The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-01-15
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Climate Resilience and Land Use Committee met on January 15, 2026. Roll call confirmed a quorum, the statement of conduct was read, and the body adopted November committee minutes by unanimous consent. The main agenda item was consideration of amendments to the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) Climate Investment Plan, presented by bureau staff, who described the five-year plan's structure, funding areas, and a package of proposed technical, goal, scope, and budget-alignment adjustments, including a proposed shift of funds between strategic programs related to housing energy efficiency and EV/transportation financing. Invited testimony and roughly twenty public testifiers addressed topics including youth transit passes, bicycle infrastructure, TriMet's funding shortfall and proposed service cuts, affordable housing electrification, and the Lloyd Center redevelopment. Committee members discussed possible approaches to TriMet funding, transit governance, and housing investments, with the matter continued to a future committee meeting rather than concluded; any votes taken are recorded in the vote ledger. The committee then held a discussion on a proposed Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake preparedness resolution, hearing from community advocates and bureau staff about infrastructure, water supply, and emergency planning vulnerabilities. The meeting was adjourned with plans to continue both topics at the next meeting on January 29.
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0 Testing the timer. Hopefully it's not too loud.
1 All right. Good morning everybody. We're a few minutes behind. So we'll go ahead and get the climate resilience and land use committee in order. It is Thursday, January 15th at 9:32 a.m. Diego, will you please call the roll?
2 Good morning. Avalos.
3 Present. Canal present.
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4 Ryan.
5 Novick here.
6 Morillo here. Claire, will you please read the statement of conduct?
7 Good morning, and 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@Portland.gov council agenda, slash climate 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 an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record. 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. We have two big items on our agenda today. First, we're going to consider amendments to the PCEF climate investment plan. It is my understanding this does not have to leave our committee today. And this is a big discussion with a lot of testimony. So, colleagues, I think that we should bring this back maybe during the next committee hearing, if possible. We're also going to be hearing from climate advocates on the cascadia subduction zone and just have more of an open discussion about what community organizers have discussed around this and how city council can leverage our power to actually protect people in the event of an earthquake. We are also going to ask that folks limit their testimony to about two minutes. We had more testimony than was initially anticipated, and we're trying to squeeze a lot into two hours, so apologies for that. But just giving you a heads up before the presentation start. We also need to adopt the committee minutes from the month of November. If we don't have any objections, can I get unanimous consent to do that? Yes. I don't see councilor Kanal online having any issues. So all right. Great. We will move to adopt those minutes. Diego, will you please read the next item?
9 Item two amend the Portland clean energy community benefit fund climate investment plan.
10 Thank you diego. Now we're going to hear the climate investment plan. And this is part of our annual review process on how PCEF dollars are spent. So this is a really important conversation. We're glad that you're here today for this. We have again, a lot of people signed up to testify. So if our presenters can be as efficient with their time as possible, that would be wonderful. And we ask that folks that are coming to testify will be as well. In the meantime, I ask that Eric engstrom, the director of planning and sustainability, sam barrasso, manager of the Portland clean energy fund. D'angelo, the pcf committee co-chair. And valdez, the pcf partnerships and policy manager, come up to give give us a brief presentation. Thank you.
11 Give us a second to pull up the presentation. While we're doing that, I'll just introduce myself. For the record, I'm Eric engstrom, the director of the bureau of planning and sustainability, and you already introduced the other folks at the table, so I'll leave it at that. We are here to provide the annual update to the climate investment plan, and I'm going to kick it off by just a few things at the very beginning. The agenda today will give you background and context. We'll talk a little bit about the sip amendment review process for 2025. Summarize the amendments that the committee is recommending and then take be available for questions and discussion. Before I hand it over to staff. A few key reminders. The sip is the five year plan that governs how we invest using the Portland clean energy benefits or community benefits fund. It was 2024. 25 was the year of beginning. A lot of the new efforts that were flagged in that plan. And it's a year of scaling up programs. This in 2025, 26 funds are fully allocated through June 2029 through this plan, with an opportunity, of course, for council to review annually and update as needed. Take it away, staff.
12 Okay. Good morning. Co-chair Morillo couch Novick. Councilors. For the record, my name is sam bross. I'm the program manager for the Portland clean energy community benefits fund, and I'm going to just walk you all through again, provide some high level context around the climate investment plan and then turn it over to our co-chair, d'angelo moning, to share some remarks about the committee's work around this effort, followed by my staff, my staff member, james valdez, to talk about the specifics of the amendment itself. So as a just a reminder, the climate investment plan lays out a five year implementation horizon, providing structure predictability for how PCEF invest in climate and community outcomes. The plan was originally adopted by council in September 2023 and amended in December 2024. Now we update the plan annually, and this has been something of a figuring out that we need to do it annually, because there's just there's a whole range of lessons learned, but it's really important to make sure funding levels, program design is staying right sized, responsive to program performance, learnings, community needs, and available resources. We generally while we generally. And maybe I'll pause on this next bit, I'll maybe just give the overview of the structure. The plan is organized by strategic programs. So we have about 37 strategic programs ranging from efforts to develop resilient community centers to administering and deploying energy efficiency retrofits in 3000 single family homes to, you know, getting out 6000 e-bikes. So a range of strategic programs followed by allocations for community grants. What folks have been familiar with, that's really the start and the heart of PCEF. And then we've got our collaborative for climate action grants also set aside within the climate investment plan. So that's just the overall architecture and structure of the plan itself is strategic programs and grants. Now, again, the council adopted the plan in 23 and amended it in December 2024. We updated annually. This is maybe what I was sharing in my last slide, my last content. And, you know, generally we expect major new initiatives and program expansions in the next climate investment plan, which we expect in earnest to start developing in early 2027 so that we've got it wrapped it up by mid 2028. In year to year, we're doing ongoing evaluations and tying in lessons learned so that we can be responsive and adaptive to both the circumstances we're seeing out there, the needs, as well as just, you know, ongoing program performance. This summary chart here just shows that. And you've seen this many times, but this shows just an overall mix of the investments across our funding areas. So these are funding areas as defined by code. And you see that yes a majority of our resources do go towards renewable energy and energy efficiency, followed by transportation, decarbonization, Green infrastructure and workforce development and our other funding areas regenerative agriculture, capacity building and other greenhouse gas reducing projects. And this slide here just shows another cut of our 1.6 billion that we'll be spending through June 30th, 2029 around how that's being implemented. So a good portion of that is being implemented through city bureaus, another portion of that through nonprofits. And then there's a good portion that's being implemented by external administrative partners. So these are contracts that we bring on with external administrators to implement our programs. And then we just specifically called out our investments in our public schools as well as TriMet, so that given those are unique factors as well to specify. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to our co-chair, d'angelo monty, to share just a few remarks. As d'angelo participated on the evaluation subcommittee that engaged deeply in the process to bring these recommendations to you all, and also, fortunately, co-chairs the PCEF committee. D'angelo.
13 Good morning. Co-chairs. Councilors. For the record, my name is d'angelo moning. I serve as the PCEF co-chair, and I served on the climate investment plan evaluation subcommittee alongside robin wang and faith graham. I do want to apologize in advance. I may have to step out early managing a couple of different projects, but I'll be here as long as I can be to see this through. The committee is central to keeping the climate investment plan effective, equitable and accountable to the communities it serves. Through the annual review process, the committee reviews progress and recommends adjustments to ensure the plan stays aligned with portland's climate and equity goals, and this plan was developed and championed by PCEF members, past and present, to provide a process so we're more proactive rather than reactive to the process of funding requests. It's been pretty difficult getting to this point, just kind of pulling this process together. But we're very proud of the process we've created in amending the plan and presenting this to you today through the annual review. The committee helps ensure the funding decisions reflect voter intent and meet the real needs of portlanders, particularly those impacted by climate change. This annual review process creates a structured way to measure progress, learn from results, make timely adjustments, and the structure is essential to public trust. Lets the portlanders see where funds are going, what outcomes they're driving, and how decisions are made. And as the conditions change, we remain agile and responsive to those evolving community needs, and this process ensures that the plan remains responsive and impactful, allows PCEF to recalibrate and shift resources where they're needed most while staying true to its established framework. It also enables quick adaptation to changing circumstances from supply chain disruptions, extreme weather events, and new opportunities for action. And by learning from these program results year over year, PCEF can pivot and respond to emerging needs while staying true to its core values, and it shows that portlanders can lead with both urgency and integrity, with purpose and not rigidity in the structure that we've developed in the process is designed to give portlanders confidence that PCEF staff committee members manage funds responsibly, remain accountable to community priorities, and stay responsive to the evolving changes of a changing climate. Thank you.
14 Okay. Thank you d'angelo. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to james valdez to walk us through the actual evaluation process itself. We'll have a pause there and then we'll talk about the actual amendments themselves. All right. All right.
15 Councilors co-chairs, Morillo and Novick councilor Avalos, good to be with you today. My name is james valdez, and I work as the strategic partnerships and policy manager for the Portland clean energy fund at bts. So I'm just going to briefly walk through the different steps that d'angelo, as you mentioned, was on this three person subcommittee from the committee that did the review and analysis and ultimately then put forward the recommendation through a process with the subcommittee that's in front of you today. And so I'll walk through the process that that subcommittee and committee took with support from us as staff. So first, there was an initial evaluation of all the strategic programs within the climate investment plan and really the status, their deployment status, their expenditures to date, and the basic progress towards some of the goals. Then there's a review of the budget and any expected additional funds in the five year window of the cip, of which I think we've shared before, there are none expected or no additional ones beyond was already forecasted by the city budget office. Then the subcommittee had an opportunity to have a targeted evaluation of some selected programs, to dig a little bit deeper, to ask questions about the status and progress of of ones that they had questions about, and to really highlight and evaluate some of the performance. And then the subcommittee developed a recommendation to amend the cip in four different kind of categories of work that I'll talk about a little bit later, then brought those recommendations out to public comment draft. Public comment draft went out in October. On the 20th, there was a public comment period open until November 5th, and it was kind of during that time that you also heard as a committee from us about this process and where we were at that point. We then had that kind of broader city council work session around the cip as a whole. On October 30th, the committee, as the committee as a whole, then reviewed public comment in a meeting on the 11th or I'm sorry, on the meeting on November 12th, and then ultimately in December on the 10th, the subcommittee deliberated and then came to decision for recommended package of amendments, which is before you today. The overall context for where we're at in this moment, and as I think we've shared before, is that this is the second full fiscal year of the deployment of the strategic programs and the the elements within the the climate investment plan. There's still quite a few programs that are ramping up where administrators are coming on board or bureaus that are implementing are still in their design and launch phase. And as I mentioned before, there's currently no additional five year revenue forecast by city budget office into the clean energy surcharge, as the subcommittee really looked and evaluated different projects for that targeted review, they focused on those that were close to meeting or fully allocating the the funds that were reserved for that purpose, and seeing where there were additional needs and where where success has been met. And so it was a fairly limited because this was the first year review of of those in totality. But we'll get into what, what the changes were that were recommended. I then will pass it to director engstrom to talk more about secondary process and how there's some options of engaging.
