The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-03-13
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (18,903 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Climate Resilience and Land Use Committee met on March 13 (per the transcript, Thursday, March 13th). Roll call and a statement of conduct were read. The committee first considered appointment of two candidates to the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission; presenters from Portland Permitting and Development described the commission's role and the candidates' qualifications, and the candidates addressed the committee about their interest. A motion to refer the appointments to full Council with a recommendation of confirmation was made and seconded; a vote occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The remainder of the session focused on Portland Parks and Recreation's budget, covering a longstanding capital maintenance backlog, operational cost pressures, and a proposed prioritization framework for services (parks/nature/trails/trees, aquatics/community centers, arts and culture centers, and public programs). Multiple funding scenarios involving different levy rates and general fund reductions were presented, though specific dollar figures were stated inconsistently across speakers. Discussion covered staffing growth, cost recovery models, sustainable funding alternatives such as a parks district, and public-private partnerships. Public testimony was given by representatives of the Portland Parks Alliance, a concerned citizen, and the Portland Parks Foundation, addressing budget sustainability and levy renewal. The meeting adjourned at 11:31.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 To.
1 Hello? I can't hear. Can you guys hear me?
2 There we go. Good morning everyone. I call the meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee to order. It is Thursday, March 13th at 9:32 a.m. Diego, will you please call the roll?
3 Avalos. Canal here. Ryan. Here.
4 Morillo here.
5 Novick here.
6 Claire, could you please read the statement of conduct?
7 Welcome to the meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland.gov/council agenda. Slash climate and resilience and land use committee or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on the item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record and address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
8 Thank you claire. This meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee will be focused almost entirely on the Portland parks and recreation budget, potential cuts, potential scenarios involving different levy levels. But before we get to that, we have some land use business from Portland permitting and development. Diego, could you please read the first item?
9 Item one appoint susan trexler and jonah james jensen to the Portland historic landmarks commission.
10 This item comes to us from the Portland community development has asked the committee to consider the appointment of these two folks to the historic landmarks commission. You may proceed.
11 Good morning, councilors. For the record, my name is david lawson. I'm the interim director of Portland permitting and development. I'm joined today by stacy monroe, senior planner in the design and historic resources team within the land use services division in Portland, permitting and development. One of the responsibilities and staff in that division is to provide assistance to commissioners to enable them to discharge their duties, and stacy is the liaison to the historic landmarks commission. And for whatever reason, our next slide is not can we have tech assistance?
12 To this?
13 Press? The next slide is.
14 On the screen.
15 Here.
16 Thank you.
17 Sorry about that. Since 1968, the hlc has acted as a decision making body for some historic resource reviews and an advisory body to the council for some demolition reviews. The commission is comprised of seven members who have an education, interest and knowledge in historic preservation. The committee provides leadership and expertise on maintaining and enhancing portland's historic and architectural heritage, and they actively participate in the development of new design guidelines for historic districts. Since 2009, the commission has provided council with an annual state of the city preservation report and are working on the latest update now, and are very eager to share that with all of the councilors. Members of the committee are appointed by council for a four year term, with an option for a second term reappointment in 2025. The hlc will have one member term out, and we have been notified by another member that due to personal reasons, they will not be seeking reappointment and recently ran a recruitment to fill those upcoming vacancies. And stacy and I are here today to introduce the candidates and seek approval to bring their appointments to full council to ensure this committee maintains its functions. I'll now pass it over to stacy to introduce the candidates, both of whom are joining online today to discuss next steps and answer any questions you may have. Stacy.
18 Thank you. David. Good morning. As david mentioned, these two appointments would would replace two outgoing members, members whose terms end this month and in June. The first appointee that we are recommending is susan trexler, filling the position of preservation consultant. And the second member is jonah james jensen filling the position of architect. Both will bring valuable expertise that is being lost with the outgoing members. These appointments will ensure the historic landmarks commission will continue to perform their duties as a decision making body, and an advisor on historic preservation matters. These candidates will bring a wealth of expertise to the commission. Susan trexler has ten plus years of professional experience in historic preservation and is currently a consulting architectural historian. She has six years of experience as a historic preservation urban planner, performing project reviews and serving as the staff liaison to a historic preservation commission. She currently volunteers at the architectural. She has volunteered at architectural history groups and most recently at the portland's architectural heritage center. Jonah james jensen is a licensed architect with 20 plus years of experience, including some historic rehabilitations and additions. He has led and facilitated a variety of stakeholder groups, required collaboration and participation with culturally diverse and multilingual groups. He also served on a historic commission with in Washington for six years. If appointed, susan trexler's first term will run from April 1st of this year through March 31st of 2029. Jonah's first term will run from June 22nd of this year to June 21st of 2029. With these appointments, the historic landmarks commission will have all seven positions filled. We appreciate your support in referring these two appointments to council for approval. Thank you.
19 Thank you. Are we going to hear from the miss trexler or mr. Jensen themselves?
20 They are available if you have any questions for them, or if you'd like them to share their why they're interested. Absolutely, yes.
21 That would be nice if you could do that briefly. Thank you.
22 Jonah, would you like to go first?
23 Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for thank you for having me. And thank you for the consideration. As stacy had summarized, you know, I've had 20 plus years in the architectural profession. Actually, the very first project that I had started as an intern back in the early 2000 was the rehabilitation and modernization of stadium high school in tacoma. This old, historic kind of castle looking high school. You may have seen it in the movie ten things I hate about you. So that was really the first five years of my career, and that kind of insinuated or instituted a passion for historical modernization and just being good stewards for the historical properties throughout the region. I've since parlayed that into multiple projects that are that have historical context and nature. And then also served on the tacoma landmarks preservation commission as vice chair for six years. Back in, back in before I moved to Portland. So very excited to be here. Very passionate about what I do. And I'm a local business owner of sage architecture. We have offices in Portland and bend. So thank you.
24 Thank you. Does the committee have any questions for mr. Jensen? I actually have one. You did say the castle featured in ten things I hate about you, didn't you?
25 I did, yeah.
26 Great movies of all time. Miss trexler.
27 Good morning. Susan trexler. I have roots in Oregon. I went to lewis and Clark college for my history bachelor's degree. And then I went to the university of Oregon for a historic preservation masters. For the last about six years. I was working outside of chicago, in oak park. As in local government for historic preservation. We had 25 frank lloyd wright buildings and a bunch of historic districts. So we had a lot going on in preservation. And I moved back to Oregon last year to be closer to family. And I'm just eager to share my local government knowledge now as as a volunteer. And I know the importance of volunteers serving on commission. So I'm looking forward to learning more about Portland.
28 Thank you. Any questions for these nominees or discussion about the nominations? Very well. May I have a motion?
29 So moved. So moved.
30 We have. We had a little script, actually. Sorry.
31 Got to actually read the fancy script. Mr. Chair, I move the appointment of susan trexler and jonah james jensen to the Portland historic landmarks commission, be sent to the full council with the recommendation that the appointment be confirmed.
32 Council councilor Morillo moves the appointment of susan trexler and jonah james jensen to the Portland historic landmarks commission to full council, with the recommendation the appointment be confirmed. May I have a second?
33 Second.
34 The motion has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Will the clerk please call the roll?
35 Avalos. Canal.
36 No. I just want to note that I'm very happy with the appointments and look forward to supporting their at the full council. And also that this came to committee and the correct policy committee for appointments to go to. So thank you to the governance committee for that I vote.
37 I Ryan.
38 Yes. Thanks both jonah and susan, for your interest and enthusiasm and your great life experience. I'm grateful for your service.
39 I vote yea Morillo.
40 Thank you so much for taking time to serve your city. I vote yea.
41 Novick and vote aye. The motion carries and the appointment of susan trexler and jonah james jensen to the Portland historic landmarks commission will move to full council with the recommendation that the appointment be confirmed. Thank you.
42 Thank you.
43 Will the clerk please read the next item?
44 Item two. Portland parks and recreation. Budget discussion.
45 We're here today to have a discussion about the parks budget. We'll discuss both the long standing major maintenance deficit and the looming prospect of huge operational cuts. Back when I served in the dawn of history, before we had a park system everyone loved but an ever growing major maintenance deficit. We did not have a parks levy in 2020. We passed a parks levy, although technically we could not have used the levy itself for major maintenance, we could have used freed up general fund to do so. We didn't. Instead, we hired, hired, added programs, hired a bunch more people, paid people more. And the council also somewhat reduced the general fund for parks. So in fact, the levy backfilled those cuts. So the major maintenance deficit kept growing. There was always a vague thought in the air that someday we'll do a big parks bond, but that has never happened. Now, I certainly understand that when you go to the voters for a levy, you want to offer them new stuff, but but as we've done with transportation, we've been neglecting major maintenance. Now we face a situation where we have a big general fund deficit. The general fund mostly goes to for things police, fire, parks and homeless services. And we have a lot of people saying, don't cut public safety and don't raise taxes. And the mayor wants to increase, not decrease spending on homeless services. So if we accept that conventional wisdom, what does that leave to cut? Largely, it leaves parks. The administrator's budget document already cuts parks by $23 million, but we still have at least a $35 million deficit to fill. I think we need to consider the possibility that every dollar will come from parks. So I've asked the bureau to show what that would look like. Meanwhile, due to increased costs, even if there were no general fund cuts, parks would be facing a deficit. If we, consistent with the no new taxes mantra, only reduce the levy at its current rate, we'll have to cut parks services even if the general funds stay the same. With that grim introduction, I welcome sonia and her team.
