The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-06-02
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (21,100 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
A Portland City Council work session held June 2, 2025 focused on the Portland Parks Levy, which is set to expire, with a Deputy City Administrator presenting background on levy funding history, current service levels, and rate scenarios. The presentation described how the existing levy funds about half of Parks Bureau operations and outlined potential renewal rates, though figures for what rate would sustain current operations versus require cuts were stated inconsistently across the discussion. Topics covered included the distinction between routine and major maintenance, capital versus operating funds, system development charges, the maintenance backlog, and the "blended" funding model combining general fund and levy dollars. Councilors discussed program specifics such as tree maintenance, the access discount program, park rangers, community center hours, and staffing levels in various bureau divisions, requesting additional data comparing levy-funded additions, subtractions, and neutral changes over the life of the current levy. Discussion also addressed public-private partnerships, relationships with parks advocacy and friends groups, polling on voter support, and the timeline for referring a measure to the November ballot. The session concluded with a request for councilors to submit data requests and priorities for incorporation into future levy drafts; no votes were taken, and any future vote outcomes would be recorded in the vote ledger.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Captions and audio testing one, two, three.
1 Mama. Watercolor.
2 Good afternoon. I'm going to cut off our levee song conversation and begin our work session. It is June 2nd. Happy pride month, guys. It is 1:31 p.m. And we are meeting today to talk about the parks levy. Colleagues, as you know, the current parks levy is set to expire and we need to have a conversation about what comes next for parks. We know that we have a city that loves our parks, that ranks parks consistently as a core part of our quality of life and a core community value. We know that over 70% of portlanders are in a park or community center at least once a month, and for so many people, it's far more than that. And we know that everybody, when you talk to them, has a personal connection to our parks system, their favorite hiking trail, their story about swim lessons, the playgrounds that they grew up going to or took their kids to. But as important as our parks are, we also know that in Portland, our parks system has been underfunded for quite some time. And as we pick up where previous councils have left off in trying to figure out how to close that funding gap for our parks system, we have this levy before us today that we need to renew or make changes to, and move forward so that we can continue to fund a strong park system in our community. We also know we're having this conversation at a time of budget constraints, when portlanders are worried about their personal bottom lines and the city's bottom line growth. And we know that costs continue to go up for everything. So as we talk today, we're going to hear about where we are in the park levy discussions. We'll get a presentation about how parks have been funded and what we can expect from a levy. And then we'll talk a little bit about what we want our park system to look like, what we hope we can do with our park system, and how that relates to costs. My goal today is not to get us to any final decisions. This is the start of a conversation about the parks levy. But to instead get us talking about what the cost is to fund the park system that we would like to see and what is possible as we talk to portlanders, to talk about what a levy needs to look like, because we know that the previous levy was very open ended. And I know from conversations with some of you that there are some concerns with that. And to start to put some direction on our conversations so that we're all moving in the same direction. And then over the next three weeks, alongside budget conversations and everything else that we're working on, we can refine those conversations and get to a point where in July we can refer a levy to the ballot and ask portlanders to continue to help us support the park system that our community needs. So we're going to start with a presentation that I believe sonia shimanski is going over, and sonia is online with us today. Sonia, I want to thank you for coming back and joining us today. I know you are on a personal trip right now, so thank you for being here. Would you like to jump into the presentation?
3 Yeah. Happy to. How do I sound?
4 You sound great.
5 All right. Good afternoon everybody. I'm sonia shimanski. I'm your deputy city administrator for the vibrant communities service area, which includes the Portland parks and recreation bureau and team. I'll be giving you the presentation today. It's pretty short and pretty sweet. And our goal is to preserve the great majority of the time for you to discuss among yourselves. And with our support since January, you've made a lot of time for conversation about the park system, the parks bureau and the parks levy. You took briefings from us very early in the year. It might have been in January. You received and accepted the bureau's levy annual report, as well as the levy oversight committee annual report. And you've had a lot of recent conversation about the bureau's budget. So, as I said, recognizing all of this, the content today will be brief. Most of our management team is here, probably in front of you in the room. A couple are online. We've got a city attorney on standby if we have legal questions. And I think our cfo is here as well. We're all here to support your discussion and capture follow up questions or tasks for the next couple of weeks. Next slide nicola, in its fifth and final year, which starts in about one month on July 1st, the 2020 Portland parks levy will provide about half of the bureau's general operating funds. This funding supports current levels of service for care of parks, which we're calling maintenance these days, care of natural areas and trails, proactive tree maintenance, and operations of community and art centers, pools and programs. Previous councils explored different possibilities for sustainable parks funding models and more than once landed on a property tax levy as the best available option. Leaders and voters of Portland have used bonds and levies to fund the park system, augmenting general fund more or less since 1901, when the first parks levy was passed in 1908. When the first bond was passed, most recently in 2020 after after several years of cuts to the parks system and financial dynamics that in some ways parallel those of today and in some ways were specific to that time, city council referred the current park levy to prevent additional cuts and to add services in certain priority areas. Those areas included preventive tree maintenance and a community grant program, and more tools to reduce cost as a barrier. And the punch line. To say it again, and as you see here, the levy funds today, about half of the bureau operations, and you can see some smaller slices over there on the right that we can talk about if you're interested. Next slide nicola, the budget for fiscal year 2526 beginning in July, includes phased reductions totaling just under $14 million. This slide shows you how we will step into those cuts, and where different levy scenarios might take you from that eventual service level. You see that some cuts start immediately. On July 1st. There's a list down in the bottom left that is probably a little smaller than it should be. That tells you examples of some of those cuts. Others begin September 1st, the purpose of which is to protect summer programing, which includes camps, things like the youth conservation crew. We are deeply appreciative of the time and the care that you all and the mayor have taken to explore ways to minimize or prevent these cuts, and you have found some solutions. Bear in mind that some of the solutions in the proposed, and that may be on the table before you are one time. And so they don't keep the service level solid line at the level that you see past next July, it goes down a little bit more because those cuts are deferred to next year. So what that means is this coming summer is the final year on our current trajectory for some summer programing and the final year that you would see, for example, a summer free for all at its current size, with the potential next levy starting in fiscal year after next. So July 1st, 2026, your decisions about a potential renewal can also flow back into this year and have an impact in the upcoming fiscal year. The reason is that the bureau could finance against future revenues if there were things you wanted to preserve, and the rate were high enough, for example, the dollar 60 rate that you've heard about could restore all of the reductions that are on the table for this year if you chose to allocate it in that way, a rate of $1.30, give or take, as you are making changes to the proposed budget on the margins would mean no further reductions required. Beyond these proposed levels. And I sort of duty bound to tell you again that a renewal at $0.80 means there are about $35 million of cuts that would need to be found for that next fiscal year. Next slide nicola. As part of our preparation to support this conversation and decision making around a potential next levy, we've worked with the parks foundation and the intertwine alliance to get a sense of what is most important to our many partners and the general public. We heard, as have you, and including from you, that there are serious and legitimate concerns about capital maintenance in our park, and thoughts about including some of that work in a levy. This table shows you how potential rates could support different combinations of operating and capital work, and know, of course, that you could combine them in whatever proportions you like and that there are other funding sources that you could consider for both operations and for capital. So this is not an exclusive, comprehensive list, but it does show you how you could combine those things in a next levy. Put a little bit more color on it, add capital maintenance without reductions to operating, your rate would have to be higher than $1.60 $1.60 could preserve current operations or support a really small cut and operations and a really little bit of capital maintenance, probably to sustain the proposed budget service levels, you need $1.30. And as mentioned earlier, the 80 cent scenario includes really significant reductions year after next. It's likely not on the table, but it bears mentioning that allowing the levy to expire completely without a different funding source and strategy in mind means about $90 million in additional reductions in 2627. Next slide nicola. This