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Council session — 2026-03-12

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (20,111 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.

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Good morning. I call the meeting of the labor and workforce development committee to order. It is Thursday, March 12th at 12 p.m. Diana, will you please call the roll?

Good afternoon. Dunphy. Here. Kanal. Here. Novick here. Green. Here. Smith.

Here. Today the committee will have a discussion on budget priorities. Receive a presentation on the state of black business in Portland and receive public testimony this afternoon. Diana, please read the first item.

Item number one. Budget priorities. Discussion.

And since this is an internal discussion, I kind of wanted, this is our last meeting. I'm sad, but I know I have some good people on on the city life committee that will continue to bring up the issues and some of the issues that we talked about during this committee, but I wanted to get a sense of where were people in terms of budget priorities that related to labor and workforce, and if there needs to be some some kind of, of listing or things that you would want us to, to get behind during the budget cycle. Co-chair. Vice chair.

Thank you, chair Smith. This, I think is really appropriate and good way to close this out. Before I get into all that though, I'm going to get mushy for a second. Okay. I've just really appreciated and enjoyed serving as your vice chair during this committee. I think you brought forward a lot of urgent and not always popular, not always politically easy, but urgent issues before this body. And we've had some great discussions. And so I just think that that speaks volumes to your leadership. And I look forward to working with you across this body in any capacity. So I just wanted to say thank you for that.

Thank you. And thank you for your service and your input. It's been very valuable on this committee and really working through some of those some of those tough labor issues that we've we've had with labor. You have been right there on it. And so I appreciate your your very sage advice about these things. Thank you.

Thank you. You're very welcome. But I do have some budget comments. Okay. You know, I've been trying to sit with the large scale deficit that we face, $170 million that we know about today. That number can still shift around as we get more money. In the context of what are our priorities? We had this big priorities discussion last Saturday, and I did get a little. I was troubled when we walked away from the work session yesterday, specifically around the equity piece and the and sort of the, the office of equity and human rights. And so I'm already worried that that's an office, that's an area of our city that we've cut to the bone. And I worry that we're going to continue cutting there. And so to me, that is a labor and workforce development issue. But it also spans, I think, the breadth of our city values. And so as we go through this, I'd love to hear from our other committee members on what we think are appropriate trade offs and where we are going to show up in our other committee assignments in the budget process. And how to how to protect that investment for the city and what we're willing to give up, because I think we're going to be in a situation where we, you know, we don't have a magic money printer. I wish we did. But I I'm just not going to support a proposal that that takes away that capability and that commitment to our communities. And so I'll have more to say as we get further into this discussion. We've got plenty of time for it, but I'll just go ahead and hand the mic over.

Councilor Kanal thank you, madam chair. First, let me start by seconding councilor Greene's comments about yourself. But also, I think the the the vibes on the committee have been good. I think we were figuring out right at the beginning of the year what, what, what this was. And once that sort of five person shared understanding happened, it's felt like we've, we've actually made a lot of the conversations that maybe don't happen regularly at the city happen and happen in public, which is great. I had a lot of different ideas for the budget priorities discussion when I started thinking about this. So I'm going to break up my comments and start with the external side and then circle back to the internal side after some colleagues get to talk. But I'll mention three. The first, you're very familiar with, madam chair, because we both toured the a couple of the the construction facilities and the city and surrounding areas. And how we talk about wage theft is really important to me. And I want to continue to starting with our own contractors, but but continuing beyond that, ensure that people who are guaranteed a wage and do a job, get that wage and are not robbed in the highest frequency and size theft that we have in the united states, which is wage theft. The second thing is moda center. As we are looking at that, I think there's a very shared understanding that the moda centers construction as part of the renovation needs to have labor peace. But I also want to make sure and I want to signal this publicly that as part of the ongoing operations and maintenance of the facility, we also need to have labor at the table and the development of this, but also, you know, ensure that we are not putting any barriers to to worker organization after the renovation is complete, especially when we're talking about putting public dollars towards both parts of this, the ongoing maintenance of a, of a facility, by the way, which we own as well as the as well as, of course, the construction and the, the third thing I think is continued support for workforce investment, apprenticeship pathways. And frankly, many of the things that we all kind of knew about. But in my particular case, I learned a lot of details from my colleagues on this committee as you talked through it and the many people that have been brought forward to present here. So I'll leave it to those three priorities here, and I'll circle back on the internal later. Thanks.

Thank you, councilor Dunphy. President Dunphy.

Well, thank you.

Councilor Kanal. I want to respond to the moda. I want to fully agree with you. And in fact, it is worth this city. Looking at what happened in seattle with the climate change arena, it is a again, a publicly owned arena. They didn't weigh into trying to negotiate the at least a labor peace agreement there, but they put it in the lease, the underlying lease that says a labor peace agreement of both construction and operations must be in place for this lease to be executable. I think we should be doing that. I think that should be a baseline for our negotiations around moda. I will be actively pushing that to make that just a basic premise that that is how we will operate broadly to the. I have two sort of bigger relevant budget priorities as well. One is this ongoing conversation we have about between city employees doing the work and contracted employees doing the work. You know, even if you look at our two utility bureaus, the water bureau has construction crews that they send out, and those are city employees, environmental services. They exclusively almost exclusively subcontract that. I think we need to get a better grasp of how, philosophically, as a city, we are spending our dollars and where we are spending them. I think that's a years long process to try and unravel, but it's something that we need to continue to bring up, and I'm hoping that we will see more of that. And then the third thing, and this is not something we've really talked about, and I'm, I'm trying to I've had a lot of candid conversations with city staff and the phrase toxic work environment keeps coming up, whether it's in the context of the parks bureau, bureau of transportation, permitting, and development. I am hearing that there is a culture problem right now, that the combination of a lot of change, a lot of distrust of leadership, a lot of seemingly arbitrary decisions about people's careers have been made, and it's leading to some toxic interactions between employees, between their management and then their management management among front facing employees. And I have a lot of real big concerns about that. That is a thing that I think I don't know how to properly address through the budget, but I want to acknowledge that for many of our employees, going to work is actually not a pleasant experience. And they are leaning into the the service side of public service. And I think that that's a real loss. If we.

Council president, I think you're you're absolutely right, because I've heard the same thing in terms of the realignment, that direct supervisors are not making those cuts for the realignment that the administration are making, those named cuts, and that people are they they're feeling afraid and they're feeling traumatized. And so I, I have heard the same thing about this, and I was going to talk about that, but I'm glad you brought that up. Thank you. Go ahead.

I'm done.

Councilor. Novick. I'll let you go.

Actually, councilor Kanal already highlighted one of the things I was going to say, which is one of the most powerful things you've done, madam chair, is to bring the issue of wage theft forwards. And I'd like to see if we can have a discussion about what kind of investment would be necessary. What would it look like for the city to be prepared to investigate wage theft and go after people for wage theft? So we'd like to take a look at what other what other cities have done. Is there any way we can sort of duplicate that quickly? And then another thing is, one thing I feel guilty about is a year ago, I had a conversation with city employees concerned about the way people, employees with disabilities are treated. And I meant to like, bring them to this committee and have a discussion about that. I never did that. I am planning to have it go back to that group and have a discussion and ask, you know, what investments are necessary? Are there additional personnel there necessary? Additional, like sort of education of people about what people's rights are and who to go to. So that's something that, again, we're in a constrained budget environment, but that's something where I think that maybe a small investment could go a long way.

And. Councilor Novick, could you give me an idea of what's going to happen with the pay rate in the ride share ordinance that you're working on right now? Could you give me an idea of what that lo under transportation. So just give me give me some ideas because I've talked to a lot of the companies who do that this past week, and they're concerned that we're moving too quickly and that they they want to be a part of the process, but they have not been as engaged in your helping to write your ordinance. And I haven't seen the new language. So they keep asking me about it and I don't have it.

Well, we've talked to both uber and lyft in the past week, and we understand that we're not we're not going to rush things through without giving them opportunity to explain their perspective. We're having a we're having conversations with two national economists who sort of experts in the tnc field tomorrow. And one of them is a guy from colombia who has issued a study saying that he thinks that uber, just in the past couple of years, has increased their take from 32 to 42%. So I'm interested to hear what he says about that. I mean, what uber what uber said in particular about lyft echoed it is that they hate the idea of a take rate, that they'd rather us do pretty much anything else. They'd rather do a per mile per minute thing like they have in Washington state. We still think a take rate, you know, it makes sense. It's easy to explain to the public. It's easier for PBOT to administer. So we'll have that. We'll have that back and forth. And we'll I mean, with lyft, it's interesting is lyft claims that they already guarantee drivers 70% of the take. So with them you would think it would just be sort of negotiation. Okay. Can you not live with 80. Can you live with 75? But they two make it sound like no, having a mandatory take rate is just an outrage. So we're we're asking them, okay, what we've asked them, what exactly is the problem? If you say you're already doing this, what would be the difference between you're saying you're doing it and are ordering you to do it?

But that wasn't what we saw from the data that we learned a couple weeks ago.

Well, what we saw is numbers all over the place, depending on the individual ride. And the drivers are skeptical of what lyft says is that on average, a driver gets 70% of the take. The drivers are skeptical of that claim.

Okay. The other issue about this that I'm really concerned about and that I hope that you continue to do, is the idea of how they terminate a driver's ability to to drive. They don't have a real person to talk to. And this is all done electronically if they want to, if they want to contest some things that people are saying. And I think it really impacts a lot of immigrants and underserved folks. And I think that we need to also, I know it's kind of hard to do two things at once on this, but we need to we need to figure out some ways. If it's not in this bill that we help to navigate that. Because I think that is a that is a real issue.

And we're talking to PBOT about that have initial conversations with them about if we had an appeal process, sort of a due process process for deactivation, what would that look like? What resources would take to do it? So yeah, we are following up on that with the the drivers really wanted to prioritize wages first, but we're not we're not letting the deactivation issue go.

