The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-12-15
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Governance Committee met on Monday, December 15, 2025. Roll call confirmed committee members present, and the clerk read the standard statement of conduct before the meeting proceeded. During general public testimony, speakers addressed the ongoing work on appointed boards, commissions, and committees code, the proposed council governance handbook, and a suggestion for future oversight/accountability hearing processes related to housing. The committee then continued discussion of an ordinance adding city code on appointed boards, commissions and committees (ABCs), first heard the previous week. Multiple amendments were introduced and discussed in detail, covering topics such as definitions, administrative rules, public meeting law exemptions, reporting requirements for ABCs created by the mayor, classification of decision-making bodies, and human resources oversight of advisory body members. Discussion included input from committee members, city attorneys, and policy staff regarding legal authority, transparency, and clarity of language. Several votes occurred on individual amendments and the underlying ordinance; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The committee also considered a resolution to establish a Council Governance Handbook, with amendments proposed by the city attorney and discussion of public testimony calling for accountability metrics tied to city values. A vote occurred on the resolution, with the outcome recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned with the next session scheduled for January 12.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 Is it all right if I get started? Yeah. All right. Good afternoon. I'm calling the meeting of of the governance committee to order. It is Monday, December 15th, and it is 2:31 p.m. Clerk, will you please call the roll?
1 Good afternoon. Clerk. Here. Dunphy. Here. Pirtle-guiney.
2 I'm here.
3 Ryan. Here.
4 Koyama Lane here.
5 Craig, will you please read the statement of conduct?
6 Good afternoon. Welcome to this meeting of the governance committee. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at w-w-w. Agenda governance committee, or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. 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, state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
7 Thank you so much. In today's meeting, the governance committee will hear general public testimony on governance issues. Continue considering an ordinance adding code related to appointed boards, commissions and committees that was first heard last week, and consider a resolution establishing a council governance handbook to collect policies, procedures and current practices to support council council's operations and improve transparency. And vice chair Ryan and I do not have any specific announcements announcements, and we do have quite a few amendments and things ahead of us. So we're going to jump right into item number one. Clerk, can you please read the first item?
8 Item one public comment on governance issues. We have three folks signed up to testify. First up, jose guerrero jorgeson, steph ruth, terry harris. Steph will join us online shortly.
9 Thank you, all of you for being with us today.
10 You can begin when you're ready.
11 Hi everyone. Jose jorgeson. He emailed pronouns district one. I've been here before. You know me from gtac and you know that I am a fan of all things governance and I truly believe that this kind of work makes government more accessible for everyone. Even the handbook you're working on today will someday make someone who doesn't know they want to run for city council. Learn a little bit about how city council operates. So that's why it's important to have all these things in practice. And I just came because I've seen the amount of work that's gone into the appointed bodies and commissions, projects that the advisory body project, julie meyer, ocean. Amanda I've seen the amount of work, and I know that this is a project that has been kind of on the city's radar for a very long time, something we start and don't finish and then have to start all over again from the beginning. So I'm very much looking forward to getting across the finish line this time. It may not be. Even if it's not perfect, it's easier to change something once it's in code than to just have it not be there anymore, and then have to start over again in a couple of years down the line. When someone inevitably says, why haven't we done anything with with this mess of advisory bodies? So I'm here to let us know this is something that we really need. We have needed and we need to, no matter what, get this, get this past the finish line. But most of all, I want to thank the work that julie and her team have done because it's an incredible work. And then also regarding the handbook, I can't wait to see that come into practice as well. I know there are the handbook is is difficult because every the norms are just starting for this form of government. But getting something and having it evolve over time is going to make things work better and easier as you continue to do your work. So I look forward to seeing that too. And I can't wait for the strategic plan conversation as well. You can tell like these kinds of things. Mainly, I'm here to appreciate the work you've been doing, the work everyone's been doing, and I hope you all get our committee, get it passed at council so that we can keep doing this. Good work. Thank you.
12 Thank you steph.
13 You can unmute when you're ready okay.
14 Thank you everyone. It's so wonderful to go after someone so smart and articulate as jose. So I could just say endorse chair Koyama Lane vice chair Ryan, members of the committee. Hello. My name for the record is steph rouse. She they and and I have had the honor of serving on many advisory bodies over the years and currently have the honor of serving as chair of the Portland planning commission. Although I'm here in a personal capacity and just want to echo, I'm here to echo everything that jose said, just deeply appreciative of the work of julia meyer, amanda garcia, smell snell, ocean. Jaso. This is a lot of work, but it is such critical work in building the trust of portlanders in government by being part of government and co-creating policies that help our entire city move forward. And and one of the the true nonrenewable resource that any of us have is the resource of time and and what this what the appointment bodies, commissions and committees. I'm getting that wrong. Code work is really a gift to ensuring that people's time is being valued. I also just really appreciate having worked with julia, amanda and ocean many times in past that I really appreciate their direct communication and I hold to two principles that clear is kind. And and also don't surprise your friends. And I feel like those those two things are really embodied in the final project and the work before you. So thank you for being on the governance committee. Thanks to everyone who engaged in this final project and in this code work. Go team!
15 Thank you steph, thank you so much.
16 Hi, I'm terry harris. I'm a pleased to be joined by other people here today, especially good friends both and our g-tech showing up on the last governance committee meeting of the year. But anyway, I concur with all of their thanks and appreciation for the advisory bodies teams. Also, I'm going to say thanks to councilor Dunphy's team who was grinding through language, and I deeply appreciate their their attention to that. And it's a you know, that's a good team there too. But I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about what might be coming down the road. And I talked about it last time, having to do with oversight and accountability things. I saw a posted on online, a proposal for an accountability oversight hearing on that, the housing fiasco, if you want to call it that. I'm in judged by that. I think the proposal that I saw is actually firm. It's well structured, it's used. It's a model that's used many places. Its non-nuclear nuclear. And I think as the governance norms get set, this is a really important moment. And this is something that's not in the governance handbook now, but should be in the handbook in the future. So I encourage you as, as you discuss that because there's this substance to to the oversight. But in the governance sense, the method for doing that oversight is really sound. And I want to just put that out there that it's it's it's a good idea. It's a good way to do things. And I hope you can work with it. And that's really all I've got to say. I might have to leave a little early tonight, but thanks for all you're doing.
17 That concludes testimony.
18 Thank you so much. Clerk, will you please read the next item.
19 Item two ad appointed boards, commissions and committees. Code.
20 Thank you. So we are continuing this item from last week's agenda. This is the ordinance to add sections of city code on boards, commissions and committees. Want to welcome back amanda, julia and sarah who have all been working hard on this project. And during last week's meeting, we opened the amendment proposed from councilor Canal to add an implementation plan work session requirement. And so as we move into discussion, I'd like to invite councilor Canal and give you the opportunity, if you'd like to come to the dais and provide any opening comments. I know you talked about it before, but is there anything else you wanted to add?
21 Thanks for the record. Sameer Kanal city councilor from district two. I think I might be better saved for if there's a conversation around the amendments today, and I want to make sure that the staff who are on this are able to speak to those two. Is that all right, madam chair?
22 Absolutely. And the amendment has been pre-filed and everything. So do we need to do anything to continue discussion?
23 No. So we opened the amendment at the before we continued the item in the last meeting. So it's currently in discussion.
24 Okay.
25 So colleagues, we are opening discussion on canales amendment which is posted on e council. I do have a question to one of our city attorneys if there are any concerns around this amendment or anything that we need to consider from your perspective.
26 Good afternoon. I'm sarah ames, deputy city attorney. I've been advising this project. There are no legal concerns about councilor Canales amendment.
27 All right. I don't see any hands in the queue. So are we ready to vote?
28 Clerk I. Dunphy. I pirtle-guiney. I'm sorry. I'm just finishing pulling things up here. I was a little bit behind. I'm making sure I'm looking at the right version. Okay. Yeah, I.
29 Ryan. I Koyama Lane. I. And with five eyes, the motion carries. The amendment is accepted.
30 Okay. Thank you, councilor Dunphy. I see that you've pre-filed a few amendments. I would entertain a motion to consider these amendments.
31 Great.
32 So these are. I have seven different amendments. Some are less controversial and some are more controversial. And some I'd like to be able to discuss them. So how would you like me to walk through them, or do you want me to move them? How? What would it be best right now?
33 Well, first we need to make sure we have a second. Right.
34 Well, I think there are several seven different amendments. So I think if we consider them individually can move in second each one. Okay.
35 That would be. Yeah, that'd be my preferred if we could. And I'd like to just briefly go through seven all of them. My intention is to bundle them so we don't have seven different votes. I my intention right now is to bundle them in that Dunphy one, three and seven will come forward as a package. Dunphy five will come separately and Dunphy two, four and six will come as a package.
36 That sounds great, councilor Dunphy, go ahead and share with us your amendments and your rationale.
37 Great. Thank you. First, before I start, I do want to thank the staff who have done an amazing amount of work on this and have also worked closely with my team to come and let me futz and make their jobs harder in the closing weeks. I really appreciate the work that's going into this. And as I said in the last time we heard about this, I'm really eager to see this work come to a finale, because my last tour of duty in this building, this work was starting to get done. And then nick fish had the audacity to die, and it sort of stopped. So I'm excited to see it finally get finished. This is really important. The broad mentality for my amendments. As I said, there are seven separate amendments trying to build on the good work that is already on the page, but. Philosophically, I believe that city code is the public facing front page of our our work. Right? That in terms of our governing authority, city code is where the public can go to understand what it is. That is their rights. What are the laws? What is the job of the city council? How are these things working? And in my opinion, that means it needs to be as straightforward to a plain reading. This seems particularly important when it comes to public participation chapters. We are inviting. You know, at one point we had over 300 different boards and commissions and blue ribbon and all these different things. It's hundreds and hundreds of public members who don't necessarily understand what how the city runs, how what their responsibilities are, what their protections are. And I think that this section of code needs to be as clear to the plain, to the average reader as possible. My amendments focus on clarity, consistency, plain language, and making sure that we are clear about who is on first in terms of authority and decision making points. And we have a special focus on information sharing to the public on the makeup and membership of these different advisory bodies. Council has one process. The administration doesn't necessarily have to follow the same. The mayor has a different process, but information sharing is really important. Additionally, council has our council ops team to focus on style. The administration does not have that same. So this is an opportunity that to to move forward with a shared unified style. That is something that broadly, I want to see us do. My amendments focus on clarifying the existing charter and code authority, the different roles that the council and the city and the mayor have. And emphasizing mayoral authority in certain areas and council authority in others. And talking about the code's supremacy over the administrative rule authority. So my seven amendments, as I said, which are on this document here, I'm just going to go through them one at a time real quick. And actually what I would what I will do for the purposes of introducing these, I'm going to read amendments one, three and seven, and then I will read amendment five and then two, four and six. So Dunphy, amendment one is around definitions. And again this is in the document that is pre-filed for you. And actually, ava, would you come on up and evan is in here. But my team are the. Best nerds in the building, and I'm excited for them to help us with this. And oh, also worth mentioning, we also worked directly with terry harris to reflect a lot of his specific concerns that he brought to us last week. But Dunphy, amendment one is around definitions section. This amendment moves the definition of an abc into the definition section, and it improves clarity by removing inaccurate and redundant language that states that members are appointed by the city, which is not the case. These edits also align with the chapter with the prevailing style used throughout city code. Functionally, what amendment one does is it cuts the definition. The section in the 3.40.030 under classifications, and removes the language on defining what an abc is and puts it into the definitions section. It also does some small tweaking to the language of enabling legislation and creating authority, just to make it consistent across the thing. Anything I missed on Dunphy one. No. Okay, Dunphy three. Is regarding public meeting law exemptions. The city. This amendment removes the city administrator's rules from this section to be moved into its own section, and eliminates the exemption of bodies subject to open meeting laws, which is unnecessary because there's actually no conflict between the chapter requirements and the law, including language about being subject to public meetings laws is mostly just redundant. And so. Dunphy three. Strikes a part of the the final sentence in application of the chapter and cuts subsection b out of 3.40.040. Anything to add there?