46 Good morning. Thank you for the invitation to be with you today and all of you for your time. I'm sonia shimanski, deputy city administrator for the vibrant communities service area. In this one hour, we will tease out the dynamics and policy questions. Councilor Novick just framed up, and then you'll hear from community partners who are with us also. We have about half the time for presentation and half for discussion, and we can split that however you like as we go. In 2019, as councilor Novick referenced, the city council made decisions about our parks system, which charted the course we're on today. And also, as councilor Novick describes, we are again at an inflection point, and decisions you make this year will shape the bureau's trajectory for the next handful of years, probably at least. The big picture that you'll hear from the team are, as councilor Novick correctly said, upward pressure on services and downward pressure on revenues. We have more and more free programing. We have old and getting older buildings. We have more parks and buildings to run and maintain higher costs, less general fund and unknown future tax revenue, which means altogether, we have a mismatch between the size of our system and our resources. As I said this year, we'll be looking to you for guidance and insight about priorities so that we can manage the system strategically and thoughtfully within whatever resources are available going forward. And with that, I'll go to parks director adena long.
47 Thank you. Deputy city administrator szymanski, for the record, my name is adena long. I'm the director of Portland parks and recreation. The park system that Portland has today has been historically funded by a combination of the city's general fund and Portland voters enacting bonds and levies. This animation shows our system's expansion by decade. Most recently, voters passed a five year operating levy in 2020. Voters also passed a $68 million bond measure in 2014, replacing a 1994 bond that was retiring. This support has enabled creation of the park system that we have today. Portland park and recreation system includes a variety of spaces and activities, providing the kinds of experiences portlanders through the decades have said they need and value. From nearly 8000 acres of nature, 1.2 million trees in parks and natural areas, and over 150 neighborhood parks with active recreation facilities and places to walk, roll, sit and rec create. We've been working since 2019 to implement the direction we heard from city council at that time, which was to pursue increased service levels across the board for operations. That's involved an increase in services we provide with the daily care of our parks and with improving program affordability by not using increasingly expensive fee based services to balance costs, increased service levels for capital maintenance means sharing what it would take to meet industry best practices of investment and funding options to get there for capital growth. That's meant using investments to add capacity and to address service gaps in the park system. We've also pursued the city taking on street tree maintenance as a service. In the second column, we're showing what our service levels looked like in 2020. We abruptly had to shutter community centers, pools and park programs due to COVID restrictions. We were not sufficiently funded for capital maintenance, and street tree maintenance was the responsibility of private property owners. One area where we continue to make investments was in growing the park system in step with development. The third column shows last fiscal year actuals. As of last fiscal year, we've made improvements in some areas to meet council's earlier direction, improving operational service level goals and affordability with the parks levy and adding a city funded program for street tree maintenance with the Portland clean energy fund. Capital maintenance remains underfunded. Looking forward, we'll need city council direction to align both the right service levels and right funding approaches in all of these areas. In today's presentation, we're going to focus on operating and capital maintenance, since those are the areas with the largest forecasted unmet needs. In service of Portland. We work to listen and to learn from what portlanders want from their park system. As portlanders, we have different needs and ways we use our shared open spaces and the programs that help to activate those spaces at a high level. We continue to hear that the places that make Portland Green and are free to use the parks, natural areas, trails, and trees are what people value most citywide, regardless of race, age, and length of residency. Access to the outdoors and natural areas is cited as what respondents like most about where they live in Portland, 97% of respondents reported visiting a park or natural area. In the last year, and 95% of portlanders report desiring trees in parks. In addition to trees, paved trails and paths, soft surface trails for hiking or biking, open grassed areas for casual recreation, and display gardens where features were features reported to be used by 90% or more of respondents. As we look at possible shifts in what services are provided by Portland parks and recreation, what we've heard from portlanders, and how they value access to the places that make Portland Green and are free to use, is one foundational value that informs the conceptual approach you see here. We also consider what services provide the broadest community benefit and the least barriers to participation. Free, flexible, open spaces are what portlanders use most. What services could be provided by others which are more uniquely provided by Portland parks and recreation? Does the approach support changes to service levels over time? Undeveloped open space acreage is something Portland is not producing more of. Getting rid of park land reduces options for future generations. Programing can be reduced and continued without the same level of permanent impact. Most portlanders value access to open space as their highest priority for their parks and recreation system, so this draft concept would first fully fund the daily care, major maintenance, and ADA accessibility investments for parks, natural areas, trails and trees. As new parks are built, this priority would require additional operations and maintenance funding and would be funded first before other priorities. The safety of the public and Portland parks and recreation employees will be part of this first level of investment. Investment. Once Portland parks and recreation meets the basic level of service for the care of parks, natural areas, trails and the city's forest, the next prioritized investment would be Portland parks and recreation pools and aquatic program. Swimming is a life saving skill to learn, and as a next priority, Portland parks and recreation would invest the necessary resources to meet a minimum threshold of swim lessons for people who want to learn how to swim. Pools are expensive to operate, and that is why there is a market failure in the private sector and even other public entities in the provision of public public pools. For instance, Portland public schools doesn't own any pools. Portlanders love to recreate and exercise in the city's pools, and they also love using Portland parks and recreation's community centers, Portland parks and recreation. Large community centers serve as gathering places for community members of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities to participate in a multitude of community programs, including fitness, art, and cultural events, and they provide safe harbor for community during extreme weather and wildfire events. These community facilities provide accessible and inclusive spaces for people with disabilities, seniors, and low income residents who might not otherwise have other options. The next area of investment would be Portland parks and recreation's largest arts and culture facilities, the Multnomah arts center and the community music center. Similar to Portland parks and recreation's community centers, these arts and culture facilities provide accessible opportunities to all portlanders. The final area of investment is all of the other public programs. Portland parks and recreation offers, including the facilities where they provide them, such as neighborhood community centers. As we know, there are many wonderful programs that Portland parks and recreation offers the community. Portlanders love to recreate in many, many ways. There is no one right answer where investments should go next. Some will say all of the above. Others will treasure arts and culture, while others will single out sports, to name just a few. These decisions are ones that the community should inform, and ultimately the city council will decide. As city council defines the level of investment for the city's parks and recreation system, Portland parks and recreation will bring creative operational approaches to optimize service levels. Part of this effort will include support to Portland parks and recreation's thriving network of community partnerships and volunteers, more than any other city service. I believe we should continue to provide a platform so people and community partners can continue to invest in their parks and recreation system. I'll provide a bit more specificity about what is included in parks, nature trails and trees. It includes all of the services related to trees, including tree maintenance, planting, regulation, education, and outreach. It includes the park ranger program, community garden program, and asset management programs. It also would include annual financial support for pioneer courthouse square, which is utilized for basic daily operations. Aquatics and large community centers could include all operations, the camps, classes, fitness programs, rentals, adaptive and inclusive recreation in portland's five largest community centers, four indoor pools, and seven outdoor pools. Multnomah arts center and community music center would include providing the full range of art and music programs at both facilities, including support through our partner, the rosewood initiative, to provide music programs in east Portland. Public programs. Includes all public programing not taking place at the five regional community centers for indoor, and including the four indoor and seven outdoor pools, Multnomah arts center and the community music center that would include smaller neighborhood community centers and other facilities like the Portland tennis center, the schools united neighborhood school program sites and other camps, classes, and summer programs. As funding is available using this framework, we would recommend funding services related to parks, nature trails and trees first, as funding is available, you could move into providing services in each of these next categories. If there is insufficient funding to deliver to deliver services in all of these, these areas you would work back starting with eliminating or reducing public programs. First, I'm going to pass it over to sarah huggins, who is going to share some more detailed information about both operations and capital maintenance services and funding. Thank you, director long.
