The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-06-17
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (22,505 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
This Portland City Council work session, held Tuesday, June 17, 2025 and called to order at 1:01 p.m., focused on appointments to the Community Board for Police Accountability. Staff presentations reviewed the history of the 2020 charter measure creating a new police oversight system, the nominating committee's application and scoring process, and the resulting pool of 40 applicants recommended for Council review, narrowed from 118 total applications; figures describing intermediate stages of this narrowing were stated inconsistently at points in the discussion. The body reviewed a list of 15 presumptive candidates who had received strong Council support, alongside a broader pool of applicants who had received at least one councilor's backing, and discussed how to select six additional committee members and six alternates. Topics covered included confidentiality of applicant information, the weighting given to nominating-committee vote tallies versus councilor preferences, geographic and district representation, race and lived-experience representation required under the charter, residency requirements for board eligibility, and concerns about political neutrality, including debate over applicants who had previously run for office or held strong public positions on policing. The session closed with plans to finalize a proposed slate, including alternates and term lengths, for a vote at the following day's council meeting; outcomes of any votes are recorded in the vote ledger.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Good afternoon. It is Tuesday. It's Tuesday, June 17th at 1:01 p.m. I am calling this council work session to order. And oh, we do have councilor Novick online. Fantastic. Colleagues. We are meeting today to talk through everybody's thoughts on appointments to the police accountability community board in 2020. If you remember back to that election, we had a police accountability change as part of the charter vote, which was approved by 82% of voters. Earlier this year, we appointed a nominating committee that brought us that narrowed down, I guess I would say that narrowed down a list of 118 qualified candidates who applied to serve on this board. To about 40 people. For us to take a look at. And over the last couple of weeks, councilors have had those 40 names and have looked through that list to start to do our work on narrowing that down to 27 people. 21 members for the community board for police accountability and six alternates leading up to this work session, councilors took that list of 40 applicants who were sent to us by the nominating committee and picked their top 15. The 15 people who they thought would best serve our community on this board. And we have put together a list of who had the strongest support from councilors and will now fill in that list with some other names to make sure that we have our full suite of candidates. I want to be clear as we start this conversation, because I know conversations about who is more qualified or less qualified, or fills certain gaps or brings different experiences can be hard for people to hear, especially when we're talking about them. And these are the candidates who have already made it through an extensive vetting process to be determined to be qualified, to be determined to be some of the best qualified. So we don't have any bad choices before us. We just have choices to create. I think different groups of representation as we move forward with the discussion today. I hope that councilors, we can all be careful about sharing the personal information from candidates that we received on the applications we looked over, but that candidates in some cases marked asking to be kept confidential and that we're just cognizant of that. And I hope that we can respect their privacy. I hope we can also be aware of the impact of traumas that people listed on their applications, as we have this conversation, and make sure that we're bringing up the need for representation and experience without inviting scrutiny into individuals past experiences. We have a couple of people here to kick us off today with a presentation, so I'd like to turn it over to sarah. Are you starting us, sarah morrissey okay, to share a little bit more with all of us councilors about what the process has been up to this point, so that not only we have that context, but the public watching has that context as well. And in just a few minutes, we'll jump into our conversation.
1 Thank you, council president, and we will pull up our presentation. And I will kick us off. Hello council president. Councilors. My name for the record is sarah morrissey. I use she her pronouns, and I'm currently serving as the interim deputy city administrator for city operations. I'm joined here with kristen thorpe, our limited term employee who was hired as the onboarding and administrator coordinator to supporting the community board for police accountability. And we also will be hearing from timur ender, a community member who served as the district one representative on the nominating committee. Next slide please. In this presentation, we will cover a brief overview of the history of the new oversight system, share a snapshot of the outreach for the opportunity to serve on the board. Explain the nominating committees process on scoring applications and their process for determining the recommendations. Next slide please. All right. So we're going to start with the history and council president spoke to this earlier. But in 2020 the ballot measure 20 6-217 to change the city's charter on police accountability was approved by 82% of the votes on November 3rd, 2020. Timelines for the oversight system, staffing and operationalization was later were later incorporated into the d.o.j. Settlement agreement. This can be found in the settlement agreement in paragraph 195, and requires the city to establish the new community police oversight board to replace the office of independent police review for investigations of certain complaints, and the chief of police for imposition of discipline for those complaints. The doj settlement sets timelines for the new oversight system, including when it will start taking complaints. Former city council created the police accountability commission, a community group charged with conducting outreach to the community on the new oversight system and submitted recommendations for code language to council and the mayor. Their work was concluded in September 20th, 2023, using some pac recommendations and considering federal, state and local laws. Former council adopted city code October 2024 for the oversight system after union bargaining. D.o.j. Review and amendment of the doj settlement agreement in August 2024, judge simon, who oversees the settlement agreement, delayed the selection of the nominating committee council representatives to until the new council. And so you all were seated in January 1st, 2025. And so we began the implementation of seating the board. Once you were all appointed, we had the council pick their four representatives, one for each district, to finalize the membership of the nominating committee. Next slide please. Oh keep going. I already spoke to that. All right. Keep going. All right. So the oversight system I'm not going to spend a lot of time here just because I want to get through this presentation in a short amount of time. But really the oversight system has two components. So there's the community board for police accountability, which are the community members that we are here to discuss today. And then also the office of community based police accountability, which will be a city bureau with city staff that report to a director. Roles for the board in the office are delineated in city charter 2.10 and title 35 of city code. So I'm going to hand it over to kristen thorpe to discuss the nominating committee process. Hello. And for the.
2 Record, I'm kristen thorpe, and my pronouns are she her? The nominating committee is comprised of six community members, one from each district and two representatives from the citizens review council, also known as the crc. One city representative from the office of human rights and equity and one representative from the Portland police bureau and two police bureau union representatives. The nominating committee received training guidelines and signed confidentiality agreements before gaining access to any applications. I sent over 250 emails to a variety of community partners, introducing the new office and announcing that the application was open. I also worked with city ops and communication to create a website for the office of community based police accountability that will evolve over time, and create two rounds of social media posts on a variety of platforms. The recruitment was also featured multiple times in row, city connect and civic life. Newsletter. I want to thank the councilors who promoted it this opportunity in your newsletter and on your own social media. The application was open on February 28th, 2025 and closed on April 14th, 2025 after confidentiality agreements were signed, bureau of human resources sent the nominating committee eligible applications to committee members on a weekly basis before applications were sent to the nominating committee. All personal information was automatically redacted. Each application was given a unique number, and throughout the process each applicant was referred to by their number. The anonymization was intended to help reduce any unintentional biases. The nominee committee scored every application. Excuse me, every eligible application, and those that received a 60% or higher score were discussed during the debrief meetings. The nominating committee had a robust discussion of each application, and members led work. Members led with curiosity and were open to respectful debate. They definitely grappled with tough conversations. After each discussion, the nominating committee voted yes or no to recommend that applicant to council. Per city code applicants who received a majority of the votes six or more yes votes from the nominating committee were referred to you. I'm grateful for the nominating committee and appreciate their service and commitment to wanting an inclusive board. So here's an application. Numbers breakdown 121 applications were submitted. Three did not meet eligibility requirements, so the nominating committee scored 118 applications. 77 of those applications received a passing score of 60% or higher during the eligibility scoring phase. Those 77 were discussed in the nominating committee meeting. Excuse me? The nominating committee meetings, 43 applications received a six or more yes vote. After each discussion, one applicant dropped out of the process, and so 42 applications went to the next step, which was a conflict of interest check. Only two applications did not pass this conflict of interest check. And so 40 applicants have come to you for your review. Thank you so much for your time today. And now I'll pass it to more to talk about his experience on the nominating committee.
3 Good afternoon. Council president pirtle-guiney and council members. My name is tim moore and he him pronouns proud to be the district one representative on the community board for police accountability nominating committee. I want to start by thanking councilors Avalos, Dunphy, and Smith for the opportunity and the privilege to represent our community on this nominating committee. Thank you. In addition to the recruitment that kristen mentioned, I also did some of my own recruitment. Other members of the nominating committee did their own recruitment. I know some council members also did their own recruitment as well. So thank you. The community board for police accountability is part of a larger arc of transformation around how police accountability is handled in our community. Lots of people have weighed in to shape and mold this path. The nominating committee is an important element of the larger effort around shaping police accountability in Portland. In terms of our work on the nominating committee, we felt it was important to create a system that would instill trust. When reviewing applicants, myself and others looked for people who brought a variety of different lenses to this work, including mental health, data science, public health, and labor, among other things. Some of the information that is available to you was not available to us, such as identifying information. We made an intentional effort to bring qualified applicants based on the limited scope of information that was provided to us in the form of four essay questions. Based on the limited information we were provided. The applicants who received the most support from our committee are those who presented a strong candidates. Our group of ten nominating committee members brought a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds to the process and engaged in thoughtful, collaborative discussion around each applicant. We trust that this input will be valuable resource to council as you make your final selections. My hope is that the work we did instills confidence in our recommendations as a committee and for the public in the development of the community board for police accountability. We appreciate the opportunity to have provided input into this process, and look forward to continuing to support the development of the community board for police accountability and the office of community based police accountability over the coming months. Thank you.
4 Thank you all so much for giving us a little background in the process leading up here, and especially to moore for your time volunteering on this work and for all of the other members of the appointing committee who I know put a lot of hours in. We appreciate that you read through all 140 applications. Colleagues, are there any questions about the process that it would be helpful to ask before we get started with our discussion? Counselor Clark.
5 Thank you, madam chair. I just have a question about our process. Okay. Are we going to be selecting the alternates?
6 We are.
7 And when is that going to happen?
8 That's part of our conversation today okay. Any questions for our guests who are here okay. Counselor Ryan.
9 Thank you all of you for being here. Great presentation. I'm really hesitant on some of these questions because you want to respect everybody's confidentiality. And so I think I have a question that I think I'll be fine. So when I've been looking at the ones that we received, all I, all I really had to go with were about three questions that were pretty standard questions that they answered, but I couldn't get a sense of them beyond that. And I think the questions that were asked were the ones you should ask, of course. But there's also a really predictable way to answer them. So my point is, I had trouble really. It was hard to make the decisions based on that. And I'm sure knowing who my colleagues are, I, I did a little bit of this, but you know, so I googled and tried to get a better sense of them. Can everyone agree that that's a fair practice? And I just wondered in your dialog, did you have more to go on? Like, did they answer more than those three questions?
10 No.
11 Were there four questions?
12 The four essay questions. Yeah, that yes, we had the four essay questions. And any identifying information beyond that was kind of redacted from us. So we didn't have their names.
13 So you saw the same thing we did.
14 I think that's accurate.
15 Except for their names were.
16 Except for their names. Yeah.
17 Their names were redacted. So they only had the questions. No names were available.
18 Okay.
19 So we actually had a little more information.
20 Because we had.
21 A name. You could do a little background digging. The nominating committee actually couldn't do that.
22 We had applicant numbers okay.
23 All right. And you had the benefit of doing dialog amongst yourselves, which we'll do today. Of course. Okay. I just needed that process. Question answered. Thank you.