38 Yeah, no, I think that's fine. I think just to be clear, that section is cut and then it's moved to the end of the chapter at 3.40070. So we're making a separate section for the administrative rules.
39 Absolutely. And that is Dunphy amendment seven, which is to create a 3.40.070 administrative rules explicitly stating that the the city administrator may establish administrative rules for any abc covered by this chapter and other applicable city code. These are relatively minor and the least controversial with city attorney and with staff, as I understand it, and I would like to move these three amendments forward for consideration. Okay. Thank you and love to discuss.
40 Councilor clerk.
41 Thank you. Thank you, councilor Dunphy. You went through this with a toothbrush. I think it's amazing. I read these as mostly housekeeping. There isn't doesn't appear to be anything substantive, necessarily.
42 It is absolutely my intention that these three are style over substance. Okay, yeah. This is more about consistency across our code and readability.
43 Right. And city attorney's office is fine with it. Right.
44 The attorney's office specifically on one, three and five. The city attorney's office did request a friendly amendment to the amendment on Dunphy. Five.
45 We're looking at seven, though.
46 077 thank you. Thank you.
47 And did you incorporate that or.
48 So in five? No, we'll come back to that. That is the next one I want to talk about separately with everybody one, three and seven specifically. Sarah ames had said no legal impact to comment on. And though she did have a note in Dunphy seven, I'm not sure what other applicable city code is, but otherwise do not advise against this amendment. So.
49 Council president.
50 Thank you. I just want to note that as we do this work, one of the benefits of having 12 of us is that we don't all have to dig in with a fine tooth comb on everything, and I'm often stuck looking at the balance of how do we maintain consistency, and how do we make sure that we move in the direction of more clarity in our law? And I really appreciate that when I know councilor Dunphy is digging into something like this, I know we're going to get we're going to move in a direction that strikes that balance. I have some questions about some of the later amendments, but feel very comfortable with these three, and just wanted to take this moment before we get into the harder questions, to appreciate the time that your team put into this.
51 Vice chair. Ryan.
52 Thank you, councilor Dunphy. No, you you submitted these this morning, correct? Yeah. Okay. And so this is a little last minute for us. I've only had a little bit of time to look at it, and I think I want to have a bigger picture conversation because I think where we might see the, the world differently here is I'm comfortable with administrative rules. I think code should be clear but broad, and they should allow there to be some flexibility in terms of the reality of the moment. And so most policy in a lot of governments don't get to this matter of detail. And I know you mentioned code and I understand code. Most of the public doesn't know anything about code, right? Not the people who, of course are here because you're not like most of the public. You're really engaged. And so I think what I wanted to just have a longer conversation about is, is this council going to micro detail? That's your desire, because you don't want the mayor, whoever the mayor is, and the admin to have as much authority.
53 Oh no, this is just moving the language from the application chapter to a second separate section about administrative rules. Right now, under Dunphy three. Yeah. In the existing body. 3.40.04 subsection b, the language is is 3.40.04 is the application of chapter and under application of chapter subsection b, it says the city administrator may establish administrative rules. What I'm proposing is to create a4a 3.40.070 at the end of the chapter that simply says that the titled administrative rules and moves that sentence into its separate section, because the ability to make administrative rules is not the same thing as the applicability of code, and to have it in its own section makes it clearer and more consistent across the rest of it. So that was my intention, is to just call out that administrative rules are not actually about the creation. Administrative rules is not about application of the chapter.
54 Okay. Well, it's just when you get seven new amendments the day of when we've been talking about something for months on end, it just became a little it's a little startling. Sure. And and so I had to put that out there. And it's uncomfortable when you're in these positions and you're asked to pass something when you had your day already scheduled, and you haven't had a lot of time to dig through this. So this morning there was an exchange and I just said there the administrative the two administrators, three administrators weren't included, nor was the city attorney. And it turned out they didn't have the final result. So we figured that out. But have you had these conversations with julia and amanda like in the last few months, or was it just all over the weekend or.
55 No, we've been working on this for for a while. Absolutely. I previewed some of this at our last hearing, and my team has been certainly wasn't over the weekend.
56 Okay, I'm a little attached to hearing, julie, I'm going to put you on the spot. I know I didn't tell you I was going to do this, but you've been working on this so diligently for months on end. And how do these change anything that you've been focused on when it comes to this big project, if you will? And thank you for leading this big project.
57 Oh, thank you, councilor Ryan, for the question. For the record, julia meyer, she her pronouns project manager for the advisory bodies enhancement project, I think and thank you to councilor Dunphy and evan and ava for the toothbrush review of the code. I agree with councilor Dunphy that one, three, and seven are primarily stylistic. I don't have any issue with them. If this style is a preference for the committee, then I think it's okay.
58 And I should have said this was about the whole big thing for me. So I appreciate you splitting those three up. Yeah.
59 Okay. So you want me to go through each.
60 Why we're here? Can we do that?
61 Should I walk? You want you to wait.
62 You haven't a chance to talk about.
63 I have introduced them.
64 All right. So this is the stylistic one. That seems to be just fine with everyone out there that's been working on this for months on end, and has been cross-checking with legal the entire time. Okay, I have to do this in public because we haven't had a chance to do this before the meeting.
65 Yeah, no. And I think it makes sense to bring these three together because they are more stylistic.
66 Ava, did you have other to add to that?
67 Yeah. And just to clarify, ava atwood, policy aide for council. Dunphy first of all, I wanted to let councilor Ryan know that we have been working very closely. I've actually been following this. I've read every single report. I've been following this from the beginning. We had a meeting with julia was like a month or two ago, like when they had an initial initial draft and then went after they, they filed their final language. We then had another meeting after that. We've been emailing. I was on the phone with sarah several times this last week and we went through literally together, all of us line by line. So what they're what you're seeing is exactly pretty much what I'd already drafted. I had drafted a lot of these things, and we went through them all together. And even like the decision making, body language and stuff like that was drafted with sarah. So that's it's been kind of a collaborative process.
68 All that's helpful. We've had meetings on it. This is the first I've heard of it. So yeah. So it's important that you share.
69 We've been like right in the weeds together on this.
70 Yeah.
71 Okay.
72 Council president.
73 Thank you. Councilor councilor. Ryan, I just wanted to note that by my reading of it, then the the move of the city administrator language to its own section in Dunphy seven, if anything seemed to actually strengthen the authority that we were given to the city administrator, not in the words on the page, but in the way it conveys our intent by giving it a separate section like that.
74 Thank you.
75 If I can add a moment as well. For the record, evan hoffer, policy advisor for councilor Dunphy, by adding the language at the end of that line, which says and other applicable code, if there are in city code types of bodies that are not imagined in this chapter that we are about to pass as as we discussed later, there may be that would mean that the city administrator could then adopt rules for those as well, rather than being only limited to those imagined in this code.
76 All right. Not seeing any other hands in the queue, we'll. Diego, will you please call the roll on? Dunphy one, Dunphy three, and Dunphy seven. It sounds like folks are comfortable with voting on those altogether, since they seem to be mostly stylistic.
77 Clark.
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78 Hi.
79 Dunphy. I pirtle-guiney hi, Ryan. Hi, Koyama Lane.
80 Hi.
81 With five eyes. The amendment passes.
82 Thank you colleagues. Now we'll get into some areas that are a little bit more controversial, which I'm looking forward to it. We're going to start with Dunphy five. Which may be a vaguely confusing out of order, but I'm going to try it anyway. This is specifically a trying to attempt to. Under under the current charter. As we read it, as we have been told, we cannot we cannot require the mayor to follow certain requirements when it comes to creation of a new abc, a new advisory board or commission. We can put our own requirements in. And as we had in this section, we have a in in the in the original draft, we have a, a portion that specifically says council must do these four things in order to create a new board. But we cannot compel the mayor to do that, even if we want that requirement. Dunphy five is an attempt to get the same level of transparency and accountability from the mayor as we have for ourselves without overstepping our charter enshrined authority. Specifically, this creates a new subsection c in 3.40.050, making that subsection abc creation, sunset reporting and periodic review. And this requirement would be towards the city administrator to report to council within 30 days. Specific information about new abcs that have been created. While we can't require it upfront, we can ask on the back end, can you please get back to us with regard to names, qualifications, organizational affiliations, appointment terms, sunset dates and deliver that to council within a set period of time? I will note that and certainly allow sarah to say it herself specifically, but she had requested a friendly amendment to this. I want to turn it over to my team first, to help us sort of flesh out the nuance. If there's anything that I missed there.
