The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-06-04
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
A Portland City Council work session dated 2025-06-04 addressed ongoing budget amendment revisions ahead of upcoming votes. Discussion opened with a request for a running total of new revenue generated by fee increases, including transportation network company and golf fees, with figures on proposed versus approved amounts and contingency totals stated inconsistently across speakers during the session. Multiple councilors described plans to withdraw, combine, narrow, or reduce various numbered amendments and budget notes, citing funding source clarifications, limited available contingency, and concerns about the volume of budget notes potentially straining administrative capacity. Topics included restoring positions such as City Budget Office analysts, funding for small donor elections, opioid settlement fund allocations tied to a recovery housing proposal, police overtime funding mechanisms and their relationship to vacancy savings and FTE authority, general fund overhead versus discretionary fund restrictions, and a proposal for additional council legal counsel amid disagreement over charter interpretation. Budget office and public safety staff responded to technical questions about overhead cost pools and overtime budgeting. Process questions were raised about handling a large number of pending amendments in an upcoming session. Votes were referenced as having occurred previously and were noted as being recorded in the vote ledger. The session concluded with an announcement that the recessed council meeting would resume the following day at 2:00.
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0 Thank you all for your patience with that short delay. We are back and coming into order. I believe we are on councilor Zimmerman to go over any new amendments that you would like to give your colleagues a heads up about.
1 So thanks. I just wanted to before I go into that, I was wondering if we can get a running total from the budget office about all the new revenue that this current budget has created. I know we raised uber fees, we've raised golf fees, we raised parking fees. I'm trying to understand how much revenue has been created, because I'll just remind folks, I know it was very late on the 21st, but we had a surplus of over $900,000 that we put into contingency. And because of that, I am saying I'm not sure why I would want to be supportive of, for instance, councilor Novick's proposal to take more from other parts of our budget to create spaces when I think there's already additional money sitting in contingency. So I was hoping we could get a running total of new taxes or fees that this budget is going to implement if it passes, and make sure we can verify the amount of contingency we increased the city's budget by on the 21st, and then I'll change my amendment issues.
2 Director levine, could you come up and I'll note for folks who are watching online that there is a new video link up on the council clerk's web page. If you're current link is not showing the captions, go back to the clerk web page and you can open that new video link. Councilor zimmermann, are you asking for a total that includes the fee increases that were in the proposals that came through the finance committee from the mayor? Or are you asking just for things that council did from the dais during our budget committee meeting, or are you asking for some of those fee increases that came from the mayor, but not all of them?
3 No, I'm I'm looking for those that came in our budget meeting, in our council budget meeting, when we approved the budget we had, I think I think it was just uber fees, just golf fees. I was just noting that we had already done parking fees. Are there other revenue grabs? And then to councilor Dunphy's amendment about funding vision zero, it was that the all the money that's being raised by the uber fees is going there. Or I think that clarity is not is not present right now in terms of where all the new taxes are, are what they're funding. I feel like that should be a good accounting director.
4 Levine, do you feel like you have the direction you need to answer this question?
5 I think so let me give you a couple of things, and then I'm going to have to get back to you. On the broader question about total revenue increases. So the amount that was in contingency in the general fund at the end of the night on the 21st is sorry. Just shy of $1 million, 999, $300,340 and that. But that's just the general fund. So that doesn't include the tnc fees that go into. And I'm trying to get a number on what that is, and then it doesn't include the golf amounts that stayed in. Yeah. Anything that wasn't pulled out of golf, I.
6 Guess what I'm trying to understand is how much does the tnc increase represent? Are we estimating how much does the golf fee change represent? And of those two representative numbers, how much have been allocated in a variety of different amendments?
7 Yeah. Let me let me get back to you. I don't have the tnc number off the top of my head, but yeah, the contingency amount is basically $1 million.
8 Thanks. And the reason I bring it up is that I recognize there's some things like cei workers, pbem type workers, and others, but I would say I'm not sure we need to be going once again after council budgets. I'm not sure we have to be going after other areas because we've created a surplus. So. And additionally, the civic life amendment that I've made certainly creates even more of a surplus that that folks can, can work with if they have priorities they want to pay for on with respect to the aspect of our amendments conversation, you know, I, I took my guidance in my amendment development from the budget office. And but when we when we passed amendments. To the budget on the 21st, particularly the police defunding amendment, the same standard is not required by the city attorney or the city budget office in terms of breaking amendments up. And so we took an action that I think read normally. We all knew what it was going to do. It was going to take money from one account and put it into another account. And I think that's that. While I disagreed with the action, the way it was read by the council was fine. Given that I plan to combine back into what I would call understandable english. Zimmerman one, two, three and four and I'll make some adjustments to those, but I'm not going to break up my amendments the way that I was directed to, because we clearly are not living by that as a, as a way in which we're going to describe our amendments in order to send a little bit more of a clear, a clear message about what my parks funding package was about. So I just wanted to share that with folks. And given the given the new money that was allocated to parks, I'll adjust my amendments to a smaller amount so that we aren't overfilling parks. Given my amendments to reduce the tree regulation fund. So you'll see those come in the future. But right now, those are my only changes that I'm voting for that one.
9 And councilor One, two, three and four all being combined into one.
10 No. There were there were four different amendments that the budget team wrote to achieve. Just my single one about moving money from regulation into maintenance. I'm going to combine the ones that that did that into a single amendment so they read more normally.
11 One, two and three.
12 I think it's just one, two and three perhaps.
13 Thank you. Okay.
14 Thank you for the clarification. Councilors. Did anybody have questions for councilor Zimmerman?
15 Or pastor? Yeah, yeah.
16 Seeing none. Counselor. Do you have anything else to bring today?
17 Just I think there's a couple of notes. I'm not generally supportive of a ton of budget notes, but I think it certainly sends an interesting message with how many we have. I think that what I'm noticing is a deep need by the council for what we perceive as access to information, and I think that that's a really valuable perspective. I, I guess I want to caution us on how many notes we do to go after individual things, because what I, having been on the other side of this and having seen, you know, some times where lots of notes are getting used, I've never seen anywhere near this many notes. And what I expect is most of these budget notes will be ignored, not on purpose, but purely out of capacity reasons. And I, and I'm concerned that we're going to water down a tool that I think notes can be valuable. But if it is, if it is about our access to information, if it is about getting a report back by a certain date, I mean, this is this is significant work. If we want it to be taken seriously. And I would encourage us to think about what might make more sense at the committees that we all sit on or where we're chairs of. That is maybe the same outcome can be achieved, but maybe in a little bit more of a collaborative manner with the administrative side of the city, instead of a directive manner from the 40 some odd budget notes. I don't know that that's manageable. And I think we're setting ourselves up to be a very watered down body. If we just send stuff that can never be done. That sounds congressional and not what we would want at a municipal level. So I just a voice of caution there.