24 Thank you, counselor councilor Morillo.
25 Thank you, madam president. I guess I want some clarification.
26 Because you know what was listed said I do not want my personal contact information to be shared and understand that the city may make every effort to keep my personal contact information confidential. However, I also understand that the city may be required to share my information, but I didn't see that anyone had marked to be confidential and I just wanted to. If I wasn't sure if someone could verify that. But you know, you can sign the public records request, but I haven't seen anything about confidentiality as far as identity or their applications. And I don't. I guess I'm struggling with how we would have a discussion about the candidates and some concerns or benefits that we think they would bring without that.
27 Yeah. And I'll share. Counselor kristen was clear with the with the committee members that there would be at some point. That's one of the check marks that we put for city applications as well. We can get those numbers from you from bhr for who did check that box. I don't believe that information was readily available to you. So I can get that breakdown from bhr and provide it to you.
28 I believe some of the applications asked that we not share, like address and things like that. Right. And that was on the application that we saw. But I don't think that names were listed that that confidentiality.
29 I think your guidance, madam president, is what's confusing this question, because I have a similar question to councilor Morillo, is that your opening statement made this confusing. How are we going to talk about people without names?
30 I think we my assumption is that we are talking about names, but that the there were people who had checked the box saying please don't share my address. My the those other pieces of information that are listed in that top section that we had available. Okay. Great. Councilor Kanal.
31 Thanks. Yeah, that is my understanding as well. And I actually worked with heidi brown and then mayor stephanie howard on developing the text for that, that question or a version of it before. And it does talk about the personal identifying information, pii, if I recall correctly, and not the content of their responses. My question is about the scoring step in the process, and there's a little bit less transparency for me because this is not laid out in code. You mentioned that there's 60% was a scoring necessary to move on, but I was also that. Then that was an average. But I had also been briefed earlier that this, that if anybody got 60% or higher from even one member of the scoring panel, which is the same as the nominating committee, that that person would still get an up or down vote. Can you speak to that aspect of it, that anything beyond the average 60% score?
32 So. Each of the four essay questions were out of five points, and each were weighted 25%. And so it took everybody's on the nominating committee score and then averaged them together. And that created the 60 or above number or 60 or below number. There was an opportunity where we looked at, well, the nominating committee looked at the folks who scored at the 59 level just to see if there was anybody. That could have passed or like should have passed, but maybe didn't because of the averaging. And they all agreed that, no, they should not have moved forward.
33 So there was a conversation around the people that were fairly close to the 60 point line, and whether they'd be brought into the up or down vote universe.
34 Just the 59 point people. Yes.
35 So 58.99 and below did not get that correct.
36 There was a gap between the 59 scores and then the 58. There was a significant gap.
37 Thank you.
38 Councilors. Any other questions? Councilor Zimmerman?
39 Thanks. I think related to councilor Kanal. I'm trying to understand then what this chart tells me, because I was reading this as individual members saying yay or nay on individual people, but that.
40 That's correct.
41 And that's different than the question scoring. Yes.
42 So everybody read the 118 applications and that's when they got the 60% or higher score. The 77 members that scored above 60 are the ones that are reflected on that sheet. And all of the nominating committee committee members voted individually for that application. Yes or no? There are some blue squares on that page that are for the people that abstained from voting on that particular person.
43 And that may be because they personally know them. And now they've seen the name. Once we did the original scoring, now we see names. That's what we're seeing here.
44 The nominating committee did not see names. And so people abstain based on clues that they picked up in the essay questions and identified that they knew people. And so okay.
45 And then given that what I'm gathering from this list is that the you had to have at least six of the ten members vote in your favor to make it to this list, because that seems to be the cutoff here, which is six out of ten, a majority, correct?
46 Yes. Six out of ten majority ended up being that 43 number. And those were the ones that were going to go to the conflict of interest check. But one person dropped out, so it was really 42 that went to that check.
47 Thank you for clarifying that. I'm understanding the levels of filtering and that is quite helpful. Appreciate it.
48 Thank you.
49 Councilors. Any other questions? Okay. Kristen, thank you so much for all of your work on this tomorrow. Thank you so much for all of the time that you and the other volunteers put into filtering down these names for us. And sarah, thank you for helping to oversee this process.
50 Thank you.
51 Have a couple of things before us. We have all reviewed the 40 applications that were sent to us. And you have a sheet that was sent from christopher haire in our council operations office, which essentially shows us, based on all of our top. Top priorities for people who we thought should definitely move through the process. Who were the 15, who had the most, the support from the most counselors. And I'm asking that we enter our conversation today assuming that those folks will move forward, though, if there are significant concerns with any of them, we certainly can consider changes to that. This isn't set in stone, but in order to help us have some semblance of order to this, if we can assume that for the most part, those folks will move forward, I think that will help us move through the process. And then we have the rest of the list of people who at least one councilor Thought should move forward. And most of the 40 individuals are on this list, but a few did drop off through this initial vetting process that we did. You also have the sheet that councilor Zimmerman held up that shows us how many votes people got from the nominating committee. And what I'd like to do is have us talk through. Who we need to pick six more people beyond those who are in the top box before us, who we move forward as committee members. And then also six alternates. And so I'd like us to start by thinking about who should move up. And I'm hoping that as we have that conversation, naturally there will be some easy divide between the other six who joined the committee and who the alternates are. And if there is not some easy divide, then we can talk through that. But for now, let's just generally talk about who we should move up above that line, if you will, to that section of names that we're moving forward to be members of the committee or alternates. Councilor Novick.
52 I have a crude suggestion. Rather than debating them all one by one, I would suggest that we see what happens if we combine the votes of the nominating committee and the council and see the six people below the 15 we've already picked, who get the most combined votes from both sources, see where that gets us.
53 Councilor I would note that you did have at least one colleague who was shaking their head no and didn't like that idea. I would also note, though, that of the individuals who received a unanimous vote of the nominating committee, the next one, two, three, four, five, six, seven of the next seven people below the line on our list, five actually did receive a unanimous vote of the nominating committee. So I would just note those two pieces of information. But because I did see some vigorous head shaking, no, I don't want to lock us into that that process. Councilor zimmermann is open to it, though. So why don't we look at well, let's do this. Let's look at the next seven down, because the next seven down do include five people who were highly scored or who were who were unanimously scored by the nominating committee. And they are the next ones who are highly scored here. Trish garner, terrance hayes, erica summerfield, dina ross, benedict springer, murtaza and corinne frechette. And I am sorry if I'm mispronouncing names. Do we want to start there and just see if folks have thoughts on any of those individuals? Councilor Novick is your hand still up or up again? You are on mute. Okay. Councilor Dunphy.
54 Thank you. Looking at the I'm going to just say this from my point of my comment, looking at the top eight next candidates in there, I just want to voice that I have some concerns about this body becoming politicized. And I note that two of the folks in the top eight are were past city council candidates, and may very well be them again. So I have some concern about advancing anybody who who was also already a candidate, just especially in this inaugural body, because I think that we really need to make sure that this is not a politicized body. And I worry about that.
55 Thank you. Councilor, councilor, Zimmerman.
56 Councilor, would you have the same concern about people who served as chiefs of staff to commissioners in this body.
57 Not inherently having been a senior official in an elected office and now being an elected, I do feel like there's a pretty significant difference between working for an elected and being a candidate yourself. So I have less concern about that. So yeah, okay.
58 For purposes of your question, madam president, I would you stopped it, corinne frechette but I would say that robert weinstein received the exact same numbers as her. So that's just one more candidate. That's an artificial cutoff at seven that you said. I would say it would be fair to include him in that conversation if you're grouping them together.
59 Certainly I had cut it off there because those were when I noted on my sheet who the unanimous vote getters were from the nominating committee. It was five of those top seven, four of them all in a row, ending with corinne. So that's why I made the cutoff, but certainly happy to make the cutoff somewhere else.
60 I would appreciate that, given that there are some people in the top 15 who have a significant number of no votes in this Green and pink sheet. So since four of us voted for that, that groups everybody in the same that same category, I think, but open to other thoughts.
61 Thank you and colleagues. I put myself in the queue just to note to councilor Dunphy's comment about folks who had run for office and may again, one of the conversations we'll need to have after we talk about who we'd like to have serve on the board, is how we will determine who holds one, two, and three year terms. And one of the things that we could do to acknowledge that there are people who have run for office and may again, is to think about whether it would make sense for them to be in shorter terms rather than longer terms, just to address that concern.
62 That is I mean, that is an option certainly to consider, and I'd love to have that discussion with the rest of my colleagues here. But it also, I just will note that one of the candidates on this list ran in district one, which is a four year term, so a shorter term might be helpful there. One of the candidates ran in district four, which is a two year term. Putting them to a shorter term gives may unnecessarily give a platform to somebody who may be running against one of our colleagues. And I just I still have some concern about it, but I yeah.
63 Yeah, I hear you that for district four and district one, we may want to have those conversations separately. I just wanted to note that we have a few tools. Councilor Smith.
64 Yes, I want to address what councilor Dunphy said. The person that we picked to come out of district one to more to more. Ender is one of the people who actually ran for district one. And he we didn't downgrade him or marginalize his impact and what he could do in terms of being politicized. So this conversation is moot as far as I'm concerned, because if we're going to do it on one side of the ball, we have to do it on the other side. And we didn't do it with two more. And he did an amazing job of presenting today, so I wouldn't think that people would be less than professional who are on that top seven. So I mean, you know, we have to be careful about what we say and how we say it. But if we're going to allow people to be the people to identify them and they ran for office, then we definitely need to either pull that person off of the committee if we're going to have these kind of, you know, benchmarks. It was never a benchmark before, and I don't think we need to put in benchmarks just because people ran for office and they might run again, that that's kind of silly to me.
65 Thank you councilor. Councilor Avalos.
66 Let me actually.
67 Councilor canal.
68 Thank you, madam president. This is a very interesting conversation that came up during the police accountability commission's work. Whether or not this should be a criterion or something that rules someone out. In evaluating other cities. This is a fairly common rule that exists in not a majority, but some. And there are some where the rule does not exist, where that is one of the criticisms that's been given, I would say a few years ago that was a conversation in seattle, is that some of the board were folks who were perceived as running or doing this to run. It did not end up in the code requirements here. It's not something that is as a rule here. I think it's just interesting. And I don't observe that to weigh in on either side of it. But I think it's notable that this conversation is not new. I think that's maybe a helpful reference point. I would like to maybe argue for a different person on here. And this is one of the people who is in that immediate next tier. So anyone that's six or more councilors put on their list is sort of in that presumptive 15. And then there's another tier below that with five councilors. And before I argue in favor of this person, I did want to note charter section 22-1002, which relates to this, says that the board's membership needs to include and I quote, representation representation from diverse communities, including those from diverse communities and with diverse lived experiences, particularly those who've experienced systemic racism and those who have experienced mental illness, addiction or alcoholism. And in looking at that next tier, I think erika summerfield is someone who, if you look at the line break between the second to last and last page, the page break there, that particular question is someone who clearly fits that in, in, in a particular way that none of the other people listed do. And I was I was particularly impressed by the commitment to fairness that was in these essay questions, although I also recognize councilor Ryan's comment on the limitation of the questions. But I think as we talk about this, and it's an awkward thing to talk about representation in a, well, we need this one of this category type of way. I'm not trying to do that, but as I was looking at the list after the first 15 were sort of discussed and where different life experiences might be helpful, I thought that this particular individual made a lot of sense, and I'd like to see them on it if possible.