83 Do you want me to speak to the amendment just to hours or.
84 To hours and then also to the to the city attorney's?
85 Yeah. So actually, when I was speaking to julia about this, we were talking about what the scope of this should be. And I said, what we're really trying to aim for is not just council understanding, you know, like what's going on, but also for like public understanding, like daylighting. These are the bodies we don't need to be creating an effort like a huge, huge silo of information where we don't know what's going on and who's who's, who's the actors. And so like the information originally we were going to have reported for establishment, any kind of big modification and the end of a abc, but we really thought instead of being onerous about this, we really just want to know when these things are created, when they're ending. And so the list of information is basically what we're seeing in under a, the creation of abcs. Those proposed the purpose, the functions, the number of seats, like the basic framework of the abc is being reported, as well as the individuals on the board. And I realized that we can't have always them staffed within 30 days. So there's an exception here. So if you can't get all this information 30 days within you getting that information, you can update council in the report. And so it's really and the copy the administrative rules. We didn't know at the time in drafting this how that was going to be. After speaking to julia, she kind of said that they already have an idea of what their administrative rules are going to be. So if they're not going to be updated or changed, you don't have to continue to send redundant information. This is really just if there's anything new and anything important that the council and the public should know, we'd like that done in a timely manner. Not only does that help with information, but it also helps with staying organized and staying on top of this. What we don't want to see is a repeat of, you know, like, oh man, what do we have going on? It's just about timely, timely tracking. And do you want to add anything to that and say sarah's sure.
86 Yeah I'd be happy to. Yes. So as we as we discussed earlier in code this, the code proposal puts certain requirements on notification and information that must be shared when council creates an abc, because the mayor has charter independent charter authority to create abc's on his own through executive action, we cannot legislate requirements in advance of that. However, we can require reporting after the fact as we discussed. So what is here is saying you if the mayor creates one of these bodies independently through executive action, he should, after the fact, report on the same basics. The city attorney's amendments are proposing. We might not know who's on these bodies within 30 days. And so therefore, we have some material at the bottom that says, all right, well, within 30 days of when you know who's on the body, you should let us know. That seems reasonable. The city attorney is also requested that the number for requesting that a copy of the administrative rules be provided to council in the public may be redundant, since those will be set in law. There is one issue here, which is that the the mayor can delegate administrative rulemaking authority to certain bodies. So in the odd case that a body makes its own rules, which is technically legal, this may still be valuable. That also may be pedantry. And I think that we would entertain removing it, if that's a strong feeling.
87 So that is Dunphy amendment five, which I would like to move separately from the, the the remainder, I guess I said the next one will be two, four and six. But this this is on its own is pertaining strictly to a reporting requirement for the city administrator on the creation or significant alteration of any abc, and it makes those reporting requirements identical to our own. If we are going to create a committee on our own. And additionally, as I said, the city administrator, city attorney asked for a friendly amendment. That language is present. That is that second section after subsection c four.
88 Okay. And was that officially making a motion?
89 I would like to move this amendment second.
90 Great. So we can open up the discussion to counselors, other counselors. Councilor clerk go right ahead.
91 Okay. I just want to make sure I understand this. So the language if abc member appointments are not finalized, that's from the city attorney's office. And that's just to give them leeway if they don't know yet.
92 Absolutely. We know that there's recruitment issues. We know that falls on a holiday, whatever it's going to be. So 30 days within the body being actually assembled.
93 Okay. And and c4 does seem what. Oh what.
94 I'm sorry. Just to clarify, that sentence is not from the city attorney's office.
95 Oh my bad.
96 It's okay. The city attorney's office did provide recommended language for the section reporting of abcs. It is a single sentence to replace the entirety of the initial proposed amendment.
97 You lost me there.
98 So we have that.
99 So c c4 you're talking about c4.
100 Yes. So the the actual language from the city attorney's office is for all abcs not created by the council. The city administrator will report to the council within 30 days of establishment or abolishment of an abc to include for all new abcs, all information listed in section 34 0050a, three a through d, and the sunset date or renewal term if applicable.
101 And substantively, what this would do one.
102 Sure. Do we have that? When I'm looking at.
103 That was emailed it wasn't was that emailed to everyone.
104 Let's see I think.
105 So it does not look like it was emailed to everybody.
106 I will forward this email to everybody right now. I apologize.
107 So can you just highlight what the difference is that what you took and what you didn't take from the city attorney?
108 Substantively councilor This would remove number two and number four, and it would remove the final paragraph. So the requirements for reporting would be all information listed in section 3.40, etcetera, etcetera. And the abc sunset date or renewal term if applicable.
109 So that seems in line with just making things simpler to understand. No, the city attorney's reference to the existing.
110 It's basically less. It's just not knowing who's on the boards. That's the big that's the big difference there. We wouldn't have privy to knowing who's on the abc that would remove that language because because a through a through d is about the number of seats. It's about if there's a sunset date, what the functions of the abc are. But all of that is outlined in the initial proposal of an abc. What our amendment did was to go a little deeper and say, okay, we have the basic outline of this abc. Well, who's who's on it, what are their roles? What are their organizational affiliations? If you know if that's applicable, or a community member, just like the basic basic bio line information, nothing, you know, not a not an inquisition, but just a basic like who's on who's on this committee, you know? And that is basically it. And we didn't really consider that to be particularly onerous since that information would already be collected.
111 So that's the language in c2, right?
112 I for my amendment that I put forward, it creates parity between our requirements for ourselves, but also include specifically who is going to be on this board. And I think that specifically understanding who is on a board in a public way is really important, rather than in my my read of it. The city attorney's request would is certainly more condensed and really outlines the parameters of what the board should be comprised of, not who comprises the board.
113 Okay, so I think inquiring minds need to know who's on the board. I don't know that we need the administrative rules and other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if we're really that serious you can go look them up yourself. But so I don't I don't care for is in there. It can be extracted. Fine. I think that if abc member giving them more time that's great. But I do think inquiring minds need to know who who these people are. So I'm supportive of this. If you want to take out four, that's fine. I don't know how other people feel about knowing what the administrative rules are, but I think this looks pretty good.
114 From my personal preferences. And you know, this body can take a different direction. I would like to have this body consider my amendment as submitted, and which is a longer version than what the city attorney had put forward.
115 Okay, colleagues, we had until 330 for this item. We can stretch it and go until 345 and talk a little bit less about the handbook if folks are okay with that. But just keep in mind we have four amendments ahead of us. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
116 I apologize, but I have three parts to this question. I really want to fully understand this. The first is for whoever did the initial drafting. I don't know if that was the staff before us or the attorney, but if in fact we are not able to require the information the way that it was originally drafted. I'm just wondering why that decision was made, because what councilor Dunphy is laying out in terms of not being able to require these require these things on the front end makes sense to me. But I'm wondering what I what was missed that it was drafted that way originally. So we can understand what the trade off is here. Because this was originally drafted in such a way that it sounds like from my colleague, put things in code that we don't, or at least that his office doesn't think we can actually enforce.
117 And would this be a question for julia, amanda, or for.
118 For whoever drafted the original? I don't know if that was julia or amanda or the attorney's office.
119 The original came from councilor Dunphy's office.
120 No, not the the original. The original language that was brought to us, not the amendment.
121 Councilor the original language did not include any requirements on the mayor because those are not supported by charter. So this text is completely new.
122 Okay.
123 Yeah. The previous language had some references to the mayor and their sole discretion. It didn't have specific it. Yeah.
124 Thank you. Yeah I was confused on that piece of it. So I want to note and maybe I'm confused on this too, that it looks councilor Dunphy like there's an incorrect notation here. It's your c1 says all information listed under subsection 3.4005083. And I believe you mean a four.
125 Yes.
126 So I want to make sure we correct that if we're going to pass this so that we're referring to the right language.
127 I will make my team very quickly make sure that that is correct.
128 I'm seeing it as three. Aren't you?
129 Well, we have proposed an amendment that would make it three instead of four.
130 Yeah, right.
131 We've not considered that yet.
132 Not considered that.
133 Yet okay.
134 So three which was four. Three would be the council may create an abc only after determining the following through its enabling legislation.
135 Which Dunphy changes.
136 Will be in Dunphy four.
137 Okay. I have questions about Dunphy four so I'm a little concerned with the order of passing five if we haven't discussed four, but I want to I, I have a meaty thing that I want to get to also first if that's okay. Yeah. And that. Is that you I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that new abcs that are created by the mayor would, at least most of the time, still have appointees who are nominated by the mayor and confirmed by council. And I want to understand if that's correct or not, because if that's the case, then we don't actually need the new c2 here, because the mayor would not be able to appoint those individuals without our confirmation. And I worry that including c2 inadvertently undermines our authority to confirm nominees. And I would prefer that when we pass this, because I would like to pass this, though not until we decide if we're doing four or not. I would like us to say that we get all of the information under subsection 3.043.4 0050a, either 3 or 4, and the sunset date and renewal information and the administrative rules. And maybe actually we affirm here that nominees will be confirmed by council. But I worry that the language you have inadvertently takes authority away from council, and I'm not comfortable doing that.
138 I don't know, are there bodies that the mayor could create that does not have members that would be appointed by the city council?
139 Yes.
140 So perhaps we need to say where council does not confirm nominees, the names, qualifications, etc. Would that be a friendly change here? Okay.
141 As a procedural note, I want to note that attorney ames is at the table to at the dais to provide any comment.
142 I'd love to give you the chance to defend your own comments.
143 Sarah ames. Again, I did want to note that this code was developed in concert with the city attorney's office and lots of consultation back and forth with staff and with the code. The chair and vice chair of this committee and the mayor's office to make sure that we were hitting the right balance of what belongs in code, what can be in administrative rules, what fits within the designation of authority between the mayor and council. That was a central issue here. There was a great interest on all of the sponsors of this code to have uniformity across the board, but you cannot legislate that uniformity because there is the the mayor has his independent authority under charter. And so this particular section was drafted to try to get to that uniformity and require, although you can't require before the mayor establishes an abc that he I'm using he because currently we have a he that he go through and lay out the mission and the sunset and all those things. But you can you can ask under the charter, the council has the authority to ask the city administrator for reports. And so that's that's how we kind of got to the intent of the council and the mayor in this code to make sure there is as much uniformity as possible. There are. So section one, that's exactly where that came from. And that was part was drafted by the city attorney's office in concert with the sponsors and the staff. The abc sunset data renewal term is also entirely within that same ballpark. The names, qualifications, organizational affiliates. I understand the intent is to make sure this is daylighted and that the public is aware. I think that there might be better ways for the council to encourage, I mean, you know, through the ordinance to, you know, encourage the city administrator to ensure that all in the rules that all abcs have, you know, transparent practices, including listing members on their website that would be more accessible to the public, I believe, than a city administrator's report. Further, I you know, this is entirely you have the authority to ask the administrator for whatever reports you like. This one felt a little bit tipping towards. You know, it was unclear to me, like every time the mayor makes a new appointment or, you know, as delegated, the bureau makes a new appointment to one of these advisory groups. Do you need another report from the city administrator? You know, I mean, I'm just, you know, logistically, it seems like maybe more work and not achieving the purpose, which was the stated purpose, so that those are just kind of more things for you to consider as a policy. You know, they aren't a legal challenge. The one piece I do did have questions about is the abcs administrative rules. You are correct that the city administrator may delegate the rulemaking authority to bureau directors. However, that would still have to go through the administrative code that the city has passed, which would have a public review period. And so I'm not sure there is much to be served in terms of public accessibility or visibility or reporting to have it included in this particular report. I don't believe any abc that is established by the mayor and not the council would have direct administrative rule authority, the community board for police accountability, for example, does have administrative rule authority, but that was set in code in keeping with their independence.