18 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Clark, do you have a question?
19 Yeah. I just wanted to engage with councilor Zimmermann for a moment here on his idea about budget notes, because I think it has merit. And as someone who has another, you know, 3 or 4 budget notes that haven't really been discussed yet, I can see that you could take what you conceive of as a budget note and turn it into a resolution and, and work with through your committee, work with an administrator. So I think that's a really interesting comment, because I also can't see how we're going to get through all of these amendments, mine included, which I love, my amendments, my budget notes, but I don't want to lose them. But I can see that there might be alternative routes for some of these, so I appreciate that comment.
20 Councilor zimmermann, anything additional, councilor Clark?
21 Madam chair, I really we can wait on this. I just had some process questions for you when we get towards the end about how we're going to deal with 126, whatever, we have amendments. When the time comes, what your process will be. And of course, I'm always concerned about the oios when to get those out of the way, since they don't hurt anybody and or take money from anybody else's budgets. But I'm just really concerned about how we're going to wade through all these, especially given councilor Zimmermann's comment.
22 Understood. Let's get to that after we hear from our colleagues and then loop back to those questions. Councilor Avalos.
23 Thank you. As far as what's going on with my amendments, I'm going to be pulling Avalos two. That's the one about parks programing simply because I don't have a source for it, but also because several other colleagues have other sources and ideas. And I'm going to see how that plays out and support amendments that will, you know, bring in more parks programing dollars. Avalos three I'm going to be changing it to moving police and fire overtime into a set aside to just police. I am keeping four, which is around the dollars for. Housing preservation, but I'm tweaking it a bit to be more specific about the north and northeast preference policy for it to go towards that. In particular, we, you know, had originally left it open. We had talked with helmi from the.
24 Housing.
25 Thank you from the housing bureau. But I want to make it a little bit more narrow, because that's really what we were trying to go for with those dollars. And so I want to make sure that it does that. So I'm going to amend that language a bit. I'm really excited about Avalos five, because originally I had 1.5 million, I had to amend it down to 200,000 because that was what I was told was what was left in the opioid settlement funds after the bybee lake stuff that mayor wilson up put in there. But it turns out there's actually 1.2 million in that unassigned. And for health is exactly what those dollars should be going to. So I'm super excited. I really hope people support that, because that's going to get us super close to opening up a bunch of brand new recovery beds. And even more importantly, it's not just like because for health has their they have beds in their programing. Right. But it's actually more long term housing. So the goal for them is that this will be a supplement to the way that they currently have their recovery program, that people could transition into a more long term, stable housing and then still have the care right next to them and also have adventists nearby. And so it's going to create a really important hub in east Portland for, you know, recovery and access. So I'm super excited. I've talked with the mayor about that because I didn't want to take from what he had allocated for bybee lakes, and luckily it does not. It is just money that's sitting there that was perfect for this cause. So and then so I'll be adopting that and then I'm keeping actually Avalos six is similar to councilor Zimmermann and canal is about the, you know, the dco's, the dcl. So I'm kind of just having it linger for now, but I suspect I will remove it entirely if there's a whole new package, I'm letting it linger in case that we need a placeholder for amending. And, you know, it's already on the books, and then the rest of them. Oh yeah. And then an update for folks around Avalos eight, which is about the protecting workers from future health care cuts. I reconfirmed with the budget office, with the city attorney that it is in fact a note. And the reason they say that is because I'm asking for next year that they prepare in next year's budget to set aside 15%. So I changed it from 15 million to 15%, because essentially we budgeted for an 8% increase in health care, and this year was like 12%, 14%. But it is it's the proper way to do it. I've been told is as a note, because it is for a future budget. So it's not actually an amendment. It's just guidance as the mayor starts the next budget, that he's allocating enough dollars so that we can protect from more health, deeper health care cuts, and then. The. Avalos nine. I think depending on what's going on with councilor Koyama Lane, I think there might be some blending of Avalos nine two. That's the one around. It's that one's just a note about, you know, essentially just being thoughtful about how we're making those cuts to comms and engagement. So also a question mark on if that needs to move forward. But hanging in there for now. And then Avalos ten is the same a budget note. And I'll just comment on councilor Zimmermann's notes. Thoughts on notes I mean, I do think that, you know, I hear that argument and agree that we need to figure out what is the best way to communicate back to the administration what we're looking for. And you know, this this is a new style, and we need to learn what is the new way that we're going to direct, right? The through our policymaking and through our budget authority, how we want the city to operate, essentially. So I'm definitely curious for us to have a deeper discussion, because I tend to agree with the larger sentiment of, you know, if we can't overly do the notes and it might get watered down. And I also had been asking like, how do we even keep track of if the notes are getting done? Like, is that something I'm going to have to follow up and be diligent about? Is there somebody that's going to be updating us on the progress of all the notes? So I have questions there. But yeah, so I hear that and agree. But I think that we need to find a happy medium, because I think a lot of people are choosing this route because it feels like an easy way to, you know. Signal intent, if you will. So that's all.
26 Councilor just to clarify, on Avalos five, you had mentioned the original number, the number you had written in there, a different number. What is the dollar amount that you are going to be asking for in that amendment next week?
27 It's going to be 1.2 million.
28 The full 1.2.
29 That is what is remaining in that fund. And it's unallocated.
30 Anybody else have questions for councilor Avalos? Councilor zimmermann.
31 So I appreciate that. Some of those you said where they're coming from but the few others it's unclear if you if you identified where you were going to take funds for when you were refunding something, did I miss that or are some of your amendments just out there, like, or are you designating where you want funds to come from?