69 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Smith.
70 Yes.
71 Thank you, madam president. And I also, when you talk about representation, I have my staff of the first 15 tell me which districts these folks came from, and eight of them came from district two. Three came from district three. Two nominees came from district one, and one nominee came from district four. So if we're going to talk about fairness and representation, we need to have fair representation from each of the districts. And I'm looking at a number of people who are in district one who are in that next level. So we have to be clear on how we're going to approach this if we're going to talk about representation, because I can tell you as I'm used to it now, but I'm not satisfied with it. I'm used to district one not being represented, and we have some candidates in that next level that are from district one that I think is owed a. A look in a second look. And even if they were previous candidates for city council, they should not be overlooked as an option.
72 Can you say that again?
73 Yeah, sure. Eight nominees from district two, three nominees from district three, two nominees from district one and one nominee from district four. That's the first time you guys have district four.
74 I must have done something wrong because I had.
75 Two each from district three and district four. So it must have caught somebody's address. Wrong.
76 And one nominee.
77 From Vancouver, Washington.
78 You have to live or work. You have to live or work here. So I think we had four total folks on our list who work in Portland but don't live in Portland, one of whom was on eight of our priority lists. Natasha pratt was on eight of our lists.
79 I don't know, she is.
80 This is.
81 Was it nine? Did I get the number wrong?
82 No. Close to the line of what we should discuss.
83 Councilor Smith, thank you for those comments. I think there are a lot of different ways to look at representation that we need to balance as we go through the discussion today, and part of the city that people live in is certainly one of those. I was also looking at who, especially for your district, might be able to move up. Councilor Zimmerman.
84 Thank you. I am actually hoping that our city attorney can help us. There was a slide that discussed the community board of police accountability versus the office of community based police accountability, and I am trying to better understand the two roles here, and they remain unclear. For me, the way that that graphic shows, it only gives me an idea. Not really a normal person on the street perspective for the two differences of these of and what this graphic is telling us. That was in the slide show just a minute ago. Can you help us out here or help me out at least?
85 Yeah, I'm happy to do so. Good afternoon. Council president, council vice president, all of council. It's good to see you. My name is heidi brown. I use she her pronouns. And I'm chief deputy with the city attorney's office. So the charter calls for there to be a board of. And they are the decision makers or governing body as far as investigations and discipline, but it also calls for the board to hire a director who will be a city employee. And also that that director then hires staff, investigators and administrative staff who perform the investigatory work, the administrative work of, of that of, of, of what the board will want. And so that's the distinction. So the community community board for police accountability, the board or the cbo, that's that's the one appointed by council. And then they will hire the director of the office of community based police accountability. That office will be a city bureau or office, if you will. And that director will then hire staff. So they hire that.
86 They hire that, that that director who will then hire that staff.
87 Yes.
88 And in that situation, that director report works for a body of volunteers with no city executive oversight whatsoever.
89 That's predominantly correct. There is some in the code in title 35, there is provisions for how they do certain operational work. So they do. The director does have a line underneath the deputy city administrator who's sarah morrissey in this instance. And so for purposes of, you know, operationalizing also adoption of administrative rules will ultimately be. Decided by the dca. So predominantly they are hired and firing decisions are in code. The authority of the board. Okay.
90 That is fascinating okay. Okay I will hold. Thanks for that. It's very helpful I appreciate it.
91 Councilor Ryan.
92 Thank you, madam president. And I really appreciate this longer list of the nominating committee votes. It's very helpful. I think that when I see that there were four no votes from the nominating committee, that sticks out to me. And when I look at the criteria, I assume that the committee was really focused on that criteria. But again, I'm doing a lot of assumptions. So all of us wish we could, of course, been a fly on the wall to hear the conversations we weren't. But based on the information I have, which are just tallies, it seems as though there weren't a lot of for no votes, but there are some and a few of them are in the top ring that councilors approved. And so I'm uncomfortable moving forward with those that received four no votes. But I'd love to hear a little sense of what that dialog was like in the room, if that's possible. Like, can't you give me some generalities on what that was like for someone to actually speak to a no vote? I think it took some courage and some they took their job very seriously. All these folks, of course, and I want to thank them again. But I'd like to understand the significance of those no votes, because four, again does really stick out. And when I look at the criteria, I'm sure that if you overlay that they're having a nice little conversation here in the front row, what is councilor Ryan getting at and how do we answer this question.
93 More? If you are interested in responding to this, we would certainly welcome your input. If you would rather defer to kristen on this, we understand it is up to you.
94 And that's a heavy responsibility to be representing the entire body. So thank you.
95 Yeah. I'll just say, councilor Ryan, the votes speak for themselves. This was a confidential process. And every person on the board had certain reasons for voting yes or no. That, and one thing I mentioned in that in that body was, you know, you don't have to justify to anyone else in this room which way you're voting. And so each person voted with their heart around who they wanted to move forward or not. And so I think it's most appropriate for me to say those votes that you see on your paper stand for themselves.
96 Okay. So there and there are only four that received four no votes.
97 If I can't see your paper. So I apologize for that. But yeah.
98 Yeah.
99 It's just a piece of paper that tallied up all your results.
100 Yeah I trust kristen did a great job on that.
101 So I.
102 Would like to also have a discussion about those that received three. I think we're trying to get at that. The dialog here, the criteria for membership qualifications and restrictions and qualifications for members, a commitment to police accountability, fairness, ensuring that ppe policies do not violate state capability of making fair, objective, impartial decisions. Restrictions of serving on the board include a bias or against law enforcement. I trust that when someone did a no vote, they were zeroing in on that criteria. Would that be a fair assessment?
103 We as a nominating committee, basically delegated that power of just residency requirements, all of those other kind of qualification requirements to kristen and her team. And so we looked at the essay questions in terms of our grading. And so we kind of and we basically left it to city employees to figure out all of the qualifications and background and things like that.
104 Okay.
105 Well, I'll just make it really clear that both three and definitely four no votes stick out to me, and I'd have a really hard time moving them along in the process at this moment.
106 Thank you.
107 Councilor I would note that there are people who received even more than four no votes. They just are not on our list because somebody had to receive majority support from the nominating committee to move forward to us. So what you see here as six yes votes or four no votes are not the bottom of the list total. They are the bottom of the list that we received, because anybody with less than that didn't even make their way to us for consideration.
108 It's fair to make that statement. Thank you, council president. And my statement is also true. Both things can be true. But from the information we received, these are the ones that received four votes and three votes. No votes. Thank you.
109 Councilor Avalos.
110 Yeah, picking up a little bit off of that, I mean, I think as it relates to the question on whether people's yes or no vote was relevant to their bias, I don't know that that would be. I can't see how that would be everyone's decision, because there might be people that they were neutral. Right. Like, I don't think every candidate was strongly in bias on either side. So I don't know. I could of course, that could be a factor, but I don't think it would be the factor. That's just my observation. But on that note of bias, I think picking up a little bit on councilor Dunphy's note, I think the biggest thing, probably the biggest problem that I have with the folks who were former candidates is less about them being a former candidate, and more that they're they have a more public record of their opinions about police. And in particular, those two candidates are over and over on the public record, not just as candidates before the election, but up until now have a very obvious bias in favor of the police. One of those candidates literally put together a whole press conference in support of police, and to me, that would be that's a disqualifier if you are very vocally for or against that, that just seems that's the way I'm judging that decision and I don't I will not be voting or moving anyone forward that has that very obvious public record. That seems to me like that would really jeopardize how others would view the people that we selected. If we place people on the committee who were, you know, as candidates were endorsed by the police, this is a police accountability board. And I mean, I'm sorry, I'm as somebody who has worked in police accountability work, I'd have a really hard time moving someone forward on a board that is supposed to hold the police accountable if they are very favorable to the police union. That, to me seems like a very obvious bias. That is part of this process that we're trying to avoid. So I just wanted to state my feelings about the candidate and the bias, and that's kind of how I'm landing on that, and I'll leave it at that for now.
111 Thank you, councilor, councilor Smith.
112 Madam president, I do disagree with my colleague, councilor Avalos, because we're not supposed to get an entire board that's anti police. We're supposed to get a board that can look at both sides and try to come up with a even solution. If that was the case then we should have just. I won't say that. But anyway I disagree and I think it's wrong. And there are some clear divisions on this council on who they support and who they don't support. So I don't think that our biases should be showing through on how we perceive the police or perceive the police in the community, and that's why you have different people identifying different individuals to show up in this space and to be a different kind of answer. With this, I'm not putting together an anti police board. I am putting together a board that can make decisions based on information, and not just someone who's going to ride down this, you know, defund the police kind of narrative or hate the police narrative and be hard on the police narrative. That's that's not what we're doing. We have to have a different. Criterion in which we identify folks. Because if that was the case, I would have never voted for the person that we identified as our person. They did not get to moore did not get he was a candidate for council, and he did not get a endorsement from the police. And so if I can look at a 30,000 foot level at who would be good, regardless of their stance on police, we should not be. I'm going to go and say this, councilor Zimmerman, picking these winners and losers. And when we got folks who are from district one who are clear and I'll be clear on who I'm talking about, I don't know the two you're talking about, but I'm talking about terrance hayes. I think we need his voice. I think we need his diversity. And I think we need his understanding of police, particularly from the standpoint as a father, a black man, and someone who is incarcerated. So I think we need to be very careful on how we try to eliminate folks from this discussion.
113 Thank you. Councilor. As we I'm next in the queue here. As we think about who we want to move forward. I'm thinking back to conversation I had councilor Kanal can I share some of a conversation that we had about what it means to approach this work independently or neutrally, and what we should be looking for and the importance of not just having no opinion, but having lots of opinions that balance each other, and the importance of finding balance for this board. And so, you know, I'll share that on the list of names that I put forward. There were some folks who I think were who have had interactions with the police that led them to having very negative relationships with the police, and also some folks who I put forward who had personal interactions with the police that led them to having close relationships, because I think it's really important to have both of those perspectives on the board. Terence was on my list for that reason, but so were some people who I think he probably wouldn't see eye to eye with on a lot of things. And I hope that we can all support names who names of people whose personal positions might make us a little bit uncomfortable, as long as they are people who we think are able to hold many truths and. And move forward based on the facts of an individual case, as opposed to holding hard and fast positions that can't change. I also, you know, we shared the votes from the nominating committee at the request of and out of respect for our volunteers, who put a lot of time and hard work into this, but they were looking at the same information we were. So I hope that we don't let their votes overrule our votes, or vice versa. I think, in fact, from my perspective, the sweet spot might be the spot where. Where we both thought highly of people. Or maybe it is people they thought highly of and we thought highly of. But I don't think that we should discount either their positions or ours, given that we were working off of the same information and trying to get to the same balance and had the same charge.