16 Yeah. Thanks. So the amendments that are before you today, many of them are fairly technical. There are not a lot of large changes to the the plan, but we do acknowledge that as part of the annual budget process, piece inevitably comes up. And so if needed, we are prepared to catch things that emerge during the budget process and steward a process of getting feedback through the the committee. And so I just describe that as sort of step two. That's beyond the scope of this particular ordinance. But is is a next step. So there's really sort of a part a and part b potentially of the the annual cip update, just acknowledging that things do come up in the budget. So that process we're in the in, in the works and in tandem with the budget timeline as the cbo releases information to you about how the process will unfold, we will try to follow that with with what our process will be if needed.
17 Okay.
18 So then I'll dive back into the summary of the recommended. The committee recommended amendments for the 2025 climate investment plan. And so there's four different categories or types of adjustments that are part of the recommendation. And as director engstrom mentioned, the majority of them really are technical or scope adjustments or refinements. There are a small number of funding adjustments recommended as well, that would seek to either increase or decrease funding in a particular strategic program. There's also pieces that we've learned along the way in implementation, especially in our engagement with different bureaus and refinement of both the scope of some some of the strategic programs, as well as kind of eligibility of different investments and goals of of those programs. Then there's minor language revisions or elements that we caught after the large document of the cip was released. They're really just technical changes. And then there's a series of changes that really bring the climate investment plan, the text of that into alignment with budget decisions that you, as a city council or the previous city council have made in the adopted city budget, either in the 20 2425 city budget or in this budget year that we're in right now. So I'll go into those in a little bit more detail, but still try to keep things high level so we can get to the public testimony. So there are two funding adjustments recommended. The first is in strategic program one, which is implemented by Portland housing bureau and provides investment funds for regulated multifamily affordable housing to be energy efficient and healthy and above code. And this is a funding area where they have Portland housing bureau has allocated the entirety of their funds to active projects, and there are more projects that are potentially in the pipeline. The committee recommended an increase of $15 million. You see the total figures there, and this is really in response to that need that we know is out there in the community for affordable housing and to make that to make an approximately 580 additional housing units through the estimated projects that are out there, this would be this recommendation also is balanced, so to speak, with a decrease of $15 million from our strategic program, 13, which is a targeted financing program that has not yet launched. The intent of this program was to provide incentives or financing tools for people who are drivers for taxis or tnc companies, transportation network companies like lyft or uber to really electrify the fleet of those vehicles. We still definitely see a need and an opportunity to deploy those funds, but at a smaller scale than the initial sip envisioned. And recognizing that we're now already in the second year of the sip, that those the total volume of funds was was in excess of what could realistically be deployed. There's also a minor change to also allow things like potentially rebates in addition to financing tools, exclusively to be able to meet the need that we are in today. Knowing that the federal landscape for ev incentives has changed quite a bit. Go ahead. Next slide. The next type or or slate of of recommended changes is around goal adjustments. Minor change to strategic program seven. The equitable clean transportation access program implemented by PBOT, which provides a reduced and free opportunity to for their access for all program, as well as biketown for all. And this reflects a focus on reducing really the metrics related to mode change, recognizing that a lot of people who are transit dependent to begin with, this program is really around universal access to transportation and that there's there's limitations in the ability to measure that mode shift for people that already are using transit or active transportation. There's some goal adjustments also to strategic program 21 that is around the Portland hydroelectric bureau and the relicensing project to add some specific goals to different steps and work in the relicensing process. And then in strategic program 22, which is a suite of work implemented by bureau of environmental services to really break that larger body of work into seven individual sub areas, so that programmatically will be able to track that and budget more with more specificity, and to adjust goals that are specific to sub areas of that work. There are some scope refinements as well that are recommended. One is again for strategic program seven and tied to the biketown program, in particular the biketown for all, and would allow PBOT to to invest PCEF funds to upgrade the fleet of biketown bikes as an eligible cost and with some parameters about how that happens and strategic program 14, which is a broad access to fair and flexible capital allocation. There's a scope change to really reflect the moment that we're in now, in some needs that have been elevated and to have specific sub allocations for consumer financing products, as well as office, residential conversion and anchor business destinations. Those latter two, which would be implemented by prosper Portland in strategic program 29, which is PBOT active transportation maintenance and operations, which I'd probably describe better as a bike Lane sweeping with bike Lane sweepers. It allows an additional vehicle to be purchased, as well as for some maintenance equipment to be purchased for leaf blowers and things like that as well. Next slide. Technical adjustment is also recommended for strategic program 25, which is Portland housing. Portland housing bureau's program focused on making retrofits and improvements to existing regulated, affordable multifamily housing. And there's a sub allocation that's recommended for removal for some safety and security grants that were basically not implemented using PCEF funds, and then also to reflect some PCEF committee budget allocations that had been shifted already to sb one. Then the last bucket of adjustments are actually second to last is some adjustments to come into alignment with the adopted city budgets. In fiscal year 2425, there was a budget allocation made to Portland parks and recreation to allocate $14.45 million to from the program that's focused on building upgrades for severe weather response for gathering centers in case of something like extreme heat cold, which we've certainly had in, in, in our city, to be able to improve Portland parks and recreation facilities, including some lighting upgrades and light pole upgrades throughout different parks facilities. And then in this current budget year, you all, as a council, also made some budget changes that impact some of the strategic programs. There was an eligible use of debt retirement funds, offsetting $5 million for costs related to ev infrastructure. And so just deeming that cost offset as an eligible expense. And then that's with fleet and facilities and their strategic program 26 focused on electric vehicles acquisition for city fleet as well as for charging infrastructure. And then in strategic program 30 for Portland parks, urban forestry, tree protection care. This is a program that's launching focused on maintaining street trees across the whole city. And in in the city budget. There were some funds that were moved from that strategic program to the regulatory functions of Portland permitting and development. Urban forestry related regulatory pieces. We're still working out exactly what that looks like in terms of the budget amount over the over the remaining part of the cip. But those are active discussions we're having with city budget office and both bureaus. And then there's additional administrative updates that that are part of this that were really brought in and recommended to maintain consistency with practice city practices around our definition and prioritizing underserved communities. These were identified by the city attorney and really helped maintain compliance with the mayor's executive order. And functionally, what they are are some minor key definition revisions for the party population definition, as well as some edits to the workforce and contractor utilization goals that that are throughout the program. And with that, I think we're at the questions phase, or I'll pass it back to sam or Eric.
19 I think this concludes our presentation.
20 Okay. Pass it back to me, then.
21 Pass it back to you.
22 Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much. This was really helpful detailed information. Appreciate you all coming to present today. We're so the order we're going to go. And if you don't mind staying in the room for a bit to chat with us longer is we have two folks here who are invited testimony who are going to come up and talk about perhaps ideas around investment for transportation options. And then we're going to have 20 minutes of public testimony. But to folks up here, have any technical questions for our panelists before we move into that?
23 Yes. My question is, as councilor Morillo just said, there's going to be a number of folks here talking about the possibility of instead of shifting the $15 million from the ev financing program to the housing program, spending it on some other transportation thing. And what. So I've got one sort of short term process question for you and one longer term one, the short term one is is there any I mean, one thing that we could theoretically do is pass all of the amendments to the full council, except that that would, except that one if we wanted to look at it further. And I'm wondering if there is any urgency to doing that today.
24 Councilor. Yes, conceptually, if you wanted to make the deliberations simple for this particular ordinance simpler, for this particular ordinance, you could choose to kind of pull that question out and move it to that second process that we're envisioning to go in tandem with the budget process, which would buy you a little more time, or as I think we mentioned earlier, if you needed to continue this particular hearing to next, your next meeting, that's also fine with us.
25 So if we continue the whole thing to the next meeting, including things other than the 15 million, that would be okay. And the second, more process thing is that I, I want us to consider the proposals for spending the money on transportation that we're going to hear today. But I definitely do not want the committee or the council to simply override the committee's and staff's process and say, we're going to do this instead of that. So I wanted to ask you if you could think if you have to, maybe you've already thought about this, but if not, if you could think between now and then about, is there a way that we can sort of integrate council suggestions about other things to consider into your process? And I apologize for not having sort of raised that question like a couple of months ago, but what I'm hoping is that we might be able to use this discussion of the 15 million as sort of a lead in to how council engages with the committee and with PCEF overall, including, most importantly, for the next cip. My impression, which may be unfair, is that in the past, council's sort of either rubber stamped what the committee and staff has come through, or stepped in with a big foot and demanded money for other stuff. And I'd like us to develop a new process where the council is engaged, but not with not with a jackboot. So I just wanted to get that out there to start thinking about whether we can use the discussion of this 15 million to establish a new procedure where if council wants other things to be reviewed, then it goes back to you and you think about how to review it, how to integrate public comment, etc.
26 Yeah, that's what I alluded to earlier in our presentation, that we will be prepared if items come up in the budget process for, you know, other ideas with PCEF that we will we will have a process to funnel those back to the committee, get advice, and then get that information back to council or the mayor. And there's really, you know, as ideas come up, there's kind of three buckets we might put them in. One bucket is things you're considering for this year's budget. Another bucket might be an idea that's going to germinate for next year's cip amendments. And then the third bucket might be an idea that's germinating for the next cip in 2029. And all those are, you know, we're happy to try to create a process to be cataloging and collecting that.
27 Sorry to be a little intense about facilitation today just because we have a tight timeline. And I'm not sure how how we'll have quorum later. So let's just move on with more technical questions, knowing that for the next climate committee, we can also continue having this discussion about the climate investment plan. Do you have any technical questions, councilor Avalos.
28 Yeah, I guess with that I'll wait for the next one. I have some broader questions, so we'll get through testimony and then we'll end there, you think, and then just automatically reschedule. Or you're saying if we run out of time, we'll reschedule.