slide shows you how rate levels and funding toggles essentially every $0.10 of a local option. Levy rate raises about $6 million in revenue each year. So if you want to add new services, restore potential reductions, you need more money or you need other cuts. This is because levy funding is in this moment, not a discretionary additional investment, but it's part of the core funding structure of the bureau. This levy helped solve. As I mentioned, there were financial dynamics in 2019 that were in some ways similar to in some ways different from the one today. But the essential structure of resources not keeping pace with costs was true then as it is now. And since then, costs have continued to go up, revenues are down, general fund continues to be cut. So the levy we're leaning on the levy for more and more basic operations of the bureau. I said it in the previous slide. I'll say just one more time here. The dynamic is about every $0.10 gets you about $6 million per year. And if you wanted to dedicate a portion of that to capital, it would come out of the current service level of the bureau. Okay. Next slide, nicola. And we just have a few more here and ample time for conversation so we can come back to these slides as you like to clarify or dig deeper. And then we have, you can imagine many, many more slides to answer questions that might come up. This slide talks about portlanders priorities. You know that we've done the bureau has done several rounds of voter polling in the last few years, and our partners at the parks foundation did an updated round of polling recently to better understand how portlanders are feeling about services the levy might provide, as well as the financial impact of a levy. In this most recent poll, which is consistent with prior polling. These are things that rose to the top when portlanders were asked what they'd like to see a levy fund. It bears emphasizing here that even though poll respondents expressed overall price sensitivity, which is a function of the overall economic dynamics that the council president referenced, they do continue to show really strong support for increased funding in almost every part of the bureau's budget. They'd like more of everything, which is not surprising. Portlanders, including all of us, love our parks. They don't think we don't see in this research and hear from partners that anything the bureau does is not important. We hear that some things are extremely important. And again, as continues to rise to the top, surveys and other outreach show us that nature and taking care of what we have is what portlanders really want to see. Next slide nicola. To place a levy on the November 2020 ballot. This is your rough and high level timeline. July 16th is the last date that you could decide or act, I should say, to refer a measure. Our council clerk deadline requires that documents be finalized the Tuesday before the week of the council hearing and backing up further internal processes require that we upload everything several weeks before the council date. So we I say that and we show this to show you that there's probably some flexibility in the June deadlines, but those deadlines are starting to come up relatively quickly. And of course, July 16th is fixed. I'll mention just briefly we've got all of June marked here as the window to discuss and decide. And the decision before you includes just a couple key components. Do you want to refer a levy? How big do you want it to be and what do you want it to do? We are standing by today and over the next few weeks to help you in whatever way is most useful. Puzzle through that and come to a decision that you're comfortable and confident with. Piccola next slide. Thank you. So that was the end of the contextual information. And this slide is really a prompt to help you transition into discussion. If it's not the most helpful prompt, proceed however you like. But in conversation with the council president, we thought this may be a helpful place to get started. We are going to take notes on every question or idea that we hear, and we will investigate or provide more information or incorporate as you like. We also have a calculator that lets you, in real time, plug in things you'd like the levy to pay for and see what that means for the rate, so you can have a lot of fun with that over the next few weeks as you like, and we're happy to do that with you. And also to just give you that tool and let you have at it. But today, as I said, we have this kind of prompting question to transition into discussion, if you like, on the theory that grouping your feedback into these main areas will help us best capture. Both the services that you would like to see in a levy, and start to think about what the overall net impact on the rate would be. So things you'd like to see as additions, things you'd like to take out of the levy, potentially as subtractions, and things that are on your mind that are important changes that may be cost neutral. So as I said, this is a potential starting place for you. But however you'd like to proceed, we're here to support and council president. That's it for this presentation.
6 Thank you so much sonia. And were you going to put up that tracker just so that folks can get a sense of what different things cost within parks? I know we had talked about getting a sense of what people's priorities are and how those ten cent increments build, but I wasn't sure if you had somebody who was prepared to put that up and share it with us today.
7 The calculator that I just mentioned.
8 Yes.
9 I think we could probably pull that together. Let me coordinate that.
10 Okay. Maybe we'll start talking and give you a couple of minutes to do that. So councilors. Along with the levy, there are a number of accountability measures on the table through our budget conversations in the form of budget notes that we'll be talking about in a few weeks, regardless of the level of the levy, we can have conversations moving through the years of the levy about priorities for our park system and how we want to prioritize the funding that's available. And today, we can talk about what limitations, if any, we want on that flexibility through the levy itself, we can talk about what our priorities are for parks, what we've heard from constituents, and what we want our park system to look like. One of the things that I talked to sonia and the bureau about leading up to today's conversation with the that calculator that sonia mentioned is that that gives us a sense to say collectively or individually, here are the things that we value most in parks. And how do those things stack up in $0.10 increments to make a levy level to get us the park system that we need. So I would gladly take any comments folks have right now broadly about what you're thinking about, about our park system and the levy conversation. And then we can maybe move into some more specifics once sonia has that calculator ready for us. Councilor Clark, would you like to kick us off?
11 Thank you, madam chair. I just I have a question before we really dive in is about the definition of maintenance. Like what actually qualifies as maintenance within a levy as opposed to capital construction or maintenance that requires a bond. Can we get some clarification on that? Because that's a high, high priority for me.
12 Yes. Sonia, is that something that you're prepared to answer, or do we need to get one of the attorneys to answer that.
13 Very briefly? And then we've got experts on hand. There are two types of maintenance work in the bureau. One is routine and daily, and one is major. We do the routine and daily with operating funds, and major maintenance is done with capital funds. That's largely a difference in accounting. I can speak also to how that would work differently in a levy, if you like, but we basically consider all of the daily care and maintenance and all of the very minor maintenance that happens in a park, as anything under $10,000 per effort. So that's the people you see in the morning taking care of the park. And it would be, I don't know, fixing a sink in a restroom. Something more significant would be considered capital maintenance, and we would fund it differently with a funding pot that's frankly very, very small at the bureau. And those are the kinds of projects that we would probably be looking toward a bond or other source of funding for.
14 Madam chair, can I follow up on that, please? So thank you, sonia. So a bathroom maintenance. What about a roof over a facility or a roof over a bathroom?
15 That would most certainly be major because of the $10,000 threshold between regular routine and major.
16 Sonia. Is that $10,000 threshold a legal threshold, or the general operating principle that we have used at the city?
17 I think it's a general operating principle internal to the city. It may be a financial policy that is kept by cbo. I don't think it's legally required by anybody else.
18 Councilor Clark, did you have any more?
19 That just may be a question for our budget office or or legal, because I would want to challenge that notion because I'm really interested in preserving what we have, which means roofs and really having better access to clean and updated bathrooms. That's a priority.
20 I think. Councilor what you're getting at is regardless of cost level, if we have something that is not something new, but that is maintaining or repairing something that exists, is that something that we could think about through levy and general funds, as opposed to through a separate capital maintenance pot? We can certainly get an answer from the budget office on what the restrictions are there, and get that out to everybody. Councilor.
21 If I may.
22 Council president.
23 Go ahead. Sonia.
24 I'm sorry, this is clunky. I'll do my best. The brief answer is you can put any type of capital into a levy. It's just a question of how much you get for it. Every $0.10 is $6 million a year, and that doesn't get you very many roofs. So it's just a trade off in what you're able to invest in and how much.
25 Thank you sonia. And it looks like mike jordan may have an answer here as well.
26 Well I was going to say, madam president, is that you're not prohibited from using levy dollars to do capital maintenance. It's more of an accounting issue for us. And that is generally a cost threshold and an amount of time the asset lasts threshold. And some bureaus do it differently. They account that way. But that's generally the difference between regular day to day maintenance and capital maintenance. But you're not prohibited from using the levy for capital maintenance. The issue is obviously you can only raise so much money with the levy, and it has traditionally been used for operations or or small short term kinds of projects.
27 Thank you. Olivia, are you ready for us to move on? Okay, councilor Green.
28 Thank you, madam president. So you mentioned a capital maintenance fund. That's quite small. Can you say a little bit more about what the source of those funds are and what the balance is? Yeah.