Okay, okay, that that sounds very, very good. Councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Why don't you go to councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: For councilor Kanal? I don't have my glasses on, so. Councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thanks. I wanted to talk about the internal side and I have three big areas and then a couple kind of very specific things, and one of them kind of crosses over, but contracting is the first one. This has come up quite a bit. It's very difficult because sometimes when we talk about a $25,000 contract to do a task and you can't hire an fte for that, even a even a half time fte for it. But what often happens is those contracts get extended or they add up in some way. And so there are millions of dollars of contracts out here as a city. This is why for those who've been following along the the city administrator's reports for several months have been asking for a single list of the big contracts. And the big contracts to me include the aggregate of an extended contract with the same people. But we might not get that in version one. But just to have that in one place would really help us assess and say to not only ourselves as budget and,d, you know, stewards, but also to our labor partners, what is it that that we should be contracting or not? The second thing, and this is the one that crosses over, is the office of equity and human rights. And I think it's it's indicative of citywide core services. And the broader. We can't be maximizing our impact in the bureaus if we don't have a strong core with the power to ensure equity across the whole enterprise, not just equity within equity and human rights, but this one I wanted to call out specifically because it's, it's it's been cut. I agree to the bone. I'd go further. I think we've, we've frankly taken off a couple limbs to belabor this, this analogy to, to death. And we need to be investing there in not only money terms, but also in terms of authority. The third thing is, is the same idea, but writ within a bureau. And I'm going to I'm going to use the examples I'm most familiar with, but it's not the current leadership that did it. And it's not it's not exclusive to these two bureaus, but in the bureaus that have sworn employees, you know, police and fire, they also have other employees, right? The records clerks at PPB who are vital to ensuring that everybody works. But the way we do our budgeting process, we often see that those are the folks that that get proposed for cuts first. And I want to have conversations where we're not applying budget asks, but also personnel specific budget asks by bureau only because we're and I think there are different service areas have explored this in parks. For example, before when we had vibrant communities as a service area, they actually took some of the non-core staff non-core, not in a negative way, but in the sense of not maintenance people or construction people for physical parks. But the customer service folks that do park reservations, they actually move them into another bureau within the same service area and had it provide services to arts and culture as well. And so those are, those are options that exist. But making sure that what I'm really trying to say is we can't get out of balance where we're only cutting the thing that isn't the obvious service you think a bureau provides, which is, for example, police officers and investigators or firefighters. But we're also protecting those folks who maintain their vehicles. Right. And by the way, police officers and firefighters don't want to see those folks get cut either. I've heard from labor partners there, and we need to protect them as strongly as we protect firefighters. So that's that's what I'm trying to get at there. Some one specific thing I wanted to to call out there on the police side is victims advocates, who I know police officers also care about quite a bit being there. And as we go through these these budget proposals, getting into the weeds on the personnel side is sort of a necessity to make sure that we're not getting out of balance there.

I, I agree with you, councilor Kanal. I think that's so important. And until we get a real number and we get a line item from the city administrator's office that tells us how are those $600 million that that's in grants that I've been asking about for this whole year? Tell me, what's the use? It's just sitting there. Why haven't we RFP it out or giving it to a to a bureau? Why can't we use some of those funds that would take away some ftes? And I'm really concerned about our public safety bureau's fire and police that we're going to try and realign to meet a goal. And let's let's talk about the. The elephant in the room. I'm not willing to cut ftes to pay for an unfunded homeless system. I'm not I'm not willing to say that our people who've been working here for five, ten, 15 years to cut them so that we can offer a shelter system that is not fully being used, those shelters that we those overnight shelters, they are not to capacity. And they are not even to 50% many nights. And I don't really blame folks who are houseless at this point, because imagine, just think about trying to try to put yourself in their position that they have to get to some place by 9:00, and then they have to get up at five or so to be out by six. And now their task is to figure out where do they go between 6 and 9:00. There is a lot of foolishness that can happen between 6 and 9 p.m. And. I. I just think it's wrong. I think if we're going to do it, we need to do it all the way. And they need to be 24 over seven. I get I don't like seeing our neighbors on our city streets. I don't. And I think that the mayor's idea that to give everybody a place to stay, it is very noble. But the reality is people, they would prefer to stay in a tent where they know they could be 24 hours then to come and stay in one of our overnight shelters. So that's what I'm going to be looking at, and that's what I'm going to be committing to. I'm, I'm, I'm not going to cut our people up so that we can pay for a system that is not that is not helping people. And then you have to give me some numbers on the recidivism rates. So is that worth putting our folks on the unemployment line and possibly being homeless or houseless and not being able to pay their mortgage because we're we're in a recession, whether or not folks want to believe that or not. And if you look at the federal level and what happened, particularly black women on the federal side, they were the biggest losers in all of the federal system. And this was by design. And I don't want our city employees for one minute to think, want us to think that I or anybody you know, up here is, is willing to make that trade off. I think we need to figure out how we can help people from a workforce development standpoint who are in our shelters. I think we need to to have some wraparound supports. And that's the other thing. The folks that are in in our overnight shelters, they don't get wraparound services, so we can't really manage them in a way that is meaningful or to help them go someplace. That's why with the slow the fall to homelessness, that I was very supportive of putting dollars in for homeless shelters, for folks in homeless shelters, to give them rent assistance so they can get get on their feet. And all these folks. And this is leading into other, other areas, like why do we have 2000 empty vacant places from home forward? What is why is that looking the way it looks? Do we need to use some money to help get those? I mean, those are federal. Those are federal. We don't have any jurisdiction over them. But I mean, it's almost like, do we do we help to to, to, to rehab some of those units or, I mean, or do we urge them to spend their resources to rehab because it's affecting the safety. Councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you, madam chair. Thank you for bringing us into this space, because I have been wondering when this topic was going to really come out into the room, bubble up because it is unavoidable. You know, you're hitting on something that I've been thinking about a lot, which is that what are the metrics like? If we have 60% capacity, it means that 40% of it on any given night is not being used. And I know that if you're going to go forward with I mean, you cannot close $170 million gap unless you touch either public safety or Portland solutions. And I know what happens if you cut into the public safety budget. You're going to close fire stations. You're going to you're going to get us to a place where we're not going to be able to hire at the level that we need to, to bring our overtime levels down and police. And that's a fact. And so where else do we go? Do we cut every other piece of the city and just leave it bone dry? Or do we look at the big chunk of one time money? So I appreciate your willingness to kind of raise that up. I mean, I do think that we have an obligation to take care of our neighbors, but there's a lot of different ways to do it. And I, and I've been worried about I have been worried about that gap from, from the morning to the, to the later part of the morning. And I hear that concern from people across the spectrum of support on these things, people who absolutely hated the overnight shelters in the first place, to people who, you know, want them or always wanted them and everyone in between, because it creates this disruptive boundary condition in the middle. And so that's something I think we need to address. And then the other piece, and it was very, you know, there was probably more heat than light in it when we did the fall towel adjustment with Morillo one. But what we were trying to do there was recognize that in the impact reduction program specifically, we were over our target. We had budgeted to a number of sweeps for the year. And we had we had we were on track to exceed that. And so that wasn't the style to do it. We got a lot of pushback. We got smacked pretty hard. That's why we want to talk about it now and give folks an opportunity to think through what the implications and trade offs would be. But I want to just say that if you look at the data in those camp cleanups, that is an endless resource sink, because when they sweep tents out of my district in downtown, where do they go? Where do they go? They go, they go to your district and they go to southwest Portland, and they go to other parts of the reach of the district, and it just becomes a sort of endless cycle that I think was going to take ever more resources to stay on top of. And so we need those upstream solutions. This is the time to talk about it. I think there's going to be some tough choices as we get into that. No one's going to be happy. But but I but I appreciate your leadership in naming that. I, we don't I personally don't have appetite to cut down city ftes, to make room for, for, for an ad hoc one time program.

I think we gave everybody a pass this last year. And to the mayor's credit, he was trying to offer. And what he's trying to do is offer overnight shelters in every part, in every district of the city. And that's that is great. And maybe if we have to do some cutting is that we offer a, a bus trip to wherever the open, wherever the open from a centralized place, wherever the open shelters are. That's not too costly. That would cost us $53 million to, to fund those, those overnight shelters. I'm, I'm just concerned. And you brought up something else about Morillo one, which also was in ssmith one as well. The employee set aside. We need to leave employees money alone.

Yeah.

And boy, oh boy, did that come back to bite us in a big way. And we called it out Morillo one called it out ssmith one called it out. And here we are in that situation and I'm just I'm just I'm just floored by the, the lack of respect for for employees, colas and those kinds of things. And they said, oh, it won't happen. We'll get the money back. And in the, in the springtime. But how do you know that you're going to it's going to come back. How do you know that we're going to have an increase in the blt that we didn't see at the top of the year? So that's a problem. Councilor Dunphy, president Dunphy.

Thank you.

This is great conversation, and I really appreciate this conversation about the the overnight shelters. I have been deeply skeptical and quite critical at times. So I look forward to the a more robust conversation amongst us as we approach this budget. Our friend isaac is standing in the back, and he reminded me of something that I was talking about with regard to the the culture for employees. I got to do a ride along with fire station 31. They don't have air conditioning. You know, our fire employees are are the only ones who we require to stay overnight. You know, they have to sleep for their shifts. And they told us they don't have air conditioning in station 31, and that the building can get over 85 degrees at night. It is really unreasonable if we are going to require our employees to be in a place that should be in livable condition. So I want to see, you know, that's a big investment, but I just want to call it out because we need to make if we're going to fix the culture, let's also fix the buildings.

Council president, would you have a problem with me calling isaac up or isaac, would you have a problem with me calling you up?

Sure. Always ready? Yeah.

Isaac, could you introduce yourself?

Yes. Good afternoon. Isaac mcclymont, president of the Portland firefighters association. Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about what council president was talking about in terms of air conditioning. That just seems like that that is that should be just standard.