48 So we are going to shift gears and provide some information related to operations and capital maintenance. And we'll start with bureau capital maintenance, capital maintenance includes larger projects to replace, repair or build new assets. It is generally projects over $10,000 and includes things like replacing old mechanical equipment like I'm showing here a photo of grant pool's mechanical equipment, replacing pipes or roofs, or repairing or replacing entire facilities like an entire playground or restroom, or renovating a community center. We'll share some information about the current state of assets in the parks system and the funding levels to maintain those assets. You may have heard that Portland parks has a nearly $600 million capital maintenance backlog. It reflects deficiencies, larger capital, things that need replacement or repairs throughout the parks system. In this slide, we've broken that capital backlog into the categories and assets associated with the priority framework. You can see here that the bulk of the system and the backlog relates to parks, nature trails and trees. But there is approximately $50 million of the backlog associated with assets that support the services in each of the other categories as well. Since 2019, parks has been sharing that at current capital maintenance levels of funding, 1 in 5 assets could close over the next 15 years. This list we're sharing here is not a comprehensive list of assets that have closed due to their condition, but it does illustrate that these closures are happening throughout the parks system. When over 200 park light poles had to be removed throughout parks. We heard from many community members that this reduced service in parks was a priority to fix. Parks invested $11.5 million in capital major maintenance funds to replace 290 light poles, and that is equal to about two years worth of the entire bureau's capital maintenance allocation from the general fund. All types of natural and built assets in portland's parks system need more investment. On the bureau of sustainable future website, we share both the capital backlog list in its entirety, and also an interactive map with the condition of assets throughout the parks system. We also share a list of those assets, including large community center and art centers, numerous playgrounds, restrooms, and more that are in very poor condition. These are the assets most at risk of failure in the coming years. In this slide, as an example, I'm showing the bureau's community center buildings, including the years they were built, to continue providing community services. These facilities will need resources for operations and for capital maintenance. Operations include services like day to day care of parks, natural areas, trails and trees. It includes the water in the swimming pools and splash pads, the summer camp counselors, swim instructors and staff like carpenters, electricians, painters, and plumbers who keep our parks system operating. We'll share a bit about the parks levy and service changes after voters pass the parks levy, and then look at what the requested budget looked like, broken into the priority areas, and look at some different operational funding and service scenarios. The parks levy has delivered services focused on recreation for all, protect and grow nature and community partnerships. As an operating funding source. It has both prevented cuts to parks and recreation services and enabled growth in services. Shown here are some examples of the impact of the parks levy, as well as the external pressures driving up operating costs and reliance on the parks levy as an operating funding source. Recreation for all the parks levy stabilized the recreation budget to bring back programing and reopen community centers and pools. Following the pandemic and the impact of uncertain fee revenue, there was not a clear financial path to reopen community centers and pools without additional general fund allocation or passage of the parks levy. New initiatives such as access discount, which allows city residents to discount programing, cost up to 90%, and project connect providing outreach and engagement with partner organizations in their communities are reducing barriers to participation such as cost, registration, language and more, and the parks levy allowed parks to start a new schools to pools program to offer free swim instruction to Portland second graders. Protect and grow nature. Portland's park trees are, for the first time ever, being proactively maintained with parks levy support, increased staffing for both parks repair and maintenance services, and land stewardship means more maintenance hours and better daily care of park assets and parks. Wildfire risk reduction and invasive management has been supported because of parks levy support of the protect the best team community partnerships. Parks has increased engagement and partnerships with community organizations through the community partnership program, grants and connecting partners to free space use opportunities in community centers and park spaces. The parks levy also allowed the bureau to expand community engagement for key initiatives like healthy parks, healthy Portland, and the urban forest plan. While services have increased in some areas, costs have also inflated beyond levy and general fund revenue growth on the growth side, with enhanced and expanded programing and the support of the parks levy, full time equivalent employees grew from about 600 with no seasonal or casual staff in fiscal year 2021 to just over 800, with about 2000 seasonal and casual staff last summer. In the past or in the past four years, the average cost per hour worked also increased by 35% over the first three years of the parks levy. Additionally, recent general fund cuts of 5% or 3.7 million one time in fiscal year 2122, then 5% or 4.6 million ongoing in fiscal year 24, 25, and 8% or 6.8 million initially requested to be prepared for the fiscal year 2526 fiscal year, budget meant that more parks levy funding was needed to avoid service reductions. The parks levy also resulted in the bureau not requesting new general fund allocations to cover the operations and maintenance for new assets brought online to deliver service that added up to about 12.2 million as a cumulative total forecasted over the five year period. Looking forward at a speculative second parks levy term fiscal years 2627 through 2030 31, those assets will continue to be maintained over the next five years at an estimated escalated cost of 21.2 million. Additionally, as new assets come online that are currently underway during the next five year time frame, it is estimated that an additional 23.4 million will be needed for their operations and maintenance. The project on that list, with the largest operations and maintenance impact is north Portland aquatic center, anticipated to open and require operations and maintenance in fiscal year 2930. A detailed revenue forecast has not been prepared for north Portland aquatic center, and will depend on the final elements included, but based on revenue actuals from other indoor aquatic facilities, revenue is likely to be in the 1 to 200,000 range annually, and with a current 6.4 million estimate to operate, that results in net operating costs of about $6 million annually. And the bureau requested budget. There are about $23 million in proposed reductions for portland's parks. There are 90 specific packages, but they include reductions to the support for daily maintenance in parks, reductions or eliminations of city environmental education programs, schools uniting neighborhood programs, youth camps, and citywide sports programs. Reducing the organization's support services as well. On this list, the preschool for all program is a reduction of general fund, but would be a shift in the type of service to align with Multnomah county preschool for all model and be funded by that program instead. This chart displays the fiscal year 2526 operating budget, delivering current service levels in the chart. The darker Green columns indicate what is included in the city administrator's budget. The lighter lime Green amounts at the top add to that 23 million in reduced services currently included in the requested budget as well. On the right hand side, we have forecasted that a renewed levy at an 8080 cent per $1,000 of assessed value rate would necessitate an additional 27 million in operational reductions in the following fiscal year. We haven't spread that out across the framework, as decisions have not been made about what those cuts would look like. When we look at the proposed budget across priority levels, we're anticipating over $100 million to operate parks, natural areas, trails, trails and trees alone. That's roughly proportional to the size of the city's entire general fund operating allocation for parks, adding in other services like pools, the large community centers, Multnomah arts center and community music center, or additional programing that occurs indoors and outdoors would require funding beyond what the general fund provides today. In fiscal year 2021, prior to the parks levy. Parks experienced an abrupt shutdown of community centers, pools and many park programs due to COVID. In this chart, we're looking at the bureau operating expenditures that year by the same priority framework categories, you can see most expenditures in the parks, nature trails and trees category. And while there were smaller expenditures associated with the other categories, the services provided were different. So for example, instead of teaching classes in person, recreation staff were out in parks as park greeters as a temporary service level change. Some of the highest cost service to services to deliver our aquatic facilities and community centers. Here we're looking at the net expenditures, so accounting for the revenues that they generate on average, within parks, splash pads typically have the highest annual cost to operate, followed by skate parks. Playgrounds are a lower cost. In general, open space and natural areas are the lowest cost. The more you build on that to provide different experiences, the higher the annual costs to operate. On any given day. Park staff are visiting portland's parks and performing the types of activities you see here. Regular visits include daily eyes on parks, which include safety cleanliness checks throughout the park, facilities like playgrounds or pathways, emptying trash, cleaning restrooms, removing graffiti, making minor repairs, and more. Park staff are visiting approximately 4 to 8 parks per day and approximately 5 to 1 500 to 100 acres of parkland every day. We're going to look at a few different scenarios to see how combinations of levy rates and general fund rates could impact service levels. In this slide, we're looking at fiscal year 2627. We're forecasting out to this year because this is the first year of a possible new levy where different rates could be effective. We'll dive into individual slides for each of these. But to orient us here in the first three we're looking at general fund without further reductions beyond those in fiscal year 2526. And in the second three councilor Novick asked to see all scenarios with a general fund contribution reduced by 35 million, and each of those two general fund scenarios, we're looking at three different levy rates to show big picture funding and service level proportions. If the levy is passed at a higher rate of $1.60 per $1,000 of assessed value, no reductions would be required and operational services in all areas of the framework could be delivered. This could include not taking the $23 million in reductions proposed for fiscal year 2526, if desired. If the parks levy is renewed at its current rate, $0.80 per $1,000 of assessed value, funding levels would mean taking the full proposed set of reductions in next year's budget, and approximately 27 million more in the following fiscal year. That's about 25% of the bureau's operations, as you see here on the framework column, that could ensure fully funding the first area of parks, nature trails, trees, and most but not all of the second area of aquatics and large centers. It would not further support Multnomah arts center, community music center, or the smaller centers and other public programs. If the parks levy is not renewed, parks would look at reducing about $77 million in fiscal year 2627, on top of the 23 currently proposed for 2526. Ultimately, that would result in about half of the bureau's operations. Looking at the framework here on the right, that could look like reducing all services provided other than parks, nature trails and trees, and seeing some slight reduction in that category as well. If the parks general fund allocation was reduced by 35 million and a levy was passed with an increased dollar 60 rate, you can see the amount of service reduction and how that compares to the framework on the right. If the parks general fund allocation was reduced by 35 million and a levy was passed with a renewed 80% rate, you can see the amount of service reduction and how that compares to the framework on the right. If the parks general fund allocation was reduced by 35 million and a levy is not renewed, you can see here the amount of service reduction and how that compares to the framework on the right. Changing approach to how parks and recreation services are provided can also impact funding levels to provide them. For example, through agreements. We've shifted additional services in the parks system to partner operations, high levels of volunteerism, nearly 400,000 hours of volunteer time helped to deliver higher operational service levels at lower costs. Use of seasonal workforce for shoulder and peak seasons is another way we've leaned into delivering service at a lower overall cost to portlanders. We also look at ways to improve efficiencies around utility usage in our facilities and our parks by installing energy efficient lighting and mechanical heating and cooling systems, we could shift our approach to park design by defining a policy with different categories of park types, with specific features or assets associated with those park types, such as neighborhood, community, and citywide park classifications. As we design and build new facilities and parks or renovate existing ones, we would prioritize focus on reducing operations and maintenance costs. The largest operations and maintenance cost could be associated with citywide serving parks. That might look like building parks that have more open space and fewer built facilities in them, especially facilities that are relatively high cost to operate and maintain, like restrooms or water spray play features, or like selectively irrigating only certain areas of parks. One of the ways parks is leaned into reducing cost has been to increase its delivery of services. Through partnerships. The bureau has over 30 sites and facilities where site where the site is leased or has a site license with some or all costs associated with a facility. Now, the responsibility of the partner, for example, due to budget shortfalls in 2019, three smaller community centers, Sellwood, hillside and fulton have now transferred operations to nonprofit organizations. The leases are now responsible for costs associated with the buildings, but they must remain in use as a community center. This reduced both the operating and capital maintenance costs for the city associated with these facilities. In addition to adjusting service and funding levels, we look forward to continuing to examine the different ways we could approach delivering services. I will turn it back over to deputy city administrator shymansky.
49 Oh, just as they stop cutting the street open, that's the end of our presentation. I don't know how we're doing on time. I recognize that was a lot. Again, the purpose of today is to share these dynamics and drivers with you at a comprehensive but hopefully digestible high level, and start framing up some of the choices that will be coming up for you in the budget with the levy and beyond. I want to emphasize that this framework, which is our last slide, but we don't need to stay. Here is an example. It's a highly educated, pretty thoughtful example, but it's not a proposal and it's not a recommendation. And its purpose is to just plant the seed, that this is the kind of conversation we'll want to be having going forward. So now we're happy to take your questions.