114 Councilor Kanal thank you, madam president, and I appreciate you sharing that. My position, supporting the work of advisory groups has always been that every person in Portland should be able to look at every advisory group and say, maybe it doesn't represent my worldview, maybe I don't agree with everybody, but there's at least one person on that group that is saying what I would say if I was a member, and that lends itself to the diversity of viewpoints that I think we're trying to seek, and that I think we're we're finding in this list and trying to bring up and to that end and to the point that that councilor Council president raised, I put corinne frechette on my list, and I, I worked with with corinne on the police bureau wide advisory committee and found that that there's that's a person that can that can evaluate a case independently. I also wanted to speak to dina ross, who is in that first tier, specifically, I mentioned just below the other person I mentioned, erica summerfield. And in looking through that application again at that same question, the page break question, someone who's worked in terms of their own, so their their personal viewpoint, but also having the experience of working with the Jewish community, which is a community that's relationship with police, is not often discussed in the police accountability space. That was something that I found particularly unique and something that I think it lends itself well to putting this person on. And I don't know either the two people that I'm speaking in favor of here in any way, erica or dina. But I was impressed with both of their applications and the things that they have in their background or experience that are different from the 15 people that are presumptively in.
115 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Morillo.
116 Thank you, council president. Sometimes I feel like on this dais, I want to just roll the clip back about what somebody said, because it's very obvious that colleagues have preconceived notions about each other, and then they're not listening to each other, and they are just making assertions about one another that are maybe politically convenient or helpful. Because what I heard councilor Avalos say very clearly was that she had looked for people who could hold truths in both directions, and that was part of how she made her choices. And she has worked in many spaces where she's had to talk to people that she doesn't agree with. So I just don't really appreciate that when we're having this discussion that for some reason, upholding the status quo is viewed as neutral, but anything else is viewed as biased. Both are a range of perspectives, and we have that on this council in a pretty balanced way. I would say for the most part, on many of our votes we're around 6 to 6. So I think it's healthy for us to have some different ideas and tension based on our our differences and lived experience. And I just want to emphasize that while we're having this discussion, I also want to point out that even in the original nominating committee, we had representatives from pbb, ppa, and pcoa. So the this idea that the police perspective is not represented in the applicants that we received is just not accurate. We had lots of their perspectives and it's fine. I, I also agree with councilor Dunphy's assessment on the governance aspect of this, because there is actually a substantial difference between someone being on a nominating committee who ran for office. That is a shorter period of time. You are putting forth other applicants and then it's over. The folks who actually sit on this board are going to be having some of the most tense discussions on policing, especially during this political moment. And if we have people there who are going to use this as an opportunity to grandstand to the public about their positions rather than be neutral than we are creating a political problem rather than having neutral people actually working in this space. So I would say that those are two very different things and that needs to be addressed. And as far as the candidates that I like, obviously you can see which ones I ranked. But as an immigrant, I'm advocating for the two immigrants of color on the list, bottla and anchel, to be appointed to this board. Their voices and lived experience are really essential to building a system that truly reflects and serves all of the people of Portland, especially in this moment. So thank you.
117 Thank you councilor. I'm going to jump over to councilor Green because he hasn't said anything yet.
118 Thank you, madam president. I wanted to also provide some perspective on current. This is a person who has been very vocally displeased with my decisions in office, particularly around a decision to cut $2 million, $1.9 million from the police budget and give it over to parks. But this is also a person who has stayed in dialog with me and has shared their experience on how they navigate, from their perspective on the ground conditions in old town where people are suffering. They have, I think, a pretty nuanced, maybe not always at times from my perspective perspective on what public safety means as a holistic perspective, I'm not always going to agree with corinne, but I appreciate the willingness to look at a position with some objectivity. Even if a social media post is not the way that I would express myself. So I think I think I would be comfortable advancing corinne forward. Generally, I'm going to defer to a diversity board. I want people of color, people with lived experience. But I also note that robert weinstein again, made some posts that I don't agree with and enjoy, but has some experience evaluating quasi judicial outcomes, which is also an important part of this job. So taking off the personal opinion hat and saying what are the facts in the position? And I also think that's pretty important. So it may be difficult for us to reconcile as a collective group what other steps we need to put forward. So if we get in a bind, I do think there's a reasonable, you know, we're the unanimous yeses. If we can't agree, maybe advance some of those forward. So those are just kind of how I'm thinking about things right now. But I wanted to name those two specific individuals.
119 Thank you. Councilor councilor Kanal. Councilor Avalos.
120 Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Morillo, for what you said. Completely agree. I want to state for the record, I never said that it would be. We're going to be putting a bunch of anti police people on the board. So I really resent that comment and don't appreciate my character being put into question. So I want to make that very clear. I also want to say that I think, you know, as somebody who was on the citizen review committee and then was on it and then became a candidate and then all of that, I put myself in that same category. If I was looking at my application right here, I would be putting myself in the same category of probably not the best person. She just ran for office. She has publicly stated opinions about police that are one way or the other, and that would be a bias that I would be holding myself to that same standard. So I don't agree with the assertion that I am trying to put people on this board that are for one side over the other. I am trying to remove people from this board who are very actively vocal in the community about one particular side, because then that to me feels like it will delegitimize the perceived neutrality of this board. If we put a bunch of people on it who have been very vocal for a particular side. So I just wanted to clarify that. I also want to say, because council president, you said that they were all looking at the same information. Yes, but they didn't have their names. So let's be clear that we had more information than the people ranking, because it sounds like some people were doing some googling and we were able to do some cross-checking. So just wanted to state that for the record, although yes, I agree they had the general information, but we do have a little bit of an advantage because we were able to see their names. So I wanted to state that.
121 Thank you, councilor, councilor Ryan.
122 Thank you, madam president. You know, we've been in some heated conversations lately about funding because it's budget season. And in my opinion, we had a false narrative put in front of us between parks and police. And because someone has spoken to favor a police funding during this budget cycle does not mean that they are pro-police all the time. Doesn't mean that they don't believe in accountability, doesn't mean that, like me, they probably are noticing that the current chief is really leading a culture towards community policing that we haven't seen before. And so I think we have to be careful not to take the heat of the current dialog we're having about that and impose it on this. I really appreciate your comments earlier, councilor Green. I do want to call them out. I think we went at this in a similar way. I was trying to do that balance thing as well, and I have now some history on some people. I actually was cool with that. Don't say very nice things about me, but I think they would bring the checks and balances that are needed. Since we're talking about a certain person in particular and his name has been brought up, I'll just say that, you know, terrance hayes has lost a member in the police involved, has lost a family member in a police involved use of force. He was incarcerated. He chose to take those incidents and learn to build a better community. He has never said he doesn't want police to be accountable. He just said he wants police to be part of the solution to make his community safer. So I just hope that we stop politicizing this so much that we can't look at the individual character and what they bring to the table to bring that elegant balance that's needed in this body. And so I just want to make those points. And I'm still crystal clear that if someone got a no vote, four of them and they didn't even know their names, that says something. And so I think I am still clear that they should be removed from this body. Thanks.
123 Thank you, councilor, councilor Zimmerman.
124 Thanks. I want to start with I appreciate councilor Green's comments about corinne frechette and robert weinstein. I have similar, similar support for them. They were on my list and I don't think we've all seen actually each other's votes. So I actually don't know who's supported because we don't have a list of everybody's votes. But I did support bob weinstein and I did support corinne. And I appreciate that. I. I'm a little bit troubled by the implication because the words were said, you know, by by showing that you're pro-police, that that wouldn't be okay to sit on, on such a board. I think that anybody who knows my record knows that I'm, I guess by de facto, I'm probably pro military by having been a part of it for a long time. And I'll just share in my role previously in commanding officer positions. I have a duty in that role. When I had those roles to administer non-judicial punishment to soldiers who broke policy, broke the uniform code of military justice, and that's a heavy weight. And I do think that you can one of the things that I think can keep a board, an accountability board, an internal review board, things of that nature. One of the things that can be powerful about it is if there is such a cultural need to make sure that we do deal with those who are stepping outside the norms of policy and culture and the law and expectations, and that happening from those within is also an important part. And in this case, obviously there are no police sitting on this board. But I think that to assume because somebody has a pro in, in our words on this dais, a pro stance that they can't then also provide decision making that is fair and just, particularly given what we heard earlier, is that there will be a staff who is assigned and hired up to help with the investigations is unfortunate. And I think that that. Terrance hayes was also on my list a lot for a lot of the reasons are, given the fact that. I think that mr. Hayes has been described by this body as pro-police, and I probably have been, too. And I think we look awfully darn different, and I think we have awfully darn different experiences. And I think that's okay. I think the irony or the hypocrisy is a little thick right now in terms of sitting or not sitting on a board, and whether or not a person runs or doesn't. Right. There were people on this body who came up with the charter review to then become candidates. There are people in this body who sat on different committees and assignments. Over the years. I've sat on one of the many police boards at a time or another. So I just think that while this is a political decision, it would be great that there decision making not be political. I do think that sometimes their selection is political and they've got a duty, and I don't know that they'll take an oath, but I think they'll take a commitment to fair application of the law. I. I definitely am not going to support any people on this list who received four no votes from the nominating committee. There are two that are in that top 15. And in the world of bias or not bias, I think one of them is a former chief of staff. To the sponsor of this. And reading that commissioner Hardesty proposed measure, I think it's 26 to 17, which is what established this. Her chief of staff received no. Four, no votes. And in the materials, that person is also I only know their chief of staff because of the materials. But we're not raising a concern there. And I feel like if we're going to raise concerns, let's actually do it. But let's not just raise concerns that you have to be. You can't be have ever said that you're pro-police, or you can't have ever said that something good about the police. I don't know that that's the world we live in. I think it's okay to say it, but if we're going to go down that path we've got we've got some folks on both sides and let's be honest about it. But that actually is not the reason that I am not going to be supporting that person. It's because four members of a body, without knowing even said this is not a person. So those those two that are in the list with four no votes from the nominating committee are are my concern. And I really appreciate councilor Smith. You mentioning the district representation. And I will just say, if we were able to get bob weinstein and corinne in there, that would increase the district four representation by two, and I would feel much more comfortable about that. And last plug for corinne, I'm pretty sure she served on Multnomah county's jail inspection community team, which, if you're unaware, the county commissioners and the public have to inspect the jail every year for fairness and humane treatment. And from my memory, she did that quite honorably and quite well. So thank you.