Yeah. You know, obviously just like any other city facility at times, you know, those systems can fail. So I think in that situation, while I know that there's all of our fire stations have hvac systems installed, some of them are aging and have are, you know, they're quite old and haven't been repaired for some time. So and then of course, you know, when things break, especially when there's high heat conditions, temperatures inside the fire stations can definitely rise. I mean, you know, that's not a unique problem to fire stations. That's every facility in every building. So yeah, while our members do work 24 hours a day for a good reason, we never know when emergencies are going to strike. You know, when, when, when, when we're back from a fire or other emergency, that's, that's our place to sort of recover. We have to wash off all the soot and smoke that's on our bodies and their showers. And then, of course, you know, in, in, in all hours of the day, we need to be ready to respond.

Councilor council president, I think that this is an example of one time only monies that we can use, one time only monies for, for our people. And so you already know what I'm thinking, but these are, these are opportunities that we get a chance to, to, to upgrade our assets. And. Chair Olivia Clark of the transportation, she put out a resolution that we passed to kind of identify our assets throughout the city and see what the deferred maintenance is and what it's going to cost. But these kinds of things, they're very expensive, but they're they're one time things. When you have one time only money, I think we need to spend them on things that will upgrade our city facilities and our assets and also change the the trajectory of how you live, because that is a living space inside, inside the firehouse. And we need to be concerned about that. And this is the first that I've ever heard of it. I thank you for bringing that forward. Since you do have the mic and I'm giving you an open floor, do you have anything else that you'd like to add as it relates to labor and and how we should be looking at realignment and those kinds of things?

You know, I listened to your comments to begin with. And, you know, I do appreciate all of you because it seems like you have workers, you know, front and center of your, of your mind when you make decisions regarding the budget, you know, and specifically just quickly to kind of circle back to your comment on one time funds and, and our firehouses, we call them firehouses because we effectively do live in them for a third of our life for 25 to 30 years, you know, and we jokingly, although it's, it's quite real. We see our, our coworkers at those fire stations more than we see our own families because of the time in which we spend at those fire, those firehouses, and we treat them like they're our own. We care for them, we clean them, we maintain them to a degree. Obviously, anything that requires more heavy systems, we have to have professionals go in there and do that, but we make sure that they're clean and good working order because we we we take care of them, care of them like they're our own homes. And so for in the back of your, your question regarding, you know, budget priorities and how the work that city council can do to maintain that, I certainly agree with the larger concept that, you know, a lot of these workers, we, you know, we care about this city deeply. And it's obviously troubling to hear that the strife between, whether it be managers and the workers or managers, managers, you know, causing sort of not feeling like this place is you want to work. I think that everybody wants to come to work and know that your work matters and you're making a difference and that you're treated with respect, you know, and firefighters are no different. We want we have we have a job. We have we are very service oriented. And at the end of the day, you know, it's these are obviously very troubling conversations that we're going to have over the next few months. And for for our part, you know, we're happy to do our work, but we can't do it with less firefighters. We know that there's reports on the city's website right now that show we're understaffed, we're under-supported. And so the notion of cutting of any kind to our frontline services and as a councilor Kanal mentioned, those back end services, we are literally at bare bones in the fire bureau. And we we are that way because we've never cut frontline services when budget cuts have come before us. And that's that's why we find ourselves in this position. So how we get through this, you know, to your position, you know, madam chair, is we are in a recession. We know that and we know that we have to be part of the conversation. But when you as we you know, we're going through some challenging times. I think as a world, as a nation, as a state and as a city and county, and the firefighters are the safety net for every person that lives in this city, we respond and we will be at your location in five minutes from you calling 911 at a time. When we're dealing with such challenging situations, the firefighters are here to catch everyone and anyone in their most troubling time. And I think we're all going through some troubling times. So I would just kind of add that freely since you've asked me to be up here.

Thank you. Isaac, not only do you do amazing work for this city, but when there are emergencies outside of the city. I know last year when that plane fell not too far from my house in fairview, that we were all hands on deck helping them. I mean, just imagine waking up in the morning and a plane drops in your residential neighborhood and everything goes up. It's just, I mean, to, to rescue folks to, to try to make sure that you contain the fire and you all jumped in and you helped. And I was so proud of you. And this is, this is what we do. We we're public servants. And it doesn't end at the at the city limits of Portland, because we also fly out. And we went out to california this last year with the with the wildfires. And I, I just want to say from from me and I can probably safely say from, from this committee that we are very proud of the work that you do here and outside of the city. It makes a big difference now.

Thank you very much for that.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. And then I'm going to go to councilor Kanal.

Sameer Kanal: Thanks. I won't make isaac explain this part, but I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the needs at station two in the training station and the the investments that are required there for fire as well as the, the things that sometimes don't show up as, as a closed fire station in the press when we do a cut, but still have a massive impact. We've had, I believe, in the last 20 years, 15 years, a tripling of call volume at station eight, which has lost one of its two apparatus and therefore half of its staffing. So that's lombard interstate and district two, by the way. So there are things that that we can do there that are going to make small investments can make a big difference in maintaining a boat is another thing. Hidden island. So the other piece that also relates to fire and also to police, which boec 911 did, is invested in the training pipeline because in order to get a dispatcher, it's six ish months. And so what you end up doing is if you divert some of the money that is paying for your current staff to hiring and training up folks that aren't taking on the workload, you're ending up picking and choosing between. And so at different times, especially during the pandemic, you saw at first a prioritization of maintaining what we have even as vacancies were accruing. And but there was no money going into the pipeline to get out of that. And they eventually made a shift. And in the longer run, they actually found a way to, to get their budget to have both. So it's sort of above budget hiring so that you're, you're building to it. And that that applies, I would argue more for fire and police, which have longer training timelines. And so those are things that we have to, to, to figure out. The other thing is hiring to the need that we project at the end of the training pipeline, last year in the spring tor, there was a conversation about carrying over money for for firefighter training, and it would have happened where it could have been starting to be spent in July. Whereas money that happens in the budget often can't immediately get spent. And I argued then that it was going to matter a great deal more to get that money spent so we could start training new firefighters in July. This was a conversation we had in March or April, because we knew there was going to be a retirement spike in may 2026. And in in police and fire, you can predict that because there are spikes related to when there's 27 pay periods in the last year versus 26. And we knew there was one coming up in may. It's a little harder to do with police because it's beyond a single fiscal year. But with fire, you can you can see that coming and say, let's start training to it. And unfortunately, we weren't able to get that done in the towel. So there's going to be a little gap where we have people in the pipeline, but we don't have everybody that's already currently in the force because they're going to have some predictable levels of retirement. And so building that what what boec did, that sort of pipeline and a separate, I think they use one time dollars for this budget line that allows for hiring above the the maximum authorized when it's going to align with a future retirement spike is something that I want to talk about. I'm trying to explain it in layman's terms. It's not the technical way, but I know dca causey was director of boec then and so is the expert on it. But I also imagine that that the labor folks know more about it too. So I just wanted to take the opportunity to talk about that. Since we were talking about fire and as well as as well as police. The other piece I'd mention is the css change is really helpful, I think not change, sorry, addition of that metric of current service level, because it helps highlight what we need to do to maintain services, not what we need to do in a purely mathematical exercise. And we've been doing this in fits and starts. In fact, you and I, madam chair, each put forward an amendment last year, yours to the lmc proposal and mine to the ppa proposal to fully fund the health care at the highest level, both of which passed 12 zero. I'm very proud of this council for doing that, and I think recognizing the full costs that each of which goes up at a different rate as part of this process is really important. So thanks.

And I think councilor Kanal, the really boss move that that happened during that time was councilor Avalos. She put in a amendment that that said, if we know that this is happening every year, why aren't we budgeting for what we know is it's going to be. So we just need to add $15 million. And so as a result, we'll learn a little bit more about that later this afternoon in our exec session. But I think with with those votes and, and what we did in voting for the $15 million to be added, it, it gives employees some, some solace that we're fighting for them and we see them and we hear them, and we understand that is a big issue. The other issue that I want to make sure that who's who's going to sit on city life, is anybody on city life? Nobody here is going to know. That's a problem. Nobody from our labor department is sitting on city life. That's a problem. Mr. President.

Talk about it in July.

Maybe we can. But we had a conversation here. The folks who are now being looked at to to review the police reports, we asked them to bring back the. Well, no, just yeah. To, to bring to bring us back a different wage. And I wanted to give a, a friendly. Just a friendly, not amendment, but I was going to ask someone who's going to sit on that city life, or if Elana pirtle-guiney is looking at this, that they make sure that they that they level set those folks salary, that you can't be paying folks lower than the people who are coming over. Yeah.

What we're talking about the office of community based police accountability.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, exactly. And so I was going to say if somebody is going over there, that y'all need to make sure that those folks get their their level set salaries, because that is just unconscionable to have people working in the same office and making different pay rates. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And anything else that we need to talk about is councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Yes. Thank you. Just on that note, I would encourage you to. I think you should just sign up for testimony at that committee and be like, hey, this is unfinished business. Is this committee willing to take it up? If not, then I'm bringing forward an action and I'll support you in that kind of maneuver. That's a boss maneuver, I think.

Okay.