50 Councilor Morillo. Thank you, chair. First of all, I just want to say thank you for making this presentation for us. I feel like this was a really helpful to start wrapping our heads around the really difficult decisions that are to come, and this is a very grim discussion. I know that your team is facing some really hard choices as well amongst and we are too, as councilors. So I appreciate you coming into this space and doing that. I think something that I'm thinking about as I'm viewing this presentation is just sort of how we can avoid this in the future. You know, we can keep passing levies to try to fund parks, but that seems like it's a potentially unsustainable option in the long term. And I'm looking at this and I have questions as far as I don't think any of us anticipated the 100 million or $93 million shortfall that we're in right now, but we knew that there was going to be some sort of shortfall. I think originally before we got into office, we were told 27 million. And there are there was a lot of discussion about new assets being brought online when the parks levy was increased last time, there was increased program opportunities like schools to pools and things that I think people want and are popular. But I'm curious as to how were those decisions made to expand programs and facilities when we know that we don't necessarily have the funding for maintenance and staffing. I've also been learning from folks about the different pools of money. As far as we have a lot of money to open new things and not a lot of money to do maintenance, and that seems to be an eternal curse. And I don't know, are we supposed to talk to the state legislature about that and change that legally? What do we do to change that? Because it's not lost on me that just a few years ago we opened a pickleball court and now we're opening potentially a skate park. And all of those things will require funding and maintenance long term. And I'm excited about those things, and I like them, and I think the community likes them, too. And it also scares me when I look at this and I know that there's going to be more project maintenance that we might not be able to do on those things.
51 Well, you're exactly right on all fronts. Thank you. Sarah is going to provide you the substantive, complete answer. I'll say the decision to grow with these new resources was directed by council in 2019 and 2020. We framed up kind of small, medium, large scenarios, and they liked large for all of the reasons that are obvious. So that's what we built. Levees are not sustainable unless you're committed and confident that you can do them every five years. There are more sustainable options. Maybe you could just mention a couple. And here's a little bit of history on the operations and maintenance money. Councilor Novick knows this very well. Used to be general fund funded, and so when a new park was built, new general fund would be added to the bureau's budget to pay for it. These days it's levy. So that makes us pretty highly leveraged on that source of money, which is going away. And then finally, sdcs is really interesting, and we're in a terrible bind with all this money to expand and very little shrinking money, actually, to take care of things. Sdc statute could be changed at the state level and that could change eligible uses. I was pressing yesterday a little bit on do we have to spend it within a given amount of time, because it creates this pressure on ourselves that we don't really have an answer for? And sarah will correct me, but I think I heard if we collect it, we have to spend it. And if we assess it, we have to collect it. So the policy choice that we have is not to assess it. And there's a lot of policy implication there. But that is something that's within you, your authority to direct. Add to that.
52 Yes. Just in reference to are there different ways that we could think about funding the park system? That was part of the content that we've been really working on since 2019. So other ideas that we discussed with city council at that time included concepts like a food and beverage tax. We talked about transient lodging tax, cell phone tax. They also encouraged us at that time to consider income tax. One of them that they also encouraged us to look at was the concept of a parks district. A parks district, of course, is both a governing body, but also it has the ability to have its own permanent funding sources, like a permanent property tax rate. Districts can also leverage, you know, put their own bonds out for voters as well and utilize other funding sources. That particular model has worked extremely well in a couple of jurisdictions. In Washington state, in 2002, the Washington legislature updated their governing governance allowance for special districts to allow a city council to actually be the governing body. Gavel in, gavel out for a special district, and both seattle and olympia later passed park districts that use that city council governed model. They also included agreements with the parks district when it went to voters to not sort of back out the general fund, so they had some certainty about their overall funding picture. And again, in those jurisdictions, that model has worked very well to have sort of a sustained, longer term, consistent source of funding.
53 Thank you. These microphones are so inconsistent. Thank you. I appreciate those answers. So when we're looking at the presentation and I think it was the north Portland aquatic center that was the newest one. When was that opened again? Or if you don't know, off the top of your head, it's fine.
54 2930 I believe.
55 Okay will be opening. Yeah.
56 Oh it's going to it's going to open okay. And that's going to cost us 6 million a year. I do think it's, you know, in an area that deserves to have that who, who is making the choices to continue to open new centers when we have no money. Is that are you being directed by council to do that or. I don't know, I just I don't I'm not understanding why this is happening. And I'm assuming it's not your fault, but that means that us as a city council, we're going to have to really collectively start having the hard conversation about the fact that we can't keep opening up new assets if we do not have the funding to maintain them. I just think this is a really dangerous precedent that I keep seeing in these presentations that I just find very concerning, and I see that not even just within parks, but across all our bureaus, where we keep expanding programs one time funding assets, and then we have no money to maintain them later. And then the public is heartbroken and disappointed because this thing that they now are excited for, or love is not getting the support that it deserves. So I would, I would say, I guess as experts in this area that you also tell us as city councilors when we're wrong, because we, of course, our constituents are going to tell us, yes, open this new thing. This is so exciting. People love a ribbon cutting, but this is actually quite dangerous. I think as far as the precedents that we're setting with the budget that we have. And I just want us to really think about that collectively.
57 I want to briefly respond. I think you're again, exactly right. I don't think it's anybody's fault. I told some of our parks alliance partners last week that we are starting to feel recklessly leveraged on partnerships and one time funds and levy funds. It's there's very little that the city does. That community doesn't, doesn't value and hasn't requested and isn't actively using and advocating for. And it is so understandable that we use year to year all the resources we have to the margins to do as much as possible. But then we get to moments like this where the check comes due, and I think the solution is exactly what's happening here, which is for you to understand it and really grapple with it and come to decisions about what's priority going forward.
58 Claire Ryan.
59 Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you. It's good to see everyone. I had 18 months of I enjoyed it at least being your commissioner in charge. And it was quite a wild 18 months. As you recall, things happened like a light poles that were mentioned. And we had to make tough decisions on how to respond to that. I think we finally got there and got it done, and I think I want to just pause for a minute and remind myself and all of us, that you steward 15% of the land in Portland. And I don't think as a council, as an organization, we just take a breath with that. So I've understood why you saw that yourself as a part of infrastructure. I think that argument can be made for basically almost every bureau, but especially parks. And I really do see that. I think what I want to get at is today, just how we're trying to organize as counsel in this process. As you might know, the council president saw parks as being divided into two committees that would probably drill down, although there could be a third. I know we have to figure this out. It's too much and we need to look for those efficiencies. But today it's basically a presentation, big picture on parks, but it's also a focus on parks and nature. And then there's also parks and recreation. And that was something I really did experience. And you know this a director long we had conversations about this not good or bad, but it was really clear there was two big divisions. And that's not a bad word, division. It just means there was a focus area. And today we're hearing more about parks and nature, because we're in this committee in the arts and economy committee, we will need you to come back with a focus on parks and rec. And here's why. When we look at portland's tough economic landscape at the moment and it's really grim, like, no one loves this, but it's truth. And when we looked at data from in the arts and economy committee from econorthwest, it was pretty depressing in terms of the population trends, people moving out. And I got to tell you, the trends of families in general moving out of Multnomah county, out of Portland, to Clark county was alarming. And when you look at the school district enrollment data, which is a benchmark that Portland should always look at for economic trends, it's very, very grim. We're not a fortune 500 city. I love my sneakers, but that's about it. And we're a city that's always been built upon. Families wanting to invest in this city, grow their families and their small businesses here. Their kids hopefully return when they're not kids anymore and have their families. That's the Portland ecosystem, our currency, our economy, is maintaining and sustaining families. It's also a city where elders have loved aging in place. And so I think what I've always struggled and we had this struggle in those meetings, you recall, is I couldn't tell sometimes if the rec side, the part that brings activity and joy. The reasons why I say this also is because when you're out on porches talking to people, what you hear is swimming pools. You hear about arts, you hear about lessons, you hear about activities. And when I hear parents say that they're struggling to stay in Portland, they tell me stories like, I'm just tired of walking to the park, getting my kids all ready, you know? Takes a little while. When you have three little ones, you get there. It's maybe a four blocks to get there, and then the kid has to go to the restroom and the restroom is closed. So they're upset and they come home and they what they do now is they email all of us. And on the campaign trail, they told us those stories. I heard them over and over again. I heard from the elders that said, one reason I moved here, besides my grandchildren, was because of the amenities that parks provides. I need my water aerobics class, I need community, and we all saw that after COVID, the joy that suddenly came back to neighborhoods when the community centers were open again. So for me to see that, that's deprioritized in my opinion, when you look at the data that you're giving as a lower rung and you use it with data that says that the nature trails are number one, not disputing it. I love the nature trails, but have we ever dove deeper into the data and talked directly to the families about what they want? Because I think that there's something that I'm not seeing in the data about portlanders enthusiasm for the recreation and the arts services that are provided, and then to find out through a community neighborhood association meeting a couple nights ago that the st. Johns community centers is on the chopping block, and it would have been nice to have a heads up on that. Anyway, so I heard the pain and the anger about that new information that was released. My point is, we're all getting we'll all get hit with that, because one reason people move to Portland stay in Portland, of course, is because it's so beautiful here. And of course, it's because of our nature. And it's also because of the vibrancy that we provide in our recreation centers and community centers. So to see them deprioritized like this is hard to accept. And I just need to understand why you choose to always put that at the lower level.
60 I can start. And then sarah, you know, the.
61 And so I sometimes think of you as part of parks and nature and not always parks and rec.
62 Well, again, this is exactly the conversation that needs to be had. So thank you. The I've lost my this is so distracting out there in the street.
63 Can I.
64 Jump in.
65 If you feel like otherwise, I would like you to speak to what we've heard. And I would like to say that the priorities are for you to set and for all of us collectively to talk about. And there are constituencies for all of them. Absolutely. And they show up differently in the data. And how, you ask, informs what you hear. So I love that you are reminding us what's coming into your inbox, what you heard on porches. That's an essential part of how you're going to get to a comfortable, confident decision.
66 So that's been consistent for the last four and a half years.
67 Yeah.
68 Before we pass it to sarah, I would like to say the framework we presented was not a prioritization. It was just a framework for us to talk and think about it. And that larger bucket is based on survey and feedback that we've received from the community. And I'll let sarah talk a little bit more about that. So we are asking those questions. You know, healthy parks, healthy Portland has a listening and learning piece. We're working very closely with our partners, especially in recreation, to understand what they need to be able to feel supported and for access and for affordability. So those conversations are happening that that and it's not even data, right? Like it literally is what we're hearing from surveys. And so I just wanted to put that out there. And also just to remind everyone that it's just a framework for setting some context to have a conversation. It was not meant to be. As nancy said at the beginning, it's not a prioritization. It's not a proposal. It's not a recommendation. It's just a way for us to keep this conversation going and come to some decisions together.