144 Thank you.
145 And just two minor points. Thank you so much. We did on the matter of needing to resubmit information to council. Every time there's a change or a reappointment, as currently drafted, the reporting requirement only kicks in at the point of establishment or abolition of an entity. And so and not at modification or reappointment. That was in an earlier draft. But it is not here, and it is possible in charter for the mayor to delegate administrative authority to a board or commission. I don't think that has been done in the current form of government, but it is it is a power that's enumerated in charter.
146 Council president, would you like to continue speaking to the amendment.
147 Just briefly with what I'm hearing, it seems to me like. This section maybe needs to have the the names qualifications piece taken out and elsewhere state that all members would be listed on the website. I don't know if that's the direction that the carrier of the amendment would want to go, but that seems to be part of what I'm hearing. I do wonder if it's worth reiterating somewhere in here that it is best practice where abc will be long standing to have council confirm nominees from the mayor to their positions.
148 If I may. The code, as it reads, just is the limit of what we can require. We can require report. We cannot require in code or otherwise for the city administrator to create a website. Should the city administrator want to create a website where he posts or whoever posts this information that would still fulfill this requirement? We don't. You know what I mean? Like these. This is just it's just making the information available within the time frame. And that's kind of not that's kind of up to up to their choice how they want to report the information. It doesn't have to be in the city administrator's report. Our preference, of course, would be for it to be very public and accessible and like less onerous in general. But we do really feel like this, these this information is very, very minimal to what is really should be publicly available. And the line number for about the administrative rules. It says if new rules have been adopted or existing rules have been modified since the last report. So once again we're addressing if there is a big change. This is not a hard line. Must repeat, repeat, repeat.
149 I want to clarify that I don't want anybody to create a new website suggestion that they be posted on the websites for the abcs that exist, and I think we could legally say that membership of abc shall be posted publicly where other information about those abcs is available, or something like that. Yeah.
150 Vice chair Ryan.
151 I thought there was someone in front of me. So my question that I was going to ask is there's got to be some sort of problem that you're trying to solve here or something that's happened in the past, like what's going on, because this seems really clean and clear. Before Friday when this was posted. And then over the weekend we have all this. So somebody tell me something that I'm not hearing.
152 Absolutely. Counselor Ryan. Say in a, in a hypothetical, a purely hypothetical world, say that there was an issue over which the mayor desired to appoint an ex-officio advisory body. When would council need to know that that existed, and when would council need to know who was on it? When would council need to know what its powers were and what it was expected to accomplish during the period of its embodiment? When would council need to know how long it existed for under the code? As it came to us last week, the mayor would not need to notify this body of any of that information. What we're proposing here is within 30 days of appointing that all of those things, term of service, what is to be accomplished? Indeed, who is on the body would be required to be reported publicly.
153 So, councilor Dunphy, you don't see there's a time when a mayor would need to create an ad hoc committee, perhaps a task force. It has a limited duration. I mean, what kind of what kind of obstacle are we putting to the mayor who has to oversee all the administration?
154 We're putting transparency as an obstacle for the for a future mayor in a hypothetical situation. This is about protecting our authority as a decision making body, and we can only make decisions if we have good information. And if without this, we are held to a standard that the mayor is not held to. And the public, I think the public deserves consistency, both in terms of how we are thinking about our work and how the mayor is thinking about the work. And honestly, I think briefing councilors by press release is often a little exhausting. And we've had a couple of incidents of that happen fairly recently, including specifically one of an ex-officio group that I am benefiting from. I'm participating in the the mayor's ex-officio group on the future of the keller auditorium, but that was announced to this body via press release. And I think that this body has a right to understand in a, in a confined and a rather defined way, what it is that we are seeing here, rather than leading up to us to ask or to to interpret.
155 This is a complicated conversation, and it's an important one. And we've been looking at these for six months. So why is it that this just came up of late?
156 Would you like is that a question for councilor Dunphy?
157 Yeah. And I'm looking at the staff where we've had this conversation about making sure there's balance, making sure there's it's uniform. And we, you and I and others in this meeting have been assured that it was there. What I just heard from you was. Sounded good. Of course you want to vote yes on that. But something's not making sense here to me.
158 Councilor Dunphy, would you like to respond?
159 Sure. I mean, we had our first formal hearing on this last week. We had our first opportunity to see what the final language was. We've had iterative language. We've had an ability to give input. Julie and amanda have been amazing about this. They've been transparent and clear about what the expectations are. They've come to this committee, but you can't you can't amend something that isn't in final draft. And we were encouraging. We were meeting, we were understanding about where things were going as a body. But it wasn't only until last week that we could actually changed something, because that was when we had something to react to.
160 Okay, well, I'll just say by eliminating two and four, I'm definitely supportive of that. I do want to I would like to hear more from the staff, the architects of this legal. If this is something we'll regret, I just can't tell if we're adding more than we need to here. I thought we had the uniformity. I thought we had the transparency already in writing.
161 Vice chair. Is that a question for.
162 Yeah, I mean, let's do this since this just happened this morning.
163 So sarah I.
164 I yeah, I can take a start here and juliet sarah add I think the if I'm understanding correctly, as we went through this process we were sharing. Our plan initially was to put some high level policy pieces out there as possible code language, and then put details and more procedural pieces into the administrative rules. And that was our how we were talking about this project as we were going forward. And it it sounds like through that there were some interest in seeing a little more of that delineated, at least for the administrative side of the work in the code document, if I'm capturing that correctly. So I think that's how we have arrived at this place. I don't know if you have other things to add.
165 No, thanks for asking, councilor Ryan. I appreciate this amendment. Conceptually, this is probably my favorite of the long list. I think it is doing something here, and it's a little bit what evan mentioned. But as someone who, you know, spent six months trying to create an accurate inventory of existing abc's at the city, we have we do have a real problem. I don't think it's a hypothetical problem. We have a real problem of keeping track of abc's that we have. It's much easier to keep track on the council side because you create abc's in public. And I think for a chief engagement officer to track those is not a challenge. I do think we have a challenge on the other side. I support that. I, I don't have a strong preference about the language. And I would say I've been working really closely with the city attorney's office for months on the language. And so I am more likely to kind of defer to their recommended language. But I think reporting on creation and abolishment in particular would be of service to this work.
166 Okay. That was really helpful. And final question, has the mayor himself been involved in this conversation over the weekend or this morning? Does he know about this change?
167 Amanda, would you want to respond?
168 Yeah. So he knows that we're bringing forward this work. And I think we've been working with ashley on the initial drafts of the code. I don't know how much of the most recent changes have been discussed.
169 The ones filed this morning, because partly what I've appreciated about my dialog with all of you is that you have been working closely with the mayor's office. We are really working to make sure this has some uniformity. And so there hasn't been any feedback from the amendments that were filed this morning.
170 I, I don't know that.
171 Directly from the.
172 Also also, councilor Ryan, I want to be clear, like I said, I met with julia like over a month ago, maybe even two months ago, and there was an original original, I think, that you drafted, right, an original, very base language. And we kind of that was presented to us originally, and I had gone through the week before our governance committee because like, this wasn't filed like this language, the original language that we just amended was not filed until like at least late Thursday night, if not Friday. So I had gone through and edited all of that and made amendments to submit for the first governance meeting. And then when I went to go file it, I realized the language had completely changed. So then I had to go through, and it was because of that, our restrictions for when we can change an ordinance. I wasn't able to get it on the first committee. And then we had julia contacted me again when I said I, you know, was wanting to.
173 I understand, I'm sorry.
174 Yeah. So and I did file it Friday. So it was you know.
175 It was a fair question for me to ask, though, about the mayor's office. It's it's very connected to the mayor.
176 And I know we have a lot of folks here on the dais. And so if you want to direct a question to someone specifically, I know it's a little confusing because we have a lot of folks up here. Was there anything else, vice chair? No. I'm good. Okay. Thank you. I would like us to be able to make some space because councilor Kanal has taken time to come speak. And I would like to speak to amendment Dunphy five. And also, I want to note that it sounds like there might be some wordsmithing of this and maybe even some other amendments that might be able to get more people, more of us up here along to be able to go along with it. And so I do want to suggest that while councilors, this might be a place to discuss some of the intention, but if there are significant changes, it might be the amendment might need to be code reviewed again before this comes before full council. So that might be necessary. Okay. Councilor Kanal.
177 Thank you, madam chair. I'm going to somewhat awkward position because I actually really like the text, but most of the arguments for it I think are problematic. And I'm going to talk about that in a second. First, let me say I agree with every word julia said about the need for it. This this text refers to abc's not created by council, which is actually where the bigger part of the issue is of the several. I mean, I think councilor Dunphy mentioned a couple hundred in the past. Those are mostly created by the mayor's office or a part of the administration without a lot of daylight into them, into that process, and as a result, creating requirements around this side of it is addressing something that the code is not addressed currently, which is really important. And that's why I agree with julia's comments as it relates to the the two four and the final paragraph, I am fairly indifferent on that. I think the the council president's suggestion for two is is a good one. I think I probably agree closest with with councilor Clarke on on four on that as well. But I did want to take the opportunity to say this is actually very different. It's being presented as though this is the replacement text for what you're trying to cut into four and six, and it's actually different. And because that is related to to when the mayor brings something to council, and this is related to when the mayor creates it unilaterally and through their executive authority. And that's why they are different. One does not move the other. And so I think you should do this and then not do the other just to preview that argument, but because there is a interpretation here that's very much we can't touch the executive. And if you read city code, most of it is actually defining, empowering and or restraining the administration what it can do, including the mayor. And so you see that across in chapter after chapter of city code. That's it's almost not even worth listing examples because it is the overwhelming majority of it. But having said that, this particular one, it does appear to to cover it. The question that I had originally got answered, which was do abcs have their own rules? And it's almost always not. But it could. It seems to be the answer to that. And I think that's why I agreed with councilor Clarke on the not needing number four, but just wanted to weigh in on that. I have a lot more on the two, four, six ones, but this, I think, will add something that the that the original drafts did not have, which is transparency into the, the maybe 70% of, of abcs that are created by the mayor unilaterally.