The other piece, the reason I got back in the stack is I just wanted to talk about, you know, we talk a lot about the costs and the expenses in our budget, but we don't talk a lot about the revenue structure of our budget. I think that we're we're ready to talk about that. I'm ready to talk about that. I know that there's a sort of unwritten rule that that's a no no, that you do not talk about taxes and revenues and fees. But I looked at me and I have been looking at this. I've been talking to councilor Novick, who's the og champion of a pay ratio surtax, and I would like to bring something forward soon. But I think the reason why that's important is because if you look if you look at our costs in context, you know, people talk about an $8.6 billion budget. That is the wrong way to think about this, because that includes all the contingencies. That includes all the capital programs, reserves. But what is our operating budget and our operating budget? If you standardize it on a per capita basis, is $7,500 per person per year, does that is that big or low? We don't know unless we put it in context. And I'm just going to read you some other cities. Pittsburgh 8000. Philadelphia 9600. New york city 13,000. Kansas city 5000. Chicago 9000. Los angeles 11,000. And the median of all these. This broad database that I'm reading from is about 6000. And so we're. I did some math yesterday at the dais, and I know that math is always hard, but I had a spreadsheet helping me out. And we're at the 75th, 71st percentile for that. But we're a high cost city. We're a west coast city. And so I think that places us right in the middle. I don't think that we're rich in over overrun on costs for our operating expenses. Of course, we can get some efficiencies by reorganizing things. I think that's always a good thing to do. But this idea that we have to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut our way to prosperity is, is foolish. I think I think that we've got we're suffering from the legacy of prop five and 50, measure five and 50. We're suffering from a legacy of, you know, self-inflicted in some sense, where we have a bunch of specialized funds where revenues only flow to one specific purpose, which limits our ability to be flexible in times. But we are ready to have that conversation because I think if we're going to take care of our workforce and build our administrative capacity to execute the level of service that portlanders deserve, we have to invest in that. And we're this is not this next budget. I mean, I'm worried about the $170 million gap right ahead of us, but I I'm not confident it's it's going to be much slower as a gap in 27, 28 or 28, 29. And so we need to think about how we're going to support those budgets now.

But councilor. And also we're going to have the tough the taxi. Utility fund.

Those are restricted.

Well, it's restricted to streets and those kinds of things. But what they will also do, it will put money on the streets for our contractors, particularly our minority contractors, if we get that tough enacted.

So I just wanted to read you the citation of where I'm pulling these numbers. I'm not just making numbers up, but there's a think tank called the lincoln institute of land policy, and they maintain a database, what they call fiscally standardized cities. And so their methodology is published on their website. Full disclosure, it was founded by a henry georgist, you know, millionaire from, you know, from maybe 100 years ago. And he left. But but those kind of guys tend to think, care a lot about cities and their health and how to equity pay for them. And this is good data. So encourage everyone to look at that.

We will go and look at that. We're approaching 1250. I'm going to I'm going to call councilor Novick. He's in the queue. Could you send us home? Because we have to call up our next our next group.

Yes. There's just four quick things I wanted to say. First of all, councilor Green, I need to remind you that the first rule of tax club is you don't talk about tax club. Second madam chair, ditto, ditto. Ditto to your comment that you're not going to want to lay off city employees in order to keep these overnight shelters going that the mayor funded with one time money, knowing the money would wind up, would run out this year? I do have to say that councilor Green knows this, but on the subject of camp removals, I do think that there are some camps that cause enough public safety and livability issues for the immediate community that some of them do occasionally need to be removed. And finally, I just had to say, with regard to fire, I had a conversation a few minutes ago with the aye, Morillo executive and one of the other general fund bureaus who said, you know, the problem with competing with fire is they can always say that if you cut fire. Lives will be lost. And this official said that like kind of frustration, like it's an unfair advantage, but it happens to be true.

Or lives will be saved. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you all for kind of having this free flow conversation. We don't get a chance to do that, but since we all are leaving each other, I'm going to be sad that I'm not sitting here as chair. But the good news is that I will be talking about some of these labor issues in our public works committee, and I'll be the vice chair. And so some of these issues will come up again and we will be able to be helpful, particularly with some of the ideas you're talking about. And councilor Green, I do support you on on looking at that revenue stuff. It's going to have to happen after this budget cycle. But I'm with you on that. Diana, can you call our next. Presentation?

Sure. Item two state of black business in Portland.

Yes. Could. Nate mccoy, president and ceo of namak, Oregon, and could john Washington come to the come to the dais and the any other folks who are. I see evan goss. Emmanuel williams.

Will be be with us today.

So evan is not with us.

Bryson. Bryson. Davis. Bryson emmanuel.

And emmanuel williams from the black united fund.

Yes, ma'am.

Wow, what a good looking group of black men. I'm just going to say it.

We decided to come as a united force to present to you today from the association strengthening our communities. We're all members. So we decided we'd like to come and say hi.

Thank you. And you're going to give us a state of black businesses in the state of Oregon, not just Portland, but you're going to tell us about Portland. But it also is indicative of what's happening around the state of Oregon as well.

Yes.

Is do we have monique online? She's supposed to be online.

Yes. I'm online. Councilor.

Monique, thank you for coming. Thank you for being willing to give your presentation online. Would you like to go first? I know you have another commitment.

Sure. That'd be great. Thank you.

Thank you. Monique clayborne. She is the ceo of greater Portland, inc. Can you start your presentation, monique?

Sure. I can't see the slides.

Let's see. You can't see. So, do we have her slides?

We never received any slides.

Okay. I wonder, does does elijah have those slides? Did elijah get the elijah.

Yes, her chris should have her slides. Diana. I can I can send them over to you right now.

What? The clerk's office doesn't run slides during committee meetings, so I think christopher might be able to.

Can christopher do it? Yeah. Thank you, christopher. And thank you, adam, because I see you on the ready back there always. So this is very this is very important topic because as we start talking about growing the economy in the in the city of Portland, we have to talk about our diverse businesses and especially our black businesses, because they're some of the most innovative and creative. But in many ways, they're underserved and undercapitalized. And I think that when we talk about the economy, we don't always get to hear from you. We don't always have you at the table and giving your your impression on what the needs are, what you're working towards. And I know that you were over at the Portland chamber breakfast the other morning giving this very same presentation. So I feel like, you know, we were we were on point to do this in a, in a larger venue so that the public can see and hear exactly what's going on in businesses in the african American community, not just in Portland, but what's happening statewide. Did you did you get the.

Okay there?

Okay, great. Monique, can you see them?

I can, thank you. Okay. Good afternoon everyone. My name is monique cardwell. I'm the president and ceo of greater Portland, inc. And we are responsible for business recruitment in the region for trade sector businesses. And I have a unique advantage in being also a black woman and understanding the the ecosystem of Portland, as well as the business and private sector community. Next slide. So the state of black businesses in the Portland region, really black businesses in Portland navigate very complex landscape of historical displacement as well as systemic barriers. Next slide. Those barriers include systemic disinvestment and historic displacement, gentrification and rising costs, limited access to capital and loans, economic vulnerability and pandemic impact that we're still experiencing, vandalism and public safety concerns, and performative support and marketing challenges in Oregon right now, black population is makes up 4% of the population, and we make up just 1% of businesses in the state. And so there is untapped potential in the amount of black businesses we could have here. And what I see is we're operating on the margins of the Oregon economy and not truly embedded in the economy. Next slide. So some of the work that's happening here, I know you have nate in front of you today, but it really positions the black business association of Oregon at the center of the barriers. What we're seeing here and the opportunities and again, being able to be embedded in the Oregon economy. And so the association. Nadim, I know you speak to what you do, but it's again, it implements data driven strategy right now that is truly focused on closing the racial wealth gaps and institutionalizing economic mobility for black Oregonians, so we can take up more than just 4%. Next slide. So some of my recommendations, nate has not seen them, but it is really to lift up bbwr. I think they're critical. They are well positioned within the Portland metro chamber at the intersection of private sector, as well as entrepreneurship within the black community. Next slide. So number one, we need to position bba as the region's exclusive partner for supplier diversity for black owned firms. At the breakfast yesterday, I asked the question while I was a panelist. Everyone, raise your hand if you have a business. And you know, quite a number of folks raised their hands. And then I said, put your hands down. If you have received contracts as a result of this or sorry, it was the reverse. Put your hands down. If you've ever been successful with receiving supplier diversity and all the hands went down, there may have been seriously 1 or 2 hands that still had a. They had up. And so that's an important data point. One for a couple of reasons. One, because there are so many of our black businesses that are not in a position to take advantage of the supplier diversity programs, just by the nature of the type of businesses that we own. Right. And so how can we be inclusive in making sure these businesses are a part of the supply chain and getting contracts and purchasing if they're not, you know, within those manufacturing type supply chain or a paper distributor or you name it, and where these large corporations are procuring, right? So that's number one. And then number two, for those that don't have those type of businesses, how are we leveraging our network, our industries, our collaboration, our capital, social capital? So they're in a position to win and be a l is well positioned to do that. Next slide. Well, so we'll go into that. But these are some deliverables I've had. And I've talked to nate about how they can how they can do that. Next slide. So again, own the narrative and the visibility. There's no other organization that's telling that story. And I like to see funding for bbwr in this area where they are really honing in, and they are the go to organization for the black business growth story. In addition to the data that they're sharing. Next slide. So next slide. So right now, again, there's no statewide data on black owned business performance. We know last year or two. Yeah, two legislative sessions when lance was over the organization, he lobbied hard for the secretary of state that when you are filling out your paperwork, you're also self-identifying your black owned right, or where the business is coming from. And that received a lot of opposition. And so there are other ways in how we can identify. And I think that's that's important because then we're able, once we have that type of data, we're able to troubleshoot a number of those challenges as well as offer more opportunities there. Next slide. Is that the next slide? Okay. We're somewhere. But yeah, no. So these are again, just what I see from my lens. I think we need to hold up bbwr. It's integral to what we're doing. It needs to be a household name. There's so much in terms of ideation within the black community, and we really need to get it to scale. Thank you.

Monique, could you what is bbba00.

So that was in the first slide. The black business association of Oregon, where nate mccoy is currently interim president.

As if he doesn't have enough to do.

As if.

We already village.

Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for your presentation, I appreciate it. This is some good data to have so that we can make sure that we refer back to. Because when we're trying to create policies, whether those are just non-money policies that we make sure that we also can put some resources in places to help with, with, with the cobid statewide activity that the lack of activity that's happening statewide. So I think that we all need to know this. And I think this this presentation should be heard in the committee of the whole. Because I don't think people. I just happen to see the chair sitting next to me, the future chair. But because this is important, and as we try to identify opportunity, that opportunity to contract out with city, local, state and federal governments because we're we're contracting out almost half of what we bring in. And if you don't know the process of getting into the process or how to do it, or, or that you are even a, a option, that you even have an option to do it. So I think there's a lot of education on both sides that need to happen from government and from, from you all to tell us who's out there.