32 I don't have any amendments that are with dollars that aren't that I haven't identified. Most of these are notes.
33 Avalos for.
34 Avalos for oh, that one. Sorry. That one is from the home share. So that's that 500,000 going towards.
35 And then Avalos six is nearly 500,000.
36 And that's the one that I'm saying I don't know what's going on with the whole thing. So I'm I don't I don't I didn't have an original source. Well we had yeah. So I don't have a full source. So I'm not sure if that's going to stay. I'm kind of waiting to see what comes of the amendment that Koyama Lane is preparing. Okay. Yeah.
37 And then. That number is also larger than what the budget office has indicated was removed from those two programs. And I'm trying to understand if that was are you trying to increase the program or were you trying to restore it?
38 I'm just trying to restore it. And if the numbers are off, I'll double check.
39 Okay. Just that's helpful with intent. Okay. Thank you, madam president.
40 Can I ask.
41 About Avalos for.
42 Councilor Ryan also had a question. But as councilor Ryan is deferring to you.
43 On Avalos four. Is that money that's in the mayor's budget? Is that.
44 That's correct. Yeah. The mayor has allocated that 500,000 as a pilot, and I am suggesting that we use those dollars and where we need them right now, which is preserving a bunch of affordable housing that's going to we're going to lose if we don't put dollars towards that. And I felt that was important since we don't have a lot of housing related things in our amendments, and it feels like an important place to transfer those dollars because of the sensitivity of losing those units. Right.
45 Okay. Thanks.
46 Yeah.
47 Do you have a question for councilor Avalos?
48 I do, thank you, madam president. Yes, councilor Avalos, I might have missed this when you mentioned police and fire. Which one did you say you were not going to touch in terms of overtime? You're going to which one? Fire. Okay, so fire is off the table. Okay. And then I thought I heard you mention a proposal for floral health.
49 For a health.
50 For a health. Is that is that how you say that? Is that the one that I see when I'm out in the gateway area? Yeah. Okay. Now, would that need to go through a procurement process?
51 From what I understood, it's we can just assign them. So that's what the mayor did. Right. He just assigned it with the for the bybee lake. So we can just assign where those go.
52 All right. Just trying to track things. I would like to have jonas come up just for a second. I just have a big picture. Question.
53 Aviary. Welcome.
54 Yeah, I know, I saw him there. I'm listening to a lot of amendments that are restoring positions. I don't think anyone up here would want to not do that. But I'm also just trying to track what we've been up to the last six months, if you will. So we're well aware that fixed costs are going up, and I haven't seen a lot of indications that bread and butter revenue is proportionally going up with that. Is that a fair assessment?
55 It is a fair assessment that costs will incrementally go up, particularly staffing costs. As we've talked before, health care benefits, etc. Are increasing at paces above typical inflation. We certainly have not seen revenues increasing at that same pace. If it's helpful, I'll flag that the city by policy forecast over a five year window. So part of the reason we make these adjustments now is to realign to balance over that five year window. Okay. What that means is if our forecasts are perfect spoiler alert they won't be. But hopefully they're close or or wrong in the right direction. But if our forecasts are perfect, then we won't make any cuts for the five year window. And we won't have any additions over the five year window because we're as at the moment this budget action is completed, we're balanced over the five year window. We know that won't be true, and we know that, as has been the case for many years, there's significant amount of one time funding. And so the forecast doesn't account for that one time funding. So we've flagged before there is an expectation that there will be a challenge next year in addressing that one time gap. In the absence of additional cost reductions or additional revenue increases above what's currently forecast.
56 Now, that's helpful, and I appreciate you because it was wrong in the right direction in the 2020 through 2023. And then it stopped last year. And I'm not feeling it being wrong in that direction at this moment. So I think what I just want to say with my colleagues is that we're doing a lot of one time trading right now, and the economic forecast is pretty challenging, and we're going to be here next year at this time. And so I'm just I'm being cautious because maybe I always like to think three years out on how we're going to get through the budget deliberations next year at this time, because we're not going to have any one time opportunities to raid, or we're losing those at least. So I just had to put some caution out right now that I'm concerned that we're going to play all of our cards in this year's budget. And so I wanted to make sure we keep the economic forecast dialog fluent. And I hope that the administration continues to give us updates as the information comes in. Thank you.
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57 Thank you.
58 Anybody else have questions for our colleague? Okay. I believe councilor Clark, your hand is up. But was that before councilor Avalos, is that legacy okay? I believe we're to councilor Kanal then.
59 I just wanted to respond to councilor Zimmermann's question. I was going through the notes, and I guess this relates to something that councilor Clark might be bringing up later. I would love to see us do most of the amendments before we get into notes when we get to this, because some of the notes are effectively commentary on an amendment, they're they're paired in some way. And I think those make sense to go together. Some of them appear to be asking for information. And I think then councilor Zimmermann's question, I think, makes sense as it relates to can the committees work more collaboratively, I believe is how you phrased it with the bureaus. And then the there's a sort of third category which is effectively, can you study something or score something or, you know, effectively come up with a plan or a dollar amount for something? And I think those are a little bit harder to work down. I'm withdrawing a couple of mine because I think they fall into that middle category that councilor Zimmerman raised. The only other reason that I'm in, in, in the queue and I you don't need to respond right now, madam president, but maybe when it's your turn, you feel ready to go through it. I would love to have a conversation and try to understand a little bit more about your proposed amendments four, five and six. I think four and five are sort of one concept, and six might be a little bit different. And just to understand where those are at in terms of if you're still intending to put those forward, I personally am very interested in having that conversation at some point.
60 Thank you. And if we don't have time today, because I want to make sure that we can speak to folks new things, I'm happy to talk to you offline about those four and five actually are not meant to go together. They had very different intents and I entered them for very different reasons, but happy to chat more offline.
61 Point of order I think I was skipped.
62 I believe you're next after councilor Kanal unless my order is somehow different than yours, but I do have you next in the queue.
63 Thank you.
64 Absolutely councilor Kanal anything else? Or should we move on to counselor Smith? Okay. Counselor Smith, go right ahead.