125 Thank you, councilor, councilor Smith.
126 Thank you, madam president. I agree. I think district representation is really important and great district representation. Who knows the issues who who's been in the space that that can offer comments and strategies that are that are coming from a really authentic space in place. And you've already said it, commissioners. I mean, councilor Zimmerman, we have people on this board who actually created the charter to even get this form of government who who are sitting on this board and everybody knows who that is. That is my seatmate, councilor Avalos. Councilor Avalos. Yeah, I know your name, mama. I, I think it's important. And when I was running for office, just for the record, I was asked in very many places and spaces that did interviews on who to support. And I never once changed. They asked who did I want to support and who did I want to serve with? I said, terrance hayes and Candace Avalos. Everywhere I went, it wasn't just for show. I said that everywhere I went. Now, I was not her person, but I did not think. And that's okay too. But I know that for the most part, people know that I can look from a 30,000 foot level and look at an issue and decide, based on my experience, my track record, my background, that I am able to make a decision. And so for me, I don't think we need to put these guardrails up. I think we need to let some of them down so that district one and district four can have folks like bob weinstein and terrance hayes, which they both were running. It is really this, this, this, this work is really tough work. And sometimes we can't get people to even volunteer to come twice a year to something. So to have people who are willing to give of their time, and it doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum they're on and they're willing to do this, and they can speak from this, from from experience and from a track record. I think we need to look at those folks and say they might be someone who is very valuable to this process, and we should not be putting up guardrails around campaigns and those kinds of things, because it just doesn't. It's flat. I mean, it is a flat situation because we have all kind of, you know, we have all kind of things going on up here that that we have to show that there conflicts of interest. I mean, we even voted for somebody's wife to get money. So we can't sit here and be so stoic as if we have not done things too. So we've done it. And I could look at that and say, you know what? This is a good issue. We need to we need to support it. So I wish that we would really stop it, that we would really stop trying to prevent people who are older. And I can tell you there were very few people in that charter review committee that were older with experience, like bob weinstein. And I think his voice is important and those voices are important because they didn't have we had a bunch of young folks who just wanted to throw away all the older people. So. Yeah, but that's just my opinion. That's that's the way it looked and that's the way it turned out. But when we when we start talking, when we start going down a, an alley, we need to make sure that we don't have some, some things too. So I support terrance hayes, I support bob weinstein. I don't care that they ran for office before. They're very seasoned in in who they are and what their opinions are. And I think that they they'll be valuable on this committee. Thank you.
127 Thank you. Councilor councilor Novick.
128 Thank you, madam president. I just wanted to put in a plug for three people, two of whom really appealed to me. The bases, their professional and volunteer background. Benedict springer, who got ten votes from the nominating committee and first generation immigrant who works for the public utility commission and therefore is familiar with working within quasi judicial processes. And then chris garner, who got ten votes in the nominating committee and five votes from us, who has a background, who's with who's worked on the fit cog and also has a background as a criminal defense lawyer and also as a prosecutor, it turns out. And then finally, there's somebody who appealed to me because of how specific she was in talking about how she would make decisions. It's sarah cytrynbaum who said in response to question 15, how would you approach the trying to decide if policy was violated and decide what discipline should be given? She said. Among other things, compare the facts to the Portland police bureau has written policies and training standards to determine whether a violation occurred. Consider prior discipline cases and consistency with precedent, making fair, proportional and disciplinary recommendations. And that might seem obvious, but most people did not say things like that, and suggested to me that she's thought a lot about what the details of the job entail.
129 Thank you councilor. Councilor Clark, I don't believe we've heard your voice yet on this.
130 Thank you, madam president. I'm not going to dive into personalities or people, but I'm going to offer up a proposal just to keep the ball rolling here. You know, I feel pretty good that in the top 15, I got 30%. I was going, ooh, that's pretty good. But I have a lot more people on the bottom list. But I was going to propose just to move this forward that I agree with councilor Ryan and my friend Zimmerman that we should or whatever I call him. That we should.
131 For the record, she calls me an evil twin, I think. But we're there. Keep going.
132 Counselor.
133 We say councilor Zimmerman.
134 Yeah. Sorry, councilor.
135 That guy. I agree that we disqualify the people who got the four no votes, and that takes two people off the top list. And then when you start going down the secondary list, it takes off the third person. So I would like to propose we consider the top list and the Green section minus the two that did not. That got four no votes. And we move down the second tier all the way down to I think, todd bateman, and exclude the person who got the four no votes. And that includes let's see. That's trish garner, terrance hayes, diana ross, ben springer, badsha murtaza, corinne frechette, bob weinstein and I think todd bateman, if my math is right. So I think that would solve all of our problems. And I would like to move that. I think it's a pretty balanced list. I don't know what your process is, madam president, but that's my proposal.
136 We are in a work session, so we can't take motions and vote. But I am trying to I'm trying to see where folks are enough that we know what we can bring forward tomorrow. So I would say, colleagues, as we continue to move through discussion, one of the options on the table is to look, I think you said through todd bateman, I'd noted I'd note that that's a cut off in the middle of the threes. So I don't know if anybody would argue for todd over sarah or sarah over todd. But so through todd bateman, minus folks who only got six yes votes out of the nominating committee. So that's an option. My guess is as we continue to talk, there will be other options put forward on how we could look at this, but that is one option, colleagues, that has been put on the table that we could think about, we would then still need to come up with our six. Alternates. And I think there's a lot of different ways we could think about the alternates.
137 I think that is with the six alternates, isn't it?
138 I believe that would get us to 21 people. I count that as 24 minus three. So that would be the committee is 21. And then we need six alternates. That's okay. It doesn't have to be a complete proposal for everything. That's okay. It is a proposal.
139 What's the 15. The 15 was a first cut at trying to get a sense of. Where council priorities lie.
140 So, madam president, just in the name of simplicity, then I would just take that bar and lower it a little bit, and then we would include the candidate that councilor Novick was discussing and maybe another.
141 Okay.
142 Okay. Anything else? Councilor? Okay. Thank you, councilor Canal.
143 Thank you, madam president. When you have a review process of this nature and you come up with 15 and the reason why I think the council president went with 15, as opposed to looking at the top 21 rankings, there can often be gaps in what you have. We've obviously talked about the district gap. That's a real one in the initial 15. But there are other gaps as well. And in this particular case, our obligations is that is that quote that I read earlier about ensuring racial diversity and as well as experiencing so experiencing systemic racism and those who have experienced mental illness, addiction or alcoholism. So this exercise allows us to look into these 22 people that are in the gray who got five, 1 to 5 and say, you know, here's a gap that the 15 have and bring them in. That doesn't necessarily get reflected in who had the most within the gray. And so I just want to bring that up. I think councilor Morillo mentioned one specific one where we have, and I'm pretty sure this name was reversed in the application. Murtaza batla I'm as someone who gets called canal like it's my first name a lot. I want to make sure I get this right, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Murtaza, batla and sharda who are not they're not in the same place in the gray. Both are are immigrants of color and identified as such in there. So I want to just caution against the quick fix element here a little bit. The other thing I want to caution against, and I'm not even a caution, I'll just go full at it, is this idea of for no votes. I want to note that there are three members, and if you look at the actual graph, not just that line on the right, and you see the grouping of votes that collectively, the pattern that emerges in those, for the people who had four no votes, I will note that there were three people who were representatives of the police bureau, the police rank and file union, and the police lieutenants union on there. And so to see that, you know that two of the people on here, one is someone who's associated with a former commissioner That's tied to this work. The other is a is a member of the police accountability commission. And so I want to make my argument for, for that person. I had the privilege of working with tim pitts, who is someone who I think is incredibly balanced, detail oriented and willing to hear everybody out. As a member of the police accountability commission, he was one of the replacement members. He was not there the whole time. And so he was coming into a process that one could choose to stand against or endorse fully. And he chose option three, which is to help shape it in ways that that reflected his experience. He's a business owner. He's someone who represented the small business community in that particular. There were categories of membership on the police accountability commission, and I think it's fairly clear here that some of the folks who had particular backgrounds in working in this space had a block of no votes. I don't know who they are, but that that happened. And you can look at the columns of red and Green on the folks that had for the idea that if one has stood in favor of police accountability, one needs six out of seven votes, whereas if one has not, one needs six out of ten votes. Is a problematic statement. But that's how it has gone. And I, I also do recognize the concern here. I'm not disagreeing. And I want to actually thank councilor Zimmermann for raising this issue because when, you know, you mentioned that if someone has on the dais a pro stance, that they could also provide decision making, that is fair and just. I agree with that. And I want to commend you, because in February, when I raised this issue at the community and public safety committee, you didn't have that view. And I commend you for listening on it, because this is the exact point I was raising in the resolution I raised in the community and public safety committee on February 25th, that we need people that are not evaluated based off of whatever they may have said about the police, but we need them to be evaluated on. Can they look at the facts of a case and make a decision based on it? And I agree with councilor Zimmermann that I think people we appoint to this will honor their duty. If we are able to evaluate people that are able and have shown through the limited information we have, that they are able to be fair and just. And that's the criteria I'm applying to it. That's why I have not argued against some of the folks that have been argued against here, because I think that that's something that that we can achieve with people that have a wide view of policing, wide range of views on policing. But this, this for no vote thing, I would strongly support keeping all 15 of the people that are presumptively in. That's the process we agreed to, and I think if there's a particular reason around one person that we can speak to, their individual reasons why they should or should not be on it, I would be very open to hearing that. But if it's just the nominating committee had a bloc that voted no and then one other person voted no as well, that that is not a compelling answer for me. For why? To change it.
144 Madam president, may I ask councilor Canal question? Just could you clarify just. Sure. The two, the names were timothy pitts and what was the other one?
145 The other person is carl edwards. There are five folks who got six, 6 to 4. I'll note that 30. I want to say 36 people got ruled out for having five or fewer votes. They're not on this list. As the as the council president noted. But there are five people that did have a64 vote that are in this list. Two of them, edwards and pitts, are in our presumptive 15, and I have argued in favor of a third, which is erica summerfield as well. So I just wanted to raise those three. And you can you can look at the columns here and see the pattern of no votes. And again, I don't know which three they were or which four they were in the in, you know, there's some difference across who the fourth vote was. But I just wanted to raise that issue.
146 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Clark, did that answer your question, councilor Morillo?
147 Well, I was going to say everything that councilor Canal said. Probably not as nicely. So I'm glad that he covered it. I agree, I think the 6 to 4 removing anyone who had four nose seems to be a pretty reductive way of looking at this. And if this body and council is going to have a discussion about how people who have had what would be generally framed as more pro-police stances on there and the belief that they can remain unbiased, then we should have that same energy for people who have faced police brutality, who have publicly stated their displeasure with the police, etcetera, we have to hold those same standards across the board. I also agree with councilor Kanal that both of those candidates, pitts and edwards, are, I think, perfectly capable of doing that and holding difficult conversations. I mean, I worked with carl edwards. She was the chief of staff when I worked in commissioner Hardesty's office, and I'm sure that everyone remembers what happened to commissioner Hardesty when she was in office. The fact that she got, you know, framed by the Portland police union for a hit and run that never happened, a story that went national, that had broad impacts. So this idea that there are we don't know who the no votes were or what happened, but I think that she is perfectly capable of holding that nuance, given a lot of the difficult things that our, our boss and our staff experienced at that time. So I think it's a little reductive to just remove people like that, given that they were one of the few that actually had six nominating committee votes as well. I also really want to elevate a few of the names on the list, and I'll just read their names off, particularly trish garner, erica summerfield, diane, or diana ross, botla mortaza, sarah cederbaum, and jason ashley.
148 Thank you. Councilor. Sorry, I'm capturing that last name that hadn't been put on the table yet.
149 Councilor Avalos.
150 Yeah. Yeah, I think the way that I'm looking at this and as somebody who also had to review crc applications and assess what, you know, how, we're doing our best to judge if these people can judge the situation and do it fairly with minimal bias. That's where I'm coming from. I think everyone's made their points, and I don't think comparing other situations is germane right now. I also think that we should I think it's most fair, honestly, to keep our top 15 right. We had this process for a reason. I think all of those folks, you know, we all felt good about so much so that they made it to the top 15. I don't think we should mess with those at all. And then I think the people I want to elevate are trish garner, erica summerfield, diana ross. Balta, murtaza. Jason ashley. And charles chada. Was that everybody? May I think I missed one? Hold on. Looking back up, trish. Erica. Tina. Butler. Oh, and I think sarah cytrynbaum I think I missed I want to elevate that one as well. Thanks.