Absolutely. One thing that we see is culturally specific organizations support black businesses, right? Chambers support the broader business community, economic development organizations support growth and traded sector companies and private sector supports supplier diversity programs. And so black businesses are supported by the culturally specific organizations and they're supported by the black community, which I said just make up 4%. And so it's really important when you look at black entrepreneurship and black businesses that are thriving and other communities atlanta, detroit, Washington, dc, houston is because those businesses are integrated into the local economy and not operating on the margins. And they're supported by the economic development organizations. They're supported by the chambers of commerce. They're supported by the private sector community, and not just in supplier diversity programs. It's in the partnerships. It's in the networks, it's in the collaboration, it's in the social capital, it's in the financing. And we have a long way to go here in Portland.

Yeah, we are, and we have been considered one of the widest cities in America. And I think that knowing that information, it's all about the education. And we have to be deliberate and intentional when when doing this work and bringing folks in as a former and I guess still small business owner, I know what it's like to have to go through getting certified for for COVID what it's like going into a government trying to figure out how can how can we partner. And it is very intimidating because you don't know who to talk to. And it's. And now, since COVID, a lot of folks are not in offices and you have to email them. And so that is a very impersonal way to do business. And, you know, after sending out so many emails and trying to identify who is who, you know, sometimes we give up. And I just have to tell you, we do give up. But I thank you. Monique clayborn cardwell I always miss saying your second last name.

And it's new. It's new in the last couple of months.

Right? And I was like, okay, she she's coming up with some some something new, but I was going to talk to you about that offline.

But.

No.

But thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you for for coming to Oregon. You've been great and a great addition. So I appreciate you and your family.

Thank you, I appreciate it. Councilor.

Yep. So I think we're going to since since we talked about nate. Nate, I think we're going to have you go next. And nate mccoy, president and ceo of namak, Oregon and the interim executive director of the black business association of Oregon. Thank you for coming today. Could you introduce yourself as well?

Absolutely. Thank you for inviting us. Commissioner Smith. Chair Smith, for the labor and workforce committee, alongside your other fellow councilors. For the record, if I have to be formal, nate mccoy, I am the president and ceo of the largest chapter of the national association of minority contractors representing the state of Oregon. And as you said, we're a dual hat as the interim executive director of the black business association of Oregon, coined by bao, which part of the reason certainly I'm here today is to also lift up our strengthening our communities coalition. You'll hear from some of those partners. You mentioned the event yesterday, a resounding success as a first conversation of many to come. The big takeaway for at least the creation of why bao exists is we all had to watch george floyd lose his life in 2020 in front of everybody's camera and tv, and people forget about the root cause behind that. The root cause was is he had a fake $20 bill, which was an economic disparity amongst not just what we see in Portland, but across the nation in many cities. And so the takeaway from that was, okay, we have a lot of people who will, you know, come out with slogans, black lives matter, all the things that we, we see, but not a lot of action behind those words. And so we asked the Portland metro chambers, you know, let's not just have statements, let's actually create something that we can all work together on and partnership. And so that grew a division of namak and raised $1 million in less than a year. And that wasn't white guilt money. That was allies who had influence, who said, we will give you money and support your communities, and how can we help to support them as we continue? So where we are in 2026, we just launched a strategic roadmap for bao. And what we talked about yesterday is that there is no black monolithic group that is going to save everything for the black cause in Portland, Oregon, clearly across the nation too. But in working together and creating a framework, which is what the roadmap is, we need to educate ourselves of not what's just happening in Portland, Oregon, but what's happening across the whole state of Oregon. Monique mentioned the work that secretary of state is charged to do, which is renew every business in the whole state of Oregon. There is no reason why, when we can calibrate and find 3000 businesses, black in particular, and only 300 combined black businesses in the whole cobid directory, there's a lot of other folks who do not know what cobid is across Oregon, rural and urban, and the the cycle of even going over those hurdles has gotten better. But it's not a perfect system. So what I think this roadmap really is doing is let's working with the groups here locally, but let's go across the state and really roll tour and see what other groups are doing good work so that we can understand our swim lanes to use the cidse model, which we all know what that means. Comprehensive economic development strategy. We're all talking about it across the state, something we haven't had in the state of Oregon in a long time. If no time, according to some economists. And so if we're going to build that, let's not forget that there's black businesses, as you said, councilor Smith, that they don't get lost in the sauce of. What does that mean for us? And some of the preliminary work I've seen is really starting to suggest big businesses like intel and nike. And how do we keep them here? The blazers glad to hear that. We're going to support and keeping a franchise like that here in the city. But what does that mean for all the other businesses that are also looking for. How do we stay afloat in the city of Portland and across the state without leaving to go somewhere else where the tax reliefs are maybe better? And so the resiliency of this roadmap is to really just bring our groups together so that we can create a coordinated plan to get past stale conversations and move to swift, accountable actions in a comprehensive way. So that's what the real precipice of the conversation yesterday was. But to have a lot of black businesses in the space with a lot of other successful white business owners and corporate and policy makers, I mean, the makeup was beautiful to see. Pmc gave us a lot of credit for having the folks who had never been to pmc settings before be there to really understand how can we work together.

Jealous, because I saw the pictures, man.

You know, there's a women of influence event that, you know, we probably would have had 300 people there, but well, you know, there were some folks that had another kind of competing event. At the same time.

We had a council meeting yesterday.

Yes. Wednesdays.

Yes. A council meeting that I had to be at. And I try not to to to miss if I'm not here, you know, personally I'm on the line, but I wanted to go and I got caught up for whatever reason. Don't leave at 730 to try to get from east Portland downtown. You can't get down here quick enough. Absolutely. So at any rate, I wanted to come, but I saw that it was a huge success. I saw people in the in the audience that I had never seen before. And I thought it was really, really good. Now, are you going to give part of your presentation?

Yeah, I wanted to and I wanted to also say one more thing that set the stage for that event yesterday, strengthening our coalition, our community's coalition group, also held the governor. And this is where it ties to this committee. We had a Oregon state disparity study that was launched three years ago, and yet have seen any tangible results come out of it. But what we do think the governor for is coming to us here on this diocese to really talk about, can we set a black roundtable together that we held last year at pcc and had over 100 businesses there, talking directly to the governor about the lackluster, less than 1% spend for black businesses at the state level. No different than what we're talking about at the city of Portland level, and pretty much every county across the whole state. We've got to change that dynamic. And what I think the theme for today is, is that we need more visibility and viability for these business concerns.

So I've been in this work for over 20 years. I've been hearing the same thing.

Nothing changed.

Since since I've been here. And even before when charles jordan was here and everybody else. And I just, you know, I want to know how to be more intentional and how to really move that dial. What are we doing? Because we keep saying the same thing. But how do we how do we make that change?

Yeah. And one thing I'll say, and then again, please, if you don't mind, I'd love us to all adlib together because, you know, I appreciate everybody's conversation in this matter. The one thing that I think very much clearly specifies with the roadmap is we've been through disparity studies. We've identified many, many, many reports that all of you all have seen before. And they always come down to always talking about the symptoms, but not the root cause of these problems. We need system change. I don't think any procurement system was ever built with small businesses in mind. The fact that my members are always called subcontractors, when we have some that are building big projects and we know who some of those folks are, they're prime contractors too. But there was never a system for thinking a black or brown contractor would rise to the occasion of being 80 million plus a year, employing people like big white businesses. If I'm being just very honest today and now we're seeing partnerships because some of these smaller businesses are competing against the big businesses and winning. And so now we've got to think about, okay, if we're showing a blueprint for some of these businesses to grow and be successful, if you can see it, you can be it. But how are we helping grow that continuum? And we need procurements to be right sized policies to be right sized with lack of barriers, because there's more barriers than there are impacts to getting people access into opportunities. And so we think there's some formulas to correct that, that we need to be very serious and honest about, not just the city of Portland, but across all the other agencies. And I've got way more specificity, but I love others to kind of just paraphrase some broadly, but I got some stuff that I definitely want you all to hear before we conclude today.

Well, one of the things that we're going to have to open up at 150, so we got about two 35 minutes to be able to set the stage. And you give us our marching orders.

Great, great, great. So aye, Morillo, thank you for this, councilor Smith, and we appreciate you giving us a platform to at least be able to share with you a little bit of the conceptual ideas that we have moving forward. Hi, my name is john Washington. I'm the executive director of the north northeast business association. Thank you, councilor Smith and the members and committees for the opportunity to speak with you on the issue of the state of black businesses in Portland. Portland is the home of roughly about 36,000 black residents, many of whom are entrepreneurs. Building businesses across industries such as construction, health care, food services, retail, manufacturing and creative industries, media marketing, etc. Much of the activity is centered along the mlk corridor is what we know as the sole district. Research from the black business association has found that nearly 45% of black owned businesses in Oregon are located within three miles of this corridor. That makes the seoul district not only a historic cultural center, but one of the most important black business ecosystems in the state. Now, what is the data showing us through our work, providing thousands of hours of technical assistance to entrepreneurs each year, we see both the promise and the pressures facing black businesses. In a survey conducted with mercy corps northwest for business operating in the northeast, 75% reported annual revenues of $50,000 or less, 95% have no emergency savings. At the same time, the state disparity study found that only 0.1% of 3.2 billion in state contract dollars went to black owned businesses. So the issue is not the lack of vision, talent or worth work ethic. The issue is capacity, infrastructure and access to opportunity. Many entrepreneurs are also navigating the long term impact of poverty, displacement, limited access to generational wealth. These realities mean many businesses begin with fewer financial cushions and smaller professional networks. Yet entrepreneurs remain one of the most powerful pathways for turning those challenges into economic mobility and community stability. At the seoul district business association, we described the journey with three ideas capacity, significance and influence. Capacity means entrepreneurs have the skills and systems to run sustainable business. Significance mean these businesses are connected to networks, mentorships and opportunities, and influence is when these businesses grow strong enough to hire workers, purchase property, pay taxes and reinvest in our communities. Across industries. Most black owned businesses face similar barriers access to capital, operational systems, digital tools, and the ability to hire their first employees. That is why workforce and entrepreneurship pipelines are so important. Programs that provide training, mentorship and operational support help entrepreneurs move from survival to stability. One model that has shown promise is the prime contractor pipeline, which has been used successfully in industries like construction, large firms or prime contractors work with small subcontractors, creating opportunities for those businesses to gain experience, grow their workforce and eventually scale into prime contractors themselves. The model such should not be limited to construction. It can. It can apply across industries from professional services to manufacturing, food systems and creative economies, casting pathways for small businesses to grow into employers and economic anchors in their communities. But many of the workforce and entrepreneur programs that help create these pipelines are now under pressure due to budget cuts and shifting priorities. At the time, much of our public investment has focused on stabilization systems such as affordable housing and social services. But if we want a stronger Portland economy, we must also invest in pathways out of dependencies and into ownership, employment and wealth creation. But when small businesses succeed, they don't just support our the owner. They create jobs, generate tax revenue, and move people from relying on public systems into contributing into our economic strength of our communities. Now, today, I brought along a set of my, my buddies with with me here. Building a strong backed business require both business infrastructure and workforce capacity. My colleague bryson davis will speak on the importance of operational systems and legal structure and financing that helps businesses become stable and investment ready. And emmanuel williams williams will speak directly to the lives, to the live, to the lived reality of entrepreneurs who try to grow their businesses while carrying the entire operations themselves. So I appreciate you giving them an opportunity to share and talk with you for a second. Thank you.