69 Yes. Thank you. And I will just add a little bit of context. So in terms of usage, you know, I think I referenced the 97% of portlanders, you know, within a 12 month period are visiting sort of parks or natural area or being outside. I think that figure is closer to 67% have sort of attended a program or visited a center. So there is sort of a little bit less overall usage in terms of the average portlander, but it is still very high. And all of those things are very beloved, very highly used. And, you know, absolutely. I think the tough decision is that only one of the six scenarios that we showed you tonight funds it all.
70 Feels like tonight. It's still morning.
71 This morning.
72 Thank you.
73 That's funny. Well, the usage thing is, is making my brain hurt a little bit because the when I go to swim lessons or in activities on the community centers, they're full. So there's only so much usage when the class is full. I can walk in a park with my neighbors, which I do, and I guess that's the usage. But I'm not paying for something enrolling in a class. So it's like a it's apples and oranges, right?
74 No survey by itself is going to determine the priorities.
75 Thank you. Thanks, thanks. And then I think there's this. Are you okay with me?
76 I want to get to councilor Canals. Question at some point.
77 Okay, I understand that. So I could feel you saying, wrap it up. Obviously I have a little bit to say on these topics. I'll be careful or not careful. I'll try to be concise as I continue. I've been concise. This is a necessary conversation. Gets to the heart of the matter of what we're supposed to talk about today, actually. And I do think that if you're promoting a campaign, cutting the usage of the community centers obviously gets to the emotions of portlanders, and then they're stuck with the dilemma of, if I don't vote yes on this levy, then I won't have usage for this space. But it also doesn't always seem true in terms of how we're thinking as an enterprise. As we look at this scenario. And I want to say two more things very quick. Steve councilor Novick, sorry, the cdc money that we collect can only be spent on new construction. I've talked about with this to you many times, sarah, why this isn't a legislative priority down in the state to be able to use the sdc funds for deferred maintenance is silly. There must be a lobby down there that's very against this. I don't know who they are, but they have a lot of power. Anyway, I keep bringing this up since I've been in office, and I cannot understand why you can't use cdc funds for big deferred maintenance projects. Everybody that has a house knows that. That's what you would like to do with your equity funds. So it's a little bit of silly. And then my last question is you used to have a person that focused on private fundraising. I know this because I hired her from you. Kelly torres to be my chief of staff when I was elected. And I was always confused why, after the levy passed, you stopped raising what appeared. It didn't seem like you filled that position. Can you tell me the philosophy on why we did that? Especially when we're saying we want to work more with these private friends groups? And when is the culture going to know how to do that if we don't have those kind of positions?
78 So I can't speak to 2020, but I can tell you in 2025 we're leaning back in that direction pretty hard. I think we have some structural, organizational changes that we're implementing now to make our focus on partnerships more clear and more consistent across the bureau. Todd, you have more probably background.
79 Just real quick. Todd lofgren deputy director of community sports services my first job at the city of Portland was business development coordinator to work on these public private partnerships. 2007 working with kelly back then, our competitive advantage in the philanthropic and fundraising environment is largely around government grants. So it's metro state federal funding. Oftentimes those funds have to flow through us. Our partners oftentimes are the best where we partner with them, and then they raise private, philanthropic and foundation dollars. The actual dollars that we received, let's say we've got about $150 million operating budget. We're raising the order of like 3 or $400,000 of direct funds and private donations. It was a very small amount. It was important for summer free for all, because that was our only choice at the time to go out, ask for $5,000, $10,000 at a time. That's actually not probably our best use of using city employees to make those private fundraising calls, but our private partners have a lot better leverage on doing that. So we're going to be focusing more on the public private partnerships, where we can partner with nonprofit organizations like leech botanical gardens and others to help do the work with us as a partnership, our volunteers, the government grants and then partner with our private partners, Portland parks foundations, all the nonprofits that we have to go after, the private philanthropy dollars that we think portlanders want to give to the park system.
80 Thank you. Todd, that sounds good. I'd love to get some data that shows how much private money we raised before 2020, and how much we've raised in private philanthropic dollars since we've had the levy that would be helpful to assess this better. Thank you.
81 And we do have the parks foundation coming up to talk with us later on this morning. Councilor Kanal, thank you.
82 And I don't mind having to go after councilor Ryan. He said a lot of the same things that I would I would be saying, including that I was also disappointed to hear about the saint john's community center, possibly indirectly through community members, and not get a heads up on that. I, I think the 67% stat is a little misleading from what I heard, which is very similar to what councilor Ryan heard, because we're in the same district knocking on doors because it it appears to me that it is because we don't have the capacity or the accessibility for the other 33% of portlanders or much of that, to utilize recreational programs in the same way as we do, because you can just walk up and go into a park and there is no barrier in that same way. The other thing is on on slide 12, although you mentioned it's not a priority, it shows roll over from one to the other, and we're not even putting a dollar into the second bucket until the first is figured out. So this presentation led us to the conclusion, I think I'll say for myself that this was in fact, a priority. And I think I'd like to get some more clarity on a couple parts of this before being able to, to weigh in on it, because as I look at the fourth bucket, specifically under public programs, and this is slide 11, you have after school programs, summer playground programs, schools uniting neighborhood programs. Another part of it references a citywide sports. These are not only recreational activities, these are also economic development activities. As councilor Ryan has put out, pointed out and as one of the co-chairs, along with councilor Novick of public safety, I'll also mention that their public safety programs. And so I want to see those prioritized higher. And I am confused by why this we've made a sort of maybe not singular coherent decision as a city, but two separate decisions as a city where we have taken responsibility for street tree maintenance. And that's in the top bucket here. But we have not taken responsibility for sidewalks and other traffic safety infrastructure that that affects human life. And I think we've seen there was a meeting with, with councilor Novick where there was an implication made of valuing trees over human life that I think was problematic. So my question is how much does urban forestry cost?
83 Councilor Kanal I think that I have some answer to that question. It's the clean energy fund that's being used to take over street tree maintenance, and people thought that there was. Although frankly, I think that's a dubious choice. People thought that there was enough of a nexus between the clean energy fund and trees to do that, but nobody thought there was a nexus between the clean energy fund and sidewalks. So it was there was a pool of money people thought was available for it. Sure. Is that more or less right?
84 Actually, yeah.
85 Yes. I want to say briefly, if you can't fund everything in all the boxes, then you have to make choices and you have to set priorities. That is absolutely the case. And in most scenarios that are possible going forward, we are having to make you are having to make those choices. But as the director said, this is an option to get you started thinking about it. It is not a proposal. And ultimately what's in those boxes in the order they go in is up to you.
86 Thank you for clarifying that.
87 I would love to speak councilor Kanal to one item that you said about the other 33%, and I appreciate that. The antidote is sometimes more strong than the numbers. Right? And I and I hear you on the number could be higher if capacity was higher. Right? I totally hear you on that. But what I want to also highlight is when we talk about parks and natural areas and trails, don't be mistaken, people are recreating in our parks. They're the community centers are another vehicle. But when you think about the sports organized and otherwise hiking, biking, you know, sailing, paddle boarding, those are happening in our parks. So the recreation is happening in our parks as well. So I have I have a hard time separating the two, and I don't think they should be I don't think they should be at all. I think that there are components of both, of all of what we offer that fit into different areas, both in the committees and otherwise. And that's the reason why they're so beloved, right? Because we're so many things to so many people in so many ways. So I just wanted to like a little bit of a clarification there, but also validating what you're saying. Of course. And then I think that someone's going to talk about forestry and the.
88 Yes. So the city administrator's recommended budget for fiscal year 2526 has $23.4 million for urban forestry budget, with 15 of that or 64% funded by PCEF.
89 Okay.
90 Thank you for that. The I'll ask two more. One is what specifically caused the increase of 220 fte from fiscal year 2021 to 2025 and was the fiscal year 2021 numbers? Were those the pre-covid average, too, or was that lower number already artificially depressed because of COVID? And now we're coming back to the pre-covid level, or was it actually an increase and if so, why?
91 Okay, sure.
92 So the 2120 or 2021 figures were COVID was happening at that time. We let go many, many seasonal employees, but we tried to retain the full time equivalent employees. So there isn't like a dip in the full time equivalent employees that you saw. They just sort of did other work in that interim period. The increase we've seen sort of in all areas of parks, but some of the most notable, I would say urban forestry has gone from about 50 fte to in 24, 25, 116 fte. So that's more than doubled. That's 50 of them. Within recreation services it's very little. So they've been holding steady. They really haven't seen much of an increase. We have seen an increase of about 20 fte in the ranger and security program. So more capacity out there in the parks. We've seen some increase in our central supports for all the bureaus function. Land stewardship increased by about 50 fte as well. Those are the folks out there doing the daily cleans and maintenance of the parks. And then within asset and development, we've also seen about 3030 fte increase. And so those are the plumbers, the carpenters, the electricians. So a lot of a lot of increase in sort of taking care of parks.
93 And if I could just add context on the seasonal casual workforce, which we have about 2000 in a in a year, we went down to zero in the 2021 year. And the recreation division uses a lot of seasonal casual employees. So a lot of that 2000 goes to recreation.