178 Council president.
179 Thank you councilor, I'm wondering if we can get councilor Canal to just.
180 Clarify when he said do this, but not the other, what he meant by the other?
181 Oh, sorry, two, four and six that package, because the way this was presented was we can't.
182 Do that. Hold on. We should pass five. We should not pass two, four and six.
183 Yeah, I'm referring to a particular part of it. Not all of it for two, four, six, but yes to passing five. I think it does add something as as julia said, my argument is exactly hers, so I won't repeat it.
184 Thank you chair.
185 Thank you.
186 Okay, I do not see any more hands in the queue. Clerk, will you please call the roll on? Dunphy five as submitted with the one through four. All that still there? Is that correct?
187 Oh, they're all intact.
188 At this point. I would like to if we have. Yeah. At this point I would like to move this forward as written. If this body disagrees with it, I am happy to go back and wordsmith additionally and maybe possibly bring something forward for the full committee. But I feel pretty confident in the language we submitted at this moment and would ask that we vote.
189 Okay.
190 Clerk, will you please call the roll.
191 Clerk with a little bit of ambivalence?
192 I Dunphy. I pirtle-guiney.
193 Know for now, but I'd like to re-explore these topics.
194 Brian.
195 No.
196 Koyama Lane.
197 No. For now.
198 Motion. The amendment fails to pass with three nay votes and two votes.
199 Okay.
200 Noting that we are over time already. Would you like me to introduce two, four and six the final package here? Are you hoping to or should we hold this over to another day?
201 The goal is that we can hopefully vote on this.
202 Yeah.
203 So go ahead and move forward. Do you think you can do it as quickly as possible.
204 As quickly as possible? Thank you. All right. Dunphy two is incorporating several clarifying and technical amendments or adjustments. One, it adjusts headers for subsections a and b that uses the term city and replaces it with the terms mayor or councilor or council that aligns with code language used in the charter. It removes some language that I believe is unnecessary without altering the meaning, and makes the content more accessible. It reflects charters giving a new subsection that we've created reflects that. Charter gives council the sole authority to create boards and commissions that have powers beyond the advisory function, and replaces the term interagency with intergovernmental, which is a term we don't use the term interagency in code elsewhere, as near as we can tell, but we do have the term intergovernmental. That is. So. Dunphy two. What anything team that I, I should have immediately called out, okay. Dunphy. For it is on the chapter regarding creation of abcs. It removes paragraph a sub two, which, because it seems redundant to a sub one. It simplifies the language in a sub three, it simplifies the language in a sub, the new a sub two and. Clarifies. Specifically the the phrasing around sunsetting and when these are terminated. So most of this. Specifically is focused around removing parts that we think are redundant, a little bit of cleanup and style. And this 3.40.0 50a or a sub three, which clarifies and cleans that up a little bit. Looking at my team to see if I missed anything up. No. Okay. And Dunphy six. This one is specifically to remove reference to a specific city bureau and instead replace it with references to the city administrator, to whom the bureau of human resources is responsive. I am supportive of the movement to ensure that our members of our boards and commissions are treated as public officials, and also given the same protections that are necessary in dealing with human resources issues, harassment, things like that that we know has occurred on boards in the past. However, we think that it is more appropriate to call out in code the city administrator who delegates authority to the bureau of human resources for these purposes, versus calling out the bureau of human resources directly. Again, I will look to my team to see if I left anything out and would move these numbers two, four, and six as an amendment package. And would love a second if somebody would be willing.
205 Technical question can I second and then immediately move to divide the package?
206 I don't see why not.
207 I'd like to second and divide the package into a Dunphy two and six, followed by a Dunphy four separately, I think Dunphy 4th may have more controversial meat to it. Two and six.
208 I think that's right.
209 Certainly that would need to be either unanimous consent or you would need to move to and vote to divide. So if there's unanimous consent to divide that.
210 Yeah. Okay. Great.
211 So for that purpose then I'd like to talk about two and six first. And that is specifically the conversation around classifications, which again for me this is primarily cleanup and streamlining. And to make it a little bit easier with the exception that specifically under two for classification, there is a I'm looking it up. Sorry 3.40. Zero three subsection b three. We are adding a new sub line or classification of bodies between ongoing and limited advisory bodies to also include a definition around decision making bodies and. Six was the hr components of it.
212 Okay.
213 So we are now in discussion for two and six. Yes. I only see councilor Canales hand raised. Oh we'll do members of the committee first and then we'll be happy to bring you in. Councilor Kanal councilor Pirtle-guiney. Thank you, councilor.
214 Councilor Dunphy, I found it helpful before for you to give us a sense of what the feedback was that you received on your amendments. I could ask our attorney to come up and give that directly. But if you have it available, absolutely. It might be faster if the chair is willing to go that route instead.
215 So for. For Dunphy, two specifically, the the city attorney has requested an amendment regarding the phrase, the phrasing, and the definitions around decision making. Body. The city attorney recommended council delegated body. That means an abc established by council that exercises delegated authority to make decisions on behalf of the city that are quasi judicial in nature, not ministerial. A council delegated body is not required by state or federal law, and may serve an advisory purpose. And sarah went on to say that this more accurately captures what council's charter authority the types of decisions that council may delegate or assign to an abc, and covers bodies such as the noise review board, which is assigned to decide variance. Applications. There may not be many bodies in this category. Many quasi judicial bodies exercise functions required by state or federal law, but we've identified 1 or 2. And so yeah, rather than a decision, the request was for to call it a a council delegated body instead of a decision making body.
216 May follow up.
217 Yes, you may follow up. Thanks for asking.
218 And that was something that you did not think was in line with the direction you wanted to go. So help me understand the decision to keep this language.
219 Councilor Dunphy.
220 Now with my team to help me parse this one out for me.
221 Well, I think there was initially a lot of there wasn't really even an acknowledgment at first of the difference in the types of boards per charter. So charter explicitly says that we as a council, as a council may make boards and commissions, and you may delegate your authorities to those boards and commissions, and that the mayor may make advisory bodies. And originally there was only advisory bodies listed in, in these definitions. So we were specifically talking about like something like the noise review board, where they were misclassified as an advisory body created by council. They're not required by law per se, other than they do make decisions. And so on Thursday, when sarah and I were discussing language about this particular type of body, she had originally recommended decision making body. That was her original language. I we wrote the line together and I think what this new amendment that she's proposing is really it is limiting in the fact that it really clearly defines it's only quasi judicial. We may never make a legislative body like that makes decisions legislatively, but it still is technically in your chartered power. So we wanted to just be specific to that. Right. And not extra limiting. And also it's she mentions not ministerial like the text, not administrative. We had to look that up, to be quite honest. But that's basically saying, once again, that we're not making administrative decisions.
222 I just want to make sure that our city attorney, sarah ames, has a chance to speak for herself and provide her own comment.
223 Thank you. Yes, I even I had a long conversation about, okay, there is this and we really appreciate the close review by councilor Dunphy and mr. Harris, because it did call our attention to there might be this tiny sliver of the current, you know, abcs that are not covered under the existing classification system. But we struggled with what to call it. And, you know, at the moment, on that call at the last minute on Thursday night, we came up with decision making. But on further review and consultation with folks in my office who support these and understand what, how to appeal and do all they know the legal background on these, there is a distinction in law between. Now I got to look at it because quasi judicial and ministerial decisions and how they can be appealed. I didn't come up with ministerial. This is a term of art in the law. And so I appreciate that. You know, it's not well understood, but it is a legal term that has meaning. And then further, there are a number of other in charter, you know, as other, you know, decision making bodies that have been established by council in the past. And so decision making didn't really capture this particular slice that the city has. So, you know, that's why I mean, and again, it was just in reaction to, you know, we had these long conversations last week. You know, we saw the final amendments, you know, and which reflected some of our advice, but not all of it. And we had, you know, tortured conversations. So, you know, this was late breaking, as you can probably see from the email that councilor Dunphy forwarded to you, this was, you know, last minute advice from us about how to make the adjustment. But I do stand by that particular adjustment as being important and based in the actual charter language and in, you know, but it fills a gap that was identified.
224 Please.
225 If I if I may, thank you so much. Absolutely. There was a there was a list and enumeration of types of boards and commissions that could be created under the sole authority of the city. It included only advisory bodies. Charter makes clear that council may create bodies that have power that is greater than advisory. As such, something needed to be included. We looked to the public meetings law, Oregon administrative rules, which gives us language for types of of governing bodies, one of which is decision making bodies. So that makes sense is where we went to a body that has greater than advisory power under the city charter, which is section two 104, council can give quasi judicial powers, can delegate quasi judicial powers to such a body, and the mayor can delegate administrative powers to such a body. As such, it's as of this time, it still makes sense to us to say there's kinds of bodies that council can create that can have greater powers and not super define it. But these are conversations that, you know, reasonable people can have.
226 I would also say just in response, it is really it is not something I have explored or can say authoritatively, but I would be very surprised if charter allows you to delegate your legislative authorities to pass code or other legislative duties. That seems squarely with council's authority.
227 It certainly does not.
228 Councilor. Okay, I feel like we're slicing and dicing this language and I'm not really sure where to go with it. I was thinking a council delegated decision making body might be okay, but I think I hear you saying, sarah, that that's not a good idea.
229 No, I think I think a council delegated decision making body would be okay. It gets long, but, you know, that's fine. It is. Yeah. You could do a mash up, I think.
230 Councilor Dunphy, how do you feel about that? A council delegated decision making body.
231 Go ahead, councilor Dunphy.
232 Thank you. I, I would be I would accept that as a friendly addition.
233 And can I just ask one more question? Does that include then that that includes quasi judicial. Is that what we're talking about? Okay. Thanks.
234 Vice chair Ryan.
235 Yeah. Well.
236 Most of my questions have been answered. So I'm actually at a point where I'm getting confused on where we are, what we're voting on. I hear what you've all been saying, that you got the final print out on Friday morning, and you could only respond with your corrections after that. And so that's why we got him this morning. That said, this has been a really heavy lift this morning, and this has taken up almost the agenda of this meeting. And I'm starting to just get at a place where I want this to go away. But I really want to salute julia meyer for all your work. So that's probably why I'm leaning in so much, because I've been in so many conversations on this, and I know that others have as well. So it's just a lack of transparency at the last minute, I think is hard right now. I wish this feels more like a first reading at this point, and I don't want that to be the case, because I'm looking at people that have been working on this for a long time, where this is their final meeting. So that's that's reality of what I'm experiencing at the moment. When we've been working so closely with the upstairs on the third floor. And then there's moments here where it feels like it. The experiences were were not having time to do that. And I feel like we're putting a lot of pressure on the city attorney and the staff to give us their opinions. It's kind of awkward because I don't think anyone means any harm here. You're just trying to make everything transparent, which I'm a big advocate for. So that's my way of saying I'm if I vote no, it's because I've learned in my five plus years doing this that when in doubt, vote no. If you haven't had a chance to really sit through it and ask all the questions that are needed. So I just wanted to make that clear because I could be the lone dissenter. Thanks.
