around it can be closer. You know it depends on the size of the department. You know 80% of that staffing on straight time and benefit cost. And then about 20% of the staff run on overtime. There's a there's a cost savings somewhere on that point where it meets perfectly. And you can usually you're really good budget analyst to know, right down to the 1 or 2 people where it's best on that ratio of straight time with benefit and overtime. And from a cost perspective, there's also the employee health perspective, making sure you're not running too much overtime for employee health. But there is a there is a fine line there. There's a we call it a sweet spot where it's the perfect ratio of straight time employee and overtime for the, for the most efficiency on the budget. And so you will always have some overtime. It's not a bad thing. It actually is cut to a cost benefit to run some of it. You just need to find out where that spot is. It's different in police as it is for boec as it is for Portland fire. But I think our job, you know, we I think we've taken over the budget here just a few months ago as a service area collectively, you know, we've been looking really closely at this. You notice bob cozzie overtime, I think, bob, we're down 6% overtime in your in boec, which is huge. We're down 19%. In fact bob, I think you're down more than that. We're down I think 30% with you, bob. We're down 19% with Portland fire. And so.
116 36% for boec right now.
117 Well thank you bob. Yeah. So you know, it can be done. Councilor. We just need to continue to work on it.
118 Thank you. We do have another agenda item. I want to make sure we have time for public comment. So I'll stop it here. I'm sure we'll have more time with all of you over the next few months. And but thank you so much for being here. To everyone and everyone in the back. I know you, a lot of you helped prepare this presentation as well. Thank you very much for being here. So with that, we'll move on to the next agenda item. Rebecca, would you please read the item.
119 Agenda item three public comment on community and public safety.
120 Excellent. So I think we have some folks who've signed up in advance. Could you please call the names?
121 We have five people signed up. First, we have leslie combs and she's online. Leslie.
122 Yeah. Hi. My name is alan combs. The if you could change the record. So it's alan. Last name is comm. And. Yes. Thank you. I really learned a lot from today's committee meeting. And I just am a citizen of a resident of district three, and I just wanted to. Express my support for the 24 over seven first responder services that are that have been asked to propose 8% budget cuts. I'm a little bit curious why only one of the three was talked about. I don't think I missed it, maybe there was just that's the way the agenda is structured. Maybe it will be covered in a future meeting. But I was curious why so much attention was being given to boec and not Portland fire and rescue and Portland police bureau. I forgot to mention a couple other things about myself. I've been Portland resident for 25 years. I'm currently on the training advisory council, which is a mandated council from the department of justice settlement with the Portland police bureau and the city. I was going to get into some of the details about why the 24 over seven emergency provider services can't be cut, or why they're important. I think dca meyer's memo that was released, I think in January gets into that. But as I was listening today, I was struck by the conversation on boec and asking, you know, if you just substitute in my case, I know more about the Portland police bureau. If you just substitute Portland police bureau for boec. You know, I think there's a lot of conversation to be had. I think you I hope you'll ask the same questions like, you know, what's the stress caused by too much overtime? What do they do with stressful situations? Remember that boec can't do anything if there isn't a first responder to actually respond. I mean, there's some things you can do on the phone, of course, but nothing happens if there isn't a either police and fire Portland street response or the Portland police bureau response. So I hope keen attention is going to be given onto that budget. When you do get into budget deliberations on things like police and ways to try to fund it, I hope you'll consider a few things. One is with Portland street response. I you know, I can only see what I see with my eyes, and I see absolute ineffectiveness with Portland street response in the city. They can't commit somebody. They are so understaffed that they are only a portion of the actual wellness checks that are done. The majority are still done by the police, and that's pretty well known fact. I would suggest a way to manage the budget and improve effectiveness would be to move over, to move portland's response and merge it with project respond. In the county, they can do commitment and transport or and that would be a much better way to deliver that service. And I will also call out, I see I see these calls for things like environmental built by design solutions, as well as things like traffic cameras. And I would argue that police traffic division is the fastest way to get enforcement by violators of speed. Remember, I'm not we're not talking about pulling people over for expired tags or a broken taillight. We should pull over people who are speeding that are going to kill somebody. And the fact that.
123 Yeah.
124 Thank you. I think we're we're over time here. But thank you for coming and testifying. And thank you also for your service on the training advisory council. Rebecca.