151 Thank you councilor. Colleagues I want us to trust our work. We're not picking a jury where people try to figure out who they don't want. We're trying to figure out who a lot of people can trust. And councilor Kanal, you said the actual number. So I'm going to ask you for the number and not do the math. How many people were left off the list by the nominating committee? How many people had five or fewer yes votes? Did you say it was 30 something or 40 something?
152 It went from 79 to 43, if I recall correctly.
153 77.
154 77 to 4.
155 So 33. So 34 people were cut from the list because they couldn't get a majority of votes of the nominating committee. Another three didn't make any of our lists as a top priority candidate. That means that everybody we're looking at here had a lot of people, at least seven people, at least six members of the nominating committee, and one of us who thinks that they can hold things from multiple perspectives, that they have a good sense of, of how to find balance here. I'm not going to speak to two of the three who folks have talked about cutting carly edwards, because I know her personally, but both timothy pitts and Eric summerfield actually were on my list because they both seemed like people who could find balance. And I didn't have. Right. None of us had this list at the time, but I knew that they had support from a majority of the nominating committee. So I just ask us to trust ourselves and to trust the nominating committee that we put together. I try with things like this to not offer a frame for how we should make our decision moving forward, because I don't want to tilt the scale, and I know ultimately I'll be bringing a proposal forward to all of you. But I'm going to right now as we talk about how to move forward, because it seems like we need some additional framing. And I just note that if we looked at everybody who at least two of us said should be a priority and above that line, that would get us to 30, we need 31 total if we added in, 31. If you count 27, I'm sorry. You're right. We need 27 total. Hold on. I wrote down the wrong number. Let me do my math again. No. That's okay. If we look at everybody above the three, that's what I was trying to say. If we look at everybody above the three line, that would get us to 25. There we go. That's the number I was looking for. And then we've heard the names. The name jason ashley get added to the list below that number. We have heard. And shall sharda as a potential to add to the list. I was impressed by linda glenn's application as well, but we might actually look at who had six or more nominating committee members support them, and three or more councilors put them on our priority list and then add in two more. And that would get us to 27. And then where there are individuals who folks are less comfortable with, we might think about moving those folks to alternate positions. And I would just suggest that as a potential frame that we could look at. Councilor Zimmerman.
156 I'm doing math in public after what you just read in. So thank you for all. Consider that. I think that what councilor Clark proposed was also actually, I've liked councilor Novick councilor Clark's, and I think yours makes some sense to me, too. Council president. I'm not sure. Councilor Avalos, I understand why you're insistence is let's trust the process on the 15 of the above, but not below. That doesn't make sense to me. You named somebody who had one vote only, but you made it insistent of. Let's stick with the 15. That one was really clear. Are you saying that below the 15? We should throw it all in a mixer or. Or what are we? I'm trying to understand what your last statement was, which is trust the process for the 15. That's what you said. But then after that, what do you mean by that?
157 I don't think I put I didn't put a denominator on what to do with the gray. I think we're all I didn't make a suggestion for what to do with the gray. I was suggesting that the 15 that rose to our list total, since we have to get to 27, that to me made sense. Like, okay, we've got a solid 15 that made our list that we shouldn't mess with that 15 and then the gray, I don't know. I mean, I haven't I didn't make a suggestion for what to do with the gray. I just gave some names that stuck out to me as everyone else was doing okay.
158 I. I would like to see some more district for representation, of course, but I, I certainly don't think that district four has to have equal representation. I think that I think that we can achieve a good board without district four putting its feet down and saying, we must have the same. I just don't think that's the case in our city. Given that, in fact, the names that others have shared trish garner. And sarah cytrynbaum, these are names that I, I also had on my list. But, you know, they fell they fell lower in terms of I guess it's angelina, me and Steve who who supported those folks, at least for the three. I think there's a reasonable path here. And I think that you're thinking council president makes sense to me. If folks can get off of the idea that a previous candidate is not eligible, then I can be, I think, much more open to the four. Or you're the chief of staff of the lady who proposed this thing, I think. But there's got to be a little give here, and I think let's be reasonable about it. But if it's just a board where one side of this, which is the majority of our council is going to go, but then those of us who are a little bit more on the pro-police side have no say then then I'm going to put my foot down on the no. For if you if you helped write the measure, probably don't need to be on it. But but if we can get over that, then I think what council president has proposed sounds reasonable to me. I'd be curious where folks are at. And while that was crafty councilor Kanal about our previous conversation in February, I think there's a difference between overt bias and having previously established a position or a thought on a topic, and I don't think that that has changed here, but thank you.
159 Thank you, councilor, councilor Koyama Lane, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were on there and hadn't spoken yet previously.
160 Okay.
161 I appreciate how seriously we're taking this important decision. I think our discussion defined the path forward together for our community is admirable. However, I'm not totally sure that further discussion is going to uncover new information here or move any of us from current perspectives. I'm happy to list the folks that rose to the top for me that are below that line. Dina ross, erica summerfield, sarah cintron born jason ashley, harry she. Sheehan, ann charles sharda and I think just a little bit more clarity on what the next steps are would be helpful. So is this supposed to be mostly a broad discussion. And then council president, you'll be putting together a list that we vote on tomorrow. Does each candidate need to get a certain amount of votes tomorrow, or are we voting on a package? Thank you.
162 I am hoping we can get to a place where we can vote on a package. My goal coming out of today was that we would have a discussion that led in a clear direction where I could say, okay, it's pretty clear council is all on the same page here. There's a little gray area here, but I'm going to take my best guess at what I heard and bring a package for tomorrow that we could either pass or ideally pass, and at worst pass with just a few tweaks. We need to do three things to get there we need to figure out who the folks are who were interested in moving forward, how we might want to determine who the alternates are. Is it, as I suggested, the folks who are above a cut but have discomfort expressed by a handful of councilors? Is it a look at. Representation? Whether that is experience or. Race or.
163 District within the city.
164 And trying to make a cut based on that? But if there are strong opinions about how we make that cut of alternates versus not. And then the third thing is we do need to determine who is in one, 2 or 3 year terms. We could do that based on how much support somebody had. We could do that with a random number generator, which we could ask our staff to, and council operations to run for us. I'm sure there are many other ways we could determine that as well. There. I think we're only. I made a list as I was taking my notes. 3 or 4 people who specified the length of term that they were hoping to serve for, and everybody else said whatever was needed. So those are the three decisions that I need to get some sense of a signal from everybody on today is who we want to move forward with, how we want to determine alternates and how we want to determine length of term. And I was I was going to bring up that last criteria, that length of term piece in our last 30 or 40 minutes of discussion, so that it didn't bog down the names piece.
165 As a follow up question.
166 Absolutely.
167 My follow up question is. Oh my gosh, I totally lost it. Oh no, I got it. Okay. When you make your list is the earliest the public can see it tomorrow, or is there any chance that folks can see it tonight? I've heard this like, hope that people will be able to see that and then testify tomorrow. I know there's an urgency to get this done. And I think also urgency to make sure the public can weigh in.
168 You know, we are scheduled in this meeting until 4:00. I have a 4 to 430. And my goal was to put pen to paper on something for us to all look like right at 430, in the hopes that I could get it to our clerk's office in time to post. I don't want to promise that, because I'm not sure how late we have the clerks tonight, but my hope is that we can get it up tonight. If we can't get it up tonight, then maybe I can try to share it with everybody up here so that we can at least send it to folks who have been asking. I don't love the idea that it's not publicly available, but we can think about what some options are there. Thank you. Councilor Kanal are you back in the queue or had you just not lowered your hand? I think we just heard from you.
169 Yeah. It's okay.
170 Should we hear from some others? Okay. Councilor Ryan.
171 So I think all of us are up here looking at these charts and doing our little calculations. I just want to say something for the record, that what I'm pleased about when I look at the big nominating committee votes is there wasn't a lot of group think there like I think has been insinuated. So the block that was mentioned earlier, they only voted together three times as a block. And so I guess I want to lift the process in terms of the fact that I'm not seeing the group think like I thought I would. In fact, I see more incidences of the non-police bodies that maybe did that more than what was referred in reference to earlier about those that were representing police. So I just wanted to make sure I balanced that information. Thanks. And by the way, by now that I have the I, I respect the person who's been talked about quite a bit. Carly, as somebody who's wicked smart, understands the issue and shows objectivity and balance. So just so we don't continue to stereotype people up here and how we might think, I just want you to know, I'm not against that. I was merely raising that in what looked like not a groupthink process. I was a little startled that there were some that did receive four as a way for us to try to whittle this down. It's hard. This is difficult. Yeah. Thanks.
172 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Novick.
173 Hi. Council president, I just I can't remember whether you were saying that. You thought maybe we should presumptively take everybody who got more than three votes or more than four votes. You said there was a cutoff of three, but I couldn't remember whether the cutoff was above the three or below the three.
174 Below the three. So if we cut off at three and above, that would be 25 people. If we then added in. I've heard jason ashley's name more than anybody else below the line. And then I have also heard linda glenn, harry sheehan, and aanchal sharda. I note that aanchal sharda was also, I believe, on the unanimous list for the community board for police accountability. So if we added in two of those four, we would get to this. The 27.
175 Thank you.
176 Councilor Green.
177 Thanks. Madam president, I think the process that you laid out is workable. I want to support it. I think it makes a lot of sense. And I say that because I've been highlighting with my little highlighter as we go along when I hear people's names, and that picks up a lot of them. And, and I think I could live with some of the people that, you know, I don't agree with necessarily politically in that list, because I think the list is good. And we've it has a lot of the names that this, this body has advocated for. And so I think using some discretion to add those to others. And then, you know, maybe if there are polarizing edge cases, maybe there are alternates. Seems like a reasonable place to start. But I just I want to signal my comfort for you to just take pen on this and come back with something, because I think for me, it it kind of gets us to where we need to go on this.
178 Can I ask a point of information for you to repeat it? Like what? How you described it because I think I support it too, but I don't remember now.
179 What I had suggested is that if we looked at anybody who was on three or more councilors priority lists, and then we would need to add in two more people. And as there are four names that I have heard put out from folks below the line jason, ashley, linda, glenn, harry sheehan and on sharda. So two of those four and then the alternates be the people who have had. We could figure it out a few different ways. It could be the people who have had the most concern expressed. It could be based on the need for district representation. I think I was leaning toward concern expressed. And then we determine length of term in some other way. I had said that that could either be based on looking at the direction around different lived experience. It could be looking at district representation. There are a few different ways we could think about that. Or we could do length of term based on a random number generator, which I would then ask our our neutral staff and council operations, christopher hare, who had put these lists together for us, if he would be willing to do that just so that there was no perception of anything going awry with one of us doing that. Councilor Zimmerman.