29 It's general fund discretionary and give or take it's $5 million a year. I don't know how far back that practice goes, but in recent years that's been approximately an annual allocation council has made. And it gets you not very far as you can imagine. And it typically goes to emergency uses. So it's not used in a category of upstream proactive stewardship. It's used for boilers and pools and things that break and impact services through the year.
30 Thank you. That that is helpful. I'm I'm very curious and interested to pursue this discussion around the distinction between routine and major maintenance. I think it's a really important one to have. The reason why I ask it is, if I'm not mistaken, we have something around 105 $104 million in contingency for system development charges going into the next fiscal year for parks. Is that correct, or can someone.
31 Sonya, do you have the answer to that? I believe you've said that those are allocated, but maybe I'm misremembering. Yeah.
32 Broadly speaking, we do have a balance and it is allocated fully toward a capital plan that's developed on a five year basis. The potential sdc moratorium would affect that and our ability to complete that plan. But those dollars are fully allocated and mostly announced to projects.
33 Okay, I raise this because I think I understand our maintenance backlog is about $60 million. Is it? No, it's higher zero 600 okay. Well, that's that's worse. And we are regulated. System development charges are for new capital. Right. And it's for in state law it says something I think the language is not to be used for routine maintenance. But what if we can define what non-routine maintenance means? I think we could potentially have an opportunity to, to use some of those dollars for some of the types of projects that I would call critical maintenance. And if, if, if you have an asset that fails and then your park is basically failed, I would say that's a critical maintenance issue. And I think that's a policy that we need to pursue as we have this conversation. It is not something you can snap your fingers and, and turn on a dime and plug into this, this parks levy referral because we don't have time for that. But we have to we have to talk about this because I think it's hazardous to only build new, new capital when we've got a $600 million maintenance backlog and we've got this pot of money there. And so it might be worth thinking about. It might be worth revisiting our cip as well. And that's it for me.
34 Thank you councilor. I think that went far broader than what we can do with just this levy. But I also think it's really important for us to be considering the future of the levy within that broader context for our park system. Councilor Ryan.
35 Thank you, madam president, and thank you, dca szymanski I'll probably have the director long come up on this one because it looks at I really like the categories that you presented additions, revenue neutral subtractions and director long, I would say that the 2020 levy that was passed was your you stepped into leadership. You were the operational leader over the 2020 levy that we're currently in. And really understanding current behavior is always very important as you look to what our next decision is. So director long, you and your team, if you could give us a scenario on in the 2020 levy, what were some of the additions? What were some of the revenue neutral changes and subtractions that took place with the 2020 levy? So we have a better sense of how we got here and how you're thinking as a leader in terms of these decisions.
36 I'm going to quickly defer to see if there's any anything that she'd like to add before I speak.
37 I see claudio coming up also.
38 Okay. For the record, adena long, director of Portland parks and recreation, thank you for that question. I'm going to let sarah speak a little bit more to the specifics in terms of what was added and etc. But you did ask about our vision. Is that what you said? Yeah.
39 Well, what I want to understand first, because we're in it in real time, it's reality is when we made decisions, the former council, I wasn't on that one that made this decision. And then what I was for 18 months in a position where I got to see what I experienced as additions. And I would like to hear from you as a leaders on how you manage this current levy that we're in under these three scenarios that you presented to us today. So what were the additions? And I experienced urban forestry growing quite a bit, for example. So I'll give you one. And you can of course elaborate on that. I just think it's helpful for us to get a level set on how leadership chose to do these three boxes with the current levy that we're in, so we have a better sense of a lens on how to make decisions going forward.
40 Okay. I think it's important to also contextualize the fact that when the 2020 levy was passed, we were coming out of COVID and very severe cuts in particular to recreation in 2019. So a lot of the additions were bringing back services that we had to stop or or delay. So like all of our community centers were closed, as you know, we did not do any summer programing, etc. So those were additions, but that was more a level setting to the baseline. Overall, though, I think one of the most the two areas that I think of mostly is preventative tree park tree maintenance is something that we've added to our work plan because of the levy, and up until then, all of our tree maintenance has been proactive. Sorry has been reactive. Another area that is important to note is our community partnerships. We are providing grants to the tune of $1.4 million a year to community partners, both for programing, for space grants and for other capacity. So those are two areas that were definite additions. Am I missing anything? Sarah.
41 Yeah, so also.
42 Gave a dollar amount directly along to the grants to community partners.
43 Is 1.4 million.
44 Thank you. But with park tree maintenance you started with that one. Do you have a ballpark on what. That was the big increase there from before 2020?
45 Well there was it was zero before 2020. So give us a minute to give you an idea.
46 But that's important I think.
47 For all of us.
48 To hear that it was zero before 2020 okay.
49 And it grew to about $5 million last year of parks levy resources being spent on that proactive tree maintenance category. Other big categories included overall increases in our ability to do that, daily clean and care of parks. So we heard very, very clearly, and we're still hearing from community members that they really value clean bathrooms, clean parks, trash being emptied. And so we have significantly increased the number of crews that are out there so that parks are receiving actually daily eyes on parks. Parks with restrooms are receiving a daily clean and care of that restroom facility. It doesn't mean it will be clean 24 hours a day, but it is getting a daily cleaning. So that was the biggest area of growth was sort of in that day to day care of parks. That also included significant amount of increase in a central team called the parks repair and maintenance service team. Those are the carpenters, plumbers, electricians. So they are the ones that are largely out there doing a lot of those noncapital, but smaller repairs, repairing the sinks, the toilets, the doors, the benches, removing graffiti. So, so those those teams received the biggest, I would say, additions. And then as director long mentioned, for recreation, it was largely a story of having the resources to reopen. All of those facilities were closed at that time due to COVID restrictions, but also due to a lack of fee revenue. There was no fee revenue coming in to support their reopening, so it was really a reopening more than an expansion. And then it did fund the start of a new program. So the access discount program and attempts to make cost less of a barrier for portlanders accessing those fee based recreation programs. Prior to the current levy, the bureau had been able to offer about a maximum of $600,000 worth of scholarships. And last year, with the parks levy, about $4 million of access discount program were utilized by portlanders seeking lower costs so that they could afford to participate in programs. So, again, with recreation largely a story of being able to reopen the basics that had been closed, but also some access discount options as well.
50 Thank you. The follow up to that is what's the difference between the cost for cleaning and repair before 2020? And now has that gone up quite a bit?
51 Just one moment. I can tell you the amount.
52 Thanks. I appreciate colleagues that were asking these level setting questions. I think it's hard for me at least to know how to make a decision on where we're going, unless we have a better forensics of what happened when we made these decisions in 2019, 2020, and then seeing how the leadership chose to maneuver differently, perhaps.
53 Can I just add to that, too, councilor Ryan, that I thought it would be helpful for us to see a spreadsheet pre levy so that we would have known in the last five years before this levy, how are the dollars being spent.
54 And that could be a follow up from this dialog here. Okay.
55 Councilor Clark, we've received that request and we're working on it for you.
56 So the two main areas most directly involved in that daily sort of maintenance of parks are that assets and development team. So that is again the painters carpenters. They increased by about $10 million. So pre levy about 10 million annual spending post levy last year. Just over $20 million in spending in that category. And then the second is our land stewardship team. So they're the ones out there largely doing that daily eyes on the park, cleaning those restrooms. They increased prior to the levy. They were at $23 million in spending annually. And last fiscal year, they closed at just over $40 million in spending annually.
57 Thank you. Sarah. That gets to the heart of the matter. On additions, would you like to add anything on neutral or on subtractions? Was there anything that we used to do prior that, that during this levy of 2020 through 2025 that we subtracted?
58 I wouldn't say subtracted. I would say that because cost as a barrier was one of the areas that we were hoping to focus on. The type of programing may have shifted a bit, but I don't think that it was necessarily less or additional programing.
59 We have also this year, as part of the budget, the shift to funding the preschool programs, not out of the levy in the general fund, but in fact being funded by the county. From a dollar standpoint, that's a subtraction. From a service standpoint, it wouldn't be felt that way.