125 Next we have charlie, michelle, wesley.
126 Let's see.
127 Good afternoon. Okay. So many priorities. I'm charlie michelle wesley, indigenous woman and descendant of many of the northwest tribes of our land. I'm a former police accountability commissioner, chosen for my lived experience as a witness to a target victim and survivor of police violence. I bring you extensive knowledge and wisdom of my of why we need real police accountability. While police obviously operate with either implicit or explicit racial bias and perceived suspicion based on race, it leads to overwhelming police violence of our black community members without accountability. This is common knowledge and why we are here today. Being black and brown should not make you automatically a suspect. But implicit and explicit racial bias proves otherwise. Hence the necessity and creation of the community board for police accountability. With a mandate of no police on this oversight system. However, the city deviantly found a loophole to add three law enforcement to the nominating committee. The city also included nobody with bias for or against the police can be considered for the oversight system. The problem is everyone has some bias for or against the police. Maybe just a ticket, but it's actually an exclusion tactic. Tilting the scale to benefit police is that not bias and contempt for communities? Will for police accountability? This prevents someone like myself who is a staunch advocate for nonviolent policing, and it also considers me as bias against police. So my so-called bias is not a negative. I want to prevent police violence. I want excessive harm reduction. I want accountability to be rare because it's rarely needed when police actually protect and serve the people as a whole. I want the core city values to actually matter, especially the one that's always ignored systemic, racist white supremacy, which you all avoid as much as possible. I want to no longer find it necessary to have that talk with my newborn black indigenous grandson when he's old enough to drive on how to stay alive when he's pulled over by the police. So at the very least, the very least, please reword that. This is just one thing though that bias bias statement. So it isn't another barrier to actual accountability and true transformative justice. And someday that my grandchild and your grandchildren bipoc grandchildren are free and liberated from the risk of police violence. Thank you.
128 Thank you, charlie, and thank you as well for your service on the police accountability commission.
129 Rebecca.
130 Next we have karen curry. Karen's online. Karen, can you hear us?
131 Hi, this ellen combs.
132 Nope. Sorry. We can go ahead to our next.
133 Would you like me to give some more comments?
134 No, no. I'm here.
135 Hi, karen.
136 Can you hear me? Karen?
137 Yeah.
138 Hi, karen. Can you try again?
139 Yeah. Can you hear me now?
140 We can hear you now. Thank you.
141 Okay. It says to join as a panelist. Do I click that button?
142 Yep. You can click that and then you'll be on screen. Your name is appearing and you're good to go.
143 And my audio. Okay, now I can hear you. Good afternoon, committee members. My name is karen tyree. I am a business owner in district four and a resident of district three. I'm also a member of stadium hood. I am writing to you today as a small business owner in the stadium hood neighborhood, a community that has been facing increasing challenges related to crime. The rise in incidents of theft, vandalism, drug activity, and the presence of unwanted individuals has created an environment that is detrimental not only to businesses, but also to the overall livability of our community. For the past few years, we have witnessed the unfortunate closure of more than 11 businesses in stadium hood. This alarming trend is a direct consequence of the limited ability of law enforcement and the prosecution system to effectively address and deter criminal behavior. As a result, our neighborhood is not only losing its vibrant commercial landscape, but also its sense of security and community. It has become increasingly clear that the burden of ensuring safety has shifted onto the shoulders of business owners and residents. Many of us are now forced to invest in private security services at exorbitant rates, simply to maintain a semblance of safety for our patrons and families. The situation is unsustainable and highlights the urgent need for comprehensive action from the community and public safety committee. Furthermore, the visible, ongoing presence of pop Portland people's. Events and activities has contributed to the ongoing drug use, criminal element and safety issues in our neighborhood. While the intention behind these programs may be to provide support, pop is only providing harm enabling tools and their visibility can inadvertently attract individuals engaged in harmful behaviors, further exacerbating the challenges we face. I urge the committee to consider the following solutions to address these pressing issues. City funded security initiatives the city should hire neighborhood security personnel on behalf of communities to provide a visible presence and deter criminal activity, thereby enhancing safety for both residents and businesses. Expansion of the clean and safe program by extending the clean and safe program beyond the downtown core to encompass all of downtown, we can foster a cleaner and safer environment that benefits everyone. Community safety programs, establishing community safety programs that engage residents and business owners in proactively safe and proactive safety measures can empower us all. These programs could include neighborhood watch initiatives, safety workshops, and collaboration with local law enforcement to address specific concerns in our area. Enforcement of ordinances and ors. This includes rogue harm reduction organizations, and this will help hold individuals accountable for their actions and promote a culture of responsibility within our community. Community service programs. Instituting a community service program for low level offenders can serve as a constructive consequence for their actions. By contributing to community. Thank you.
144 Thank you, karen, and thank you for testifying with us again. I remember you from a previous meeting as well, rebecca.