65 Yes, I'll be amending a amendment that we passed last week. It's Avalos seven. It's the motion to amend the budget to restore and protect the small donor elections. We actually voted to support that and to take the money from the golf fund.
66 Just to clarify, though, it was actually councilor Morillo amendment. Which number was it for the small donor? We both had the same idea, but okay, below seven technically is out because we approved Morillo.
67 Okay.
68 So it's the same thing.
69 It's the same thing.
70 Yeah.
71 It was. Morillo amendment. Was it Morillo six? Thank goodness somebody else knows. Okay. Hailey, how do you have all this memorized?
72 You.
73 Hailey. Okay.
74 So I am going to amend Morillo six, a friendly amendment. And this amendment took the money from a one time fund called the golf fund. And I don't know about you all, but I received many calls about this. But I am going to put in an amendment that we take that money out of the city administrator's budget in the services and materials in the ongoing. Because if we if we continue to take this out of a fund, it won't be put in ongoing. So we need to take from ongoing money to make sure that this particular amendment is funded. Every year.
75 Thank you, counselor, I'm going to let counselor Morillo jump the queue here to ask you a few questions, since this is referring to the amendment that she originally brought forward.
76 Sure.
77 I was just curious. Are we able to amend an amendment that's already passed?
78 I believe that because the amendment has already passed, it is part of the underlying document now. So what this would be is a new amendment to the underlying budget, not to your amendment. But saying it's to your amendment is a helpful way to point our attention to what the language is that's being changed. Okay, technically, though, it would be an amendment to the underlying budget document.
79 Okay, great.
80 It's a new amendment.
81 Okay, I see well, I'm definitely in favor of having ongoing money for that. I think it makes more sense. I'm curious if the city administrator has any response to the potential impacts of that.
82 Mr. Jordan, would you like to respond?
83 Mr. Thank you. Excuse me.
84 Thank you, madam president. If the amount of money is still going to be 825,000 in the new amendment, there aren't many places to get that much money except Portland solutions. The ogre is very small, very small. There's two people currently in the city administrator's office, although we will be making some changes if zimmerman's amendment continues. So it literally is one of the divisions of Portland solutions where there is that kind of money. Now, I haven't gone through the whole budget, and so I'm I'm just speculating a bit. But you asked.
85 Yeah.
86 And you and.
87 You didn't spend their entire budget this year. And so I want to go back to something that. That counselor Ryan brought up about us nitpicking the, the ones and twos off of the one time only money. So I just want to say this for the record, and you all have heard me say this before about Portland solutions, homeless and housing and what that looks like. But I really think we need to take a look in the mirror and look at how much money last year on a council that you set on, put in ongoing programs in ARPA money to the tens of millions, and to nitpick places that people want to do one time only. That's the reason why I'm trying to ask where is the unattached money in the grants department? And to get a clear accounting. We're always going to have one time only money. That's not the problem. The issue is the ongoing money. And we're sitting at about 140 million that we're paying for homeless services that we should not be. And so me trying to reconcile that with trying to identify programs, that is our book of business that got put on the ballot and approved in regardless if it's election related or not. It was approved and we have to find a place to pay for it in an ongoing way. And until we come up with a solution on how to deal with our homeless problem, and that we're going to now be a homeless provider, and we're going to spend over $140 million in. In our budget for homelessness, instead of spending money for small business, economic development, for housing production. I just think that that we can't be, you know, we can't have our hands slapped for putting in budget notes. Budget one time only requests, because the reason why we're in this big budget gap hole is because of the one time money that you approved last year. And I wish that people would have had as much oversight and concern last year when they saw all the one time only ARPA money going into ongoing programs, that how are we going to pay for that? I didn't hear any of that. So for me, I think we kind of give give each other some grace because we're still learning how to do this and they're still learning. They don't know, but we can't slap other people's hands on what we have right now. I guarantee you we're going to have a lot of one time only money next year. It's the ongoing money that's the that's going to be the issue of how do we pay for those ongoing operating costs. So that's what I'm going to be dropping next week. And I'm also going to be taking away the $5 million amendment that I put forward to, basically put into a council. A council, attorney's office, legal counsel. I really like what councilor Kanal did with his 200,000. I'm going to take that off the deck. My $5 million request, because I think we do need to have some ability to have additional counsel for council. Right now, we're in a charter crisis because we've been given. An interpretation of the charter that says the mayor can't break a tie. And regardless of where you are on either side of this. We need to have council that we can talk to make sure that how do we how do we solve this problem? Because that's all interpretation. And this budget would be totally different and these amendments would be totally different. The ones that went six six if in fact they were broken by the mayor. And I think that we're breaking the charter and we need to have our own council. But with the large gap that we have right now, I'm willing to drop that amendment and support councilor Kanal amendment for $200,000 to start their so that we can see what the possible is.
88 Thank you. Councilor. I think two of your colleagues have quick questions for you. Councilor Ryan, did you have a question for councilor Smith?
89 Yeah.
90 I just thank you, councilor Smith. It's fair to say what you did. I it's hard to explain how different the apples and oranges are in your comparisons. It was quite a windfall for all cities that came from the federal government during COVID. The former council strategically chose homelessness, livability and economic development. There were big strategic investments in all three, knowing that those one time monies would go away. One was to get the permit reforms in motion. That's been successful. I know it doesn't feel like it yet, but it was a heck of a lot more than we've ever done in the past. We went against the county who wouldn't do shelters with actual services and so and then the bargain was supposed to be that the money from hhs would then come in to pay for those that was failed, and that was why some of us didn't want to stay in the joint office any longer, but keep our money here and focus on getting money directly from sh. And also the third circumstance was that we were getting a lot of good information, that long term revenue was quite at a risk because we were seeing more and more businesses not lease their their businesses. We're not seeing building. Just look at the few cranes that you see around town. So we did the best we could in an emergency to take that money and do strategic investments that would be good for the long term. The hope was that we'd start to see bread and butter revenue come back at this time. Sadly, that's not happening in the pace that we would have hoped. In fact, that's the big concern that that you and I have talked about. So I just think what you're saying is true, but it's also fair to have this more nuanced conversation about it and not. And I still think my point that we have to be careful because we have like a three year challenge. And I just hope that we're not rating. It's very creative what's happening.