Thank you, mr. Washington.

You're welcome.

Bryson davis williams.

Yeah. So hello, counselors. Thank you for having us here. My name is bryson davis. I am the managing attorney and owner of principia business law, as well as the president of the williams and russell cdc. You know, as you as you've been hearing, black owned businesses are essential to oregon's economy and portland's economy, but today they remain underutilized. We, in our work with the business hub at williams and russell cdc, we've been able to dig into a lot of the economic information that's related to the black businesses in the city. Business ownership is one of the most reliable pathways to wealth in the nation, accounting for about 20% of household wealth nationwide. Looking in Oregon, however, black entrepreneurs remain underrepresented among business owners not because of lack of talent or demand, but because of the long standing barriers tied to capital, tied to space and tied to opportunity. A majority of our black businesses are located in the in the Portland area, and nearly 40% of those are concentrated along the mlk corridor within about three miles of the boulevard. And while this area is rich in cultural history, it's also been deeply shaped by displacement. Rising development pressures, and historic historic injustices. Most of the black owned businesses in Oregon operate at smaller scales. And so typically, when we talk about a lot of black owned businesses, only 14% earn more than $1 million in annual revenue, and many employ fewer than ten workers. I believe steven Green mentioned how many of the black businesses were sole proprietors at the at the event yesterday. And that scale kind of reaches the type of businesses that we're really looking to support here. And a lot of this disparity in size and disparity in wealth reflects those barriers to growth. So limited access to affordable commercial space growth, capital and business networks. Access to capital is one of the one of the big defining challenges. You'll see a lot of organizations in our community talking about that and working to support that. Miso is a good example of a of a local nonprofit that that that tries to overcome some of that barrier. National data shows that 4 in 10 black owned businesses were denied a loan or line of credit in 20 2024, which is the highest rate of any racial group. In response, a lot of black entrepreneurs are forced to rely on community development, financial institutions, or cdfis, as well as credit unions as well as online lenders. I noticed in my practice, I see a lot of small business owners relying on personal credit cards and personal personal loans. And, you know, all of these alliances and economic injustices go back to the historic impact of some of the development things, some of the redlining that happened, some of the urban renewal projects that happened in the in the early in the 60s and 70s and 80s. But even more recently, some of the external shocks, such as COVID 19, has had disparate impacts on black businesses. To survive. A lot of black folks who lost their jobs were forced into entrepreneurship and. Even despite that, the the pandemic hit black owned businesses the hardest, especially in sectors like the retail sector. Research shows that place matters. Even highly rated businesses in majority black neighborhoods experienced lower revenue growth, which results in billions of dollars lost in economic potential each year, which helps explain why even some strong black owned businesses struggle to scale despite having some clear demand for for what they're producing. In my work as a business attorney, I've worked with black owned businesses that are that have been successful, some that are just starting out. And one of the differences that I see is really in addition to that access to capital, also the access to an educated network of people who can point them in the right direction. I've got two clients, one who have the the business owners have the same education level. One is one is a white male who comes from a family of, of wealth and education, and another is a, a black. Dominican woman. And the difference in their education to the legal structures around contracts, around business, business governance, they just the, there's just a huge disparity between what one has been taught from just their family and, and friend connections and what the other one has. And so I find even with business owners of the same education level that some that sometimes with the black owned businesses, there's more that I've got to do to bring them up to speed on some of the concepts and a lot of city funding and city supported programing can help help in that work. I do some work with miso, where we've been doing a small business workshop, taking people through the basics of entity selection and business registration, the differences between having a sole proprietorship versus an llc and all of those things. City funding helps make those programs work. I've also been able to work with prosper Portland in their ibn network in supporting the businesses that help come through there and come through the other non-profits that are connected to that network. All of these programs can help bridge some of these gaps that these communities, especially our community, have with relationship to that networking and that educational piece. And the question that we have is, are these programs supported enough? Is there more that we can do to grow these programs, and also more that we can do to communicate to people that these programs exist? I know I've talked with people about ipr and pointed them in that direction, and they've been like, I don't even didn't even know that, that, that, that, that program was available.

We're coming down. We got about 12 minutes.

So, so I'll pass it to emmanuel here. He can, he can talk, he can talk a little bit more about what he's seen on, on on his side.

Thank you bryson. I appreciate your comments. And emmanuel williams, black united fund.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you all for giving us the time to speak. Once again, my name is emmanuel williams, representing the black united fund of Oregon. I'm the director of economic justice and development for them. I'm also the board president for taking ownership pdx, a local nonprofit here in Portland. And I'm also an entrepreneur myself, equity consulting, a lot of executive coaching and consultation when it comes to that. Fortunate to be one of the one of those black folks that have, you know, government contracts with or at least one with with metro. Right. But I'm here to speak on behalf of the entrepreneurs, the boots on the ground, the folks that are that are doing the thing. So through the black united fund of Oregon, I run the emerging entrepreneur program, which is a nine month accelerator where we support five entrepreneurs at a time, and we connect them with other subject matter experts when it comes to just go to market consultation, digital marketing specialists and accountant, a tax advisor, and even give them like mental health consultation, right? Because every, every entrepreneur, we're, we can be our worst critic and sometimes just really need that time to speak with someone and be able to bounce ideas off of and not always be the person that's looked to produce and drive revenue and do all those things. So through the, through the emerging entrepreneur program, this accelerator program, you know, meeting with these folks, whether it's weekly, bi weekly, and really walking them through their business, these are folks that are, that have been in business for 1 to 5 years and are doing good. Right? They haven't reached six figures of revenue, but they, they have shown year over year revenue growth in the application for the program. And they're, they're gaining traction, right? So whether it's these folks that, that apply to this program and only the top, you know, 3%, 4% get selected, whether it's them or other folks that don't even make it in the program. But I, that I meet with like on a monthly basis. What I'm seeing is that one thing that I want everyone to really understand when we talk about black business, when we talk about business, when we think about business, we're thinking, when you hear the word business, you're thinking maybe target, walmart, nike, intel. But when we're talking about black businesses, especially in Portland or Oregon, we're talking about people. We're just talking about people. Everyone's kind of mentioned like, you know, there's you was talking about with steven Green was saying how most folks are sole proprietors. So like, there's entrepreneurship, there's a lot of solopreneurs, a lot of folks that it's just them. They're the ceo, they're the accountant, they're the tax advisor, they're the marketer, they're the digital marketing specialist. They, they are everything. They're wearing all the hats. And so essentially, we have a lot of people that are in business, but they're self-employed. That's really what it is. And, and they really want to get to that point of being able to feel like a business owner and not not a boss just as a title, but like they want to be able to get to the point of being able to delegate and be able to not only work in the business, but be able to work on the business. But it's hard to work on the business when you're constantly in the business and you're in the day to day minutia of just trying to keep things together.

And to hire, how do they make it? They're not making six, they're not making six figures. And so how do many of these businesses make it? I mean, they're using their credit cards to to fill the gap in those kinds of things.

Using mortgages on homes.

Yeah, yeah.

Very common.

And so, and, and they're also what happens is councilor Smith is they kind of start reverting to doing nonprofit activity, right? And so they start going after grants that are typically set aside for non-profits or they get fiscal sponsors because the nonprofit industrial complex of Portland, I don't know about the rest of Oregon, but, but what everything is geared around nonprofit activity as far as like.

Corporate models.

Yeah. And so a lot of folks understand like, okay, no one is necessarily going to support my business or just give to me or I can't get 25, 50, $100,000, but I see my friends getting, you know, $50,000 or 100,000 here. Oh, you know, taking ownership just got 3 million from piece of inner city collaborative. Got a million from, you know, it's like it's big money going around for black folks that have nonprofit have a 500 1c3. But if you're a for profit, it's like you're on your own.

So you're saying that these folks who had for profit organizations, they are forced to go to nonprofit.

Absolutely.

So that they could do the kind of work that they need to do. Because to be.

Successful, because the system is set up to support, like, for instance, taking ownership was an llc. They didn't they didn't go 500 1c3 until the winter of 2024. That's when I came on with them. But they were they started out as an llc, but they couldn't get the support. They couldn't get the funding that they really need to be able to hire and build capacity.

Who was that.

Taking ownership.

Pdx and councilor. We find that most of the models that support the small business structures are, as we continue to say in our community, is they are dependency models. And so what the collective body is trying to effectively do is to figure out how to get a model that we can create some. Our what we responsibility to that community, to where that community is. We're committed to growing that community in such a way to where it doesn't depend necessarily on external focuses, but our internal locus is what it depends upon the support of its community.