29 Well we have yeah it's pretty tight. So I think we had some 15 minutes allocated for committee discussion. But I think that realistically we're going to have to move it to the next committee meeting. Apologies. It's a very good problem to have that. We have so much testimony, but we do. And I would like to make sure that we get to hear from the public, since they did show up here today.
30 So yeah, agree. I'll just hold off my comments for now.
31 Okay. Great. Thank you all so much for coming and presenting today. We look forward to hearing from you again at the next climate committee meeting.
32 Thank you. And with that.
33 I would like to invite our invited testimony up. Celeste ruiz from the transit, equity and environmental advocacy committee with the Multnomah county youth commission, and jim middaugh, chair of the bicycle advisory committee. Thank you both so much for being here today and for offering just a few more perspectives for us to consider. We're really grateful for all the work the PCEF committee has done, and I think we take it very seriously the outreach that they've done. And it's just important to hear from more folks. So, celeste, why don't you go ahead and get us started?
34 Okay. Good morning, climate resilience and land use committee. My name is celeste ruiz and I am from district one. I grew up in the parkrose area, and I'm currently a sophomore at PSU. Today I am here a part of the Multnomah youth commission, the official youth policy body of the city of Portland and Multnomah county, to encourage you to think about piece of funding to go towards youth pass, which is free public transportation for youth. This would be life changing for many youth across Portland. I went to parkrose school district, which received limited funds from statewide transportation improvement fund, also known as stiff for hop cards. This funding was not enough to provide all students with a hop card. Students who don't have a pass are frequently relying on the bus to get to school, and are putting themselves at risk of getting fined just to go to school. With limited funding provided, once hop cards run out, students are then added to a waitlist and we can help change that with this piece of funding. Having access to youth pass means having more access to the city, and more ability to be engaged in the community. We are specifically asking you to think about youth pass for youth who are not already having this, to help fill the gap for the many youth who are not in Portland public school district, such as david douglas, parkrose and even the middle schools. Although I don't have the numbers for you or how much this would cost, we'd like to remind you all that youth pass was written in 2020. Transportation package for metro youth pass. This ballot didn't pass. However, we can refer to these numbers. We can also feel it's important that we shape this discussion of the cost of youth ridership, instead of the nominal cost of youth pass. Youth pass cost conversation should be treated similarly to universal annual pass programs for employers, where we can look at estimated usage or even data TriMet might already have. Thank you for your time.
35 Thank you so much, celeste. Appreciate you being here.
36 Councilor Morillo and co-chair Novick and Avalos, thank you so much for having me. Other members of the committee. My name is jim middaugh. I'm the volunteer chair of the city of Portland bicycle advisory committee, and I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I want to start with a shout out for Portland voters. Yay, voters for creating safe. I think it's really important to remember that we've got a bunch of really great people in our community who care. I want to acknowledge safe for investing in some really important transportation initiatives. And without those dollars, some really important things wouldn't be happening. Thank you and thanks, you guys, for making these hard choices. I heard from a wise bureaucrat once that the only thing worse than not having any money is having to decide who gets it. So you guys are in a tough spot and I thank you for doing it. I'm prepared today to talk about bicycling, but I want to acknowledge that energy efficient housing and transit and other things are also really important. And again, I'm glad you guys are in the position of having to choose. But as you're making that choice, I hope that you will consider that tailpipe emissions are the leading cause of carbon pollution that we have local control over. We also know that getting folks out of their cars is one of the best ways to reduce those emissions. And when I think back just a few short years ago, when Portland was a leader in cycling, cycling was a key part of the buzz that attracted incredible talent to Portland, that attracted outside investment to Portland, that brought tourists to Portland. And really, cycling was key to our brand and key to that economic recovery that I think that we all want. And that's why for the last two years, the 20 or so members who volunteer for the bicycle advisory committee have been working closely with PBOT to identify more reasons for people to choose bicycling and more opportunities for people to ride. We have a world class system that gets people on their bikes. There is clearly opportunities for more investment to make that system better, but we can also make the most of it today by encouraging people to bike. And we can build on PBOT excellent programing and recent behavior change research. We can leverage our community groups who are focused on cycling and working with folks to help them economically. We can build on things like the e-bike program pilot that was very successful working with Portland state, and if we do that, we are going to reduce auto trips and get more people on bikes, and when we do, there will be less traffic and more parking for people who need to drive will have healthier folks in our community. We'll have more eyes on the streets so people will be safer, and people who need it will have more money for housing and other basic needs, and finally will be more competitive as a city. Transportation is suffering financially, just like everything else. But remember, transportation is the leading cause of tailpipe emissions and bikes stop that pollution. Bikes are the carbon pollution solution. And so they do that and so much more for our community. Please consider the total common good as you're making this decision. And remember that bikes do more than reduce pollution. They do a lot of good things. Thanks for making the tough choices and yay voters!
37 Thank you so much to both of you for being here today. I wish that having more money to allocate was the problem that we currently have, but it is not right now. So thank you both so much for being here today. Now we're going to move into public testimony and we have about 20 people signed up. So we're going to change it to two minutes each. And if you have any additional comments that you're not able to fit into your testimony, I would urge you to just submit testimony or email members of the climate committee. We all want to hear your full feedback. And again, we will be talking about this at the next climate committee as well. And we hope that we'll get to hear from you then, too. And with that, could we call up folks three at a time so that people are ready to go as quickly as we can?
38 First up, john, sarah jordan lewis jordan's online john carter.
39 Welcome. Good to see you. Please go ahead.
40 Good morning, chair Morillo, co-chair, Novick and members of the Portland city council. For the record, my name is john sarah, and I'm a registered lobbyist here speaking to you today on behalf of TriMet, I want to thank you for this opportunity to talk about the climate benefits of transit and how we could leverage the Portland clean energy fund to invest in this community. To set the stage. Trimet provided 66 million trips last fiscal year. That's 1.3 million trips every week. These trips avoided nearly 50,000 tons of co2 emissions, which which is the equivalent to 11.5 million car trips taken off the road every year. As you've heard, trimet's budget deficit is forcing us to cut service. We're currently proposing a 10% cut in our service over the next 18 months. This means more car trips and more emissions. This is devastating to our riders, many of whom can't afford to drive or can't drive, and many of whom are members of sf's priority populations. Loss of transit service is bad for our city's residents, bad for our city's environment, and bad for our city's economy. With our current budget shortfall, it also means that there are many worthy projects that TriMet can no longer afford to fund. We don't have time to walk through them all today, but these opportunities include reducing the impact of trimet's proposed. Cut to the lines 19, which serves Portland providence hospital, upgrading the climate resiliency of the max system better, enabling our trains to operate during extreme weather events. Replacing 20 to 30 year old bus shelters with next gen shelters that improve weather protection, lighting and real time bus information and funding for infrastructure. To help realize trimet's goal of busses powered by Green hydrogen, these projects are scalable and ready to implement, and they will deliver tangible benefits to improvements or to portlanders across the region. We still see a future where max can safely deliver people to cooling shelters and triple digit temperatures, where people wait for the bus in comfort and dignity, and where the bus that picks you up emits only water. At a time when these budget cuts are forcing these projects to be delayed or eliminated, these are just a few of the ways that PCEF can make an immediate impact for transit riders in Portland. We look forward to partnering with you to make these a reality. Thank you.
41 Jordan. You may unmute and begin when you're ready. Jordan, if you can hear us online.
42 Hello.
43 We can hear you.
44 Hey, my name is jordan lewis. I'm registered lobbyist for Portland democratic socialists of America. I'm speaking on my own behalf in neutral on the proposal to divert funds to TriMet. What I'm here to do is to offer some political context for the coming cuts. The cuts were set in stone last spring, when the state transportation package, which funds TriMet, died due to suburban state democrats like marc meek getting heartburn over a very modest increase to the statewide transit tax, TriMet asked for a 4% increase to the existing payroll tax, and the spring session transportation package only offered 0.2%. The package was already a compromise for most of that session. The bump was even lower than that. Of course, it failed, and last fall we had a special session to stop the bleeding. Remember how TriMet was promised 0.2% in the spring? Well, now they were getting 0.1 percent if they were lucky. House republicans introduced a sunset clause so the additional 0.1% would go away after two years. This was a compromise to the compromise, to the compromise. I called lots of state electeds dems even, and the response was mostly what? What are you talking about? What's all this transit nonsense? Portland has been a transit city for decades. It's a core part of our civic soul and our comparative advantage over mid-sized metros like austin, baltimore and pittsburgh. So why are we backsliding? Part of that is a concerted effort by business interests to tell us that the only solution to homelessness is physical segregation. Out of sight, out of mind. It's also the product of a broad national propaganda campaign to convince us that transit is, for lack of a better word, woke. And lastly, I can't forget the good natured but sheltered Portland liberal environmentalist who sees transit as a non-sequitur, who sees environmentalism is when you drive your electric suv to the bird sanctuary. Unfortunately, it seems that TriMet service has become radical sometime after 2020. Make no mistake, during that period, transit service did not change significantly. This means that we are witnessing an incredible rightward shift of the overton window. Since COVID, the same service we had in 2024 is not radical. My opponents will bring up the drop in ridership since COVID, but I want to make it clear that we need to preserve service not in spite of, but because of lost ridership. The 30% we lost briefcases, suburban commuters into the downtown core they could afford to choose. The remaining 70% are some of our most vulnerable and precarious neighbors. They matter, and they can't just move their trip throughout the day like they could with a car. If we cut service, there may not be service when they need it. Again, no comment on PCEF, but I'm here to stress that transit is necessary. It's not enough to say not like this. We have to find an alternative. Thank you.
45 Thank you jordan, I share your passion for transit. Please go ahead.
46 Oh, hi. Hi, council. My name is john carter and I am here to support the proposal to use PCEF funds to help TriMet. I'm going to keep it short because there's obviously a lot of testimony. There is no climate action plan without public transportation. Like, I think that that needs to be something that we keep very clear in our minds as a city, as a council, like 40% of our emissions are from tailpipe. I'm electric. Cars aren't going to solve that. And also, just like TriMet is the circulatory system of our city, it is what keeps people moving around and what keeps people moving in ways that are not atomized and divided by automobiles. It creates a more livable environment. One of the reasons why Portland is even a city that people talk about as a leader is because of our transit. And I agree with the previous testimony. There's been so much backsliding. We've gone from like transit dreamers to envisioning what a society could be like, where you have true freedom of choice, the ability to drive, walk, bike, take the bus, take the train. That's true freedom. Not being in a car for everything. And so I want to thank the council for being like transit forward and recognizing that TriMet having a deficit is a huge, huge problem and doing something about it, because it seems like our state legislature is just like transit is kind of like this. Non it seems like a non-issue when it's a real urgent one. So yeah, I support the amendment.