91 I know it's a cautionary tale and I appreciate it. Yeah. But I also understand, too, that you didn't have a lot of control over the grants which the ARPA money was in. Mayor wheeler's wheelhouse. And so he was willing and dealing with that piece of money without council approval. And they were doing things that they didn't put out and give you an opportunity to say where it went, specifically the previous monies. But this last year, where all this money went to Portland solutions, that was his choice and his choice alone, and we were left with those funding opportunities. So we're here. It's been successful, but how do we now pay for it now? We've we've gotten ourselves into a gap. And so the gap is not because of these little ones and twos, you know, one time only request the gap is because we got ongoing requests that cost a lot of money that we should not be paying for. And I wanted to make it very clear that that's what's happening. And we're trying to pick up the pieces and fill the gaps in different places. Like I said, a lot of these folks don't know, and so they're trying to do the best they can in trying to figure out where, where to get funding sources from. But we need to tell the real story, what really happened. And I don't think there was a bunch of pushback because everybody was running for office. On what the leadership was doing in terms of our one time money going towards ongoing projects. And here we are today. So I do recognize that that was not necessarily your deal in. Maybe you didn't push back when you seen it because it was in the mayor's.
92 There were some three, two amendments.
93 Yeah.
94 Yeah, yeah. No I get it, I get it.
95 I'm going to try to pull us back to the now.
96 But I think the big picture.
97 Is it's the cautionary tale that he's trying to, to put out to us. Be be careful and we should. But I just wanted to let folks know we're in a pickle because of a bigger issue around who pays for what on housing.
98 Thank you councilor.
99 Thank you. And I, I don't I think we can say we don't see the one time windfall coming from this federal government. That's I think what we can all that's the caution right there. Yeah.
100 Thanks.
101 We have 1 or 2 more colleagues with questions for councilor Smith. And I will note that both councilor Koyama Lane and I have conflicts. At 4:00. Councilor Avalos, did you have a question for councilor Smith?
102 Yeah. Based on what ca jordan cao jordan said, I guess with your amendment, are you expecting that the. The administrator office make the decisions on where that 800 will go? Are you going to be directing it or.
103 No, no, no, we're directing it. We're directing 825. They they didn't spend their entire budget this year.
104 Yeah, I'm just saying. So then are you going to in the amendment specify like it's going to come from this thing and that thing. And is it a is it a combination of different parts.
105 Or it's going to come from the services materials. They they did not spend their entire budget. So they obviously it's ongoing money. They can take the loss of the $825,000. No worries.
106 Yes.
107 That will be no, no, no, we'll, we'll talk to we'll talk to ruth. But there is money there in ongoing that can be taken out of the administrator's budget. I mean, there's, there's a, a.
108 So you're going to line item it out.
109 Yes.
110 Yes, yes. That is I've already done it. It's services and materials. And so.
111 Are things coming out of Portland solutions though.
112 Whatever they however they whatever their services and materials are budget. Some of that goes to Portland solutions. Some of it is to materials and services. They will just have 825,000 less, just like they took out of our budget. Just have 825 less. We're not necessarily taking out of Portland solutions. We're taking out of that entire account, which is a huge account. We won't be taking money from housing and homelessness, even though that's where they also get their money. But the entire amount is not used for housing homelessness.
113 Yeah, okay.
114 I will look forward to seeing where those dollars come from.
115 Thank you.
116 Thank you. Councilor councilor Kanal, did you have a question for councilor Smith or were you in the queue for a different reason?
117 I had a question for councilor Smith. By the way. I really appreciate this conversation. I think it's really valuable. And we've talked about a bunch of different things that are creating this. And one of them is, I think that the federal and state, the lack of the lack of funding that we're getting even on things that we that we're not ARPA and have continued on. I, I appreciate bringing up the amendment I had. I had previously mentioned that I would probably withdraw canal two. And so I appreciate that. And I just wanted to flag in response that I might.
118 Take.
119 It away. I might drop it, which, as a side note, when you drop something and then you don't drop it, it actually isn't adding a new amendment at all. But that's a broader point. Thanks.
120 No, I recognize that the $5 million is a heavy lift, but I think what you are doing, it will give us a start to be able to have a conversation about how we have legal counsel from council operations standpoint.
121 Thank you for flying.
122 Thank you, councilor, councilor Zimmerman.
123 Still wondering if we know how much new revenue this budget will create given its amendments. I oh, my question was, I have two questions, for things have been read by previous councilors. The first one, I think it is in canal. Wherever your 2.5 is at, whatever that one that is. Canal five. So I'm still unclear given the answers that we got two weeks ago, whether there is an overtime ongoing line item for this even to be a coherent amendment, because what we heard is that. Ongoing dollars exist for fte allocations and authorities, but then they use those savings for overtime. And you've indicated in this, in this budget amendment to raid a general fund overtime line, which I don't think that exists. And so I'm trying to understand what it is that we're taking this from to for the police, because that I think the way that that would be interpreted at a staff and budget level is a reduction in fte because it's an ongoing figure. So does this amendment even read coherently given that line?
124 May I respond?
125 Go right ahead, councilor.
126 Yeah. So first, I'll just repeat, I am intending to retain this one, but to reduce the amount so it won't end up being 2.5.
127 The what was the amount though.
128 I don't I think it will be 1.5. I'll just use that for purposes of this conversation. It'll be ballparking. And that will come from adjusting the ovp amount. And then and this is an ongoing conversation, but adjusting the ovp amount and then removing the second line about the boec dispatchers. Just to clarify, and I had a very good conversation with incoming interim dca causey about this and his boec capacity, but I think we've had the conversation. It's been had, I think a few times now. I've gotten both in public and in private from the from dca, meyers as well as from director levine, that this would not result in the reduction of fte. I think it's at this point repeating that is well, it's already been debunked.
129 No, but it hasn't. I'm not trying to actually get into some sort of rhetorical media fight. I'm actually trying to understand, councilor, what is an ongoing overtime fund? Does the police bureau create an overtime fund that is ongoing that is unrelated to any fte? Because I understand they use they pay for overtime from the savings that are not spent because there is a vacancy. But what I don't understand is yours is on the front end, so I don't feel like it has been debunked. I remain with a big question mark here about what the impact of this is, and I don't feel like that's resolved yet whether it's 1.5 or 2.5.