60 That's from the taxpayer supported pre-k for all. Okay, I appreciate this dialog. If anyone wants to follow up, that'd be great. I think the follow up of the general ledger of getting the and getting the nuts and bolts of details on this will be very important. But you did highlight a couple of big increases. And just to clarify, 4 million in scholarships today for access. But there were zero before this.
61 $600,000 was the maximum that the bureau had done in the prior.
62 3 to 4 examples of some really big increases. Okay. Thanks.
63 And also the 4 million currently is through the access pass. So folks can self-select their their ability and pay, but they can up to 90% discount.
64 And councilor Councilor Clark mentioned wanting to see financials going back further. You have before you and also received in email financials back to the first year of the levy. And as director long said, we should be getting a few years before that as well. To be able to compare this will give you a sense of growth over the last few years as well. Counselors, I'm going to move to counselor Dunphy since he hasn't had an opportunity to ask a question yet.
65 Thank you. I was following up on the access fund. I've heard some grumblings that the populations that we are hoping to serve with this are not necessarily being served. Do we have any changes to this program that we're going to be thinking about if it is renewed? And do we have any data about who is being served with those funds?
66 So the access discount pass has actually evolved over the course of the levy. We've tried different things, certain some things didn't work as well as we had hoped. We are certainly open to changing how we approach that work, and really look forward to hearing from community and from from the council on on ideas that we might want to try in terms of who we're. Sorry. So it looks like currently we're spending about 20. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
67 I can jump in. Thank you. We do we do track the demographics of the folks who are using the access discount program, both by race, ethnicity by income. We are seeing the largest utilization of the access discount by folks in the lowest income. So in the 0 to 23 828 income range, that's nearly half of the folks that are using the access discount program fall into that range. And we are tracking roughly by 10,000 income increments. And we're happy to share that information with you as well about who's utilizing it. So we think it is it is largely being used by its intended audience, whether it's 100% being used by its intended audience, I don't know.
68 Sonia, did you have a comment before we move on to counselor Zimmerman?
69 Yeah. Anecdotally, we understand that there is not broad awareness and understanding of the program among portlanders. So among those folks who use it, it may be that we are capturing and reaching very low income folks, but that the inverse isn't true, that all of the folks we'd like to reach are aware. I got to work pretty closely with the 311 program for the last few years, and I got to see both kind of the front end strategy and back end impact of a really, really concerted, very sophisticated awareness and outreach campaign. You probably saw bus ads. There were a variety of tools that they used to get the word out, and it has had a material impact on awareness and understanding of 311. So I just want to offer I think there is a lot that we could learn and a lot that we could do from that example and others around the city.
70 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman.
71 Thanks. These choices that were presented are and they weigh heavy right. In that graph that our deputy city administrator showed us that there are some significant cuts coming. So I'm just trying to understand, when we first took office in January, we were told by parks that $1.60, which is a doubling of the levy, would have to occur just to maintain. And it looks like based on today's presentation, that that is not the case. And I'm curious what has been changing in parks to have I mean, it's a it's a hell of a thing to tell a taxpayer. We want to give you exactly the same thing tomorrow as we give you today, but you have to pay twice as much for it. So now that has adjusted, I'd like to know what what is contributing to kind of that inconsistency or what do we know more about now that would help us as we evaluate the right size of a levy to send forward? Thanks.
72 Yeah, I can take that one. And it it may be that I was unclear and I'm sorry if that happened. $1.60 is the rate to sustain current operations. And you're right, it is a heck of a thing to say to people. The primary drivers in claudio can explain more if it's helpful, are that things are much more expensive. We have, I would say, significantly less. General fund and levy revenues are down because of declining property tax value dynamics. Your point is well taken.
73 Okay, so. When I'm looking at page three and it says 130 and that continues on the straight line, that is actually not indicating a same service level. Am I reading that right? Then.
74 That includes the cuts about $14 million that are in the proposed. So we would level off at about $1.30. And that was probably my error and imprecision. $1.60 is pre the cuts that you're contemplating in the budget.
75 Thanks. That is helpful. And then I just want to make sure given that graphic because graphics can be helpful I want to make sure that I understand. So if we were to go for a levy that did not pass that 80 cent down arrow that we see would be. Zero and far steeper. So I guess to the director, I'm looking for how many employees does a failed levy proposal represent in this equation?
76 As the director answers.
77 That, I'm wondering if we can move to the slide after this, which I think showed the scenario. There we go. Levy expires scenario.
78 Yeah, that's helpful, but it doesn't tell me a story. Right. So I'm I would like to know. So my motivation here is I think that the parks levy is probably going to be one of the most important things that we do this year. And so with it comes a lot of risk. And in my career, I think $1.60, which is doubling to do the same thing we do today, is one of the worst political propositions I've ever been faced with. And so I would like to understand what the risk is if we fail the whole thing and how many employees we're talking about and what type of employees we're talking about.
79 I can't I'm so sorry. Because these numbers represent people, jobs, parks that are closed. And I need to understand that better.
80 Certainly. So when you say a failed levy, you mean just renewing at $0.80?
81 Nope. That's a successful levy. So I mean failing we go for any of these numbers and it fails. 50% of 50% of your employees.
82 All of our employees.
83 So I think you're at about 548 if I have my thing correct. So about 250 people.
84 That sounds about right.
85 Okay. That was government math. If anybody caught that, okay. That is significant, right? That I guess the reason I'm asking that is because I think that these choices are important. I think that the polling that I saw is incredibly narrow for a levy passage right now, particularly one that is an increase. So. Another aspect that I'm I'm wrestling with in this conversation is that this is my first experience where having done some levies in my life and having campaigned for this levy in 2014, I. I haven't been in a position where a lot of the advocates are really at odds with the bureau and at odds with our department, and I find that the advocates, the advocacy groups, the foundations, those types of friends of name your favorite asset, favorite park, favorite pool. Those are the people who carry the water for us in a campaign. And in this season, I'm feeling like their trust of our future levy is as shallow as it's ever been, so I really worry about what a campaign would look like. If our advocates don't even necessarily believe what we can accomplish with it, which is why I appreciated councilor Ryan's line of questions like what were choices that were made with this levy? One of the things that I'm having a lot of trouble with, this levy versus others that I've been involved with, is that the braiding of general fund and levy dollars are one of the same. And so I'm not able to look at this spreadsheet and say, oh, okay, I care about the woodstock community center. And I realize it's paid for 100%, 10%, 50% by levy versus general fund because we don't do that. And I find that to be kind of a shortcoming in the documents and in the preparation. And it's been my experience going through our budget cycle right now, just trying to get an understanding for the what levy pays for. I feel like we've become quite broad in what it pays for, because we can't actually cite anything that the levy pays for. What is the financial policy that has led us to combine these two streams of funding in a way that is not discreet? Sure.
86 Claudia camposano, finance, property and technology manager for vibrant community support services. So I think you mentioned that the levy, it's broad. And so the actual the allowable spending on of the levy is broad. And therefore we wanted to develop a tool for being able to spend broadly. And so for example, if we were going to increment up service of cleaning parks and natural areas, and we wanted to increase the number of park techs, we didn't want to have levy funded park tax and general fund funded park tax. That would create an enormous administrative burden and a lot of, a lot of additional inefficiencies by if the general fund one becomes vacant in order to preserve levy, which was one of the principles of, of the of the of the passage that it should be an incremental resource on top of general fund. So we wanted to make sure that that levy was down at the bottom of the waterfall and only filling, filling those gaps. So we created what we call the blended model or leveraged funding model that leverages that general fund. So the way that that model works is we identified all of the all of those services, which either could not be funded by levy or should not be funded by levy, and those are all general fund funded. Then we identified all those that could be funded or should be funded with levy, and they would be funded with a blend. And what this, what this allowed us to do was always have general have levy be that last dollar in and also not make a distinction. And so I think that there's a lot of benefits to that not making distinction. But I do understand the, the how it might how it might lend to frustration in terms of trying to trying to unpair the two. But I think that the best, the best way to think of it as it is an incremental resource for incremental effort. And that's, broadly speaking, across the bureau, because that was really the nature of the levy itself. I will note that that that blended funding model was subject to a lot of discussion early on in the levy. You know, we worked with the city budget office to understand what alternative approaches would be. We discussed all of the, you know, some thinking that they had. And ultimately there was a there was a memo sort of resolving that between us and the city budget office. And also we at the end of the third year of the levy, we had committed to oversight and an independent audit, and they reviewed that that model and determined that it was both very effective and appropriate for, for funding these, these incremental services. So, so really, I think the best, the best way to think of it, and the reason why we show it as a single number is because it really offers you all the like that flexibility to, in terms of making choices. And so where there are levy eligible services, you have the you have the, the, the, the ability to dial those up or dial those down. And also for those that are just general funded, if you dial them down, that frees up general fund for those levy funded services. Does that sort of help to clarify a little bit?