47 Thank you so much for being here today. Appreciate your testimony.
48 Next we have juno suarez who's online. Fisher jemison chris Smith.
49 Chair Morillo chair Novick councilor. I'm juno suarez on behalf of myself as a resident, I'm an engineer and founder of pdx solar, an energy education nonprofit. I support the proposed amendment package. Nearly 70,000 Oregon households were disconnected in 2024 because they weren't able to pay their electric bill. Heating in my first southeast Portland 70s era apartment with cadet heaters cost me hundreds of dollars a month. That apartment also lacked ac, and as we saw in the 2021 heat, dome, ac is no longer a luxury but an urgent health and life safety issue. Heat pumps give people effective heating in the winter, cooling in the summer and lower electricity bills year round. I strongly support the sp1 move to include heat pump electrification and efficiency from day one in thousands of new affordable housing units. This is exactly the kind of win win, win multi solving we should be looking for as we consider high leverage investments for public funds, where each dollar moves us forward, not just on climate goals, but also equity, human health and housing, productive production objectives. I support sp 14 in leveraging private capital for additional impact, and hope we can increase Green bank financing in the future. I urge the committee and staff to look into the connecticut Green bank program. I know chair Novick is a champion of evs. Transportation accounts for 40% of portland's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the climate and energy dashboard. The proposed scope change in sp 13 allows funds for expanding charging infrastructure as more used evs hit the market. J.d. Power surveys show price is no longer the biggest barrier compared to charging access. While not in the amendments package, there's also discussion of using funds to help TriMet avoid service cuts. No doubt we have tough fiscal conversations ahead, however important, in order to realize the climate and congestion benefits of transit, it must remain functional and avoid loss of ridership. In each decision, I ask the committee to move forward with a sense of shared purpose and urgency to meet our climate emergency work plan targets and stay true to voter intent. Thank you.
50 Thank you very much. I can't remember who was next, but go right ahead.
51 Thank you. Chairs Morillo and Novick and members of the committee. My name is fisher jemison, for the record, and I'm testifying today in support of councilor Green's proposal to use PCEF funds to stop TriMet service cuts. Last year was a pretty grim year to be a transit advocate and transit writer, so I was heartened to see councilor Green's proposal. You know, we were left for dead by the state legislature, like jordan talked about. And my bus line, the fc2, had its service cut in the fall with very little attention or fanfare. So I'm hopeful about the proposal to step in here with PCEF and turn things around. But I also haven't always been a supporter of this idea. And so I want to talk a little bit about, you know, changing my mind on this. The big problem is that, you know, PCEF is not a good tool to indefinitely fund TriMet operations. You know, transit operations are a huge funding need. Piece of is a comparatively small revenue stream. But the thing that is kind of different about this case is that PCEF does not have to fund TriMet indefinitely, because TriMet is not in a structural revenue crisis. Trimet has the tools they need to fund transit operations with the local payroll tax and the statewide payroll tax. And we're here just because the state legislature failed to act last year and left them handcuffed and unable to use those tools correctly, so my suggestion is that we should go forward with this, and we should have a conversation about this policy that's kind of focused on two goals, the first being harm reduction, protecting vulnerable riders and protecting our climate goals that are going to be impacted if TriMet cuts happen. And secondly, I think we need to think about how do we get to a 2027 transportation package, how do we get buy in from statewide leaders to say thank you, Portland, for bailing us out? And now we're actually going to do our job in the long session next year. So thank you.
52 Thank you so much.
53 Good morning, chris Smith. And I'm appearing in my capacity as chair of the board of Portland streetcar, inc. P.s.I, as a reminder, is the nonprofit partner in the public private partnership with PBOT and TriMet that operates Portland streetcar. In looking at the question of whether to help reduce the impact of TriMet service cuts, the question has been raised well, aren't we just subsidizing suburban communities who aren't contributing to the solution? I have an easy answer to that for you, which is shop local first. You are a transit operator and we are in discussions now with TriMet about our budget for next year, and we're being asked to consider a 20% reduction in the TriMet funding for streetcar. And as a reminder, TriMet provides the majority of the operating funding for streetcar on the basis that TriMet would have to run bus lines if we didn't have the streetcar in those corridors. In terms of the worthiness of that investment, I would point out that we see ourselves very much as part of the equation for central city recovery. We are a contributor and a beneficiary of downtown foot traffic. And in terms of serving priority populations, I would remind you that 40% of the affordable housing developed in the city of Portland since 2001 is served by the streetcar. So we are both an important equity contributor to the central city as well as hopefully, part of the economic recovery. You know, if you look at the key opportunity sites broadway corridor, albina vision, omsi district, streetcars, the thing that connects all of those. So I hope we can start a conversation about how to ensure that streetcar continue to provide that service in the near future. Thank you.
54 Thank you so much for your time today.
55 Danny noonan, robert galanakis, alison paley.
56 Good morning. My name is danny noonan, and I'm a registered lobbyist for breach collective. We submitted written testimony in support of the $15 million allocation to strategic priority one. I just want to briefly elaborate on that testimony here. We recognize PCEF dollars are ultimately finite and are always going to be subject to competing priorities, and that there are some dramatically urgent funding needs for mass transit created by the failures of the state legislature. That said, heat pump and weatherization upgrades are widely recognized as one of the most cost effective emissions reductions tools across the economy. And evidence demonstrates that prioritizing electrification of low income households maximizes community wide benefits. The pdf committee, in our opinion, has made a compelling case to reallocate funding that, practically speaking, cannot be used under strategic program priority 13 towards strategic priority one, where demand exceeds current allocations. Without this increased funding, regulated affordable housing that would have been built with heat pumps and above code weatherization would instead be built to minimum code standards. This would increase greenhouse gas emissions, decrease housing livability, particularly during extreme weather, increased demand on the electricity grid, and raise utility bills for the people living in that housing. Councilor Green acknowledged in his written testimony that he does not yet have a specific proposal for how to reallocate that $15 million to mass transit. And I think council, this committee and council needs to think very carefully about whether reallocating that funding would actually achieve greater or equivalent emissions reductions than directing it towards strategic priority one, and this is something that staff could and should provide modeling on before any critical decisions are made. Thank you.
57 Thank you. Go right ahead.
58 Hello, councilors. Thanks for the opportunity to speak. My name is rob galanakis. I'm a parent in district three and safe streets advocate. Investments in car and building electrification are important, but they just replace burning fuel with electricity, electricity or marginal reductions in carbon emissions. The money proposed for housing costs $4,000 per metric ton in co2 reduction, which is 100 times higher than current markets. On climate. We don't have a minute to spare or a dollar to waste. We should be pulling levers that have multiple problems at once. It isn't enough to just replace burning gas in an engine or furnace with an electric motor. We need to make better use of our urban space. Since more compact cities use fewer resources, we need to create healthier residents. This means our the less our means of production are spent on health care, the more we have to build homes, trains, and the infrastructure we need. We need to use fewer resources. While ultimately believe in an abundant future, any short term reductions carry massive benefit. We need ways to move around that eliminate emissions today, not spread over decades. We need to raise kids that are engaged in independent, getting around. An electric car being warmed by electric heat doesn't address our social isolation or unsafe streets. The levers to solve multiple problems are in transportation. Here are a few programs that already exist that can be scaled for minimal funding one. Cover the cost of youth pass for high school students in Portland. This is not just a carbon reduction. It increases youth independence, reduces financial pressure on families from buying additional cars, and also keeps the most dangerous groups of drivers teenage boys off the road a bit longer. I have a teenage boy, by the way. Scale up PBOT safe routes to school bike safety fleets. Currently, PBOT has two fleets for over 70,000 students. Most schools can't even get access as demand has become so high. Estimates from Oregon show $1 million would pay for ten fleets for five years. Teaches kids how to bike, replaces school commute trips, and creates good local jobs for the technicians required to service the fleets. Number three TriMet funding. As you already heard today, number four put more money into the e-bike rebate program. I cannot stress this enough. Getting an e-cargo bike into the hands of a family that recently had a kid or second kid, and is looking at leaving the city and buying a second car is very often life changing. You will have taken a car and all of externalities out of existence, likely for multiple generations, as the children are normalized into biking, this window of opportunity to intervene is short. Hope you'll consider these ideas you heard today. Thank you.
59 Hello, co-chairs Morillo and Novick. Hello, councilors. Today I'm here on behalf of myself and many of my coworkers to ask that funds be shifted to fill holes in TriMet budget and allow maintenance of current service levels. Trimet remaining functional is a huge part of working people in the city. Being able to get to work and afford to live. A lot of my coworkers straight up cannot afford to have a car and still be able to make rent. That means that we're TriMet goes, and how often defines the boundaries of their world. The proposed cuts would be brutal, especially after 9 p.m. When people who work swing shift are trying to get home. Cuts to lines and frequency impose a steep time tax on the very people who can least afford it. That's time that they cannot spend working, accessing resources or accessing better opportunities. Protecting TriMet is also clearly within the mandate of safe. Declines in service levels, would result in increased car usage and dependance from those who can afford it, resulting in new emissions into our air and congestion on our roads. It is tremendously difficult to claw back space from cars for public transit. Once car dependance has set in, it is imperative to keep service levels where they are so that we don't have to spend more later clawing back what we will lose now if we allow these cuts to go into effect. Obviously the best outcome would be that the state figures it out and passes new transit legislation that keeps TriMet funding able to support current service levels. But if that doesn't happen, please consider reallocating PCEF dollars to cover the shortfall. Thank you.
60 Thank you all so much and for anyone watching at home, please contact your state legislators and let them know how you feel about public transit to. Could we please call up the next panel?
61 Next we have gavin gentry. I believe the next one might be a duplicate jordan lewis once more. If that's the case, jennifer begley, followed by sam balto.
62 Thank you so much for being here. Go right ahead. Yeah. Is our next person online or this person here present? I'm not sure.