Thank you. Emmanuel, can you wrap this up?

Absolutely. I had a lot more written. I was just freestyling, but basically I'm I'm urging this this committee to invest in a workforce development pipeline that is explicitly designed to connect trained, work ready talent with black owned small businesses. So subsidized hiring programs, for example, maybe internships, apprenticeships, maybe a wage share model that makes it financially viable for a solopreneur to bring on their first employee. Because when I'm talking about these folks that are in their first six figures and trying to break that barrier, eventually they're going to have to delegate. But bringing on good help is going to be kind of pricey for them at that at that revenue level. So because, you know, when a black business owner can finally hire someone, they can get out of survival and really start to thrive and build, right. And so a business that can build is a business that can hire and they'll root themselves in the community and essentially become the economic anchor that the city says that they want to support. Right. And so I guess lastly. No more studies. Can we stop the studying? And can we just start putting the money where we know, like with the trusted individuals with the, oh, go ahead.

I tried to use the, the study that you all did at the state from three years ago to help us. And so, so, and it would have saved us a lot of money too, because we know we're going to get the same information, but we have to do our specific to city of Portland. And so I was from the city operations, dca said, no, you can't use that. You got to get your own. And I imagine that some of the same information is going to come out, because you're going to be talking to some of the same black businesses. And therein lies the the issue. So I hear you, I hear you, I hear you. We need to do some action. And I think we're I could probably be most helpful is in the public works department because we have parks, water, sewer, and I'm missing some. The transportation, the big one. So those are the areas in which I see a lot of opportunity for growth in contracting with the city of Portland. So I'm going to. Diana, do we have any people for on the on the line that want to give testimony? How many.

People do a hands on that screen down there.

So not for this item because it's not open to public testimony, but we do have for the next item we have somebody signed.

Up as councilor Smith. Could we allow nate to wrap this up?

Yeah. No, no, I was just trying to figure this out so that if we could have some more additional time, because.

I do appreciate.

That many. Yeah. But nate, could you because I'm going to tell you how much time you got, sir.

I'll be.

On it.

Be quick. We haven't you got about ten minutes that we. Can that we can use for questions and your comments.

Okay.

Because I want to give these guys an opportunity to ask you questions.

Would love it. And I'll just quickly paraphrase what we've already talked about. So the barriers limited access to capital and bonding insurance requirements that disproportionately impact small firms, difficult access to prime contractor networks, including big businesses that are on the goods and service sides. They have long standing relationships with the city. It's hard to penetrate that when you have procurement staff that don't know these small firms, project managers of the the bureaus that you're speaking to, they don't know the firms that are up and coming, limited access to large contracts. Do we do bundle projects in a way that actually are bite sized right size for the firms? Do we do 360 reviews so that small businesses can tell you how city staff are treating them and how the big primes are treating them, whether it's construction or goods and services. We heard revitalizing the prime contractor development program. I hope the offices have already talked to have looked at this. This came out of the 2016 disparity study. The city used to have. What was called the sheltered markets program had to eliminate that and recording it as the prime contractor development program. This program can be expanded. It's already a tool you have in the toolbox to add goods and service businesses. Why this program matters. It was $1 million and below contracts that were coming from the water bureau. Parks Portland housing bureau tried to get in on some of this, but it was more for those infrastructure related projects fed the small business ecosystem race neutral. Let me say it again, race neutral. The problem was, is then mary caballero, the auditor, found that there was nepotism and fraud in the system where some white businesses were dictating work to other white businesses, left out the people of color who should have been getting more plentiful work. The program went on too. I wouldn't say chopping blocks, but it went on the shelf, if you will, for a minute. But now to your point, Loretta, it's been revitalized. It's been in discussion based on the current disparity study that we're talking about. This program would help people get bondable pipeline of work workforce development. So as these businesses scale, you can't even offer a workforce pipeline if businesses aren't growing back to the sole entrepreneur. If you got one person, how do you scale and get to the next person if you don't have any contracts? And so I think the part that is very exciting is Multnomah county TriMet, port of Portland, city of Portland, all talking to the same contractors. They got their own resources. Why not pool resources into one program, which is the prime contractor development program for the city? Already had sylvester and raymond lee look into this. They're starting to have those conversations through maybe some form of intergovernmental agreement, which we know those are used a lot. And I think we could pull more resources because the only other program is a mentor protege program at the port of Portland. They don't have the work. They have funds for technical assistance, but not real work opportunities. So I think we could pull a lot of those resources together and come together to do a lot of what we're trying to effectuate and get 1% of a lot of those projects, which was the money that was pulled into this prime contractor development program. I'll stop there because I'd love to hear from the counselors and answer any question under.

The moon. Appreciate it. And I've actually I've talked to sylvester about this. And and since I will be over the public works, I want to talk to him to see how we can develop more. I put more dollars into the apprenticeship programs and to summerworks, which it went up. It went up by $1.2 million. And I want to I want to construct some works where we're actually getting people hard to fill jobs in our, in our public work system and to do contracting so that it means something. It's just not answering telephones that this is going to lead you someplace in, in the future. So. Councilor. Mr. President Dunphy, thanks.

I'll be real.

Quick, gentlemen. Thank you.

This is.

A fantastic final presentation for this. So we can go off and bring this with us to all the other conversations we'll be having. Thank you for advocating to not have more studies. This city. I firmly believe that government in this region believes that the act of studying something is itself an end. A study is supposed to be a means to an end, but we create all these. I've been saying it over and over again. We create beautiful pdfs that live on somebody's desktop and nobody ever looks again. And we never do the work. It is time to do the work and stop reinventing the wheel. Two there are a bunch of ways that this city currently disadvantages black owned businesses, specifically through the basic structure of our government that I think we need to fix. First of all, the fact that we have a complaint driven system means that we are empowering the worst voices in our community. And one of the first actions that this council took was actually repealing a section of the noise code that empowered neighbors to determine that something was too loud without measuring something, and cops could show up and shut it down. It's why soleil's jazz club closed. It's what happened to a number of the the historic, black owned music venues in this city. And if you have a understaffed city apparatus and you are entirely operating off of complaint driven systems, then you are empowering the worst voices in our community who know how to manipulate the system. And we are seeing time and time again where that is falling on the, the backs of, of black entrepreneurs. And so we have a lot of work to do there. And the last thing I will say is that the legacy of economic development in this city through the pdc is, I believe, moving away from the horrible historical injustices. But they are not that historic. Nate, you said 6070s and 80s, but I still believe that the the the north williams tif district did a huge amount of disservice to the black community. I still believe that the tif district and the the gateway tif district did an enormous amount of damage to displacing these black communities, and I worry that the tif district may fall in the same position. We know that when the cobid process for. For grants or dollars to help subcontractors went to prosper, it did not get implemented the right way. And lastly, we have seen that when they when we fund economic development dollars with our general fund, the last dollars in that they consider probably arguably treat this. The lowest priority is the exclusive business resource network, because anytime the city says we have to tighten our budgets and cut back on the general fund, there's a doom and gloom narrative that is told to all the small business owners of color who are not thriving, but just barely surviving. With these dollars and the threat of taking away the the few dollars that are actually helping businesses survive is enough to create existential fear. But it's a deeply unfair narrative to not only those businesses, but to the general public. I think there is so much more we can do. I have a lot of faith in our new executive director at prosper, but I think that the city still has a lot to to tighten up our ship and understand where these historic structural problems really are and we can do better. So thank you guys for continuing to demand more of us.

Thank you. Thank you, mr. President. Councilor Green.

Mitch Green: Thank you, madam chair. Privilege, to face you gentlemen today and be able to ask questions directly and try to be helpful in this space. So, nate, I heard two things that really stuck out for me, which was access to capital and sort of like insurance, you know, there are some fixed cost barriers that I think firms, black owned firms that are not at scale are going to disproportionately feel. And I think that if we're going to think about the city stepping in and breaking that dependency relationship, as you mentioned, mr. Washington, then one of the ways that we could help, and this is a new policy direction that we need to contemplate, is establishing revolving loan capital for the for profit sector. We do that right now. I think for the nonprofit sector, I mean, sp 14 in the climate investment plan is a revolving loan capital fund of $45 million. I don't think it's just for non-profits, but it's very specifically for climate work. So if you if you're in that book of business, go look at that fund, by the way, that's there. But we, there's no reason we can't establish a fund. I know prosper does this work? But city can also do this work to say, we're going to we're going to loan out at one, two, 3% for favorable terms to then allow a business to take a risk. Because when you're making it on rocket loans and you know, you know.

Yeah, we know.

Yeah, exactly.

Our leverage in your house, you know.

Then you're, you know, you're going to face some.

Risk that is going to prevent you from being able to take the next step. And, and I think that that's just, that's something the city needs to explore because then that will return back to the city as the business thrives. So it's a sort of mutual virtuous cycle. The other piece, and this extends to kind of got in my head when I was thinking about our affordable housing problem. Insurance costs. Yeah, are a big barrier there, particularly in the realm of the very expensive but unexpected operations and maintenance events. One of the ways that we can support that type of concern, but then think more broadly across industries is for the city to sort of, and maybe it's multi-jurisdictional effort is to create a common pool resource for insurance, you know, because if the city, the county, the metro government are coming together, the state, our risk profile relative, we're able to eat that risk. Essentially what I'm saying. And that allows the smaller firms who are trying to eke it out have an opportunity to grow, and that will only then yield benefits to the cities as well. And then finally, I would imagine maybe you guys can give me a sense of whether I'm on track or not. Is that actually rent to landlords is a significant line item when you're just opening up a shop. If you're trying to do a storefront enterprise, that's going to be a major, you got tenant improvement costs, but then you've also got the the ongoing month to month. And if you want to expand into different parts of the city and maybe execute and take action on some of these vacancies in other parts of the city, being able to kind of enter into a situation where you can get in at something much lower than $18 a square foot, feels like that's that's the kind of price certainty that you need. And so I wonder if the city kind of helping sort of purchase and buy down, you know, take some of these, these properties off the market, but then make it available on a priority basis for folks who are who've just been out here in the streets doing some work. So maybe I'll stop and see if there's an answer to that.