87 It helps a little bit. I think that the idea of a levy funded employee or non levy funded employee is, is interesting to think about, but generally like if you were to do other levies, you would if you if a levy were to fall off for instance, you know, those issues become issues of seniority versus saying like this person who works over here or that person, I think it makes this conversation a little bit more difficult. And I want to change this to my last question. You know, I, I have been pretty outspoken that I don't think that the use of levy funds for tree code enforcement is what any portlander had in mind when they voted. If we're I'm going to I'm going to push that. What we do with levy be very specific in terms of its outcomes and what it's going to pay for. But I guess to the director, I'm curious if you're willing to make a commitment here that no future levy dollars will be spent on tree code enforcement officers.
88 I can tell you that currently, no levy funds are being used for that program, and that policy decision is yours.
89 I want to make sure you just said no levy funds are being used in tree regularly.
90 In this current year.
91 I would encourage my colleagues to look at page three of three on your spreadsheet of urban forestry tree regulation, and just kind of double check that where we've gone from 37 employees, pcp is covering many others, but there still remains a significant amount of levy and general fund dollars that look to be. And this would be the at least the fourth, maybe the fifth, maybe even the sixth version of what funds are being used. And I, I think that is a great risk for us as we head into levy conversation. And I'll leave it here for I'm curious about other questions.
92 Thank you, counselor, and I'll just note that one of the important things that I hope we get to today is a sense of how broad or narrow we'd like the direction in the levy to be. The past levy was very broad in its direction to the bureau, and we can make a decision to do something different. While we probably ought not to be prescriptive down to the exact line item, and we probably ought not to write it from the dais, I think we can give direction today on more or less prescriptive. And I heard both you and councilor Ryan their notes.
93 I'd like to I just need. To rebut a little bit. I think if there's anything to learn based on what Portland public schools has just gone through, is that being descriptive, precise is a route that will be successful for us.
94 And I.
95 Don't think that's a rebuttal at all. I fully agree.
96 But but in an era where certain decisions have been made inside bureaus that I'm not sure are going to be palatable to the public, I think doing it from the dais may be our last resort to save this thing. That was my rebuttal. I think we may have to do it from here.
97 Understood.
98 I think today we probably can't come up with all of the language. So I was referring to this meeting. But I hear you on that. Sonia. I see your hand up, and then I see two councilors who haven't had an opportunity to ask questions. And I'll note, councilors, that we do have that tool ready when we are ready to see what the scale is of what we're really talking about, and to understand what ten cent increments in the levy can buy that maybe we can get to after. Anybody who wants to make an initial comment first has that opportunity. But sonia, did you have a response to councilor Zimmermann before we move on.
99 Just very briefly, largely to agree that specificity feels valuable for us and valuable for the campaign and the success of a potential next levy. And I welcome that today and over the next few weeks, with all of you, the blended model I was, I raised my hand to briefly summarize what claudio shared about the blended model. It is terribly confusing to track, and that makes it difficult to be as transparent and accountable as we would like to be, about where it goes and how it's used and what it achieved. It was a policy choice by council in 2020, largely driven by the fact that it was filling holes and not buying new things. That doesn't mean they couldn't have directed that the accounting be done differently. But they they said basically a very short version of what claudio said to you. I have actually pulled up this morning, mayor wheeler's comments to tcc in 2020 answering the same question. And he basically said it's just going into the pot with everything else because it's backfilling the structural gap. So again, your point is well taken. And that's something we could certainly talk about doing differently next time. Thank you.
100 Thank you sonia. Councilor Novick.
101 Yeah, I just wanted to thank you, madam president, to sort of make the perhaps obvious point that it's kind of a catch 22, because if we make the levy very specific and like, say, general fund is going to do all of the outdoor parks maintenance, the levy does everything else, then people who care about general parks maintenance. But looking to levy and say, well, wait a minute, where's general parks maintenance? So that creates a communication challenge. So we might have to do sort of a dance between being specific about the levy, but also informing people about what's what the general fund is going to. So again, that might be obvious, but it's just pointing out it might be. I understand the need for specificity and the need for specificity might also present a communications challenge.
102 Thank you councilor. I think that's an important note. Councilor Smith.
103 Thank you, madam president. I think our constituents have been very clear about supporting parks and that that that's important. But I also think that if we start. Looking confused, not being direct, not being specific, that we're going to lose our constituency. And my fear is and I'm looking at the data, I'm looking at the polling numbers that say the $0.80 in the 60%. That's where you really want to be. Right? And the other two are in the 50%, the 130 and the 160. So I'm concerned that we're going to confuse people. And the city of Portland, we have put a lot of new taxes on the backs of constituents, particularly in my district, who cannot afford it. And so I'm worried. Not about the work that you all do. I'm worried that with all these new increases in water, in the water bills and all the other things that we're we're taxing, that there may be some pushback. And especially with all the things that have gone on in the federal level and all the money that we are not receiving because of doge and other things, those things kind of concern me. And I just want to make sure that we, we have a unified message and why it's important to do more than the $0.80. And if we can do that, and you can convince people in my neck of the woods, we're in good shape in east Portland. So while I like this conversation that we're having today, I'm just concerned that the average resident there, not knowing what what we're doing. $0.80 130 they don't have the benefit of having all this data and stuff. And I think the simple and as clear as we can be the better just so that they know I mean people they love our parks. Parks are, are are really one of the really great things about the city of Portland, our parks and our libraries. So I think we need to maintain them at a level that's going to keep people employed, and that's going to make sure that our parks are clean. We have a huge. Unsanctioned homeless camping in our parks and around our parks. We can't afford at this point to. To let that go. So I just just understanding we understand this stuff, but people are not understanding what they're getting for either. Three of the categories, the $0.80, the 130 or the 160. So thank you.
104 Thank you councilor. I think we certainly have a heavy lift on the ahead of us no matter what we do. Councilor Avalos.