130 Councilor are you.
131 Looking to understand from the budget office or somebody within public safety how overtime is funded, aside from the vacancy, savings from funded positions?
132 What I'm trying to understand is if the fourth bullet in canal five is if that thing actually exists, even if it's 1.5, because it is the mechanism that pays for the first three bullets, even if they're being adjusted. What what I don't understand and cannot find is where does this line exist? But for the use of vacancy, which is a direct. The use of vacancies, which is a one time use of vacancy, but it's still an ongoing authority for fte. That's all I'm trying to understand. And I've said this before where I, I think overtime in public safety bureaus, if you have a if you have a fund specifically for overtime, it should be one time only each year. But the type that are used as vacancy savings, when we reduce those, we're actually reducing fte. And I don't think that's been resolved yet.
133 I guess we'll just. Director levine, if you could come up again, do this one another time.
134 It's an ongoing.
135 And counselors, we've lost councilor Koyama Lane. I do need to leave right at four. I have another meeting that I'm running. Interestingly, if the president and vice president are both absent, the immediate past president is next in line to gavel. After that is the immediate past vice president. We have neither of those. After that is the person whose last name is first alphabetically in the district of the president. That would be councilor Canal.
136 Okay.
137 So in his defense, he learned this about five minutes ago.
138 Model un.
139 So ruth, I would love to have you answer this question. I will be leaving at just a few minutes after 4:00. I'm very sorry, colleagues.
140 Okay.
141 And I saw dc meyers hop on a minute ago. I don't know if he wants to jump in as well, but, I mean, I think there's kind of two separate questions. One is like, technically, can that bullet point be enacted in the budget? And the answer to that is yes. It wouldn't like create a negative budget anywhere because police has budgeted overtime resources to back. Up overtime. Sorry, ongoing resources to back overtime. There's a second question as to what is the like impact of that. And because it is a swap of one time and ongoing, the impact would be felt in 26, 27 and the of this particular amendment. And the impact would be that there would be, if you're changing it, $1.5 million less revenue going into police budget, in the base budget in 2627. So when they open their budget, it would be $1.5 million lower than if this amendment did not pass. So those are those are both true. I think there's like the broader question of, you know, what would they do in response to that? I would defer to dca, meyers and the police chief on that. But I think just at a technical level, it is doable and it does create that cut in 2627.
142 So are the are the ongoing funds in this? Are they tied to an fte authority?
143 No, it wouldn't change the fte authority.
144 Why does the police bureau dispute that. What is the what is the rub here?
145 Dca meyers to weigh in at some point.
146 Yeah.
147 So for the record, my name is mike meyers, the deputy city administrator for public safety service area. I think councilor Zimmerman, the difference might reside in the fact that we use vacancy factor fte that have a sequence number and a dollar amount attached to it to fund our overtime. And I think ruth has described the situation that those dollars are considered our overtime budget. And ruth, just clarify if I'm wrong. We I absolutely and I've said this repeatedly support, you know, ongoing funding for chat and office events prevention functions, but not at the. Not at the harm of the Portland police bureau stability of their budget in the future years. Just moving ongoing funding for Portland police bureau membership for officers and putting it into an unstable environment of one time funding next year just puts us in a really difficult position next year. Having to ask for money to continue to fund fte. Ruth I hope that is helpful.
148 Counselor Zimmerman, do you feel like your question is answered?
149 Yeah, thanks. I again, I'll continue to wait to get an ongoing assessment for how much revenue is being raised in this budget with the new fees that have been enacted. And then going to my next question was for counselor, unless that's available, going to my next question was for counselor Avalos. I'm used to the for a ask from my county time. I am not so used to it. Over here on the city side, it seems like a pretty big stretch to me for is a pretty darn big organization, and they have made similar asks at the county for a long time who is in the business of. Treatment and are an extension of that. So this this is quite the jump into a new line of business. And I think our use of the opioid funds can be, can be used in a way that support this type of work. But. Why is it appropriate for us to allocate to them versus any of the others who are coming with the same ask? And I'll also say we had been up until now designating over, I think it was 1.5 or 1.9 for the future sobering center, because we're the biggest users of it. So. I'm leaning toward a no on your amendment here, but I want to give you the opportunity because I've worked with for I think they have a great service. But why would we fund this and not the county or the state or their own, you know, their own medicaid situation? Why do we need to be in their book of business?
150 Well, because it's not it's for the for the building. So since we build buildings, that's why I felt it was relevant. And it is for a building that is for the relevant cause of opioid addiction and all of that. I mean, we're putting some of that money towards bybee lakes for just beds and programing. So I guess if you have that feeling, then maybe we would want to talk about the mayor's ask of those dollars, because I would consider those to be more in the line of Multnomah county's book of business as, as compared to us, in us helping with finishing building the actual building. So it's that's how I'm seeing the alignment and why I feel the city could take that on. And because those dollars are so specific and there weren't any other requests for how to use those, and this felt like a very easy ask of the city to help finish that building.
151 There were quite a lot of requests, and the mayor rejected an agreement that we've had with Multnomah county for two budget seasons, which I will say was my agreement for this.
152 One more time. Sorry I missed.
153 The mayor rejected agreement we've had for two budget seasons with Multnomah county to fund partially the sobering center that they are opening, and he pulled these funds in our support of that because they haven't gotten that program off the off the to the races yet. But I would say that they had been in a lot of ways spoken for, and I know others on this council have also made some, some thoughts about opioid. And so I appreciate that you related it directly to the mission. I want to say that. I, I. I'll, I'll, I'll leave it I'll leave it there. Thanks.
154 Thank you and colleagues. Thanks for bearing with me as we transition here. I believe, councilor Smith was a legacy hand, if I recall correctly. Okay. I think we'll go to councilor Morillo next, followed by councilor Clark.