63 They're not online. Is gavin gentry once more in the room?
64 Why don't you go right ahead and gavin can find his way here when he's ready?
65 Great. Thanks. Co-chairs, Morillo and Novick, members of the committee. My name is jennifer buckley with housing Oregon, the statewide association of 147 affordable housing and community development organizations representing the continuum of nonprofits from homelessness services organizations to multi family rental developers to homeownership providers from across the state. Thank you for the opportunity to comment and support of planning and sustainability commission's recommendation to amend the Portland clean energy community benefit fund climate investment plan housing in support of increasing funding by 15 million to strategic program one clean energy and regulated multifamily affordable housing. The additional funds will support an estimated 580 additional high performance housing units. Affordable housing is essential climate infrastructure for city of Portland. Stable, energy efficient homes are foundational to achieving the Portland clean energy funds goal of reducing carbon emissions while delivering meaningful social, economic and environmental benefits, particularly for low income residents and communities of color who are disproportionately impacted by climate change. As portland's affordable housing stock continues to age, and as new affordable homes are urgently needed, PCEF resources are increasingly critical when layered with federal, state and local housing funds. Pcef dollars expand project scope and unlock climate forward building strategies that would otherwise otherwise be on unobtainable. This integration ensures that affordable housing contributes fully to the city's climate goals, rather than lag behind them. Thank you for this opportunity to share comments on this important community resource.
66 Thank you so much for being here today. I see we have sam balto online. So sam, why don't you go ahead and get started?
67 Hi, my name is sam balto. I'm a Portland resident in district two, physical education teacher and internationally recognized safe routes to school advocate. Have we all noticed that we can tell when rps isn't in school just by the lack of traffic that is on the roads? Student transportation accounts for a massive amount of extra car use that we all want the same thing drivers, pedestrians, people biking, people taking transit. We all want less drivers on the road. So doing things like youth pass, funding that physical infrastructure adjacent to schools, bike education for students, secure bike parking at home, especially apartment complexes and at school. We're hearing a lot of cases of amazing community members giving out bikes to students and those bikes getting stolen time and time again. And this funds could go to a lot of good things that we all want, which is less drivers on the road, better climate solutions, kids being active, more social, better student outcomes, stronger communities. This is a swiss army knife to so many of our overlapping issues. So thank you all very much and thank you for your time.
68 Thank you so much. Did we ever find gavin?
69 Next up, sahan mckelvey. Andy namkoong, brett morgan.
70 Welcome. Please go ahead and get started.
71 Thank you. Good morning. Chairs Morillo and Novick and members of the committee. My name is sahan mckelvey and I am the director of advocacy and engagement at self-enhancement, inc. I'm here today to support the recommendations of PCEF staff to amend the climate investment plan. As a proponent of PCEF and the goals of this fund, recent attacks on this funding have been troubling. I've heard the narrative that PCEF funds are underutilized, and that programing needs to promote clean energy use and reduce footprint do not necessitate the level of funding that PCEF collects. I believe that we all want to ensure that this source of revenue remains dedicated to its original purpose. Following the staff recommendation to reallocate funding from sb 13 to sb one moves us in that direction, sb one funds have been spent or allocated 100% of them. Sb 13 funds have not yet been spent at all. Not only does this shift meet the demonstrated reality of where our needs are, it further protects our self investment from being stolen and used for alternative purposes. I also want to address the narrative that diverting funds from a transportation based project to a housing based project dilutes the impact of this funding. These funds are allowing for the development of net zero projects, all electric buildings, high efficiency heat pumps and energy recovery ventilators. These funds are allowing for building designs that are intentional in reducing long term energy burden. This type of work is what we need and in 100% aligns with the stated intent of our PCEF fund. Of course, transportation emissions are also important to address, but this recommendation from sff to reallocate funding does not reduce our ability to address transportation. It just aligns our funding to the reality of what has been spent so far. This is sensible planning, and it allows us to maximize the impact of the resources that we have. Ci is committed to supporting smart utilization of our PCEF funds, and most importantly, we know that this is the goal of our staff, who have been tasked with implementing programs to maximize our impact. We are committed to continuing this discussion and look forward to further dialog with each of you. But today, we urge you to support our piece and staff by approving this recommendation. Thank you.
72 Thank you so much indeed.
73 Online indeed. Feel free to unmute and begin when you're ready.
74 Good morning. Thank you. Chair Morillo chair Novick. Council members, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. For the record, my name is andy namkung. I'm here on behalf of verde. I'm here to share some thoughts regarding a conversation in monday's transportation and infrastructure committee, which we understand may be continuing today regarding a proposal to use PCEF transportation decarbonization funds currently in the cip and potentially beyond to address the deep service cuts currently facing our communities and transit riders. I'm not coming to you with a plan of action tied up with a bow today. I wish I were, but I am here to share some thoughts, both as a big fan of pcf, a big fan of public transit, and as someone who's been deep in the state level conversation around how we fund our transportation system here in Oregon and what that buys us, I'm hoping these can be useful as considerations for your conversation today, and as a fire underneath you. To keep fighting for the transit our communities need. The service cuts coming this summer are due to a $300 million budget gap currently facing TriMet. They're facing it because at the 11th hour in a back room, after ten months of frankly excruciating on and off deliberation and negotiations, all but two years of new transit funding were slashed from the already shrunken transportation budget fix. You already know this. It's why you're moving quickly now to look for creative solutions to address the crisis. And I sincerely want to thank you for the urgency. So any piece of dollars you redirect to transit would be a one time infusion of cash to alleviate the worst impacts of a hole in funding that will remain open cycle after cycle and will grow larger without further action. The climate benefits and the quality of life benefits to transit riders, who often overlap with sep priority communities could be real and invaluable. But to sustain and grow service, to allow people to choose it and count on it, to retain and create jobs for the drivers and operators and workers who make it run. We need a lot more money and we need it year after year. So the question on my mind is, can you walk and chew gum at the same time? Can you support portland's transit service being sustained and help create the political will and the popular support to win the fight for more, it might look like a package that helps saves the service we have while making some targeted investments where transit can most noticeably improve the lives of our communities. Or it might look like focusing every dollar possible on preserving service levels. I urge you to make this the first of your conversations about how the city can take action to ensure transit funding is restored. We need you to keep beating this drum. I would love to see you in Salem doing just that over the next year. Thank you.
75 Thank you andy.
76 Brett morgan is online. Brett. Feel free to unmute and begin when you're ready.
77 Yes, thank you for the opportunity. For the record. Cheers, Morillo and cheers. Novick. My name is brett morgan, transportation policy director at climate solutions. I want to be really clear that I'm showing up today because public transit is an essential and vital tool to addressing the climate crisis, and we need to make sure we're investing in it if we're ever going to meet our climate goals at the statewide, at the regional, at the at the city level, as andy sort of alluded to, we've been in the fight here down in Salem. I'm joining you from Salem right now in the fight for transportation comprehensive transportation package, including the needs of transit in that package. And I hope that we can continue to to fight at the state level. But I want to provide some three quick thoughts and urge some caution. I don't have a particular stance on the allocation of funding towards transit, but I think you all, as you all probably are well aware, are at a very possible situation. You can't continually backfill ongoing needs that ought to be met by the state with one time funding, and you're setting a clear expectation about what comes next. I'll also illuminate that. For example, in Washington state, they have their climate commitment act, aka a cap and invest policy that's facing some of the same immense pressures that you all are facing. When you have a dedicated climate fund and you have general fund or other operating shortfalls within your budget, and those needs are going to only magnify in time as the ongoing federal impacts from the big, beautiful, ugly bill continue to magnify at the local level, and the funding needs continue to cascade. But I would echo what andy said don't fall for the same. We need to chew gum and walk at the same time. We can't fall prey to the same trap of being asked to pay more for the almost the same thing. So I would offer this as well. In 2020, metro worked on a transportation bond that would have been a comprehensive investment at the regional level. One of the components of that was a $9 million investment per year for youth pass. While that is a really complicated thing to talk about, supplementing an additional service for youth, at the same time, we're talking about drastic cuts. We know that these folks are the future of writers, right? And so how can we incentivize and provide more benefits to riders while also maintaining the service that they have? So I hope you can join us down in Salem. You're not in a unique problem. Rogue transit district just cut over 50 positions when they do mostly dial-a-ride services. For folks who are homebound. 30% of Oregonians don't drive. We need to show up at the state level and continue advocating for the resources we deserve and need. Thank you.
78 Thank you very much.
79 Our final four are douglas allen, who is online, matthew henderson, doctor fonseca, sharice bach. Douglas. You're welcome to unmute and begin when you're ready.
80 Co-chairs and committee members. My name is doug allen. I have some thoughts. Why coming up with $15 million for the purchase of transit service from TriMet is a good idea. I'm sure it's a difficult decision where that money is going to come from, but I just wanted to bring up a few particular points to help illuminate that discussion. Currently, prime bus and rail system costs approximately $550 million per year for operations only if trimet's proposing a 10% service cut at the end of the summer. That's saving roughly $55 million per year in short term avoidable costs. If you have an opportunity through city of Portland leadership to stave off these cuts until more sustainable funding becomes available, 15 million is not enough. But if other local jurisdictions could come up with comparable amounts relative to their size, we could be on our way. Other efforts could close the gap. What I really want to point out is that ultimately, we've got to have a more robust system, but in the short run, we must make sure that current bus service is not eliminated for the following reasons. Once a route is removed from a city street, it will be very difficult and expensive to reinstate it. Locating and placing shelters and stops is not only expensive, it provokes opposition from nearby residents. Over time, streets become modified with parking. Et cetera that impede service restoration. Our existing network of transit served streets is an asset that should not be squandered for short term savings, without considering the long term consequences. Another point is that trimet's local payroll tax, plus its share of the state tax, is a rate of approximately 1% of wages paid. And whereas paris, france, also imposes a payroll tax at a rate of 3% and consequently they have excellent transit there. Hope these this information will help inform your conversation. Thank you.
81 Dear council members and mayor wilson. My name is matt henderson. I'm a lifelong portlander and artist and a musician active in the community since I was a teenager. For the past two years, I have been a renter at lloyd center mall, which you all are aware is both showing encouraging signs of life while simultaneously being slated for a dramatic re-envisioning, or what some might call a wasteful, tragic teardown. I'm here today as a citizen and as a member of the save lloyd campaign, to speak against this impending demolition, which many portlanders feel is an unnecessary and misguided outcome for a still beloved destination in our city. Since November 2025, save lloyd has gathered over 3700 petition signatures and more than 700 written comments. The feedback overwhelmingly praises the growing small business activity at the mall, and expresses optimism about continued creative and adaptive reuse of the existing structure. A completely unique, climate controlled piece of infrastructure that portlanders use in many ways, not unlike a public park. Our coalition will make sure that this feedback is shared with the design commission at the upcoming hearing on February 5th. As a grassroots coalition, we strongly believe that granting kkr and urban renaissance group carte blanche to demolish a long held community fixture, one that travel Portland recently called one of portland's most iconic landmarks, should not happen without deeper public and city led discussion. With climate resilience and the Portland clean energy fund being central topics. Today, we ask what funding or support might exist to retrofit the existing mall, restore its damaged power grid and pursue clean energy upgrades instead of a wasteful teardown. Finally, save lloyd would like to invite the mayor and city council to visit the mall. Guided by the small businesses currently operating there to help imagine alternative futures for lloyd center. I'll end with a question. Would you accept an invitation for a people's led tour of lloyd center?