94 And then my last question, I do have a short comment after that is I want to talk about cost recovery. So I was a member of the parks board. I remember one of the last briefings I had there was about this. And I'm going to oversimplify the statement that I'm about to make, which is that the current parks approach to equity was effectively given access discount, given all the different programs and how they're structured, we can only afford to run 2 or 3 swim classes. These are not real numbers, but I'm giving an example here. Only afford to run 2 or 3 swim classes a day at x location in order to make sure that they're all affordable for everybody. And one of the things that I heard on the campaign trail and which I asked about, is, why wouldn't we have ten swim classes a day where seven of them are being charged at full price, and then a little bit extra to fund the 2 or 3 that are more focused on low income portlanders. This was a suggestion I heard a lot from folks who would prefer to pay a little extra to do it in Portland, as opposed to taking their kids to Vancouver for swim classes, which was a very common refrain I heard is driving to in particular Gresham or Vancouver. So my question is about how we structure this and if it is possible. I understand there's lifeguard staffing and instructor staffing issues, but beyond that, are there any concerns about cost recovery as a potential vehicle?
95 Sure. So just focus in on swim lessons as the example. We try to max out the swim lessons with available staff and hours that we have. We actually have offered portlanders in the past so they can plus up. They pay their full fee and then make an additional donation. We actually haven't had much of a response to that. So I hear you that if maybe there's portlanders out there, if they were forced to pay full price, then they would pay that higher price. But when we've given the option for them to make a donation in addition to the full price, they're not making that donation. So and then the other option, as you mentioned, we have up to a 90% discount for portlanders that are experiencing low income. And that's been our primary discount program that's allowed access. We do have a lot of free programs so that outside of the swim lessons and I'll talk about schools, the pools for a second. We have lots of free programs where there's no fee at all, or registration where portlanders can just drop in and participate in the recreation program. And in some ways, that's the lowest barrier option for portlanders, because they don't have to go through that registration process. That can be a barrier as well. Lastly, I'll hand it over to director. Long schools pools has been a great option for expanding access to swim. Do you want to talk about that?
96 Yeah, no. Thanks to the levy, we were able to offer schools to pools working with currently the Portland public school district. And we're looking to expand to the other school districts and offering free second grade swim lessons. And the schools get them there, and we teach them. And we've had great results and really great feedback about that program.
97 You you've asked this before and I really appreciate it. I think in our onboarding work session, and I would say if there is a way to charge more and use that revenue to increase capacity without squeezing people out or creating a barrier that's going to affect other people's ability to participate, why wouldn't we want to do that? I think it's a kind of down in the details question about the mechanics and how this affects this over here and the hydraulics of it, but we I think we started looking into it after the work session and we'll continue.
98 I think it's also important to remember pre 2019. I wasn't here, but I was here for the fallout. Right. We had before COVID, we had a financial a structural issue. And it was largely because recreation was not recovering like full cost recovery. And you know and so we do have history on on a different model that wasn't working for us. So I mean, I think I think we're open to looking at it again, looking at different variations. But the levy has allowed us to not have to worry about that and also to be able to provide services at low and free and free, low cost and free. So.
99 Thanks. I'll just I'll close out and pass it back. But I.
100 Did want to note one thing first, which is, you know, parks is one of the four big places in our one of the four biggest parts of our general fund budget, along with police fire 911 and then, as councilor Novick mentioned, there's also the questions around our funding for homelessness services. And so in January, on the second, because previous councils had given guidance to not even look at three of those five parts for the budget, for how we would adapt it for this year's funding situation. We were looking at that time at a massive cut to the remaining two and that would be parks and homelessness services. At the same time, we were getting a request to increase homelessness services, which meant that parks were going to have the brunt of it. And that's why what we saw, I think it's slide 30 that that is not a function of parks bureau in the long run, to have $60 million within two years of having a budget of 100. And 90 ish million dollars. It would not have been a functional parks bureau. And that's why I asked for us to get clarity on the other parts of the budget so that we can rescue the parks bureau because of public safety reasons, because of economic development reasons and attracting people here. And so what I'm trying to convey here is that for the people that are watching this who are friends of a park, whether you're in a formal organization called that or not, looking at the other parts of the budget is vital to ensure we can save us from the slide 30 scenario, which is having a nonfunctional parks bureau. And so I hope that my colleagues will look at that, but also for portlanders to understand that every dollar we give somewhere else is a dollar we can't give to make up these types of gaps. Thanks.
101 Thank you. Counselor. First of all, I want to say that I take some responsibility for this looking like a prioritization because the bureau presented me this as a possible framework and I said, go with it. So if there's any, you know, thought that somebody is prioritizing when they shouldn't, they they the fault is mine. I wanted to say that. I think that it's easy to grasp what happens when you shut down a community center. The community center is closed. I think it's less easy to think about what happens if you decide to stop doing the daily maintenance of the open space parks themselves, and realizing that because she's no longer working for the city, she could possibly be less politic? In an answer, I asked former parks director gary santner to tell me what she thinks would happen to parks if we stopped doing that daily maintenance, and since mount tabor is a favorite of mine, I asked her to talk about that, so I want to read what she said. Daily maintenance of parks includes cleaning and stocking bathrooms, watering and mowing grass, picking up trash, moving debris including needles and dog poop from playground surfaces. Weekly safety checks of all playground equipment, cracking, prepping and removing safety hazards from sports fields, play courts and picnic areas. Providing water and mulch for community gardens and providing power for lights and irrigation for the sports fields, ornamental vegetation, if any, and grass and group picnic areas. These are maintenance activities that occur in every park, and bigger parks like mount tabor require a lot. Without these activities, mount tabor restrooms will be covered with graffiti, broken windows, and moss sodden or collapsing roofs, picnic tables and benches, rotten or graffiti covered grass and weeds so tall they could become fire hazards in the summertime and filled with garbage and other hazardous material. Playgrounds will be unsafe for children to play. Massive vandalism of all parks features, including the parks lights, will happen because an unkempt park sends invitations to do so. The problem is, after a mere couple of years of neglect and abandonment, it will cost so much more to renovate the parks and open for use, whereas reopening a few mothballed community centers would be far less costly. Although she acknowledged the importance of the community centers. So I wanted to say that the priorities are for us to decide. We in the council and what we need to do is be prepared to spell out the consequences of the choices we make. So, for example, I would expect somebody who thinks that we should not cut public safety, you should not raise taxes and need to preserve the community centers, to say and to do those things. I'm willing to see mount tabor park become a weed choked, trash strewn hellhole. And if somebody wants to avoid tax increases and cuts to public safety and is committed to the natural, the open spaces, natural areas like a councilor Named Novick might wind up there, I would expect Novick to say, in order to avoid cuts to public safety and avoid tax increases and avoid the open space parks becoming weed choked, trash strewn hellholes, I'm willing to close down all the community centers. Those are the conversations we need to have with this community, and those are the kind of things I think we need to prepare to say. We have some community partners here, that I want to have a hard stop to let them speak. At 1053, I'm at 11. But in the meantime, councilor Ryan.
102 Real quick, I want to acknowledge that the structural deficit that we keep talking about was first identified. I think, under her leadership in 2007. So I know that we've been wrestling with this for some, some time. I think it's time to go bold. I'll just make this statement. Pcf is the fund that has flush. And it, I think could be fully funding parks, nature, trees and trails. That's one way we could look at this as a city, as an organization. And if we do that, we'll have a very different conversation to look for enterprise wide efficiencies. When we talk about the cleaning that was mentioned, we know that impact reduction could work with the good people and maintenance partner, be more efficient with that usage of labor, and also allow maintenance to do other things besides cleaning that up. And I'll just end with a story. Someone texted in our kids sign up. Both our our kids class sign up days. Both me and my wife have to sit at the computer to try and sign up right when they open. Last time it failed within a second. So clearly there's a lot of popularity and usage. Our families are screaming at us, we want to stay in Portland. Please work with us. Continue to make this a family friendly city. And thanks for all you do to do that. Thanks.
103 Councilor Kanal.
104 Well.
105 Once again, following councilor Right. I've heard very, very similar stories about seconds. And I know, you know and we've talked about it a lot. So I agree with everything there. And councilor Novick basically finished the point I was starting to make, which is we have to look at what are we going to cut if we're going to maintain anything. The one thing I'd add, though, is that when we talk about public safety, public safety is not just the public safety service area. Public safety is also these first off parks rangers. So there is a third committee that that just talks about it too. The rangers are when people talk about what kind of response they want to a lot of situations and they describe it, what they're describing is often a park ranger. They don't they may not know that. They may not have that terminology. But the conduct of a park ranger is usually one of the ideals in terms of their methodology of addressing situations. And I've personally seen that, as have my staff in places like pioneer square, as well as in the more Green space parks, but also the recreation programs and things that keep kids have and young adults to having something to do. And so making sure that those remain open. And I think part of it is also that a lot of those programs have already left city of Portland park community centers. I've mentioned probably too many times I play dodgeball. There's no dodgeball in a city of Portland community center right now. And that's a that's a problem that there are activities occurring that aren't occurring there because we're paying for that asset. It exists. It's certainly the extended hours to have certain programs happen outside of the current hours is an additional cost. But I think maximizing the utility of these assets is also going to help, especially if we adopt more of a cost recovery approach to it. So I just want to note that because public safety is a core reason why I support this. And I also think in the long run, we would if we were to defund parks, to the degree that the worst case scenario shows here, we would end up in an economic problem too, because it would lower. It would it would reduce the growth of property values and property tax revenue. And we would end up in some of the spiraling situations that we've been warned about, which I don't think we're in yet, but we might get there if we would if we did something like that. So I think this is a really core part of what we need to do. And I appreciate the clarity that all of you have brought to it.
106 Thank you.
107 Thank you. Councilor Kanal. I have to say that councilor Rye and I and I will have a robust discussion about peace funds, because I think peace is supposed to be about climate change and maintaining parks. And certainly operating community centers, in my view, have a rather tenuous connection to climate change. Okay. Even maintaining parks has a rather tenuous connection to climate change. Thank you very much to the panel. Really appreciate it. And we'll we'll have further discussions. And will the clerk call the next item?