155 Thank you. Council president gavel looks good. All right. Pulling up my agenda items. So I'll go through the ones I'm pulling first I'm going to be pulling Morillo eight and then 12 through 15. If you want to take a second to write that down, because there are no longer applicable funding sources. And our other amendments have passed. Eight and then 12 through 15 will be pulled. Then I'm amending budget no. Morillo seven and 17, but those have already been discussed by council. So we will be amending Morillo 16 to direct funds saved from re-implementing, the proposed cut to the impact reduction program to be to support rental assistance. And the intent here is to ask the impact reduction program to take the proposed 8% cut that the other programs are facing, and use those funds to support the Portland housing bureau's efforts to keep people housed, because we know that housing and homelessness is a continuum, and we need people to stay housed so that we have less people to take care of on our streets long term. We're also going to reintroduce Morillo nine, which restores the mayor's cut to the city budget office. This one, I think, is absolutely critical for everybody on council and everybody on council should be interested in it because this is a matter of good governance. The city budget office is really critical to our operations and the knowledge that we have as we're preparing our budget and doing our legislation. And if the if there is disproportionate access to budget information for us as legislators, then we don't have any power as a legislative body. And it's really that simple. I also wanted to talk about budget notes again, in response to some of councilor Zimmerman's comments from earlier, because I think that budget notes are actually really critical and important. The executive branch exists to execute our agenda, and people elected us to set an agenda that we can do in our budget with the notes, with resolutions, ordinances, etc. And we have to give direction in our notes because the legislative branch does that. It directs the executive branch. And so we have to ensure that we have a strong legislative branch. And I kind of worry through this budget process as I'm watching this unfold, that we're conceding a lot of our own power, and we were elected to represent people. So that's part of why I think budget notes are a really important tool of policymaking, and that relinquishing that really only harms us as a council body. And I guess I will take any questions.
156 I don't think I said that they were not. I said that the more you do, the less powerful they are. That was my point because I agree with you that they are very important points of how we send both intent to somebody else's points earlier. But when we have 11 priorities, that's, I think, an easier task to wrangle than if we have 42 priorities. That that is all my point in that because I, I don't disagree in their importance, and I certainly would not want anyone to reflect a record that I don't think budget notes are important.
157 That's fair. I appreciate that clarification. I think I am annoying enough that I will ensure that all of my budget notes are actually addressed if they get passed, so.
158 We are aware.
159 Thank you. Before I say, ask if anyone has more questions for councilor Maria. I just want to give the same note that I think the council president gave me earlier, which is that Morillo 9th may need to be reintroduced under a different number or reconsidered for the same reason that the original canal one was. And you may have heard that note. Do any colleagues have questions for councilor Morillo on her? Items? I see councilor Green.
160 Thank you, councilor Canal apologies for being late. I had to get my backpack so I can operate 100%, which is where you want me. I just want to say, you know, if you need someone to help reintroduce that, I'm happy to partner with that. I think it's very important that we restore those cbo analysts, because we just voted today to adopt some council rules that provide more clarification for committees to bring complete packages that do lean pretty heavily on on the city budget office. And without those resources that will slow our work down. So I myself am continuing to try to find resources for my own amendments. And so I'll be I'll be looking to, to fund fund that piece.
161 Thank you. Does anyone else have questions for councilor Morillo? Okay, we'll move on to councilor Clark.
162 Legacy I can tell I have one more thing, that's for sure.
163 Just clarifying real quick, councilor Clark, you said your legacy hand. Okay, we'll go to councilor Zimmerman then for question.
164 For councilor.
165 I want to be supportive of councilor Morillo push toward the restoration or improvement in the centralized city budget office. I will continue to say that the slow rolling of the consolidation of our city services, centralized services, is the reason that this amendment might even have to be necessary. And I don't love that because there are more budget analysts and business operations folks in the bureaus than there are in the centralized service. And so my point here is that I think we can achieve this with a little bit of backbone from the administration without having to spend new money and meaning that that consolidation should actually achieve the end and the intent.
166 But to clarify, this isn't new money though. These are two positions that were cut, so this is preventing a cut.
167 Great. I think that the you're talking about people, I'm talking about fte. I think that with the consolidation we can both restore and probably grow and enable and make the cbo office the thing I think it needs to be, which is the ringleader of the budget process for the bureaus versus our current situation, where I'm not exactly sure how bureau business operations do or do not listen or take direction from a centralized service. The fact that our our budget offers all look quite different from different departments, different bureaus is unforgivable. If we move forward and allow that to happen again next year. But that comes with resources, that comes with that consolidation. What we have not seen in this budget that is still a big problem is that a slow rolling of the consolidation is going to force us to restore or spend in ways that we shouldn't even be put in this position, because they should have been consolidated already to bolster centralized services and support disparate. But so my point here is that I would love it if the administration could talk about why they're going to make this happen without having to do the restore package, but I'm not sure where I'm not sure how quickly that's going to happen, but it should it should happen rapidly.
168 That's fair. And I think that we're actually in alignment on some of that, because some of the budget notes I had that already passed actually reflect a lot of what you said.
169 Thank you. And we unfortunately do not have anyone from the administrator's office here, but we could hopefully get that information at the next meeting. Oh, sorry. I meant the administrator himself on that. I don't know if anyone.
170 Were going to come back. We have a plan for communicating out if you guys want to.
171 I don't know if you wanted to hear that.
172 Okay. Thank you.
173 For the offer, though. All right. We'll move to counselor Green then. Next in the queue.
174 Thank you, acting chair. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what the honorific is. I just wanted to briefly note, folks, that I have a number of amendments that are still in play. Green one, Green, Green three, Green five, and Green six. I'm reducing, though, all of those just given the scarcity of our funds, I, I am working I'm actively working with the city budget office right now to try to evaluate how to pay for these things. I don't have a final answer on that yet, so I'm not going to I'm not going to sort of give a final piece here. What I would say is if I don't have a complete package, I, I'm not going to I'm not. My intention is not to burn up a lot of time on June 10th and June 11th. So I will be bringing a balanced amendment, whichever way that goes. Part of my intention in seeking funds is also to provide another pathway of funding. Clerk two in case folks don't go for Novick approach to that. So I just wanted to lay that on the table. That's as transparent as I think I can be at this time. But I didn't want to hold that powder. So I'm just sharing that at this time.