180 I think I'd support that. I mean, either the 12 people that I put my name behind, I think a number of them would be in that category, as you just described it. And I think that that's a place that I'm quite comfortable. I had a question for councilor Canal. You mentioned a need to balance race, but the only members whose race I know when I was doing this were people who cited it themselves in their narrative. Is there some other way in which you made your decision or you had available demographic information? Because I don't think I had demographic information available.
181 Yeah, I mean, a lot of people. So this is one of those unfortunate things where we get the process at the end. And I want to note for the record that my criticism is not of anything that's in the council space or of that process, but we should have we should have asked for more information there for an optional self-identification in the in the application as well, because this is a charter requirement that we do it. It's not something I'm I'm coming up with. It's specifically says or at least had a question of can you describe how you've experienced systemic racism? Can you describe, you know, on the mental health addiction and all that? And we didn't have a question on that. And we're we're stuck. You're right. But there are a bunch of people who did identify in some way. And so that's that's what I went off of. But the criteria that I, the criterion that I read out loud is from the city charter, and it's particularly those who have experienced systemic racism and those who have experienced mental illness, addiction or alcoholism. And this is charter 2-1002.
182 Yeah, but none of the questions were about that.
183 I agree.
184 Yeah I agree.
185 But there was.
186 Some there.
187 Was this was a tough read, given that there are actually specific needs that that folks need to represent. And yet these questions were wide ranging. And just how do you think about things.
188 Yeah, I mean people did identify and there were questions that left the door open. I think we've talked, not us, but society has talked about this in the context of like college applications. You can't ask about it specifically, but you talk about hardship. And often people will cite the specific nature of the hardships that they may have felt they've experienced. So I think there there is some data. It's not comprehensive and 100% you are correct. I think this is something that I hope the board will direct their director after they hire that person to figure out for future application processes. And I was I was frustrated by that too.
189 Okay, thanks. I just want to make sure I wasn't missing something that I, you know, at this point, somebody said we all know each other's votes. I didn't know that. And then you mentioned that we knew race and I didn't know that. So yeah. So this is this is that's fine. I don't I, I think I'm tracking now and then with respect to the question of length of term, I think that random generation, unless a person said I can only do this many years, would be preferred by me. And. And I'll leave it there. You asked that question. I'm just saying I would prefer probably that generation also to be random.
190 Thank you councilor, colleagues, before I move on in the queue, is it helpful to have staff speak to not having the demographic information or councilor Zimmermann and canal. Do you feel good about where we are in that discussion? You're okay, you're okay okay. Councilor canal.
191 Thank you, madam president. I appreciate the framing you've put on this in terms of the methodological approach. I think it's correct. I would note that the previous comments about identity and representation as it relates to that still apply for me. And then I would note that the other person you named, I believe was harry sheehan. Is that correct?
192 There were four people below the line. Harry was one of them. Who? Whose name? I've heard, heard somebody advocate for and wrote down.
193 And this is a person who was someone I didn't put in my top 15, but it was not not a negative in any way. But they are from district one, and I did want to point that out, because I think if we are able to add this would add two people to district one's representation. It would also add a few to district four's and a little less to district three's to help mitigate those disparities. And I think that's an important note. So those would be the two that I would point to. I think the other two are both people I really liked, but they I think it's a question of balancing and choosing what would balance out the board. I think the best. So those are two folks that I would, I would argue for in this context.
194 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Ryan.
195 I want to just lift the dialog that was very decent and valid between the two. Councilor Zimmerman and canal. I thought the question was really crisp and I didn't hear the exact answer. Like the fact that you. Which isn't a bad thing. You've been working in this space quite extensively. You seem to know by name when you see the name. More demographic information perhaps than others, because it was hard to find. So the question I heard was, how did you know when there was most didn't really go into that type of detail in their narratives. And I think we're getting at a place of ethics here where maybe we need to identify who on our list do we have? Do we know, do we have a personal relationship with that's a that's a consideration as we vote.
196 Can I respond to that?
197 Of course you can. Because I mean, I hope you're okay.
198 Go right ahead. Councilor.
199 I was looking right.
200 At so councilor Kanal.
201 Yeah. I think in the context of the folks we're discussing here, I know trish garner from, I know terrance hayes from fitcode and from work at the Portland at the public safety service area. I don't know, erica summerfield, diana ross, benedict springer. Murtaza, I do know for corinne frechette, as I mentioned, bob weinstein I met during the campaign and here, I don't know, bateman, cytrynbaum, ashley glenn, graham jenkins, sheehan, hellman, bond, decoursey I've heard of landgrave because I believe he was a candidate to, I don't know, rocked or wilson. I think I've mentioned everybody above that that was relevant. That's been discussed. I think it may be fair to say I made an assumption on one name that is about an ethnic background. That's that's not a but that's a guess. The rest, it's all based off of the application itself. There are people who said, as a latino who does blah, blah, blah, I think that's a fair. That's part of the application. And I think in the context of my own ethnic background, I can make an educated guess on on that particular one.
202 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. That's what I was looking for. And the answer to the question that councilor Zimmerman asked.
203 You happy to provide. Yeah.
204 Colleagues, I'm not seeing anyone else in the queue. Does anyone have other folks who they want to raise, either support or concerns for other thoughts on process or any other discussion?
205 One. One yes.
206 Okay. I'm seeing I'm hearing Zimmerman and then Avalos. Councilor Zimmerman.
207 Yeah. Thanks, colleagues. I when we first started, it was noted that one applicant who's fairly high on our list was a Vancouver resident. And while I recognize that that's I guess, allowable by this charter, that does strike me as strange, right? I think that I want accountability to be doled out by people who live here, potentially vote here, but at least have the right to if they want. That seems like a real stretch to me and the person I will say was on my yes list. So I say that in a self-serving way or negatively self-serving way for my own list. Is that that that address is concerning. If it's the name that you all shared with me a few minutes ago, but I am I alone in that concern, or should we be appointing people from not only outside of our city, but outside of our state, to be doling out decisions for our employees? That one is a little tough for me, and I would entertain that part of the conversation if it is helpful.
208 Councilor Avalos, go ahead. And then I'm thinking, I think some folks are getting in the queue to answer that question, councilor Zimmerman. But go ahead, councilor Avalos.
209 Well.
210 I'll start by reflecting on that question. That is a criteria. That's for all of our boards. And yeah, I guess I'll be honest. I've always felt it was a little weird that people that didn't live in Portland could be on our boards, but the qualification is that if they work, you know, in our city, then they have, you know, a perspective to offer, even though they don't live here. I don't feel strong strongly, but I do agree that that has always been a criteria that I've found odd. For what it's worth. Let's see, what did I actually get in the queue to talk about? Put all my brain energy towards that that I lost it. So maybe let me think a little bit more. Thanks.
211 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Morillo.
212 I would say to answer councilor Zimmerman's question, it doesn't bother me too much because I think if someone is working in the city of Portland, then they are going to be affected by how our police force operates. And so it would make sense that they would want to be a part of the police accountability commission. I also think it's a little different than someone who lives out of state, because they're probably not going to work in the city of Portland unless they drive a really long time every day for work.
213 This person.
214 Okay, in Vancouver, most of our police force lives in Vancouver as well, so I feel like it. I don't know, it doesn't really necessarily bother me. She was in my top 15, not necessarily like my top. You know, top six if I had to pick. But I would say overall, if this is the standard for our commissions, then it doesn't make sense for us to change the rules now. Are we going to list councilor or council president? Do you want us to list like all of the ones that we were pushing for, or what's going to be best to make your list? Or do you want us to email those to you?
215 You know, if we if we go forward with the idea that anybody who is a three and above or who has had some strong advocacy and that's there's four people who I've named, who I've heard strong advocacy for. I don't think I need you to read your full list. If we're going to move forward with a different way of adding people to the list, then. I think it's better because we have everybody's lists here, right? We don't know whose is who, but we have everybody's list here. And I want to try to keep this process such that it's making sure that. There is some, I don't know, some. Not neutrality. I don't want to see everybody's lists and be in a position of picking and choosing between us. That doesn't seem like it's fair to anybody up here. But I am trying to capture whose names have been added to the three and above. Whose names have I heard more than once as folks are talking.
216 That makes perfect sense. Yeah, I didn't consider that. Okay. Well, yeah, I think if our police live in Vancouver, then it is okay for someone who works in the city of Portland to also sit on a police accountability board.
217 Point of information. Because this is what I remembered, what I was going to ask. And it's about what you just said. So are you then looking at this? So I've got everything in Green that's 15. And then you add everyone up to the three all the way down to sarah cytrynbaum. And that's the 25. And then you were saying that the other two would come out of essentially. Are you asking us to look at below cytrynbaum and have everybody say which ones we like in that list? And then that that'll be you'll pick the top two? Is that how you were? I was trying to understand your process. Like, is that is that what you were suggesting essentially.
218 You know, if we have everybody name who was on their list, we're going to have all of these people named either once or twice, right? Because they have ones and twos by them. What I.
219 Mean, but I mean, if we pick from that, right, like if we say like, for example, for me, out of everything below cytrynbaum, I had lifted up onshore and jason. Right. So then if everybody goes and does that, then would we have like maybe that could be a good start because then we could say, okay, maybe, you know, ten out of 12 of us picked. And so then that's one of the two. Or does that make sense? What I'm asking.
220 It does. I had written down a little more informally the names that I had heard from below that line, and there were four names that I had heard lifted up, but we could certainly go around and have everybody lift up two names from that list. I know for me that's a little harder because I want to go look at the applications again. And I think I see nods from a few other people saying the same thing. Let me, let me think about how we might address that. Heidi, had you wanted to note something related to the conversation about folks living out of Portland?
221 Yeah. Council president.
222 I just wanted council to know that it's in code. They that folks need to either live or work in Portland to serve on the board, so it is limited to that, but it is in code rather than a general practice in this. In this particular instance. Thank you.
223 Thank you. Councilor Green.
224 Thank you. I just wanted to respond to the question that councilor Zimmerman posed, because I think it's an important one to think through. So setting aside the kind of code requirement question, we're in this space where we're we might be making a marginal choice on someone, maybe based upon where they live. I mean, I get the intuitive concern, but portland's in the middle of a metropolitan region that includes Vancouver, Washington. And I think a lot of people who used to live in Portland now live in Vancouver, Washington, because they can no longer afford to live in Portland, but they still be rooted in this community. It's the same thing that you see with people who are from albina, who now live in eastside of Portland. I mean, they might live in Gresham. And so I do think that there's kind of a skin in the game piece to that. And if they've gone to this length to apply and they've made it through all these hoops, I see that person as vested in Portland. So that's kind of where I'm coming from. On that.
225 Quick follow up, do you see a difference in an oversight board, which I, I take that to have authority versus an advisory board, which is how for us to best do our work. Do you see a difference in those two things? I'm feeling a difference, but I'm not sure if that lands differently for people.
226 I don't.
227 Okay.
228 Councilor Koyama Lane.
229 I'm thinking a lot about your question. Councilor Zimmerman. My gut response is, I feel like folks should be in Portland. I also think this is a larger conversation about our advisory bodies. I'm not sure if it should be the same. If it's an oversight board or a committee, but I think there needs to be consistency with all of those at those levels. I would say at this point it should we should go with what it says in code and what we have been doing for other appointments. And there have been some where I've thought, oh, interesting, that person doesn't live in that district, or I have thought that I will say this is just going with my gut. If there are only two representatives right now in those top in district three. District one and district four, I see that from my googling. There are four people here that live outside of Portland. It would feel out of balance if there were more people outside of Portland than, say, anyone district. But that's just throwing something out there.