237 Thank you, vice chair Ryan. We can go to councilor Dunphy, and then if no other members of our committee and then councilor Pirtle-guiney and then councilor Kanal would also like to speak to this package of amendments two and six.
238 I, I will just.
239 Say that again, we filed these on Friday, four days after the initial hearing on this. This isn't a second reading. This is a second hearing. Committees are where the work is supposed to be done. We are under no obligation to get this done today. I am not a check box. I am not a rubber stamp. I do not simply accept something that because the process was good, the product must also be untouchable. And I'm sorry that it's taking time. I read I do my homework over the weekends. I read an enormous amount of documentation over the weekends, and I don't apologize for this taking up time. We have to get this right. This is literally what our jobs are. We have to get the details of this done is this matters. This is what is important. And this is part of the reason why we are spending so much time as a body trying to respond to the existing code that is written like a camel. It is a horse written by committee, and it is this kind of work that we were hired to do. This is what I came here to do, and if not, why do we even bother having committees? So.
240 Councilor pirtle-guiney, council president.
241 Thank you. Chair.
242 Did you want to respond right now? Vice chair Ryan.
243 Oh, no, it's it's fine. We did receive this this morning. I also look at stuff over the weekend. This wasn't I wasn't able to see all of these amendments over the weekend and happy holidays. There were a few obligations on top of everything else. I don't want to do this back and forth. I agree with you. I'm not a rubber stamp either. I'm glad you're not as well. So. I just when I went home when I studied this on Friday and I did additional outreach, I think it just was surprising this morning to get all of these amendments. That's all. A heads up. Would have been nice. Thanks.
244 Thank you, council president. Go ahead.
245 Thank you, councilor Councilor. I'm wondering if or chair I'm wondering if we can have councilor.
246 Clerk reiterate the language that she had said about the heading for three.
247 Councilor, clerk.
248 That was just on number three decision making body.
249 Yes.
250 Yeah. I just wanted to rename it council delegated decision making body.
251 I'm now wondering if councilor Dunphy would accept as a friendly amendment changing that to councilor. Delegated decision making body.
252 Yes.
253 Yes I did okay. Yeah, I would be I'd.
254 Be glad to insert the two words council delegated decision making body.
255 I'd like to propose that that be what we vote on, and that we actually do that as a friendly amendment.
256 Can I ask a point of clarification? I don't remember, did we move to just two separately? Was that what we're working on?
257 Just two, two and six. That's also the hr rule calling out hr versus calling out the city.
258 I'm good.
259 I'm good. I will note the city attorney has advised against six. They do specifically want hr called out. I disagree.
260 Anything else? Council president.
261 We have an explanation on why.
262 The existing hr human resources administrative rules are were not established by the city administrator. They continue in effect. And also I think the direct the directive that the bureau of human resources is responsible for enforcing those rules is pretty clear and direct, and I think is important. I don't see any reason not to specify the actual, you know, as we had discussed with staff, they said, well, sometimes bureau names change and I'm like, yes. And then we try to try to clean up the code and change the name. If we decide it'll be the people department or whatever, we'll we'll make that change when it comes to it. But I think it is important to kind of really name who's responsible for enforcing them. I think that's helpful. And it also is a clear message to the public, I think, and to members of these groups.
263 Thank you.
264 Councilor Kanal, I'd like to invite you up. I know you'd like to speak to amendments two and six, and we've been clear that we can go a few minutes over for governance today.
265 Thank you. And thank you for all the work on this, these three amendments two, four and six all combine some substantive things with some technical things. So they're a little hard to to narrow down. I have no concern about two I'd ask you to divide them because I do have massive concerns with six. But I did want to point out, while we're talking about two, the way that you read 3.040.0 30a abcs, the city does not have sole authority to create, alter or dissolve. The city's authority would include the mayor, the council, or both, and changing that to mayor or council. My read on that would mean that if there's something that the mayor or council and council work together on, we've actually changed the meaning. Does that make sense when it says abcs, the mayor or council does not have sole authority to create? So if the mayor and council work together, neither has sole authority. And so I think that is actually a change that that might have a meaning, the way I read it and might just need a little wordsmithing there. But other than that, no concerns. And I actually think two does a lot to improve the document as well with relation to six. In my experience serving as an advisory board liaison and councilor Ryan and I have talked about a particular example as as sarah and I, if you don't specify bhr, this entire paragraph is is worthless. And the reason is bhr is the only one that has certain authorities under those administrative rules to do it. I have had to bring two council removing people for harassment from advisory boards. That is not something an advisory board liaison should have to do because it should be done by bhr. And when I asked bhr who should be doing it, they said we should be doing it. That's who what they told me in 2022 when I brought this up. Then we actually created a work group under oceans authority and the workgroup on this, the sort of previous version of this project to talk about volunteer conduct. Specifically, it had a lot of people from seven different bureaus taking parts in it, and the underlying commonality of everyone's experience is wanting bhr to do it and not feeling comfortable or or empowered as an individual staffer in a bureau to deal with harassment. And it does happen. The fact that there are seven different bureaus working on this means that it happens, you know, more often than than we'd all like to admit. And I really hope that this with bhr and it can help root that out, because we have other work to do to make sure that when someone is removed for conduct that's problematic, they're not immediately appointed by another bureau to another advisory group to. But we can't do that if it's not a single place that owns that responsibility. And bhr is the only one that can. So whatever else happens, I think six has has needs to continue to retain bhr in it. I don't have a problem with the addition of city code 1.03, but the rest of it I think should be voted down.
266 Go ahead, council president.
267 Thank you councilor.
268 I have a another friendly amendment question for my colleague, councilor Dunphy. If that's all right with you, councilor Dunphy, if we changed this. Dunphy seven to say established by the bureau of human resources and the city administrator. Because I hear your point that we need to elevate some of this work. Dunphy six I apologize and then continue to have the strikeout at the end that you have, or maybe put it back in. Since we refer to bhr, I'm open to either. Would that meet what you are trying to do without the unintended consequences of removing bhr?
269 I'm actually. Okay, yes.
270 Go ahead.
271 Thank you. I am actually at this point comfortable just tabling Dunphy six and moving forward with a vote on Dunphy two and a vote on Dunphy four. I think that there has been some compelling testimony and some compelling pushback, and I think that that is fine. And for the purposes of getting this done, I would like to table Dunphy six, which I don't know how to do that systematically.
272 Revert back to your office.
273 I'd like to refer Dunphy six back to my office.
274 And we had two and six coming together. Do we need to do anything else to do? We make a motion just for two or. That's on the table right now.
275 I think if the original person who made the motion and second are okay with moving Dunphy two, then. So that was moved by councilor Dunphy and seconded by the council president. Okay.
276 Is there any further discussion on Dunphy two colleagues?
277 Yeah.
278 It's we're considering.
279 That with the friendly amendment.
280 With the friendly amendment. Diego, will you please call the roll on? Dunphy two.
281 Clerk.
282 Hi, Dunphy. Hi, pirtle-guiney. Hi.
283 Ryan.
284 Hi, Koyama Lane.
285 Hi.
286 With five eyes. The amendment is approved.
287 Thank you.
288 We are now in discussion. We need a motion.
289 Yeah. I would like to move. Dunphy. Four, please.
290 I'll second as a courtesy. I'm not convinced on this one yet.
291 Fair enough. Appreciate it.
292 And now we can open up discussion on Dunphy four. Councilor Kanal. Are you. Oh, sorry. We'll come back to you. Vice chair. Ryan.
293 Yeah.
294 My first question is you struck section two or under a to. And it says discretion is provided in charter section 2-103. So why.
295 The line immediately before it says the council and the mayor have the authority to create, alter or abolish a.b.c.s as provided under charter section two, dash 103 and then dash two immediately says the mayor may create, alter or abolish abcs through independent executive action at the sole discretion, as provided in charter 2-1 hundred three. I removed it because it feels duplicative. It already says that the mayor has the authority. It just doesn't call out executive action.
296 Yeah, it was accurate prior. Okay. And it was a discussion you had with the mayor's office.
297 No.
298 What we did when we were creating this.
299 Well, yeah.
300 Would you are you directing a question to attorney ames?
301 Yeah. Sorry.
302 There was there was discussion about delineating and making clear that the mayor has independent authority and has discretion over the ones that the advisory boards or commissions that the mayor may establish. And so in this, it kind of says, you know, the first line is they both have powers under the charter. And then it says the mayor gets to do his or her own thing, basically. And then the rest of it discusses how council is going to do their thing. So I just thought that, you know, I mean, it may sound redundant. It elaborates and it says how the mayor is going to establish. And it's like we're not going to tell the mayor how to establish. And then it goes on to talk about, I thought it was more clear for the public to understand the differences between the same.
303 Thank you.
304 That's all.
305 Councilor Kanal.
306 Thank you, madam chair. I just wanted to speak to this part that was addressed earlier in terms of the the authority it's related to. I think most of this is good. There's four things that are mentioned in the points up at the top one, one, two and four are great. It's the the sponsorship language is how it's portrayed. I don't think this is necessarily just a technical fix. The change to paragraph four, which would be renumbered to three. We require that a sponsor put in place information about their documents through the impact statement. We have different requirements for different types of documents. There's some things that have a real estate analysis, some things that don't. There are things that have a proper rights and analysis. And there are things that prosper doesn't requiring this for the things that would eventually be created by council. Because keep in mind the original text it says proposed the creation of an abc by council, and I don't want to pit lawyers against each other here. So but in I've talked to four total attorneys about advisory boards over the years and since taking office as well. I do not see any legal concern around saying that if you're bringing the idea to council in the first place, as the mayor, that we're allowed to require certain things. The clerk requires things of, of a of a sponsor as well. So because of that change, I think the this dramatically would weaken the entire document to change what is currently paragraph four and would be renumbered to three in this. And that concerns me immensely. I don't have any concern with the rest of it. I actually think the rest of this amendment is quite good with. But on the subject of of paragraph two, paragraph one doesn't say advisory in paragraph two does as well. And that, I think is a notable difference as well. You're repeating the charter, but if the goal is that it's for clarity, there's no harm in leaving it in. I don't I wouldn't vote either way based on that if, if I was on this committee. But I do think that that the change to four which would be renumbered to three is, is really would weaken the document significantly. Thanks.