175 Thank you, councilor Green. Does anyone have any questions for councilor Green on the amendments he's put forward? Okay, I am next in the queue. I'm going to ask director levine to come back up for a question, which is of the $999,000. My understanding from councilor Novick is that there has to be a sort of optimized ratio of the overhead dollars to the discretionary if it was to be used on an overhead bureau. And so could you speak to the breakdown of that 999,000 and the. We either need this much more discretionary money to unlock the full overhead, or you can only use this much of the overhead, given the discretionary either format is good or both.
176 Yeah, yeah. So the of that total the discretionary amount is 309,914. So 689 426 is in overhead. And so basically what that means is. For the discretionary dollars can go anywhere. But the overhead dollars can only support overhead things that are what we call in the overhead cost pool. So things that are city overhead functions per financial policy. And so it doesn't need to be like I would say, you all don't need to optimize it. We can work on the sort of costing based on that. But just for your information, I think the councilor Novick is correct in stating that if you're sort of funding something that is in the overhead cost pool, that the sort of contingency money goes further in that you can use those overhead dollars to fund it. If you were only funding something that lives entirely outside of the cost pool, meaning it's entirely discretionary function, and you want to use general fund discretionary on that, you would be limited to the 309,000. Does that make sense. And then we would we can do the math on how much, you know, depending on, you know, which amendments pass and the like where you are on June 11th. But just for your general information, that's how that would work.
177 Yeah. Thank you. Before I move on, I think councilor Zimmerman, you had a clarification you'd like to ask?
178 Yeah, it doesn't make sense. So in terms of this overhead prescription that the city operates under, I mean, a lot of budgets. And I am still not sure why it is that we are prescribing such a strict use of what is already a general fund dollar, how it gets used, what is the authority that you're citing to tell this council that they cannot use this chunk you're calling overhead? Where does that come from?
179 Yeah. So the reason for it is because of it's not general fund in that the revenues don't come from general fund taxes. It's essentially money paid for by non-general fund bureaus. So the utilities transportation in proportion to the size of their respective budgets essentially. And so I mean they're restricted dollars because those fund sources are restricted. That's the basically the reason for why they can't just be used for anything is that there's financial policy that ultimately points to. The restrictions on those fund sources that says, yes, if there's a function that the city does, that sort of is either required it's a regulatory function or is something that you couldn't pay for kind of 1 to 1 that gets put into general fund overhead and then that gets shared out based on this model. And there's so there is both administrative rule guiding how that's done. But then there's also at the at the end of the day, it comes back to the restricted nature of those funds that are transferred into the general fund for the purposes of funding overhead functions.
180 Okay. I think that we might be overemphasizing given. So I want to make sure I understand where this surplus came from in the actions we took two weeks ago. But, you know, everything from the city administrator down to the point where you get to one of the restricted enterprise funds, most of those centralized services within the city are are general fund overhead. Right. Your it, your hr, your budget person, your city administrator, your councilors to some extent would fall in overhead of the administration of what it takes to run some of those more restricted bureaus. So I don't want that term necessarily to be a some sort of overly large constraint. I think there's actually a lot of things that folks have talked about that this would qualify for. And if you think about even like emergency management is one of those that gets paid from a centralized perspective, it is overhead in its nature. So this term is getting a lot of emphasis. But I'm not giving it a lot of emphasis. What I of course wouldn't want to do is say, here's this restricted fund, let's go give it to an enterprise fund that has its own self-sustaining funding mechanism. But most of what we do in the general fund, centralized services is somewhat of an overhead. So I just want to I just want to note that that those two distinct pots exist, but they're pretty transparent pots.
181 Director levine, would you like to give anything else on that? And then I still have the floor, so I'll do that. No worries.
182 No, I think that's generally right. I mean, we can we can talk specifically. I mean, there are certain there are certain things that definitely wouldn't qualify for as as overhead. But but emergency management is primarily an overhead. Sorry. Can I just also that you had asked about the fee revenue. Is it okay if I state that for the record right now. So the I have it split between what was in the proposed budget and what's in the approved budget and for both tnc and golf. So for tnc in the proposed budget, there was $5.1 million of revenue that was to go to a dollar, I believe, per ride. And then the approved was an additional $5 million in revenue for a total of 10.1. And in golf, it was 250,000. In the proposed and then an additional 1 million in the approved, for a total of 1.25.
183 And just to clarify, the proposed was from $0.65 to $1.30 on the tnc, and then the additional proposal was from $1.30 to $2.
184 Thank you.
185 Yes.
186 Sorry.
187 Thank you. The only other comment I wanted to make was to I had given a sort of vague explanation of I'm narrowing and tightening up the deputy director positions that we're looking at, and the specific narrowing included, not including exempting the deputy director of cbo specifically because I don't want to add more potential cuts or reductions. So exempting it means that position would not be affected. Just wanted to clarify that before, because I also support the conversation we've been having about ensuring that that cbo itself has enough staff to do the work that we're asking them to do. I'll go to counselor Green next, and I'll just note we have seven minutes left before we need to wrap up this work session.
188 Ruth, can you come back up? Thank you. Ruth, you mentioned just now the golf fee. Original proposal is $500,000 in increased revenue. Two 5250 yeah. And then the amended was a million. Correct. That was a dollar. And the mayor's was $1 for nine holes. And then in the amended it was $5 for nine holes. But are we doing the math on actually a full round of golf, or is it just the nine holes? Because that's what I'm a little confused by, because if it was 500,000 or 2, 50 for the nine would be 500,000 for a full round of golf. And so I'm not sure what ultimately made it into the, the, the spreadsheets, I suppose.
189 Yeah. And I would need the parks staff that forecasted the, the revenue to speak to the specifics about kind of how they got to the 250. I think they were using the dollar for nine holes as the basis of their calculation, but I don't have I didn't do the original calculation.
190 Off by 250 to 5.
191 Yeah, we that's great. We can take that offline.
192 Okay.
193 Great.
194 Does that conclude your okay colleagues we have no one else in the queue. So I'll just make sure that that's the case okay. With that I will wrap up this work session noting that we resume our recess council meeting at 2:00 tomorrow. Thanks everyone for your flexibility with our schedule and accommodating these changes. And with that, I will close our work session.