230 Councilor Kanal are you back in the queue or is that an old hand? Okay.
231 Yeah. Just wanted to note that in the in this particular case, this is different. A lot of our advisory groups have live work, play, worship or go to school. And this is put into code, which is a very difficult code to change due to the need for federal oversight as part of our settlement agreement. And this was put in a more narrow way. I think it's possible councilor Ryan might be able to speak to why that was narrowed down by the old council from the recommendations of the pack, but this particular individual, their answer to number 14 might help alleviate some of the concern. Possibly. Born and raised in Portland, went to jefferson high school, and.
232 I circled and put.
233 Her on my list.
234 Sure. Yeah. And I believe that. I also think that for me, the state line is not relevant. I think it's Gresham hillsboro Vancouver. We've talked about all these things, but I think it's important to note that, that we will be seeing training for the members after they're appointed in the particular state law, especially as it relates to collective bargaining, which frankly, most people don't know even in the state that they do live in. I'll also note that this that this particular individual noted in their application, and this is question eight, that they have lived in Portland for at least 12 months. So it's possible that they that the address is just wrong in some way. If you apply for a job in the neo gov portal you're at, and then you later apply again, your personal data just holds unless you manually update it. So this was a check that was done by the city attorneys. That is one of the two people that was ruled out as, as far as I've been told, that one of the two people ruled out is because they didn't live or work in the city of Portland. So I trust that they have checked this individual on on that, that they have met the criteria. But what I will say is that it's not a particular concern to me. I don't see a difference between oversight and advisory boards as it relates to live and work and as it relates to the other three criteria, which are play, worship or go to school. I think that's already been addressed as part of the code change or the code creation, I should say, which is a difference between that and the purely advisory board roles that we have here is that we require someone to be in town on a regular basis, not just, you know, come play pickleball or dodgeball or whatever casually in the city. Thanks.
235 Councilor Zimmerman, I also wanted to respond to your question about location. And as I was reviewing applications, it looked to me like there were four people who didn't live in Portland. And very frankly, I held a higher standard to those applications because of that. I thought, if you don't live here, I, I have a higher bar for how I want you to be looking at these things. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe it is. But that was part of the standard that I used. And this individual who's in the top 15 was the only person who doesn't live in Portland that I put on my initial list because I thought that their application was so strong that despite the fact that their address was elsewhere, I thought that they would be a very important voice to have on this oversight body. I'll note that if we use the criteria that I suggested, we do capture at least one and possibly two more of the four people who don't live in Portland. Before I suggested that criteria, that was one of the things that I thought about was capturing that one additional person. But I, I do think that the person in the 15 at least had such a strong application that it seemed to me like it was worth moving forward with them. Councilor Dunphy.
236 Yeah, thank you, councilor. I'm responding to councilor Zimmermann's response. I'll be honest, I absolutely do have a problem with. I now understand it was in the criteria. I understand that, you know, this is how we do things. But I do think that this I think that in general, people should live in the city of Portland. If you live here, you're assuming you're here for 16 hours a day versus the eight that you spend at work. And when I was going through these applications, anybody who did not live in the city of Portland got a point counted against them. And anybody who lived in the city or lived in district one got a point added to them for me. So it is reflected in the way I voted. But I do think I think that. Right. Yeah. I think it is worth having a bigger conversation as this body as well. It might be too late for this. And I also think that it's incredible that anybody wants to step up and volunteer. But yeah, I do think that there's a difference between supervisory and advisory. And I do think that especially with this, especially because I also have heard the critique from the community that police should live in Portland than probably the folks who are advising us how the police, whether or not there was misbehavior, should also live in Portland. I'm not going to vote against a whole package because of it, but I do want to just voice that.
237 So thank you, councilor. Councilor zimmermann.
238 I appreciate those who were able to respond. It's helpful. It's an interesting part of the conversation, given that I know council president, you keep on mentioning that on shell charter is mentioned by many people as a person of interest for that next tier. But I've heard the name, but I've only see one person who voted for them in our selection criteria. And I will also say they're not a portlander. With only one vote. I just if people were truly supportive of that person, if that's one of the couple of names that sounds like you're kind of zeroing in on as part of a package, I would say, well, let's remember only one person put them and they don't live in Portland. It might be. I think there were some other twos in there that that perhaps would be easier checks. But I'm maybe sensing that that name, that application is getting more talk in this discussion than what our actual ranking shows by anybody's standards. Thanks.
239 I think you're right. There are a couple of people who only had 1 or 2 votes, who have had more people name them in the room. I wasn't on my list because of geography. Geography. I am noting that they have an email address at PSU, and I don't know if that is because they work there, or if that is because they are working and taking classes there. It says they have a master's degree, and I don't know if they're currently working on that or not, but it's. Perhaps worth rereading the application. Councilor Morillo.
240 Yeah, I just wanted to respond to that applicant specifically. They weren't in my top 15, but I wouldn't mind them being on the committee either. They're an immigrant woman of color, and I thought that their objective portion of the application was pretty good. They were talking about, you know, wanting fair, transparent and community driven oversight. And I think a perspective that they bring that would be really valuable if we're trying to diversify the voices on this. You know, they had talked in their application about cultural and systemic barriers as well. And so while they weren't in my top 15, I think that they would be an important perspective to have as well.
241 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor canal.
242 Yeah, I want to note, I erroneously said earlier that I made an assumption based on the name, and now going through this application, I realize it actually was mentioned in the application, so I wanted to correct that record there. I think. I don't know. And this is hard, right. Because we didn't see we didn't have a question on this specifically. But I do feel a need to argue for aapi representation on this body. And I don't know that anybody else because nobody else identified. And this is a little bit of a crapshoot in that in that regard. But I don't think anybody else disclosed that in any way. So I think it's possible that it is that that somebody else on this list is, is api. I don't know that in any way. So I do feel a need to argue that point as well, I guess more broadly than than these four individuals. I think there was maybe a disconnect in terms of what the purpose of this conversation is. We could have just ranked and picked the top 21. That wasn't the process that that was laid out. And the reason for that was so that the remaining six could be a discussion. And I appreciate that immensely. I talked to the council president about this a while ago, because this is a conversation and actually the vice president about other advisory groups, too, that there's a conversation where if we end up not having the discussion part, we miss the opportunity to fill the gaps that are blind rankings might give us, and we end up without that representation. And in this particular case, having some of that representation be charter required is, I think, particularly compelling to me. That doesn't mean this individual has to be the person to do that. There's every person here brings everybody here has something that they bring that may, may or may not be replicated in the other folks, depending on who else gets picked. But I just wanted to sort of this is less about the applicant and more about the process. I'll leave it there.
243 Thank you councilor. And you're right. We did. You and I had some some, I think important discussions about not just picking the top ones. My recommendation to do that was based on most of the names I was hearing. Being in that group, but I think there's we certainly want to think about that representation as we pull the other two in. And as as I go through and think about who were the more controversial names and what does that mean in terms of the balance of representation?
244 I think given this conversation, I see where you're going with that. I was making a broader. But yeah, I agree.
245 Councilors. Is there any other discussion, any other comments, other things that you would like to note during our time here today? Yes.
246 Sorry.
247 Councilor Avalos.
248 I guess I just want to understand what what am I doing? I want to understand what is going to happen tomorrow. So you're going to put together a list that you're going to come to us with tomorrow. That ideally will be a package we'll pass. Like does it end there or is there going to be discussion tomorrow? Is there going to be any kind of like, okay, this was the list that was comprised because I'm not fully clear on how you're going to make that final list that there will be like how do you foresee that happening if people object to something on the list tomorrow? Or is it is it the expectation that we're leaving it?
249 This has been filed as a report, so we will need to vote to adopt it. And we can. I'm looking to our attorneys to make sure that heidi is not going to tell me this is wrong. We can amend a report attachment. Correct?
250 Correct.
251 Okay. That's been my assumption. So. I'll take this back and try to bring in the feedback that I've heard today to make a list. I'll probably stick it in front of our community and public safety co-chairs, because I generally try to reach out to the folks who are chairing committees as we're making decisions on important things. And then tonight, file my best thinking with that screening of our community and public safety co-chairs, I'm putting you on notice. Councilor Novick. And you're not in the room? Councilor canal nodded. Yes when I said that. Hopefully you are too, and I'll file that if we need to make amendments tomorrow because we missed the mark, we can make amendments tomorrow. My hope is that it won't miss the mark, and that folks will look at it and say, it might not be everything that I wanted. It's certainly not going to be everything I wanted. There's some folks who I had thought really highly of, who others clearly didn't put in there their priority list, and that's okay. But hopefully it's something that we can generally feel good about and move forward. And if not, you are of course, welcome to propose amendments.
252 And then is that list also going to have the terms and the alternates. And so you're going to also do that part.
253 There will be a proposal with everything.
254 Yes okay.
255 And this is my vice president Koyama Lane was just mentioning behind me as well. This is filed to receive public testimony. So presumably we'll have some folks who are signed up to testify. Councilors. Councilor Kanal, are you back in the queue?
256 Yeah.
257 Just really quick. Wanted to say to those who applied, I apologize that we have to talk about you in personal terms. We need to work on getting our public meetings law changed at the state back to allow for some of this to happen where we're not discussing people so, so directly. And there are a lot of people here that I think didn't make it into people's top 15, but it's not a reflection on them. I do share a concern around not necessarily having all the information I'll follow up with staff for the public presentation tomorrow, and I just wanted to flag that. I think this is not a problem on our end at the council. I think this is staff. I'd love to make sure we have bio statements of interest, the opportunity for applicants to come in, and we can talk about that more later, but I just wanted to flag that for later. Thank you, madam president.
258 Thank you councilor. Councilors. Any other discussion? Before we close? I just want to take the opportunity to reiterate my gratitude to everybody who applied and has gone through this process. There was a lot of different steps of vetting to try to winnow down the group of applicants to the first people who are going to serve, and whether you made our final list or not, whether you were winnowed down earlier or later in the process. I know there were a huge number of really fantastic applicants, and so I want to just express my gratitude to everybody who was willing to step up and be a part of something that is going to take a lot of time and is going to be hard because this work will be hard. I also want to thank all of the volunteers who were on the nominating committee, because I know that they put a lot of time into this and work together to bring us the list that they thought were the very, the very best people to help us with this work as we move forward. So gratitude to everybody who has been involved in this process in one way or another. Colleagues all put something together, maybe even before my 4:00 meeting, since it looks like we're ending early to run by our colleagues who are on the community and public safety committee, and will do my very best to work with the clerk's office to make sure that it is filed before our clerks leave for the day so that folks can look at it starting tonight online, and then we'll be taking this up tomorrow in our council meeting, which is an evening council meeting. So members of the public should have the full day tomorrow to review the list if they're interested in providing testimony. Thank you all for your discussion today. I know this wasn't easy. With that, I will close our work session.