82 Please reach out to us. I think a lot of us would be very interested in that.
83 Thank you, thank you.
84 Go right ahead.
85 Is there one person before me, I think.
86 Oh, is that person online?
87 They are not. Once more for doctor fonseca.
88 Okay. In the meantime, just go ahead. Okay.
89 Thank you.
90 Good morning. Councilors. My name is sherry spock, and I'm here representing 350 pdx. I appreciate the work of the staff, staff and the PCEF committee. Thank you for your work to be nimble and to make sure that staff gets reevaluated in beneficial ways and stays focused on the original intentions. Seems like every few months there are ideas floated about how to redirect PCEF funds toward one thing or another, but it's I feel like it's really important to remember what director engstrom mentioned at the beginning of the briefing, that the funds are fully allocated through 2029. The bulk of PCEF is allocated towards city bureaus, and so I'm glad to see that these minor adjustments and changes are being made and were generally supportive of them. We're glad to see sp 34 attempting to address the funding needed for life saving cooling that comes from street trees, and in general, we agree with moving funds from sb 13 to sp one to emphasize making it easier for PCEF priority communities to access energy efficient heating and cooling affordably through heat pumps. We've been working on this statewide to reduce building emissions and doing so in ways that increase energy affordability. So we think that Portland should help with that goal of getting 500,000 new heat pumps installed by 2030. Building emissions, when taken together, are comparable to the percent due to transportation. When commercial and residential are combined, as they are with transportation. At the same time, we really care about transit, and having affordable access to transit is also important, so having affordable heating and cooling is life saving, and maintaining our transit is really important. So I would encourage us to have a bigger conversation about this if we're going to consider the idea of moving the funds to transit. As many have said, we've been working also on making a useful transportation package at the state level, and would appreciate all of your councilor Support in bringing transit into that conversation. To show that Oregonians really do care about this and need this.
91 Thank you.
92 Thank you so much.
93 That concludes testimony.
94 Wonderful colleagues. First of all, thank you to everyone who signed up to testify and came and share their expertise and perspectives. And to our experts from the PCEF committee who also came and spoke to us about the different options that we have ahead of us. I just have to say, as a transit rider and someone who is transit dependent because I don't have a license. Public transit is really important to me personally, and I've heard from a lot of people that it is a top priority for them too. What we also heard is that I think we need to be really careful with our local dollars and with PCEF dollars, because we cannot be backfilling other agencies because other governments, like the state legislature, failed to do their duty to actually fund public transit. So I really hope that for any of our state legislators that are out there watching that, you know, that public transit is a top priority for portlanders and for many of your constituents. And we have about 12 minutes for discussion in this portion. And then at 11, we're going to move on to the next agenda item. So, colleagues, we have 12 minutes for discussion. And again, to members of the public who are watching. We will have another meeting on this at the next climate committee meeting. So I see councilor Avalos in the queue, then councilor Kanal and then councilor Novick.
95 Great. Thank you. Thank you so much to the committee presenters and giving us the context. I just overall really like the package that was put forward. I think you made some really smart pivots that will meet the need as we know, you know, transportation is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. And the second one is buildings, right. So these are both I don't I can't remember which one is first or second, but it's one and two. And so I think it's I think being able to take dollars that are for transportation and putting it into the other big area that we need to be addressing for reducing ghg is good. I just want to reflect, you know, I have some questions and things and it sounds like we'll have time next meeting for me to dive into. You know, I have some questions around equity and how you made decisions and all that. So I'll save that. Let me just use my time to respond to what I'm hearing from the testimony. So I don't serve on the transportation committee. So forgive me that I'm like one step behind just trying to get caught up on some of the discussion that's been going on there, especially around potentially using PCEF dollars for TriMet. Backfills I completely agree with what councilor Morillo started with that. It's just always it's just deja vu, just feels like deja vu to constantly be told that these dollars that communities worked really hard for, that are clearly allocated, are working as as intended, that we need to fill other governments problems. Right? State legislators get it together. Honestly, like I'm really frustrated with you all because this this is now what we're having to deal with. And our communities are going to be suffering immensely, and particularly east Portland. And so, you know, I will wait to see kind of what the proposals are that come out. But I'm just going to state my my current opposition to using a bunch of PCEF dollars to be filling TriMet gaps, but that doesn't mean I don't think we can't find creative solutions. And I think one of those that my office has been working with, TriMet and talking to community about is re-upping, the roseland conversation. That might not feel aligned right now, but I think it's critical that if we're going to be losing a lot of service, then one way to combat that is making sure service can go more quickly, right? We had this huge effort to implement rose lanes now almost ten years ago, and then it stalled because of reasons. And I think this is a really good moment to re-up that conversation and figure out ways that we can make the lines more efficient, given that we know that regardless, PCEF is not going to fill this $300 million hole and we shouldn't have to. So I'm definitely curious for community to continue to continue to stay engaged with us in the next coming weeks as we hear some of the proposals that my colleagues might be bringing forward. And I really strongly support the direction of the current changes that PCEF is bringing. So that's my plan. I'm open to talking about other ways to shift it, but as you all have seen and I've been very vocal about over this year, I'm very cautious about how we do that. And I'm going to be really I'm going to be keeping my eye on that because this piece has been constantly under threat. So I just want to name that for everybody, for my colleagues that like I'm watching and I will not allow for us to continue to divert dollars that communities of color fought hard for. And so I just want to make that clear on the record as we move forward in the next phase of this conversation. So thank you to everyone who testified. Know that I've got an upcoming workshop with me. It's a new series that I'm doing. Long story. I'll put it on socials and all that, but we'll be we will be doing one on the rose Lane so that we can re-up the conversation. So I want to bring back everybody who was there back when we started those and just see kind of where we're at, take a temperature check and see what our path forward is. And I think that could be one good solution for our TriMet cut problems. Thank you.
96 Thank you so much, councilor Avalos. Councilor canal.
97 Yeah. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for bearing with me. I was listening as I came in, had an earlier appointment run late today. I appreciate the the framing and how we're going to approach this conversation. I think doing this over two meetings is great, and I think the presenters, I did get to hear all that as well to the testifiers. Jordan lewis always spitting fire. Brett morgan I appreciated the context from Washington. I worked for governor inslee in Washington and the climate commitment act, and then defeating the ballot measure aiming to gut it are among his largest achievements. I wish our state leaders here had the same level of commitment and courage. And then sahan and sharice, the context on the housing side is very much appreciated. Things I like in this plan, I'm going to spend this time just kind of signaling some things we can explore later, but things I like in this plan the bike Lane, sweepers, anything related to the supporting, the transition away from gas powered leaf blowers, upgrades to community centers. I would love to also look at some of the suggestions on scaling up safe routes to school, and the bike safety fleets heat pumps. We talked about transit. I'll come back to in a minute. I'd love to talk more about frog ferry in this space and electric ferry that connects eventually the entire Willamette river corridor, but it first connects cathedral park to downtown is another way to support the reduction of emissions. Also related to that, your commute in the morning and the evening does not have to suck. You can enjoy it too. And having used the east river ferry from brooklyn to manhattan when I lived there, I support exploring possible use of pcf funds here as well. I'll ask some questions, but I know there's not time to answer them. Just wanted to understand the reasoning behind the specific decrease in tif funding for energy efficiency upgrades. And if that's just reflecting the money that's left, and then if there's a long term plan to reduce the the percentage of PCEF funds that goes to city bureaus as opposed to actually getting out into the community, I want to spend the bulk of the time here that I have left talking about transit. On transit, I want to start by saying, I think that public transit is a single most important thing we can do to reduce tailpipe emissions and in turn, therefore, the largest source of emissions reductions we can get. To put another way, robust public transit systems are a critical part of reducing transportation and overall emissions. My big picture values here are we need fast, frequent, fearless, and fearless transit. Expanding the max primarily helps to avoid what a couple testifiers pointed out that once we lose transit, we have a difficult time bringing it back. It can help a little bit to have permanent transit infrastructure. And here I must pitch once again, moving not only towards merely maintaining, but expanding the max with a line from st. Johns to the airport. We also need more local input into this conversation, even as the state maintains control of the agency. I'm specifically concerned about the significant cuts and reductions being proposed to the Green line to line 44 in st. Johns, and all the changes to line 72 and adjustments to eight, 17, 70 and 77 in northeast Portland. So just big picture broadly, we'd love to support investment in transit and would also like to propose that in parallel, we pursue we pursue an iga where in exchange for funding, we give the city of Portland is allowed to appoint one of the seven members of the board, and that would be a transit writing resident of Portland. We had in August 2020 for four of seven board members reported to not have used the system in the preceding years preceding year, and that might help offset the concern that co-chair Morillo said, which I share, that we shouldn't be backfilling for other other governmental entities when they fail. And so we should become a partner as opposed to just a donor. It's true for the feds, by the way, and it's also true for the state. There's probably more things we can talk about, but I know we got a rush, so I will stop here. Thank you so much to the presenters and to the testifiers.
98 Thank you, councilor Kanal, and I hope for the folks listening there, there are some follow up questions that maybe we can discuss at the next meeting as well. Councilor Novick. We have about three minutes until we move on to the next agenda item.
99 Yeah, I just wanted to talk about organizing the next meeting. I'm going to suggest that we hear some more from TriMet on their some of their specific proposals. I'd like to hear more from sam balto and jim middaugh and also PBOT staff about possibilities for spending money on bikes. And I would like to have a further discussion about the the actual proposed investment in housing. And what I'd ask my colleagues to do is identify for me people or organizations you'd like to hear from, concepts you'd like to hear discussed, and data you'd like to see gathered for next time. Like councilor Avalos that there's an organization you think we should hear from about the importance of housing investments? I'd love to hear that. Councilor Kanal. I don't want to say right now we'll be talking about frog fare, but if you have some suggestions as people to talk to about that. So what I'm hoping to queue up for next time is lengthier discussions about specific proposals, and also hear from people that members of the committee think are key in terms of data, organizations and concepts. And I think that we can have those discussions without violating the public meetings law.