108 Item item three comments from Portland parks alliance and virginia alley. Concerned citizens.
109 All right.
110 Good morning. I'm pat rose, former member and chair of the Portland parks board and a member of the Portland parks alliance. The alliance is an informal group of advocates for the park system. Our coalition members come from 30 organizations, and we continue to grow. We represent a diverse diversity of interests and include people and organizations from every part of the city, united by our concern about the lack of sustainable funding model for the park system, particularly with respect to the capital maintenance funding needed to protect over 100 years of investment in park assets, including our newest parks. We understand that the park system has a short term funding program. You've just particularly on the operating side, you've just heard about that in some detail and it's daunting. But for decades, as I think council for councilor Morillo indicated, we've addressed fiscal cliffs like the one we're facing now by short term levies and small, certainly in comparison to the maintenance backlog bond measures. For decades, we have kicked the can down the road and put the park system on a path that is not sustainable. The fact that the levy would have to be renewed at double the tax rate to maintain current levels of service, illustrates and confirms this. Costs are not going down in the next five years, which means in five years 2030, the levy tax rate would need to be increased just to maintain this 2020 status quo. And the capital maintenance backlog will only have grown and was really not been addressed so far in the presentations. I would like to just note that as assets fail, the capacity to deliver service becomes constrained. The two things are related and this is not sustainable. In 2019, when I was chair of the parks board, the current levy was proposed to close a gap originally pegged at $6 million, later reduced to 2 million, that at the time we thought was catastrophic. The levy was intended in part to give the bureau some time to develop a model for funding the park system on a sustainable basis. Sarah huggins, claudio capezzano and others did very good work on that. Yet here we are six years later, having the same conversation, only instead of a $2 million gap. The gap, assuming the levy is renewed is 23 million this year, 27 next, and the capital maintenance backlog has gone from 450 million to 600 million. This is not sustainable. We believe with the new form of government, we have a once in a generation opportunity to break with the status quo and develop a sustainable model for funding the park system, which addresses the capital maintenance backlog, delivers core services on an equitable basis and provides for the expansion of the system to underserved areas. We urge you to seize this opportunity, and we are here and ready to help if, if and how we can. We now turn this over to jim.
111 I'm jim keelan, I'm a volunteer with the 40 mile loop. But here today, I'm here with the Portland parks alliance, with which I'm participating. The city has tough short term decisions to make regarding parks. As you work with the city manager and Portland parks and recreation to make those decisions, we urge that you make choices that facilitate and not delay building a sustainable park system going forward. At a minimum, we recommend clearly defining paris core mission and funding priorities. We believe the foundation of that mission is equitable access to clean and safe public Green spaces, natural areas, trails, and the preservation of capital assets, particularly those assets associated with core services. This will help in the short term and in the long term. Secondly, developing a city wide capital maintenance program, a capital replacement program that includes the establishment of a citywide capital asset management program, as recommended by the city manager, and as a first step in addressing the park backlog. A comprehensive review of the condition of capital assets, including the parks included in the park system, the existing capital maintenance backlog for Portland parks and recreation is incomplete at best. Such a review should be completed prior to levy renewal to allow the inclusion of projects that present additional near-term closures of valued assets. We ask that you restart the sustainable futures work by building guardrails into the levy renewal that are designed to ensure that a sustainable financial model is developed well before a renewed levy expires. That work must not be limited to looking for new revenue sources, but must also address the scope of services provided by Portland parks and recreation. Last on the list is to take a hard look at the long term trends of the city's discretionary discretionary general fund and how they've been allocated to pay for over the past three decades. We strongly suspect that Portland parks and recreation share of discretionary general fund has diminished. Contributing factors include real pressure on the city to address new challenges and periodic general fund downturns like we're having now, where police and fire are held harmless. We suspect that planner never fully recovers from those downturns. Last night, I watched the youtube recording of the November 26th, 2019 city council work session on sustainable funding options for Portland parks and recreation. As pat said earlier, very good work was done by Portland parks and recreation staff preparing for that work. Session options were presented and follow up actions were anticipated. We all know that Portland and the whole country has been through a lot over the past five years, but with two exceptions, it's as if time has stood still for Portland. Portland parks and recreation funding problems, the exceptions being, as pat has already said, the reported deferred capital maintenance gap for Portland parks has grown by a reported 150 million, and the immediate fiscal cliff for Portland parks and recreation has grown by 21 million, from 2 million to 23 million. I really appreciate the conversation that occurred with following the parks presentation. We'd like to continue participating in that. And but we're happy to take questions. Following virginia's presentation.
112 My name is virginia ellerby, and I am testifying today on behalf of the concerned citizens, an informal group dedicated to ensuring the city's assets are preserved. Our group, like the Portland parks alliance, believes Portland parks massive deferred capital maintenance backlog merits serious attention. The concerned citizens, moreover, recommend that discussions on future park funding be broadened beyond the current focus on operating levies. Given our interest in a broader discussion, I will begin my presentation by focusing on parks 2019 sustainable future plan. That Portland parks alliance also mentioned. Even though the plan was never implemented, we still regard it as a solid policy roadmap for tackling parks twin financial sustainability challenges, namely the previously mentioned maintenance backlog and the sizable operating deficits the bureau periodically runs. These two problems can be traced to a large, in large part to a long standing imbalance between the bureau's operations spending shown in blue in the base budget pie chart, and its capital maintenance outlays shown in dark Green. And as pat has pointed out there, the failure to deal with capital maintenance backlog as leads can lead to a deterioration in assets to the point where they have to be taken out of service, potentially compromising the bureau's ability to fulfill its core mission. The sustainable future plan presented two options for remedying this imbalance. They're captured in the maintain and fulfill pie charts, the ambitiousness and the cost of the options differ, but each uses a similar formula for rebalancing the bureau's budget. That recipe combines a sizable increase in the share of the budget devoted to capital maintenance, with limits on operational spending growth. These policy shifts, in theory, should not only make a noticeable dent in the backlog, but also ward off cash crunches akin to the one that the bureau experienced in 2019. Implementing this promising plan, however, almost certainly would require securing voter approval of both a bond and a levy. These complex financing requirements understandably led policymakers to set the plan aside and focus instead on an operating levy. When COVID emerged. Unfortunately, as the graphic that's now up shows, both the bureau's maintenance backlog and the projected size of its operating deficits have grown since the levy. When act was enacted. Among the factors that appear to have played a role in this deterioration are the levy induced widening of the existing budget imbalance, reduced fiscal discipline attributable to the high levy revenue target chosen, and bureau decisions on how to account for and spend levy money. Especially concerning is the bureau's decision to boost authorized fte spending since 2020. As sarah huggins has discussed, as the graphs in the middle of the page show, these large staffing increases coincided with the decline in the city's population. The divergence in these trends virtually guarantee future operating deficits, since they imply parks largest expense category will grow faster than the bureau's largest revenue source, namely the general fund. The large 2020 levy gave the bureau enough fiscal wiggle room to avert big operating deficits in the first three years of the levy, but the bureau's ability to do so in coming years appears limited. I know these brief synopsis of the sustainable future plan in the 2020 levy do not do either of them justice, but I hope that they spotlight the importance of carefully evaluating both the policy framework and the specific funding policies, especially those governing staffing levels. When reviewing paper proposals on how to deal with future challenges, performance metrics also deserve scrutiny, since they are the best way of gauging whether taxpayers are getting their money's worth. That brings us to the this slide, which attempts to put levy related performance metrics into historical perspective. Despite noteworthy gains in park tree pruning and in reducing cost as a barrier to participation in park programs. The final panel on the slide indicates in many other categories, performance has lagged well behind bureau expenditures. That suggests there's plenty of room for the bureau to improve performance by implementing productivity enhancing processes and cost saving measures. Pursuing such initiatives should limit the bureau's need to reduce services in the face of funding cuts. In the interest of time, I'm not going to comment on the final slide, which discusses which notes various topics on which greater clarity from parks would be helpful, and I'll just note that I enjoyed the robust discussion so far on the. Issues related to core mission. Thank you for the time you're devoting to this issue and the many other challenges facing our city.
113 Thank you very much. Any questions from the committee?
114 No.
115 Councilor Kanal can we get the slides back up and go back to the second to last one, please?
116 Thank you.
117 For thank you for being here. Thank you, jim, for saying the for having the courage to say why the budget has gotten out of hand the way it has. I wanted to just draw everyone's attention and ask if we can get some clarity from your perspective on the sort of center right part of this slide, the summer programs shrinking, and if you can speak more to that, that is a very significant decline of nearly two thirds in the swim. Lessons provided a small decline in free lunches provided. But the big one there is the free concert attendance as well. Can you speak to this part and give any insight you have on on your thoughts on it?
118 The I mean, first off, I do want you to note, you know, that's 2013 versus 2023. So that's a long time. And I, I think in terms of the concerts, it's really a it was a conscious decision to scale back that rather. So it's more supply side than necessarily demand side. But I was struck when I because I too was puzzled when I started looking at some of these numbers. Why you know, there wasn't why the numbers weren't going up, up, up. And in some cases they were coming down. In other cases they were stagnant. And when I looked at the data in census relevant to sort of the demographics of the city, and I saw how clearly we were both getting older. And so there, you know, relatively fewer youth and richer so that there were also fewer youth in poverty. And since a lot of the summer programs are focused on that particular demographic, you know, I think there is a demand issue. I don't know how significant it is relative to, you know, the supply sort of issues that in some ways are related to budget and such. But I think it is worth actually keeping track of those sort of demographic factors going forward, because they also say things about to the extent that recreation is going to remain a large facet of the parks operation, the need for. Programs geared to the elderly. So that's.
119 Thank you. And then I doubt if, well, you might know the answer, but if not I'll just let this stay out there. I'd love to know what percentage or what part of the increase in that bottom right yellow gold line, which skyrockets from 2023 to 2024, is the PCEF funding. And what part of that is a is a general fund increase.
120 That should that refers specifically to pruning of park trees, which is a parks responsibility. And that's one of the levy related areas of expansion. And as you'll see, it's the same data is historical data is provided in the upper right corner and in the blue line. Confusingly. And it is well up, but it's still only about at levels reached a decade ago. So it's a it's a very strong, positive sense of the levy, but it had taken a significant dip prior to the levy.