Councilor Green, you're nailing a sector that we really have been tackling a little bit, especially in the williams and russell's project that we got going on. But here's one of the questions we like to in our district at least, is what we've been seeing. It's not so much that we don't support affordable housing. It's just the affordable housing in clusters in communities, because we're seeing the impact of affordable housing and cluster affects small business. It is the type of small business that can or cannot flourish in that environment. So we're seeing that that is a real significant impact area that we're going to really start paying attention to. And of course, true, when you get affordable housing or any kind of housing assistance type of situation, the space, like the community rooms, those kind of potential retail opportunities, they don't balance out in the books. You know, you can't get the same kind of loan for the the if you're saying you're going to put a small business in there, if you got affordable housing up on the top. So there's some disparities in that space. And so we're trying to work through that, that reality nonetheless. Bryson, you got some other things you want to share.

And before you go, I'd like to see some sort of black investment group come together to purchase some of this property downtown that is like pennies on the dollar. But we can talk about that later and to see how the city can be helpful. But I want to get councilor. Novick. And then. Councilor. Kanal. So. Councilor. Novick. Could you go?

Thank you, madam chair. Mr. Williams, I was struck by your reference to the nonprofit industrial complex. I've always felt that in America as a whole, at least rhetorically, we worship small businesses, but in Portland we worship non-profits. And it hadn't occurred to me that here that might result in some circumstances where non-profits can get investments and small businesses cannot. And I'm interested in sort of investigating, like with PCEF in particular, are there contexts in which we restrict PCEF money to non-profits where you could have kind of an RFP process where where businesses could bid on doing a particular project to. So that just want to follow up with you on that, because it really struck me.

I mean, I like the way that you're thinking, you know, and that's really what it comes down to is just understanding where we're at. And I'm glad I can, you know, give, give language to, you know, what I'm what I'm seeing out here and that can spark ideas. So I'm really, I'm not too familiar with the setup process and what it all, what it all entails, but just delivering that information and then allowing you all, allowing us all to come together and just continue the conversation. Think, how can we just bring our ingenuity to the table and say, this is what is already happening? But a large lion's share of the funds are going in this direction, which is the 500 1c3 route. And so a lot of really well-to-do entrepreneurs are pivoting from an llc to a 500 1c3, because that's where the money is at. And they're incentivized to go that route even though they really don't want to. But out of just sheer survival of I could go self-employed and struggle and whatever, or I can go over here and get some funds and I can actually at least create a good job for myself. But where's where's the empowerment? Right? And in that, because if you if you go 500 1c3, it's not yours anymore, you know. And so we want to be able to have ownership in and lay our claim in our, in our stake to what, what's happening in the city and be able to fully take advantage of all the tourism dollars and just all the economic development that's going on here, as opposed to just creating another public entity.

So and what I'll add to that, if I could, couldn't agree more. When you talk to young people, that is exactly what they're saying. You've got to distinguish though. And here's a big distinction. You've got to distinguish what kind of non-profits are really economically focused on supporting the businesses we're talking about. Because the trip line in this is I wouldn't be a as a president and ceo, I would not have some of my smallest businesses going out to try to assume a loan that might be too big until they've shored up their business, their operations, their marketing, their legal, their accounting. Because sometimes we fall into the trick of giving them grant money, trying to help teach them how to fish, and they're not ready to fish for themselves. So I think we got to be careful about what type of business we're talking about. If it's very early on, they're going to need some help, but it's not maybe a social service nonprofit need. It's a economic development focused nonprofit need. And I think that's our group that can play in both of those sandboxes. And re-imagine Oregon was one of those things that prosper did offer that. I found out that there were folks who wanted to learn quickbooks. The fund was good to go by the system, but you got to know how to use the system and all the nonprofit stuff we do. We use quickbooks. So who is the best trainer to show them how to use quickbooks us as well? So I want to just make sure we're focused that there are some business minded non-profits that really do know how to help businesses get to the next level. But I do agree. Also, we got to fund the businesses directly too. And on the workforce side, miss councilor Smith, we also spend too much money on pre-apprenticeship programs, which we need them. But I also feel like minority contractors, small businesses are also doing their fair share of training folks on the job, and they get nothing for it. They get nothing for it. And so we've talked to the governor about a workforce tax, where if you're hiring formerly incarcerated people or whatever it might be, and they're actually retained because let's be honest, there's a lot of money spent on saying we're retaining people, we're placing them, we're getting them on a job, but they're not there longer than a year or two. And so I just think we've got to think about the system a little bit more inclusive of these small businesses.

I wish we would have had more time, but I want to get councilor Kanal an opportunity.

Sameer Kanal: Thank you, chair Smith. Thank you all for being here, as well as monique for the information. And just to defend my colleague. I think it was a women of influence event. She couldn't be at. She was at a council meeting being a woman of influence and that exact moment. So I want to say, I am very aware how much of the experiences we're talking about here and the folks that you're, that you're talking with and for are in and around d2. And it's a, it's a privilege to represent north and northeast Portland and get a chance to talk to many of you and in particular, most recently, john, about school district and the needs there. I also, a lot of what I said was going to get said by my colleagues, so I'll just call out the good things. But I wanted to start by saying one stat that came up in the black businesses breakfast yesterday, I think it was yesterday, right? Was about people who it's interesting and sad, I think a metric that young black people go study outside the state and then don't come back. And I think that's not necessarily something you can only focus on directly for itself, but it's a metric for how we're doing on a lot of the other things we're doing as well, but also that this should be that we should be working not only to, to reduce that outflow, but also ideally, people are moving here, whether it's for, for college or for something else, and liking it and not leaving. And that creation of opportunity helps a lot with that. I really appreciated, john, what you said about dependency mindsets because it's often portrayed, I think, for all communities of color as a thing that that we have, as opposed to a thing that systems impose. And I really thought that was an important thing to, to bring up.

You got you got 30s.

Revolving loans, really important councilor Green everything. I agree there support the idea of wage share for solopreneurs. I also think that has to do with what was just discussed about hiring for formerly incarcerated folks. We have a commercial vacancy fee. Sorry. There is still a study coming out within about a month, but to help create downward rental, downward pressure on commercial rent. And the other thing, we're up against time, but some of this is going to come to the committee the whole. And so for that, but also from a d2 perspective, I'm excited to keep talking to all of you in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor.

I thank you all for coming. I just want to say I appreciate all the information and all the the tech savviness and on the ground front line savviness that you all have an experience that you bring to this subject matter because the struggle is real for a lot of our black businesses. But we do have some black businesses that are thriving and they're not just surviving. And so we have those models as well. And I want to keep in contact with you all to to do something I don't three years from now, I don't want to come back here and be talking about the same thing. We didn't do nothing to change. We didn't offer anything. We didn't give any any kind of boost to what you all are talking about. Then it's just a moot point. So I do want to do something and I want to thank you. Just sit here for just a second because we want to get a picture with you when when we close. Diana, can you go to the next agenda item so we can.

Sure. Item three public testimony on labor and workforce development topics. We have one person signed up, simon gentry. You're free to come up to the dais and begin your testimony whenever you're ready.

Thank you. Simon, thank you for being so patient.

Good afternoon, chair, honorable council members and fellow portlanders. My name is simon gentry, a lifelong portlander born and raised here alongside my entire family across generations. I felt gentrification's weight as rising costs push working families like mine to the edge. For seven and a half years, I've driven full time for lyft, completing over 23,000 rides in Portland through the express drive rental program owned by lyft. I choose the lowest tier. I choose the lowest price rental tier. The vehicle is used exclusively for lyft. No personal miles, no commuting, no other gigs. That locks me in completely. Every week, my earnings go towards covering the $200 rental before I get any income. After fuel, the extra platform cut and that rental many hours net me less than $7. Recent city of Portland analysis, citing the center for wage and employment dynamics, show local tnc drivers average $12.05 per hour before expenses well under our metro minimum wage of $16.30. Industry claims of higher pay often ignore full time drivers like me. Unpaid wait time or rental realities, leaving too many in poverty despite 40 plus hour weeks. And as an independent contractor, I get no overtime or paid sick leave. I can't rest when ill without losing income. I'm a gay married man saving for our future. Perhaps adopting a child someday. These low earnings make that dream feel impossible. Despite my long hours and safe service, it hits hard emotionally. Portland's values of equity, human rights, and compassion mean everything to me. Yet feeling undervalued leaves me drained and questioning why drivers are overlooked. This isn't just my story. It's too many of us drivers. Portland stands for worker dignity and putting people over profits. The ordinance capping tnc take rates at 20% so drivers get at least 80% of each fare, plus itemized receipt. Transparency for riders and drivers honors those values. Other places prove it works without harming service. New york city's pay standards, Washington state's per mile minute guarantees and massachusetts settlement ensuring approximately $32 plus per hour for engaged time, plus benefits like sick leave. Portland can and should lead to. I urge you to support and advance this ordinance. It would give drivers stability. Let us keep more of what riders pay and restore hope that Portland truly cares about all its people. Thank you for hearing frontline voices. I'm grateful for your commitment to Portland workers and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much.

Thank you for your comments. This is the last meeting of the labor and workforce committee, and I am really happy with the work that we have done this last year. And I know that we have given ourselves a roadmap to the work that we're going to do in the future, and it was really an honor and a privilege to be able to have you all as our last presentation, because it gives us our marching orders, and I appreciate it. I want to thank my my colleagues for sitting here and bringing ideas. We have a lot of great stuff that we've worked on together and that we're going to take forward. So I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, diana. And thank you, christopher, for all the work that you've done to help us. It's been really great. And I want to thank the public for tuning in. And I hope we've given you some things that you can chew on and that you've learned from, and that can be helpful to you in the future. So I will adjourn this meeting of the labor and workforce committee. And we'll we'll take pictures in the back.

Thank you.