100 I think we can, too. All right. I think everybody got their marching orders from councilor Novick there. He will be chairing the next meeting, and we look forward to getting to have this discussion more in depth. And look at us, guys. We're two minutes ahead of schedule, so we're actually right on track. Thank you so much to everybody who came in, commented on the climate investment plan. Again, we look forward to hearing more about it at the next climate committee meeting. Diego, will you please call the next item?
101 Item three discussion on cascadia subduction zone policy.
102 Thank you so much. So for this discussion, we have community partners who are here to share a concept that they've been developing to address the city's preparedness for when the cascadia earthquake hits. And this is more of an informal discussion. I think that we've really talked a lot about how we want to utilize committees in this new form of government, and this is an opportunity for us to hear from for the committee to hear from the public about this issue and policies. So we're not going to be voting on a policy today or anything like that. Although a draft ordinance is posted on the committee web page for everybody to reference, if that's of interest. So I see our panelists have already come up. I'll introduce you guys shortly. We have david labby from tank the tanks, nancy, nancy heiser from tank the tanks, heather king, who's the co-executive director and lower Willamette riverkeeper, nikki mandel from ci hub task force, and sherry spark of 350 pdx. So we'll have 15 minutes for you to present and then 15 minutes for committee discussion so that we can get out of committee on time at 1130 for folks to go to other meetings. And with that, if you would like to introduce yourselves and go ahead and get started on your presentation, we look forward to hearing from you.
103 Heather's first.
104 Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to present to you on our cascadia earthquake resolution. My name is heather king. I'm the co-executive director and riverkeeper for the lower Willamette for Willamette riverkeeper. So I'm just going to give you a brief overview, and then the rest of my crew is going to go through the rest of the presentation. So we're calling on the city to actively address the impact of the potentially catastrophic earthquake that we are know is on the horizon for all of us. And we would like that to address planning, emergency preparedness, public services and other any other city services that the council deems necessary. And we ask the committee to ensure that this happens.
105 Good morning and again, thank you. I'm nancy heiser with tank the tanks. I am a registered lobbyist for community safety related to the cei hub. What is the city's emergency response plan? When bridges, streets, electrical lines and communications are inoperable, what is the emergency response to address fire risk at the hub when the city's water system fails, which it will fire suppression systems at the hub will not function. Fire suppression systems are required by code, but current code does not take earthquakes into account. Will Portland have water? You can see here a two 2017 study in which pipe crossings will fail, backbone pipelines will fail, and the distribution pipelines will need repair in the event of earthquake induced fires around the city, water supply will be insufficient. And if you haven't heard from tom walsh at Portland fire, I hope you will listen to him soon. Who's tracking and monitoring and coordinating city's mitigation and risk reduction efforts?
106 Thank you. My name is david lab. Next slide. There we go. We're good. One of the best examples of why a resolution like this is needed is the proposed economic opportunity analysis. We've known for years that the cascadia earthquake is going to devastate portland's economy. A 2018 study done by the Oregon department of geology found that the cascadia event would likely cause extensive to complete damage to up to half of Multnomah county's industrial buildings and up to a third of their commercial buildings. Most of this damage. The greatest part of this damage will be here in Portland, and it will be along the industrial and commercial zones of the columbia and Willamette riverfronts it's the area where the liquefiable areas where there also will be the greatest human casualties. That was done in 2018. And instead, there is no mention of the cascadia earthquake in the eoa. Not one. Instead, the area of the highest liquefiable soils are current industrial zone is exactly where the eoa proposes to find 80% of portland's developable land, and close to 60% of the developable industrial land. It is where the eoa is, citing more than 20 years, or more than half of the 20 year job growth that is predicted. So why would Portland bet its economic future on the area of greatest risk from the cascadia earthquake? There is. There was testimony at the planning commission that this area would be an area where middle income wages would be available to people who didn't finish college, but and that was based on equity. But how is it how is it equitable to site the jobs for this population in an area that we know is a basically a disaster, a future disaster zone? One could reasonably argue that the reason there is where they propose this is that there's no safer ground within the Portland city limits, but that's assumed. That's assuming that we have to, in fact, limit our eoa analysis to Portland city limits. But if you look at state law, the state law actually says that a multi-jurisdictional coordination is the is possible and encouraged for all eoa. It actually says cities and counties are strongly encouraged to conduct a single coordinated economic opportunity analysis. So basically we have put our head in the sand. There are other options. The city can take a much broader approach to economic development in partnership with other local jurisdictions. Portland's economy doesn't stop at city limits. What we need is a state law that encourages, we need, we need an eoa that encourages partnership. That's why a resolution like this is important, because it basically messages to the staff that are doing the eoa that they need to think outside the box. They need to think in the context that we can't really beat mother nature, that we actually have to figure out what is going to happen. The previous conversation about peace is exactly the same thing. We have to figure out how we use our resources to align with what we know will happen in the climate, or else we will not have a resilient city. I'm a fifth generation portlander. My grandson hopefully will be a seventh generation portlander, and I hope when he is my age there will be a Portland that is resilient and we currently have. Thank you.
107 Brilliant.
108 Thank you. My name is nicky mandel. I'm a member of the cei hub task force, and thank you very much for scheduling this and giving us the opportunity to bring this resolution before you, in light of the research and other facts that you've just heard. We asked the city to take the fact that we sit atop a catastrophic earthquake zone as a serious public policy issue, and specifically that as a first step, the council passed a resolution that commits the city to addressing the potential impacts of the cascadia subduction zone earthquake as a foundational part of all city planning, you should have the full resolution in front of you and some of the whereas and findings have already been addressed. So I'm going to turn right now to the therefore be it resolved section which has three parts. First, a charge to all city bureaus, including but not limited to the bureau of planning and sustainability, to explicitly address the potential impacts of a cascadia earthquake. To focus on how the city can mitigate harms to residents and communities, and how the city can protect infrastructure and the economy. Second, as david was just saying, since the cic will affect a much wider area than Portland, the city should be more actively engaged with other jurisdictions, from local to state to federal, to develop policies and strategies to not only lessen the impacts of cascadia earthquake, but also begin to be planning out pathways for recovering from such a disaster. And third.
109 Yeah, I'm sherry spock, representing 350 pdx third, the bureau of planning and sustainability would be directed to review the comprehensive plan to consider how it addresses portland's cascadia vulnerabilities and the actions needed as they apply to each of the plan's five guiding principles economic prosperity, human health, environmental health, equity and resilience. And, as you know, 350 pdx, along with all of these fine people and many others have been advocating for safety and transitioning away from fossil fuels at the cei hub and many other issues around Portland that relate to climate and environmental safety and health, and also to make sure that these areas are safe, public for public health, you know, not just paying attention to the climate and environmental issues, but also the public health issues. And so recognizing that if this cascadia subduction zone earthquake happened today, there would be a huge impact on our local economy, and it would be incredibly challenging to recover economically from the damages that would occur from that earthquake. So we need to think about how portland's economy can change so that we suffer the least from disruptions to such an earthquake. And at the same time, in the eoa and other ways, we're thinking about how to support our economy. We need to think about that in an integrated way with these other principles human health, environmental health, equity and resilience, not only thinking about the economy as if it exists in its own sphere all by itself. So we ask these questions about how can how can we keep our public, our human health safe, our environment safe? In the case of an earthquake, how can we make sure that portlanders who are underserved and from underrepresented communities are protected from such an experience, and to build up the resilience of Portland before this happens? And so adding this resolution would help us to be able to make those hard calls and planning that needs to happen before hopefully before the earthquake happens, and especially as we are in the middle of that process that david mentioned with the economic opportunities analysis. Thank you. We're ready for questions, I believe.
110 Thank you all so much for being here. And in my rush to give an intro, I for I neglected to say that we also have bureau staff here to help answer questions I believe. So I think we have folks from bureau of environmental services and bureau of emergency management. Is that correct? I see we have director engstrom here. Wonderful. And we have councilor Avalos in the queue. And then I put myself in the queue. But my question is more for staff than it is for your group. Go ahead. Councilor Avalos.
111 All right. Well first I want to start by saying that I am very supportive of this work and really appreciate all of you and the community partners who are bringing this forward. As we know, a major cascadia subduction zone earthquake would have devastating impacts, and we know that those impacts would fall hardest on our most vulnerable communities like renters, low income households, elders, people with disabilities, and communities that are already overburdened by environmental and infrastructure risks. So thank you for helping us to elevate this to the urgency it absolutely deserves. I think that this resolution is an important step in naming that risk and making sure that the urgency of the earthquake preparedness plans for the city can be at the top of our list. And so I have a couple of quick questions. I know we're short on time, but, you know, as we move forward with this work, also one step back to say thank you to councilor Morillo. I think this is a really good just the process of what you're doing right, I think is really important that we are creating this kind of space so we can just talk through these things. And so yeah, as we move forward, I just want to make sure that we're clear about what the directive is meant to accomplish. And so that we're not just naming the risk, but we're actually naming steps to reduce the risk. And earthquake preparedness needs to be treated as a citywide responsibility, as we know. And so making sure that we're coordinating across bureaus and partners, not siloing this work. And ultimately, this effort needs to stay centered on community resilience, right? Particularly for those who would face the greatest harm and the longest recovery. And the resolution I see does not include funding. And we know that we're in a funding nightmare right now. But it's important to acknowledge that meaningful preparedness will require future policy and budget decisions. So I'm trying to think of how we can elevate that in the resolution, too. So my let me just start with, are there specific plans, frameworks or examples that you believe the city should be looking at as models?
112 Okay.
113 Thank you for that question. We know funding is a huge issue from the top down. However, this problem resides at the ci hub on facility property. And as you know, they are under deq jurisdiction for seismic stability. One thing that we've uncovered in reading the seismic vulnerability assessments is that almost every single facility is dependent on a city water system. In an earthquake, of course, that will rupture, hefner has said. Even if it doesn't rupture, there's going to be such a huge demand on water, we will have no water for fire suppression. Foam that they use for fire suppression is 97% water. We have a huge issue here. We have spoken with one facility manager who has mentioned that he would certainly support convening a table of all of these facilities to collectively problem solve the water supply issue. It's been done in Vancouver to a huge fiscal impact. But if these facilities can do it collectively, it would be to their advantage to solve this water problem. And they would go through a group like the clean rivers cooperative, of which they're already members, or the marine safety fire association. I might have mixed up the s and the f, of which they are a part as well, and those groups have an interest and a stake in keeping their people employed and helping the facilities do this for a lower cost. So there's one funding possibility.