105 Thank you. I appreciate this discussion. I think everyone is bringing up valid points, and it's clear that we need to find a more sustainable way to fund our parks. They're the lifeblood of our city. Our residents have told us that over and over again. Some of the things that I heard, I heard you say that the last time voters approved this levy came after another set of harsh cuts. Did I understand that correctly? And I just want to note that, you know, we have obviously, the discussion around parks maintenance and the deep cuts that we are expecting have really agitated the public and have mobilized them in lots of ways. This polling that we're referencing was done prior to any of this. And so I would just caution, you know, polling can be outdated very soon. And I think in this case, it is because I don't know that voters have this. They didn't have this information, this context in their mind when that last poll was done. And I don't think we should overlook that fact. I also agree that we should be more specific on what the levy dollars go. I mean, it's a little bit of that communication challenge and trying to demonstrate the value and the value add. I also don't think, though, that we can afford to send this levy back to the voters at an amount that's not going to add services. Obviously, we have to have a broader discussion as a city about our general fund dollars and how we increase those and how we better allocate. One thing that I personally have been thinking a lot about as we've been doing this budget process, is how I think we need to hold every bureau more accountable to how they're demonstrating impact, how they're showing the ways that they're making decisions about the dollars they use. And I think that's our responsibility to guide the city in that way through policy and just a culture of accountability. So that is, you know, absolutely part of this discussion. But again, I really do not think that we are at a place that we can afford to ask voters to put any amount, whether it's a renewal or even any amount, that's not going to add more. I think that's more of a losing message personally, and I'm also not super concerned about mounting a strong pro campaign. I know for a fact I will be out there every damn day if I have to be, and I think that I personally am leaning much more towards going to the 180. I think that a buck for parks is marketable. I think that we can demonstrate with the 180 not only the value add, but I think we're also making a stronger commitment for these next five years instead of incrementally making an investment that we're just going to have the same conversation either way, we're going to have. I mean, we have a budget challenges, right? The next few years are going to be tough no matter what. But this just feels like the, you know, when you consider the polling and the communications, you have to consider the zeitgeist right now. And I think a lot of people are feeling frustrated by not having enough. And I get that, you know, adding a adding a tax rate is has its own narrative challenges. But I think when you put it into context in parks and to what we're all experiencing and to the very important need that portlanders have for parks to kind of complete their, you know, I guess it's an important part of the services they receive is what I'm trying to say. So I'm just putting out there that I think we should really consider maybe doing some polling that could be worth it to see where the temperature is now. And I'm very much aiming higher because I just don't think we can afford to renew anything at an amount that's not going to add. Again, I think that's far more a losing message than the others. So that's where I'm at right now.
106 Thank you councilor.
107 I appreciate that. Councilors.
108 We have a number of folks who'd like to weigh back in, but I also got a message from sonia that that tool is available to give us a sense of what different increments by. So I'd like to take a couple of minutes to it looks like kelly is coming up. Kelly, are you presenting this or is sonia?
109 I am not presenting it. My name is kelly torres. I'm the chief of staff for sonia, but I'm going to open it and claudio can walk you through it. I'm going to share it. If keelan perfect.
110 So let's have you all show us a little bit of what the specifics are that we're talking about with levy funds. And then we'll get back counselors to everybody's questions. We have a full two hours left. So I'm not worried about running out of time here for that.
111 And I just want to lower people's expectations. This is a very rudimentary tool that is really just designed to help folks visualize sort of what specific items will, you know, what the impact would be on the levy amount, just using that rule of thumb, $6 million, obviously, as we develop a better a more refined sense of what this council wants, we would do that deeper analysis to actually determine it. But this is really just a very simple tool for this group to be able to play with some scenarios. I will note that the first thing that we put in here, it is not a suggestion, but it was the most concrete example we could give was was adding those things back that are in that are reduced in this year's proposed budget. But we also gave that that information. And I understand that this council has been frustrated by the level of detail of budget. So we wanted to give that more detailed fund center look. And of course, my team is always available to dive even deeper if you want to. And we have responded to a number of a number of folks on council already throughout this process around details. So, so to identify things that you might want to reduce that would lower the need for that would lower the need for the 130 rate, which is what we talked about. This is the starting point. Here is the approved budget. And that's the 130 rate that we discussed earlier. So really all you would you would do is enter lines to identify to identify things that you would want to either cut or, or add. And if you turned it on in column c with a one that would actually generate, generate a levy amount that would be needed or levy or levy amount that would be saved through reduction. It is super rudimentary, but the idea was that it would give you all some basic, a basic tool to play with, to get a general sense. And then we could do refinement with you. So I hope that that sort of helps to explain it a little bit. And, and happy to take questions. But otherwise this is more this is more something to work with over the coming weeks, as we kind of refine, refine what a package would look like at any, any level that this council desired.
112 So I know you.
113 Said that you would send this out to everybody, but I think you've heard a little bit today about some of the things that folks on council care about. I don't know if it's worth councilors plugging some numbers in, or if we just want to have everybody play with this on their own time. Okay. I think I'm seeing nods to make sure that this goes out to everybody this afternoon so that folks can do some playing with it on their own time and just get a sense of with everybody's individual priorities, what that might look like.
114 Sure.
115 Perfect. Thank you for showing this so that everybody knows what the opportunity there is. Councilor Clark, do you want to kick us off for. Oh, I'm councilor I'm sorry. Councilor Kanal got in the queue and has not had a chance to speak yet. We'll get right back to you.
116 Thank you, madam president. I have a couple clarification questions before anything else. So the first thing is that the items on that list that we were just shown are those all items which those are all items which are currently being cut. And so we're talking about restoring the cut with. So and like I said that was yes that is true. And that those were just to give examples. And if you were to turn them on it would generate additional levy amount. If you if you keep them turned off it stays as, as zero. If you wanted to, if you wanted to reduce other line items. So for example, looking at the looking at the fund center list that we provided, if there was an area where you wanted to explore reductions, then that would show a reduction in the levy rate required.
117 Got it. And then.
118 Purely example.
119 Second question is if you could just briefly explain, you know, we heard the $6 million figure, which would translate to about $600,000 per cent. And then at the top of that spreadsheet, it says it's about $550,000. If reimbursement goes to the Portland children's children's levy for compression, you just give a brief explanation for those who might not understand that.
120 Sure. So with the with the passage of the 2020 levy as part of that discussion, it was recognized that local option levies are the first to be compressed. And I don't know how deep we want to get into, how deep we want to get into to the tax measure system. But really, what that would mean is that the only levy that would really be impacted by the levy being put on the tax bill would be the children's levy, and they would lose some some of the revenue that they had forecast. And so part of part of the passage of the parks levy was an agreement to transfer an estimated amount that that our partner, Portland state university, would estimate for us, based on a tax law by tax law analysis, to determine how much they are losing as a result of that compression.
121 Thank you. And then on page two of the big spreadsheet here near the just two clarifications and I'll give my comment in the fiscal year. This is the second line property management. It says that we're planning to receive or we're in the process of receiving $4.2 million in revenue on property management, but that we're projecting receiving $1.8 million next year. Could you explain why that's dropped so drastically?
122 Sure. That is that is a really outlier number in in the near year. That's a result of the what we call non parks use permit program is in that is in that property program. And non parks use permits are charged to entities that do work on our property. And the big one that's that's generating a revenue. There is the pacific core drilling through the fields under the Willamette river. And so that's a multi-year project that's generated a considerable amount of revenue. And so we don't expect anything of that magnitude going forward.
123 Okay. And then last clarifying question two lines below that is security coordinator. Is that the park rangers program.
124 That is the park rangers program. But it also includes the charges from from our central service bureaus for risk management. So all of our workforce, workforce and sorry worker's comp charges from from central services, the and liability claims as well. So a lot of that that risk. So it's both risk and security is in that line item okay.
125 Thank you. Appreciate that. So first I want to say that I agree I can't speak for the voters every voter in 2020. But I do agree that I think code enforcement was probably not there. And it's a part of everyone's expectation. And I appreciate you clarifying that. It's not I think it's notable that this levy has had very clean audits this whole time, both in terms of in terms of performance, financial auditing as well. And that's really helpful to know. I think that's a really big selling point that we have, and it'll make it easier to whatever the level is to speak to our voters. The thing that I would like to see added, if we could add anything to this levy, would be around that safety side of the house. Last time you were up here, director long and I think a couple other members of the team, I asked how many park rangers would be ideal. And you mentioned 75, and we have 29 right now. And I would like to see that be a part of what we consider adding colleagues here. If there is going to be any additional services, along with, ideally, any restoration, we're unable to get done through the standard, the budget process we're doing right now for the service dispatchers, and I'm hoping we're able to get those through the budget. But I think that's a really important side of it. And you mentioned in talking about the reactivity in developing the 2020 levy to what cuts had happened in 2019, and you were looking at the situation as we saw it at the time, as as portlanders saw it, and building a levy that responded to the needs that were perceived at the time. And based on the cuts that had happened in the in the past, I think the recent past 2019, in this case, I think doing the same exercise now would yield a pretty clear indication that park rangers are really vital part of what we could be doing and aren't right now. And to the degree that we could 29, they're doing what they can do, but obviously there's a capacity issue there. So that's the thing that I would personally like to put on the table for that, along with expanded hours for community centers for the same reason. These are public safety issues, giving a place for kids and young adults to go, especially those who don't have somewhere else to go and don't have parents at home, is a contributing factor to a better public safety outcomes in the city. So those are the things I just wanted to put on the table. Thank you.