145 Next is matt levine.
146 Hello, everyone. My name is matt levine. I'm a racial justice activist, scholar and facilitator here in what's now known as Portland, but is actually occupied rightful land of many different indigenous peoples of the lower columbia river. I use he him his pronouns. I identify racially as white and ethnically as ukrainian and irish. And as you consider community and public safety committee priorities, I want to implore you to please continuously, explicitly consider how these priorities relate to the city's core values of anti-racism, equity, transparency, communication, collaboration and fiscal responsibility. I say this because of the history of Portland city council ignoring these values when it comes to community and public safety being long and horrific. Most recently, I've been extremely concerned with how the previous city council, the city attorney and others have ignored these values in relation to the amazing work of the police accountability commission in creating the structure for the community board for police accountability. While almost every single change the city made to the police accountability commission's proposal were in violation of the city's core values, I want to highlight two of them. First, the added prohibition on cvpa members having pro-police or anti-police bias is extremely concerning. It incorrectly assumes that neutrality is the desirable position with respect to the board's cases. We should not be neutral about police violence, though we must be staunchly opposed to it. The bias prohibition also clearly conflates an anti-police position and an anti-police bias. As should be clear with any sincere look at history, an objective look at the history of policing in this country and in this city leads to an anti-police conclusion, not an anti-police bias. In fact, the core city values of anti-racism and equity, not to mention 26, 217 and the doj settlement agreement themselves not only allow, but actually require taking the position that police have been oppressive. Second, it's extremely concerning that there are as many police representatives to the cvpa nominating nominating committee as there are, and that there are as few community voices on the cvpa nominating committee as has been suggested. There should be no police representatives having anything to do with cvpa or its nominating committee. By definition, one cannot transparently hold oneself accountable. So please rethink the cvpa nominating committee, the city's core values and the community and public safety committee priorities. Thank you.
147 Thank you, matt, and thank you again for testifying previously as well.
148 Rebecca.
149 Brian orndorf.
150 Thanks for being here.
151 Good afternoon. Committee and councilors. My name is brian orndorf. I live and work in district four. My wife, emily and I have raised our three kids here in Portland. My day job, I've had the pleasure of leading teams that have delivered $3.5 billion of commercial real estate across all product types, including seven mixed use buildings in the urban core of Portland since 2008. Those properties generate over $30 million annually. Funding income tax, hotel and business taxes. Public safety is considered a critical element for civilized society because it allows to live without fear of crime, fostering a sense of security, promoting social cohesion, and enabling people to fully participate in community life. Essentially, without a safe environment, a society cannot function at a high level of civility and progress. In my opinion, the community and public safety committee is key to building a foundation to rebuild our city, to benefit all portlanders. The possibility of portland's strained law enforcement system facing new, catastrophic cuts when vulnerable citizens need more help, fewer dispatchers and officers would lead to longer response times, less crime prevention and investigation, and fewer officers patrolling districts to build community trust. We currently don't have enough police officers or firefighters in Portland, and making these cuts would not only would only make the situation worse. Additionally, the private sector is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly on third party security to address the shortage of officers, which is close to 400 from the current level of 781 officers. Many small businesses can no longer afford both the high state and local tax burden, and the cost for third party security. The other thing I want to point out is I actually did a study that I've already sent to everybody where I've looked at 11 comparable cities as to what the gross budget is of the city and what percentage is spent on police security services. Portland, surprisingly and maybe not surprisingly, was the lowest of the 11 of our $82.2 billion budget. We spend 3.6% on police. If you look at other comparable cities, they've averaged close to 10%. So we're not dealing with a situation where we have a lot of fat. We've lost all the fat. We only have muscle and bone left. Defunding police will result in more crime. More crime will lead to higher demand for government services. More crime will result in more existing Portland businesses to close or leave, as cost of insurance and security increases due to increasing crime. Ultimately, this will result in higher unemployment, which will increase more homelessness due to loss of income and inability to meet basic housing and basic living needs. This will result in less income tax to fund government services. Portland is at a tipping point. The worst thing we can do right now is to further reduce portland's police budget, which is already the lowest of any comparable city in the country. I'm going to end with two quotes. First was arnold schwarzenegger government's first and highest duty is obligation to public safety. It's not getting the chopper. The second is from barack obama. Understand, our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day. They've got a tough job to do to maintain public safety and hold accountable those who break the law. Thank you.
152 Thank you, and thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today. Does that conclude testimony?
153 That concludes testimony?
154 Thank you very much. So right now, this committee is scheduled to meet the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at 2:30 p.m. We're hoping to have work session work sessions to the schedule, but as of right now, that's when the times will be. So as a result, the next meeting of the community and public safety committee is scheduled for February 25th at 2:30 p.m. And with that, thank you everyone for being here. Community members, presenters, labor partners and more. I adjourn this meeting of the community and public safety committee.
155 Thanks.