114 I really appreciate that. Oh go ahead.
115 Yeah. I would add that in terms of your excellent question about what would be the process, there doesn't seem to be any venue right now where the different bureaus are updating anybody about what they're how they're dealing with the inevitable earthquake. I'm looking at the water bureau specifically, which I did. There's a 2017 study. They've done some a few things. There is, but there is no report to anyone about where the what, what what have they accomplished and what do they need to do to be able to remediate this problem, which is basically most of Portland will not have water if they're after the quake. That's going to be a huge issue. So you can go through. You know, fire emergency response. All of the bureaus have some stake in this. So who is minding the store saying, where are we collectively at and what do we need to to prioritize, and what do we need to find funding for. So that's there. So part of the the intent of this resolution is to put actually on your shoulders, as the council, a responsibility to say, what are what are all our bureaus doing and how do we stay on top of that and move that along.
116 Thank you. And I'll just put a finer point on what I'm hearing you say, because I agree with the sentiment that there are private businesses on private land that need to take responsibility for the risk they're causing the community, and that is our job to enforce that. Right. We are the regulatory body. And so I just wanted to lift that up. And what I heard you say, because I do see that as a really important part of the funding problem, because this should not just be on the taxpayer to have to take this burden of companies that are putting us at risk, right, and putting our infrastructure at risk. So I just wanted to elevate that and name that. I agree with that concept. I'll, you know, I have more questions, but I'll just shift it to my last question to chair Morillo. Like, what would this look like moving forward? Like, how do you want to how do you see this, the development of this going forward? Do you have a plan for that?
117 Great question. Yeah, I think right now the language is formatted as an ordinance, but we can take a look at it if it should be an ordinance or a resolution. I think oftentimes we have, you know, community here coming and talking to us about different issues, and we don't necessarily go through the drafting process in our committees. So I'm hoping that this will be an ongoing discussion in partnership with folks that are here. So I think that this was originally submitted as an ordinance, but now the attorney said it should be a resolution according to my staff. But I think that this is just an ongoing discussion that we should have as committee drafted together and then submit it to full council.
118 Great. Well, I'm I'm willing and ready to be a part of that. And go ahead. You can.
119 I just want to add something to this. I think that we're at a pivotal point right now, especially because we're doing some policy work at the cei hub. Every single fossil fuel company that's based there has specifically said to the state and the city that it's too expensive for them to leave that area and to move the hub somewhere else. So we are at a point right now where we can enforce stronger policies, where we can make these companies do things that they wouldn't normally want to do because they have publicly stated they won't move and they can't afford to move. So I'm strongly urging the council to get a little bit of a backbone and tell them what they need to do and make them do it.
120 And that can be integrated in the ten year timeline they're about to launch with dick. They're not there yet, but if we give them a heads up, they can integrate this into other things that they are doing.
121 If I could just add also in response to your question, councilor Avalos, which is a great one, this resolution certainly has some financial, you know, fiscal implications, but it also asks that these that the cascadia event, the potential actually not even potential the predicted cascadia event be taken into consideration, things you're already paying for. So, you know, the eoa doesn't mention the earthquake. There's no it wouldn't cost them money to have incorporated that in their planning and their consideration. Emergency management policies as they're figuring out what are we going to do? What's our plan? What are the emergencies we're planning for? There's no reason that this can't be incorporated in as flooding, hopefully is. And fires et-cetera. So so part of this doesn't have a fiscal except to say, can you start planning for that? That may have a fiscal when they come to you with a recommendation for what policies are needed or what, you know, more services need to be funded, but we don't even have a good picture of that yet because it's kind of a head in the sand. Well, it's so big, we're not going to pay attention to it.
122 Thank you for adding that. And I will say, I think that part of the committee discussion that I'm hoping to have here is to gauge interest from my colleagues on if this is something that the climate committee really wants to dive into. It's something I personally really want to dive into. I know councilor Avalos does, and I certainly I see a councilor Novick nodding and councilor Kanal nodding as well. And we have some big advocates in district four around this too. So I think that you will have a council that is very eager and ready to dive into this. I want to flag we have about ten minutes left. I do have a question for or I'm sorry. Councilor Avalos, was there anything else you wanted to add? Okay, I had a question for director engstrom. If feel free to folks still stay up there. If one person could switch out since some of the questions that were coming up. And if is there a representative from pbem in the room as well?
123 No it's okay. Available online.
124 Oh I see, okay. Thanks for being here. I think it would just be helpful to hear about some of the work that you're already doing in this space, because I know that work is being done and what opportunities there are for growth and improvement, in line with the priorities that have been raised by the community members who showed up today. So, director engstrom, perhaps you want to take that one first.
125 Sure. For the record, Eric engstrom, director of planning and sustainability at the city, I want to just start by saying this is a really important topic. So I'm I'm very happy to see the committee discussing it, and we're happy to continue the dialog. I think it's also important to say that just this is a hard topic. Portland's geography is what it is, and we're river city, and the railroads and pipelines and highways are where they are. And that makes it harder and more expensive. If we could go back in time and give people hints about where to put facilities, that would be safer, that would be great. But we're here as a result of a lot of historical decisions. The and this is not the first time we've discussed or been aware of this issue in the the development of the current city's comprehensive plan. There was a thread of work that was about this topic, and it did result in some specific things in the plan. One of the topics that was discussed pretty extensively was kind of our emergency response network of streets, and how we might make that more resilient in the face of the potential earthquake that led to the city identifying some priority routes. And that's one of the things that led to the prioritization of the Burnside bridge replacement. So that project, being a project is an example of past discussion of this topic, leading to some some specific infrastructure recommendations. In that case, the the prioritization of making one of the bridge crossings more resilient so that we can get back and forth across the river in the aftermath. So I just wanted to give that one example as a as an outcome that came from past dialog on this. This topic is generally over the course that I've been at the city, I think, acknowledged that this is an under-resourced area of work. So there's a there's a financial aspect to this as well. And it is something that I don't think we've paid enough attention to.
126 Thank you, director engstrom. Is our if our PBOT pbem representative online wants to answer that as well, I can reiterate it, but I'm just asking what the bureau has already done with regards to the cascadia subduction zone and what areas of improvement and growth you see based on community feedback.
127 For the record, my.
128 Name is richard norvell, chief chief resilience officer of emergency management. I apologize, I'm not in person today and I'm traveling so I don't have the best internet, so that's why I'm staying off camera as well. I agree with everything director armstrong just shared, and I'm very glad that this topic is being brought up. So thank you for thank you to our community members to bring this up at this in this session for from emergency management side, I think our community member captured, captured the essence of work that needs to happen quite aptly. Portland emergency management is responsible agency to have earthquake preparedness plan for the city and also response plan for the city. Right now our plans are out of date, so there's more work that needs to be done in that particular planning area. Other than that, there are other adjacent projects that director armstrong shared about mentioned, such as the emergency transportation route project that several city bureaus participate, participate in, and it's a regional project. So it's a great example of how. Five county region can come together to address some of the issues related with seismic preparedness and seismic resilience for the city. But in a nutshell, I would say there needs to be more planning. And we have been given a resource by the council in the last budget session where in the hiring process right now. So we're we're working towards it, but we are nowhere where we need to be right now in terms of our preparedness plans for earthquake or any seismic resilience.
129 Thank you so much for that. Appreciate you being so candid, councilor Kanal. You're the last person in our queue. We have about six minutes left.
130 Thank you. I won't need all those, but because I think it was just mentioned that what councilor Novick and I worked on in the budget to get those resources to pbem. I'm excited for that. Thank you all for being here. I think there are things that I am interested in bringing into this conversation, and I'm excited about continuing to to have it just again. In brief, the evacuation routes is something I really want to talk about. This is very relevant to to north Portland in particular. The peninsula is going to have very little to no access to the rest of the city in the event of several different types of natural disaster. Three of the bridges are owned by the railroads. This is a structural problem. We need to make sure we're talking to them. Bnsf, please return my office's calls and emails. I would love to talk to you about this, but also we have the lombard bridge and the bill that representative nelson introduced to start the process of of replacing that. And I really want to emphasize its importance. I testified in support of it and called legislators around it last year. I hope that the next time it comes back, we'll have more people lobbying on that, because it will help us get one step closer to at least having one reliable route out of over the railroad cut. Another thing, I really appreciate the conversation around firefighting capacity. I brought up a budget amendment last year. I intend to bring it up again, if needed, to start the process of developing industrial firefighting capacity on the west side of the river. This relates to a lot of the different things that have been brought up here. But right now, our station in overlook is where a lot of the the capacity that we would need is. And it may be very difficult to get across the river in the event of some of the natural disasters that we might face, including the earthquake. I would love to see a reconfiguration of our capacity where we have city firefighters funded by the companies. They're doing industrial firefighting and having those certifications, which also benefits firefighters. In terms of there's usually a pay bump associated with that and having that be available within a few blocks or even fewer than that of the cei hub as well. And this is a part of our role, which is largely we're part of the long term planning, but we're also the first 24 hours to 72 hours response, and we need to be ready for that. And I think this is pbem. We've we've had these conversations. I know this is part of their explorations of what the next steps might be as well. I also really just wanted to to appreciate nothing additional to add, but really appreciate the focus on the water supply issue. I think this is something that there have been some conversations about that I've been hearing about, but they're very much assessment and planning. Nothing concrete yet. So that's just wanted to flag that as well. And I'm committed to continuing this conversation. I know that the cei hub is in district four, but a lot of the impacts would be felt in district two as well. So just wanted to to mention that. Thank you.
131 Thank you so much. Thank you so much, everybody for being here today. This is the first, not the last of many discussions that clearly my colleagues have a lot of interest in digging into. And I think next steps for this particular proposal is that we have collaboration with the bureaus that are involved. It sounds like folks are generally supportive of the resolution and want to dig into how we partner on that. I also heard from my colleagues, a lot of them raising particular concerns about how state government integration or other specific vulnerabilities impact this issue. So we can talk about adding that to a revised resolution. So to me, the next steps are going to be getting feedback from all the bureaus and then coordinating with all of you again to make sure that this discussion is ongoing. Again, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate you as well, director engstrom, for being here and the folks online who helped answer questions to our next climate committee meeting is going to be on January 29th. We're going to go over the parks levy annual report, and we will potentially also be having a continuation of the climate investment plan discussion. So stay tuned for that. Thank you all so much. And with that I will adjourn our meeting.
132 Thank you.