126 Thank you, counselor and counselors. I think we were getting the groove a few questions ago of a good conversation amongst ourselves of what we might what we might want to see here. So I'd encourage us to not just ask staff questions, but to try to get back to thinking about what it is that we all want to see. Also, councilor Clerk, go right ahead.
127 Thank you, madam president. I don't the same optimism I've heard up here on the dais about our fiscal reality. And I had the impression that when the 2020 levy passed, that the bureau was actually going to develop a strategy for sustainable, sustainable funding. And I haven't seen that or haven't heard about it yet. And I feel like we're on this sort of hamster wheel of, you know, levees. And I think we really need to go back and take a bigger look at how we're funding the parks. We can't continue to do this, you know, running on the hamster wheel. But be that as it may, one thing I'd like to see, you know, given our fiscal situation, it says to me that we need to do a lot more engagement in public private partnerships, that we do have assets that we are not maintaining, that we could dispose of or develop a partnership with, with our community based organizations, neighborhood associations, corporations, friends, groups. I understand that the bureau has been talking about working more with volunteer or friends groups, but I don't I don't see that. I don't feel that. And that's something that I don't know how you work that into a levy. Exactly. But I want that commitment from the bureau that they are going to pursue public private partnerships, because I don't think that with our backlog that councilor Greene and others have noted that, that we're going to get there. If it's 600 million, how are we going to do that? This levy is not going to address that. I also think we need more information. And you've already heard me talk about the maintenance and asset management. We need some more information on what are the failing assets. You know, what are the restrooms that need new roofs or what are the facilities that we can make a small investment in now that we can open later or to preserve those things? So I don't feel like I have enough information to actually do ads. How many how many roofs do we need? How many bathrooms need to be rehabilitated, that sort of thing. I I'll pass at this point. I may want to come back later. Thank you.
128 Sonia, if you're making a list of things that councilors would like as follow up to this, can you get us the deferred maintenance list? I know there's a long list of items that the bureau has, and I don't know if those are divided out by things that are more significant versus some of the smaller things that are kind of on the edge of major maintenance, asset management and regular maintenance. But if it's possible to limit it just to those things that might be of the size that councilor Clark is talking about, that could be helpful. Councilor Morillo.
129 Thank you, madam president. I just had a question about if we try to be ambitious about the parks levy and we try to push something past 130 or 140 if it fails, it's my understanding that we're not going to have that funding for a few months. So the 250 people ish that would be laid off, that would be in the event that this fails and then we pursue something else in next may. Is that correct? Sorry. I guess no one's here to answer.
130 Sonia's nodding right now. And sonia, is that the case or because of the expiration date, would parks be okay for a little bit longer?
131 You have another chance in may? Yes. And if it passed in may, we could use accounting maneuvering to make sure we had maximum continuity heading into the next fiscal year. The trade off is mostly that the planning becomes tighter and tighter, and the possibilities are more and more real as you get closer to the end of the next fiscal year.
132 So it sounds like we're going to need various contingency plans depending on which type fails or succeeds, which I'm assuming the bureau is planning for. I think overall, I agree with councilor Avalos. When she brought up that this survey was done before, people knew what a dire position parks was in, and I think that there's a possibility to get more funding given, you know, all of our community town halls on budget people showed up and they showed up in full force to support parks, and they were mobilized and ready to go. And I also agree with councilor Smith that this is a really heavy burden for our communities as far as the costs that we are putting on people. But I think that we have I think that we have to pursue a bigger parks levy or one on the higher end. And I also think that means that we need to work with the groups and business interests that are in our corner. If we have those relationships and tell them that we need them to show up for Portland the way that Portland has showed up for them, and that they need to support the parks levy so that we can pass this thing in the way that it needs to be passed, so that we can save core infrastructure for the city, because at the end of the day, the number one reason that portlanders choose to live here in the insight survey showed that it was because of parks. And so we really need the entire community to rally in support of this. If we're going to go big or go home. And I hope that my fellow councilors will leverage the relationships they have with those groups that are currently threatening the parks levy to ensure that they do right by portlanders.
133 Thank you, councilor Councilor Ryan.
134 Thank you, madam president. I needed to finish the other side of the scenario that I was doing earlier where we looked at where your vision and your planning was when it came to the parks levy and the three categories we talked about but we didn't talk about. Although it's a smaller number, the 20.7 million other revenue preschool for all services to other bureaus, rentals, fees and charges. I'd like that same forensics comparison of 1920. In the current year that we're in, I heard enough on the other side that there could be a relationship on fees and charges. I have my own knowledge that the probably is that the number of other revenue. Is that where philanthropic money is come in? Is that true? Yes. I saw head nodding here. Oh there's sonia. Sorry, sonia. I'm looking in the room and there's you in your your little box.
135 Do you want to weigh in there, sonia?
136 I actually don't know what's inside other revenue specifically.
137 Okay.
138 But claudio is nodding. I trust him, okay.
139 And so we need to get to the bottom of that. Like, I really want to support a levy because I love parks. They helped raise me. And all portlanders love parks. Portlanders want to make sure that we're doing our due diligence. And we're looking at what really went on the last five years with this levy that has left some people not satisfied and not enthusiastic, and we're trying to get them to be that way, and we're not going to get there unless we really dig into these types of questions. And so I want to see the comparison there as well.
140 So councilor is that an ask to have the data going back before 2021?
141 Dias can make a decision until we get these really clear comparisons, because we want to make sure that the strategic decisions made with this money is more in line with what voters intended. I think we had people that shopped and purchased something, but they're not satisfied completely with what was spent with it. And we have to have more clarity. And then if we if we do pass this, we'll have to make sure the campaign doesn't get away from all of you and, and put promises into the literature that weren't a part of your strategic plan. Yes, I experienced that one for sure. So I want to make sure that we just ask these questions. So we need to see those comparisons. We have a lot of information that suggests that our philanthropic revenue is down, which makes no sense. But it is. And we need to see those numbers. And if we're looking for culture change and something that voters can get behind, they want to see a vision and a strategy that increases those numbers, not decreases them after they vote yes on a very expensive levy. And I think what's hard right now is we keep hearing the word compression. And so we're seeing all of these numbers go down from some that were already past. And it's because the data suggests that we're getting tapped out. It's like we're draining our our tax base and it's going to keep draining out. So we have to be a lot more strategic about what we get with those investments. As our tax base continues to get drained out. Thanks, sonia.
142 I heard another ask for some data points and councilor Another. Tick on the tally for making sure that we're very specific with this, with this levy compared to the last one.
143 Yeah, we have to have it be thorough. So we didn't look at that. I didn't bring up that box earlier. And that box, even though it's a smaller number, it's a significant practice that I think portlanders want to see that we don't go down on those numbers. I'm assuming it's down, but we need to see those comparisons.