307 Go ahead. Council president.
308 Thank you.
309 Chair councilor Kanal just stated far more succinctly than I would have been able to what my concern is with this amendment. Thank you. I agree wholeheartedly and that is why I'm currently planning to be a no on this amendment.
310 With no other hands in the queue, we are ready for a vote, I believe. Diego, will you please call the roll on Dunphy for.
311 Was that 4 or 6? Four? Four. Four? It's four. Thank you. Clerk Dunphy. I pirtle-guiney. No. Ryan.
312 No.
313 Koyama Lane.
314 No.
315 The amendment fails with three nay votes, one I and one absent vote.
316 Okay. And looks like we might be. Seeing Dunphy. Six that will that will hopefully come back to us. We can discuss it at a full council if this passes.
317 Yeah. Dunphy six is.
318 Off the table.
319 Back to my office.
320 Okay, so now we are back to discussion on the underlying ordinance. Council president.
321 I'm sorry. I'm going to do this very quickly. I'd like to bring back the language in Dunphy five, and I'd like to do so with a change that I am sending to my colleagues right now. And councilor Koyama Lane, if you could send it to the appropriate staff for this meeting, that would be fantastic. I would remove two from. Actually, I would start because Dunphy four failed with amending in with sub one of the original Dunphy five, where it says 3.4005 0a3 to a four, which I think is the relevant the relevant notation. Now I would remove sub two from the original Dunphy five, and I would add a c to this section, which would say members of abcs will be listed where other information about abcs are publicly available. That gets to the the conversation that we were having around Dunphy five originally. I think as cleanly as possible.
322 Second.
323 And I'm looking to council operations to see if this is a significant change enough that this would need to go through code review or if we can discuss this.
324 I think we need to defer to the clerk's office as the one who completes code review.
325 Okay.
326 I believe so. It would have to go once more, but I can confirm that with you offline.
327 All right. I'm looking to my colleagues to see how you'd like to proceed.
328 Would you.
329 Prefer that I bring this to full council, or are we comfortable discussing now with the understanding that it would need to, if adopted, be reviewed before it comes to full council for passage? And I would remove it if there were any issues in that review.
330 I apologize chair, we actually do not need to get it through code review once more.
331 Okay. Thank you. Thanks for being flexible. Okay, so we now have an amended version of Dunphy five to discuss. And do we need to and we have a motion and a seconder okay. Do we need to discuss this any further.
332 Is there an email sent out the new language?
333 I'm sorry I just sent it via teams. Do you prefer it via email? Councilor.
334 Yeah, that'd be nice.
335 Okay. Let me do that right now. I was just trying to get it to you in the fastest way that I had here, so you could see it.
336 While we're waiting, attorney ames, I. I'm not sure if you're able to follow all that in those changes. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about this, amended Dunphy five.
337 As to the names, qualifications, and etc. Of the members. As discussed before, I think that that's a policy decision that you are free to make. And the. And you have not changed the copy of the abcs administrative rules that that is still in the current.
338 I did retain that.
339 Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, you know, if any. I mean, just say if rules have been adopted or existing rules have been modified. So I suppose, you know, on the rare occasions where there might be. You know, it's kind of not going to come into play very often, but.
340 So am I hearing that you might suggest some more flexible language there?
341 If, I mean, you can just say if rules have been adopted or existing rules have been modified, I would take out new. But I it's fine.
342 Councilor I realized that there was an issue with what I sent to make this conform with the rest of the language. The final paragraph if abc member appointments are not finalized within 30 days of establishment, would need to be removed as well. Since we don't actually refer to appointees in the top part, and I apologize for that oversight.
343 Yeah, we'll be listed. Where other.
344 Would you like to send out a new version?
345 We'll do.
346 Julia meyer. Is there anything you'd like to add? No.
347 Thanks.
348 As amended. Is there anyone on the executive side that wants to speak to their. Part of this or. Okay. So we are getting that updated language.
349 I have.
350 One quick question for the councilor Pirtle-guiney.
351 A follow up. Is that okay?
352 President pirtle-guiney. So earlier we took there was a lot of conversation about taking up two and four, and now they're back in.
353 No.
354 Two.
355 You sent this to me. Two looks the same as the two that I thought we removed.
356 Yeah. So two I it's hard to do the notations in here. The italics in red are removed. So I just resent this.
357 So don't get.
358 Additional paragraph okay. So three is removed in sub one that final three in the code notation and replaced with the bold red for sub two is removed in the red italics. We would need to renumber three and four. The final sentence if abc member appointments are not finalized within 30 days of establishment, etc. In italics, and red is removed and the red bold c is added, members of abc will be listed. Where other information about abcs are publicly available.
359 You kept four.
360 I did keep four. I heard the concern from the administration, but also heard the the arguments that it should be in there, and so I didn't want to touch that in trying what I had hoped would be a quick and easy change here.
361 Council.
362 Thank you for your efforts. I like about half of them. Yeah.
363 Councilor Dunphy. Go ahead.
364 Thank you. I just question for for sarah. You know, our it says in here where in other information about abc is publicly available. Are is there a requirement that all abcs have publicly available information.
365 There is not. That would be a subject for administrative rulemaking and well within the city administrator's power. And I know that you have I believe that there will be some coordinated effort to kind of show the show their hand before those are put out.
366 All right. Not seeing any other hands in the queue. Diego, will you please call the roll on Dunphy slash pirtle-guiney five. I'm not sure what we want to call it. This newly amended. What do you want to call it?
367 I think that councilor Dunphy is asking that it be pirtle-guiney one, which is fine with me.
368 Pirtle-guiney one. Will you please call the roll?
369 Dunphy? I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan.
370 No.
371 Koyama Lane I.
372 With three eyes, one no and one absent vote. The amendment is approved.
373 All right. We are now back to discussing the underlying ordinance. Is there any discussion? All right. Will the clerk please call the roll? On the underlying ordinance?
374 The big thing.
375 I believe we need one final motion and a second.
376 All right. May I have a motion?
377 So moved. Second.
378 Thank you. Dunphy. I pirtle-guiney.
379 I want to note here, and I'm sorry I didn't in discussion that I have some concerns in the report. Were not codifying the report. So I feel comfortable moving this forward. But I just I think it's important to note that my vote does not say that I support everything in the report. I.
380 Ryan.
381 Yeah, I want to thank the staff for their hard work on this. I really appreciate the collaborative spirit in working with the different parts of our government throughout this process. I think some of the additions today were additive. I also think some could be problematic in the future, and I don't think I had enough time to go through all of those and have the same sort of thoughtful dialog that I've been doing throughout this process. Therefore, with I will I will be a no on this. Yeah.
382 Was that a no vote?
383 Correct?
384 Koyama Lane.
385 Thank you so much for all of your hard work. Amanda. Julia. Ocean. Sarah, I'm proud to vote.
386 I with three eyes, one nay vote and one absent. The motion carries and the ordinance document number 2025, dash 471 will move to full council with a due pass recommendation as amended.
387 Great. Clerk, will you please read our final item?
388 I just want to say I hope to vote yes when we get to full council, but I need more time to understand what just happened. Thanks.
389 Item three establish a Portland city council governance handbook to collect policies, procedures and current practices to support city operations and improve transparency.
390 Wonderful. Thank you so much. So we've talked a lot about the handbook. Thank you everyone for your patience. Thank you everyone for being here today. I truly believe it's important to start a document that has information that will grow and evolve over time, that lives within council operations, and this is really about building a better democracy together, not just for our current council, but for future councilors who will come after us and also the public. And I believe that having policies and procedures and having those as accessible as possible is very important. And our integral to making things democratic. So I will pass things over to aubrey and craig quickly for a maybe quick summary.
391 Thank you so much. Craig couch council policy analyst for the record.
392 And aubrey chen, senior council aide for the record.
393 All right. We will go through this very quickly. We've talked about this handbook many times. As you know, we have considered this a collaborative effort between members of the governance committee and the full council. Councilors have been invited to collaborate, and we've discussed this in committee several times. As you all know, the purpose and scope of this handbook is to be an informational and transparent guide for councilor Staff and the public. It compiles guidance from existing policies, including Oregon laws, city charter code and other policies. It's a living document, and we intend that as practices and procedures evolve and are decided by council, they'll be added to the handbook. So again, we've talked about this previously, but topics covered include council adjacent and support offices. Fundamentals of portland's government governance structure, how to draft and file various types of legislation, and the various types of meetings that you all participate in. And as I referenced previously, as you choose to pass new policies or procedures related to council governance, those would be included in the handbook. Council operations will update the handbook as you pass those procedures. It's important to note that the resolution before you today does not establish a cadence for reauthorization of the handbook that would be at council's choosing. The goal is transparent, collaborative, and iterative process of co-creation. I think that was record time for a presentation to the committee. I'm happy to answer any questions.
Procedural episode · turns 394–404
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394 Thank you. Before we move into q&a and deliberation, I'd like to propose a friendly amendment to Koyama Lane one to exhibit a. We have a couple amendments recommended from the city attorney, our city attorney, robert taylor. City attorney taylor, would you like to come to the dais and speak to these recommendations?
395 Please hear.
396 Then there's another one with a second friendly amendment to Koyama Lane to exhibit a. That amendment is to add a sentence clarifying that the section on council committee assignments will be revised to reflect committees as they change. Welcome. Thanks for being with us.