121 Thank you very much.
122 You're welcome.
123 This might be an unfair question, but I was just curious if any of you have thoughts about. Can you imagine community partners stepping up to take over some of the work that the city might no longer be able to afford? I mean, can you imagine community partners stepping up and saying, we'll take care of the daily maintenance of the outdoor parks? Or can you imagine community partners stepping forward and saying, we'll take over the operation of the large community centers? And do you think either one of those is more likely than the other?
124 I mean.
125 Okay.
126 Well.
127 It is hard to imagine that honestly, to, to any substantial degree. Our friends organizations are doing what they can. We're doing good work to preserve land, historic landscapes in places like Laurelhurst and volunteers at the rose garden, volunteers at hoyt arboretum. We're doing what we can. Leech garden is largely run by the friends organization. One area of interest to me is maybe a role, a bigger role for friends of trees. They seem to have. They worked with the city for years, and I. I was kind of dumbfounded when that relationship ceased, and I don't know why.
128 Honestly.
129 I'd like to add to that and maybe disagree just a bit. I think for a friends group to run a large community center is probably not realistic. But I do think that there are a couple of things. I know that there are friends groups who would like to do much more, and are finding the barriers, finding it difficult to find a way to do that and working it through with the parks bureau. And I think that's an area we need to work on. I think there are opportunities for philanthropy that have not been pursued. I think there are private sector possibilities for taking over or funding, not the whole park system by any stretch, but in specific cases. And money is fungible. So what is you know, that's additive. I think it is an area where there is enough possibility that we ought to be pursuing it and not just dismiss it. I think a lot more could be done.
130 Thank you. Any further questions for this panel?
131 I just want to say I look forward to meeting with we look forward to meeting with you. I think for the last district we haven't met with.
132 Yes.
133 Don't take it personally. We have the council president. She's a little busy. So yeah, we look forward to that meeting.
134 Thanks.
135 Thank you very much.
136 I just want to.
137 I want to show you a little sticker that I brought that I found in my jacket this morning. It was printed in 2019. It says park district. Now that reflects my personal views.
138 So thank you.
139 Can the clerk read the next item?
140 Item item four comments from Portland parks foundation.
141 We might.
142 Well, we'll see if I can run it. Okay. One moment. Let me get my screen share. Are we in business? Are. All right. Hello. Thank you for inviting me to present councilor, Novick and Morillo. My name is jessica Green. I'm the executive director of the Portland parks foundation. I'm here today as a nonprofit partner to maybe reinforce the things that you've heard today and to talk about some next steps in how we can partner together in this. The Portland parks foundation is a citywide parks nonprofit. It was created 25 years ago with a vision that people flourish with thriving parks. And I use parks as an all inclusive term. And in terms of parks and recreation throughout this conversation, and I think that's an important thing to point out. Pbem helps Portland communities create more equitable access to nature, to play, to health, and to places of connection. Today, we expand organizational capacity of friends, groups and partners, foster collaborations through awards, grants, workshops, fiscal support, and build a network. We partner with community members and the city and bring projects and visions to life. Like our recent initiatives to replace failing playgrounds and restore the thompson elk fountain. And we advocate for more funding for our parks and recreation system. So, number one, I'm here today to remind you that parks and recreation are not a nice to have. They are a need to have for a safe, healthy and livable city. Portlanders know this, and they love Portland for it. It's part of the core experience of being a portlander. Portland voters have confirmed that they believe this through the long history that we heard earlier, of approving bonds and levies to support our parks. They also show it just by how much they use the system, the assets, the programs, nature and the city once thought of as a contradiction is now a core value. We know that parks can improve mental and physical health. They serve critical Green infrastructure functions. They contribute to economic development, and they act as links and transportation networks. They host cultural and social activities, and they help give communities a sense of place. We also know that access to park facilities and programs is often a lifeline for households and communities, including access to affordable, safe, inclusive summer after school recreation programs and access to community centers. Back to what commissioner Ryan said earlier they offer a place for families to grow, connect and live in the city and thrive in the city. I was asked here to address the proposed budget and consider what should be cut, but instead, I want to reinforce the question that I've heard so many times today and ask the council, in partnership with key stakeholders here today and outside of this room, what level of a parks and recreation system is right for our city. And it's really answer that. Do we want a system that only manages Green spaces? Have we considered the disproportionate impact that closing community centers, affordable after school and summer programs will have on lower income and historically excluded communities? Again, what is the park system that we want in our city? Let's start there. As we are faced with reductions in expiring levy and reshuffling of our government, now is the time to define the park system that we want to invest in. Decision packages presented by the city include reductions in things that will have measurable impacts on our parks. And we've seen in the city's presentation that even in a best case scenario, includes cuts down the road or funding issues. Plus, we heard we have $600 million in deferred maintenance and capital backlog. And at the same time, we're poised to add new facilities that will have to maintain and operate. We need a strategy across the board. We have to recognize the fact that we've built out a park system that we can't afford to maintain or to operate. We need to raise more revenue, and we need to prioritize and possibly reduce our level of commitment for both operations and maintenance and capital. It's time to prioritize and look at the health of the whole system. We have to ask hard questions. What do we really need? What can we afford to let go? How do we leverage partnerships better? What are the consequences of what we cut? And can we afford that as a society? Are there existing alternative sources and how can we be innovative? Parks provided a framework earlier today, and you've asked us already, and I want to advance and continue this conversation, but is that what council wants and what's the impact of it and is it sustainable? In addition to prioritizing a strategic vision of what we want our parks and recreation system to look like, I also I want to address again the desire to turn to parks whenever there's a need to reduce the general fund budget. We've heard in so many ways today that parks are essential. Parks are a form of infrastructure. Parks are public safety, and parks are core to our city's future. They're the heartbeat in so many ways. I included a quote in the slide from former mayor wheeler in 2001, where he commits to not using the levy funds to free up general fund for other uses. Given all of the recent general fund reductions. Even back to what jim was talking about for the decades and the conversation that brought this together around additional reductions, I think it's important for the council to define what their policy stances on general fund reductions to balance the city's budget and to honor that. This is also really relevant because the budget proposed, at its bare minimum, assumes the levy renewal in November. And the real conversation is actually talking about a levy renewal at a higher rate. Although we have a history of park support, affordability is on everyone's mind. Prices are higher, economy is uncertain, and taxes hit hard. If when we choose to renew or increase the levy rate, we need to be able to clearly explain why we need the levy and what we're using it for, not just to backfill a general fund reduction. I say all this, and I also come to you today as a partner in this work and part of a network of partners who I know want to support this work. Our mission as a Portland citywide parks nonprofit is to mobilize support for a system of parks, natural areas and public spaces. The levy, a major source of revenue, expires next year. Pbf is partnering with the intertwined alliance, who's here today to lead the conversations about what a parks levy referral in July looks like in the months ahead, and the intertwine alliance will work together with you council to gather external advocates, collect community input to help inform the process ahead. We'll work with opposition. The Portland metro chamber, governor kotek, and we'll work with council and external partners to also determine the best path forward for sustainable operations and maintenance and capital funding. I want to thank you again for inviting me to speak today. I really do look forward to working together on a sustainable future for parks. And I leave you with one of my favorite quotes of our founding board chair, joey pope, who said the bottom line is we're here to raise much needed money for parks. We need to reach for what seems impossible, and we need to think in the long term. Thank you very much.
143 Thank you. Any questions from the committee? I have I actually have a couple of questions. What do you mean? What do you think about prioritization? Do you think that it makes sense to say that we prioritize the open space, natural areas first and then the community centers? Or would you say the opposite, or would you say it depends. Are there some open spaces you would write off in order to maintain some community centers and some community centers? You would write off to maintain some open spaces?
144 Yeah, I think it's a whole system. And it's a system that without one, you have to look at it as a whole, and you have to look at the impact and the cost to run it and the partnership opportunities. And I think you have to stop thinking about closing stuff, and you have to start thinking about how do we create a system that can sustain itself and in what partnership. And I think going back to jim's comment around, like, what are the core, what's the core values, what are the core services of parks? And let's name that and let's be okay saying, we want to run this program, but can we find somebody else to do it? Because right now this is what parks does. Parks and recreation. And I think now is a time where we're forced to reset a little bit. And sometimes you take on programs or you build out in a way where funding allows you to. But but sometimes you have to reset and it can be painful, but it also forces you to really think about how you want to grow and how you want to support. I think our city and our community and our forests and our natural areas, it's all part of one thing, and I don't think we get to just say, let's cut here because there's impact.
145 Councilor Ryan.
146 Thank you, chair Novick I just want to say thank you for being here, first of all and all the good work that you've done in your leadership role in such a short time. I did see on your slide at the end, you also were recommending looking at PCEF for additional funding. Okay.
147 Yeah. I mean, I think that we need to think about how the role that parks plays in climate adaptability. Right. And parks, we think oftentimes as parks in climate change is just the Green spaces. But then we talk about the community centers and we talk, you know, you think about those are also cool places for people to go when it gets really hot that don't often have that kind of access. So I think there's a much bigger picture there. And I also think that staff is an opportunity. And I'm not going to say we should use it, but I think that going back to some of these comments of we're we're in the business of parks and parks, so directly relates back to climate resilience, climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and so parks is also in this really unique position with so many great partners. And so where can we, in the true spirit of PCEF and in the true core mission of parks, all work together and be innovative and think strategically long term, and how to use these additional funds.
148 Thank you. And to clarify, I know for me it's really looking at the nature side, the tree maintenance side, I, I just want to ask for one more request. Could we get a usage of all of the community centers, like when the classes fill up, are they full like the percentage rate? I think that's what was missing from the data today. It'd be great to see that. Thank you very much.
149 Thank you very much. Thanks to everybody here. And it's now 1131. So this meeting of the climate resilience and land use committee is now adjourned.