397 Yeah. Thank you. It's great to be here. Robert taylor, Portland city attorney I craig circulated this around and I made some comments and gave it back to him. And I really appreciate. The suggestions and him incorporating the changes. The big one that I really wanted to talk about today was there's a section in the handbook that talks about binding city policies, non-binding city policies, and we do have a code provision. It's 1.07 that talks about binding city policies versus non-binding city policies and how that's supposed to work. And that code provision was adopted first in 2001, and it was an attempt at the time to give direction to the city of where to post all policies that that are impacting the city, because at the time, there were certain policies that were adopted that were in a filing cabinet and weren't available to the public to see, and there was an idea that we need to make those available to the public in a place where they can find them. But there was also a question about, well, how do we know what's important or not to to be publicly available? And what is something that just isn't that important? So when that was passed, it created essentially a labeling system that council would put a label on a resolution and call it binding city policy. If it received that label, then it would go in the Portland policy documents and be available for the public. If it did not receive that label, then it wasn't required to be put in that Portland policy documents repository. Fast forward two and a half decades, and I'll just tell you, as I sit here today, that that labeling process has not always been consistent. There are some things that probably have that label that don't need it. More importantly, there's probably some things that should have that label, that don't have that label, and that can create some confusion about is this binding, is it not binding? Should it have been binding? What's the legal effect of that? And where that comes to our office often is, let's say there's a resolution that was passed by council and it does not have that label as being binding city policy. And there's a question of, well, what do you do with that? Can we just ignore that? And usually the advice is you could ignore it at your peril, because council has said this is something that they're interested in, but the label is not on it. On the other side of it is you can have a resolution that identifies something as being binding city policy, but it's not adhered to. And then the question is, well, how do you enforce that? And usually the answer in both of those instances is council. It's up to council to bring that to people's attention and ask them to abide by it. So this has been a problem for a long time. This kind of mislabeling and non labeling. And so when I saw this in the handbook that it drew attention to this issue, I suggested to craig the best thing to do would be to remove that from the handbook and instead have a conversation with council to both daylight. This issue that we're having and and suggest the way forward now that we're in this new form of government and a new council under a new charter. And I think the best way forward in an ideal future state is to really follow the tools and structure that's laid out in the new charter. And by that I mean charter. The new charter now explicitly says city code is the set of laws adopted by council through its legislative authority. So if you want to make laws, put it in the city code, very clear that those are the laws of the city of Portland. Those are binding. If it's in the code, you've got to follow it. Similarly, the new charter gives the city administrator the authority to adopt administrative rules to implement that code. And we have a whole code, section 1.05, that lists the process for the administrator to make administrative rules. So under the new charter you have a you it gives this new council a new form of government, an opportunity to use the city code to make laws. The administrator can adopt administrative rules to implement those laws. The administrative rules have to be consistent with the code passed by council, and if the council is unhappy with those administrative rules that are based on the code, council can change the code and then the administrator can adjust the administrative rules to account for it. And in that way, you have a clear set of law. In code, you have a clear set of administrative rules that are adopted by the administrator. Both of those sets of authority are available to the public, and you don't have to worry anymore about the Portland policy document repository and whether something has a correct label or not. It should be clear whether it's in the code or in the rule that the source of the authority. So it really is an opportunity for this new council and this new form of government to to put this kind of mislabeling problem in our past and move forward with a very clear code and administrative rules.
398 Thank you. Mr. Taylor. Are there any objections to this friendly amendment from our city attorney? Okay. The friendly amendment is welcomed and adopted. And for Koyama Lane two, the amendment is to add a sentence clarifying that the section on council committee assignments will be revised to reflect committees, committees as they change. That also came from the city attorney's office. Is that correct? That friendly amendment?
399 We receive that feedback just as a point of clarification from several offices. And as a result, we suggest that that amendment.
400 Okay, great. Thank you. Is there any objection to that friendly amendment? Okay. Council president, are you in the queue to speak to an amendment or to the underlying?
401 I have two.
402 Questions based on the conversation with robert taylor.
403 Okay.
404 Yeah. Go right ahead.
405 Thank you. The first is for you actually, chair, you asked if there were any concerns with the piece that mr. Taylor described, which I think is a small portion of Koyama Lane one. But there are other pieces of Koyama Lane one, I assume when you said, without objection to that piece, you were not talking about all of Koyama Lane one, but just the portions on page 34. But I want to clarify what we just amended here.
406 That's correct. Right. We just adopted. You're asking if we voted.
407 Well, you asked if we could accept without a vote as.
408 A friendly.
409 Amendment, the portions that mr. Taylor discussed, which was not all of Koyama Lane one, it was just, I believe page 34. Correct.
410 We have to vote on Koyama Lane one.
411 So that's a change to Koyama Lane one.
412 Correct. So a friendly amendment to Koyama Lane one.
413 To remove that section, rather than say, council could work with the attorney to update it.
414 I'm looking to craig for some support.
415 I'm not.
416 Clear on what the question was that we were.
417 I think I think you could do it either way. You could leave the discussion of binding and non-binding in the handbook with a note that you need to work with the attorney about it, or you could just strike that whole section from the handbook. And and you, as the governance committee can, can work with us to, to implement these new changes. I my concern is if you're putting it in the handbook, you're putting too much emphasis on something that I kind of think is a mess, which is the binding versus non-binding setup.
418 And I think the intent here, you know, as we've said, this document is not intended to introduce new policy or change policy. And given that this exists in city code currently, and councilors would need to vote to take it out of code, the reason why we worded it that council could work with the city attorney to update it, was with the purpose of trying to not change city policy through this document.
419 So I just want to clarify that nothing that we're doing here would prevent council from creating policy, because council does sometimes outside of code, through resolution, create policy that we hold ourselves to that binds us but does not bind the administration. I want to make sure that nothing we're doing here would affect our ability to do that.
420 No, no, no it wouldn't. But but I'll give you an example where council has passed a resolution this year that. Governs itself. That resolution doesn't say is not labeled as binding city policy. Maybe it should have. Maybe it didn't. But I think that to me, that's an example of where I worry that we put too much emphasis on the label attached to something, rather than the substance of what it really is.
421 Thank you.
422 Anything further?
423 I do want to say something else before we pass this, but I think you're trying to get us to voting on amendments right now, correct?
424 Yes. So I would like to move Koyama Lane one.
425 Second.
426 And now we can move into discussion on Koyama Lane one. Looks like we're ready for a vote. Clerk, can you please call the roll on Koyama Lane one?
427 Dunphy I. Pirtle-guiney I.
428 Ryan Koyama Lane. I with three eyes. The motion carries.
429 I would like to move Koyama Lane to. Second and we can have discussion if needed. Otherwise we can call the roll. Diego, can you please call the roll?
430 Dunphy. I pirtle-guiney. I Koyama Lane. I with three eyes and two absent. The amendment is approved.
431 And I apologize. I should have actually checked in. Diego, do we have any public testimony and. Yeah. Go ahead.
432 We have one individual signed up, edith gillis. Edith is joining us online in a couple seconds here.
433 Thank you for your patience, edith. I know it's been a long meeting. We have a hard stop at 445, but we will hear you first. Thank you.
434 Edith, if you can hear us, you're welcome to unmute when you're ready.
435 Can you hear me?
436 Yes we can.
437 Okay. I am edith gillis, and I strongly support the creation of a Portland city council governance handbook. We need that in general. But what I want you to additionally do is require in the handbook and have it require every city decision maker and every official report to document and publish how decisions or proposals meet accountability, transparency and alignment with your stated values. Portland stated. Core values are transparency, communication, collaboration, fiscal responsibility, racial justice and equity and these must be active criteria, not aspirational statements. Your declared emergencies are housing, climate justice and resilience, regenerative economy and food security and public safety infrastructure. These must guide every choice on policy, budget, administration, enforcement within the legislative, the administrative, executive and judicial branches of city government. To make this handbook and its implementation truly effective, I want you to have each council agenda item, each policy decision, each administrative report and decision include a publicly available evaluation grid with these values and priorities. For example, as the columns and the items decide in rows. So for, for example, with climate resilience, each council, the mayor, the city administrator, department heads and reports should score on a 0 to 5 scale. How well it meets climate justice, how their decisions or proposals meet each core value and emergency priority. Racial justice, for example, with narrative justification and links to prior ordinances, budgets or relevant data. So when you do make decisions, you go back to what are the core values? What is the requirement of city government and what are the priorities and emergencies you state? Now, this isn't theoretical. In 2020, the council approved $30 million for a private management. Why whites out of state of two golf courses after the city had already paid for the land and the maintenance, the management, the golf instruction, the sales, the kitchen, custodial staff, marketing, management all was already paid for. But now we gave $30 million to outsiders. These whites who are the parks and the schools were closed, disproportionately impacting children of color and low income families. That decision contradicted every stated value and priority, and it could have prevented with transparent scoring and accountability. As a result of it, we were robbed $30 million from what could have provided housing or safety. Requiring and publishing these evaluations would prevent waste, align actions with public promises, and earn portlanders trust. Without this trust, for example, in the handbook and in requirements being a documented procedures rather than a tool for accountability, equity, and meaningful public oversight. If we don't have this trust, we're not going to have the investments. We're not going to have the taxpayers, we're not going to have volunteering. We're not going to have the cooperation that we're going to need when we have emergencies in front of us. So please ensure the governance handbook is more than words and require values, priorities, decision making grid.
438 Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being with us. Okay.
439 That concludes testimony.
440 Thank you so much. We just have a few minutes to see how we can discuss the underlying resolution. Council president.
441 Thank you very much. Chair. I just want to start by saying that I actually love the idea that edith just put forward. We have disclosures on all of our ordinances and resolutions already. And while I know it is long and cumbersome, I'm very interested in looking at whether we should include disclosures about how each item impacts our stated city core priorities. So I appreciate that testimony. I did receive back just over the weekend. So unfortunately, I was not able to bring something that we could dig into today, some technical, some technical pieces that we may want to address. For example, the language around executive sessions notes that the clerk oversees those, but the clerk, other than scheduling, is not usually involved. There are some areas in the handbook that talk about different types of items brought to council, but it doesn't include a note to ordinances that don't create code. For example, there are some land use items that we pass by ordinance, but they don't actually go into code. And I think we are not fully technically accurate everywhere. So I would like to reserve the space to bring forward some of those technical changes. When this comes to full council. But I understand that we are trying to move quickly today, and I know, vice chair, that you have an interest in getting this done. I do want to thank, while I have the floor, you and your team for all of the work on this. I know that aubrey and craig have both put many hours into this and you have as well. At the beginning of the year, we talked about the importance of having a place where we can lay out our policies for how we govern ourselves. I hope that in the future, this handbook is not just a listing of what what is in code, but also includes policies that we have passed through ordinance. Those those binding or rather not ordinance, but resolution, those binding resolutions that we hold ourselves to and that we can really flesh this out to be a place that we look to, not just that other people look to, to say, how does council work, but that we look to to govern how we do our work. And I hope that over the coming years we can get there. And I just want to express my gratitude to you and your team for taking on the first iteration of this work.
442 Thank you. We look forward to hearing your feedback and making this as strong as it can be. I am going to move resolution unless there's someone else in the queue. Document number 2025493 be sent to the full council with a recommendation it be adopted.
443 Second.
444 Is there any discussion? All right. Will the clerk please call the roll?
445 Dunphy. I pirtle-guiney. I Koyama Lane.
446 Thank you so much, aubry and craig, for all of your hard work. I.
447 With three eyes and two absent votes, the motion carries.
448 All right. Thank you folks. Sorry we went over. Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, January 12th. I will adjourn this meeting of the governance committee. I could say a lot more and give you more thanks, but I want to make sure we don't take any more time. Thank you.