144 Absolutely, yeah. Councilor Dunphy.
145 Thank you. I wanted to build on councilor Clark's comments about looking for opportunities within the system to try and find ways where we don't have to be the only party to do it. I think that the Sellwood community house is a great example to show of how community can step up in a moment, and maybe in better times, it wasn't the right model, but for now it is the right model that there are parts of our system and parts of our community where maybe finding a better operational model is the right choice for us. I don't know what that looks like in every circumstance, but I think we should be very serious about considering that. I also, I wonder if there isn't money left on the table in other parts of the system in the way that other cities run their parks bureaus. I mean, candidly, I would love to be able to buy an ice cream cone in the middle of a park, but we don't have vendors. We don't allow that to be a thing. We don't allow buskers. We don't allow people to play an acoustic guitar with a hat out. I just I wonder if there aren't some best practices to supplement this. That's not that's not direct to this. The question of the levy and what we want to spend and what we don't want to spend. But I just I think that our system needs some, some bigger care. And I think that we're now in a spot with this new form of government where we can have some of those conversations. Lastly, I will say that I also know that you know that there is a whole number of plans that are happening right now, and I'm sort of interested to understand how they feed into this. Specifically, we know that the mayor is working around a lot of centralization of services. We know that there is a effort to be made around capital improvement and back maintenance, and how the city maintains all of our services, and whether or not those are reflected in the anticipated dollars that we are needing. Meaning, you know, if we're going to have a plan as a city on how to deal with maintenance, are we going to need more from this levy? Is this going are we going to find ourselves in 18 months, woefully underfunded? On the same side, if the mayor's wildly successful in streamlining some of the services, are we going to have extra cash on the table? And is that reflected in here? So I don't know if there's really a comment here. I do think that we need to think about some of these bigger things and think about. I also just I think we need to have as, as councilor Avalos was saying, I don't think that it's sufficient to just simply say we're going to provide the same service for twice the cost. And this lingering back maintenance issue is a problem that none of us with a straight face can defend. And it's none of our faults. It's no one's fault, it's just how it happens. But I think we really need to start figuring out how to systemically start addressing that. That is a that is a an embarrassment for us. So I would love to see it. Something about that included in the levy.
146 So luckily, councilor, one of your colleagues, councilor Clark, is trying to look at that issue comprehensively beyond just the parks system. And I, I think some of that will look at things that we probably can't tackle in an effective way because of scale in this levy, but it certainly is a related conversation. Mr. Jordan, did you want to enlighten us at all as to how changes in the centralization of services might or might not affect what a parks levy could buy? Do you foresee costs in the parks bureau going up or down as that work occurs, or are the changes that you'd expect in the next two years, say, already captured in the calculations that we're looking at?
147 Madam president, a little bit of both. The half, the targeted reductions in cost in those business areas are in they are baked into the mayor's proposed budget for this coming year. We expect that much savings more next year. We their targets because we don't know exactly what we will get as we redesign those service delivery models. If we do it the way we think, we will do it and get the savings, we think it will lower the costs a bit to all bureaus, those overhead costs. So we expect that there will be some lessening. And it's probably, if we put our minds to it, a calculable number. But it would be, I think, relatively small compared to the size of this levy, even at $0.80.
148 Councilor Dunphy, any follow up on specifics there or is that helpful? Okay, sonia, did you have a comment before we move to the next question or comment?
149 Thank you to what councilor Dunphy put as a question and councilor Clark put as a point. I want to emphasize, yes, a levy is an impermanent and imperfect partial solution. Costs will continue to go up, and there's no cow in a levy. Cow isn't big enough anyway for the rate. Costs are going up and there isn't one. And if your general fund is going down and your forecast is, heaven forbid, maybe going to go down again in the future, boy, you've got a problem. And while it technically can get at capital needs, practically a levy cannot solve your capital need. What that does is, is call to mind the other part of what you said, councilor Dunphy, which is about, well, both of you actually, and many of you at various times, new partnerships, new ways of thinking about how to operate our spaces for maximum public benefit and, yes, maximum revenue, because we need that. And we I am really excited to hear from you and work with you to think about what is a park in Portland in the future, because I'm not sure that it's precisely what a park in Portland has been so far, and that just presents enormous opportunity that I think is really upside potential. Thank you.
150 Thank you, sonia. Councilor Green.
151 Thank you. I'm going to come back to the you wanted us to talk about what we want to see in the levy. So I'm going to start to do that now. But before I do that I would like to ask a clarifying question in terms of the assets and development category. What does that pay for? What exactly is going is that new construction?
152 Sonia, do you want to take that or should we ask claudio.
153 At a very high level it does the prospective proactive park planning, but it also includes that significant group of people that sarah described, professional repair and maintenance, carpenters, plumbers, etc, who go out and do the kind of maintenance that prevents more maintenance later. Okay, claudia, can you speak to proportion or particulars if that's helpful?
154 That is helpful. And then so is general maintenance. The lower stuff, is that just embedded in all the different program items.
155 Generally some of it is done by that team, some of it. And depending on where you kind of put the threshold, the folks who go out and clean up the parks on a daily basis, those are not in assets in development. Those are over in land stewardship. Both of those divisions have gotten bigger because of the levy.
156 Okay, great.
157 Claudia, would you like to take on some of the specifics?
158 No, actually, I think that that sonia just got to the distinction between the land stewardship and the assets and development component. So if you've got any further questions, happy to happy to answer.
159 No that that's helpful. Colleagues, I think if we're going to be successful and do what voters want to see with our parks, I think we got to make sure our levy does not try to do anything about capital, new capital, or even the assets and development work that that they described here. I do think that we need to press very hard internally to see if there's any leeway to use our sdc funds to take care of some of that work, because we've got to show voters that we're willing to spend the money we already have, and we've got a 20 year capital improvement plan that's building new assets. And I think that if we can say, with the exception of some parts that are underserved that have historically not had some assets, let's just use the pot of money that we have to very quickly in a very sort of advertised way, say, we heard you were showing up, we're fixing this stuff. And then the levy itself really should focus on like excellence and programing and preservation like we used to do, like sunup to sundown programing in the summers in this city. So a community house is going to bring some of that back this year. And that's that's very exciting. But we we've got to extend the hours, as councilor Canal had said, and, and really focus on the experience of this. And then I think investing in this land stewardship piece is also critical for the levy. I'm very worried about the operations and strategies line item in our spreadsheet here, which was $14 million in 2021 or 2122 actuals and is now $41 million. That is the as far as I can understand it, the overhead aspect of parks delivery, it's not the sort of thing that you experience. And so I hope that as we're changing our city form of government, we're thinking about how to. Make all that more efficient. But I think the levy dollars themselves really need to be about delivering the experience and keeping our parks from falling apart. So that's just kind of where I'm at. I don't know if that's helpful for folks, but I definitely want to keep off the table. This idea that we would use it for fixing roofs on parks.
160 Thank you, councilor, councilor Zimmerman.
161 Thanks. This has been an interesting conversation and I appreciate it, I think. First off, councilor Kanal, I would challenge you to not take what you heard here as the gospel because our budget office has said that levy funds are being used in tree regulation. So I would challenge that assumption that you heard here in this this answer, which I think is, is a is a big problem that we have. You know, in my life, I've never seen all I mean, I had this strange experience early in our term where I was at a place with a number of our advocates. Right. The friends of all these groups. And, you know, sometimes you're in those meetings and you think, okay, they might all each advocate for their own piece, but they work. They were aligned on one thing which really jumped off. The meeting to me is that they all had deep reservations about continuing to work with the leadership of our parks bureau, as the relationship is today, and I wish that councilor Avalos was here, because I think that I am very concerned that if our cheerleaders in the community can't cheerlead on a levy, that we are in a in a pretty precarious position, we owe them a relationship. You know, selwood house is such a good example of where the community came together, but they are constantly facing struggles to do normal city things in the park most adjacent to them. I'm a person who, you know, councilor Dunphy. I grew up going to these different concession stands, and I went on a best practices trip a couple of years ago to milwaukee, not our milwaukee, but having commercial enterprises in parks. While it may be offensive to the Portland idea, is also a way in which a lot of people expect it. One, it's positive behavior in a place that maybe sometimes doesn't have a lot of stuff going on, and so that deters other things from taking root, but also just the knowing you can go to the bathroom, get a drink, get a snow cone, whatever it is that your kids have a place to take a break is important. And we're allergic to that here. So I say that because I think we've got to really consider from this dais what relationship we have with all the groups who want to do something pretty cool in our parks, and they don't feel like they have partners in the bureau right now. They are walking away from us. They have sometimes walked away and now just kind of operate independently. That's a big concern for me. I there is a world where I can I can go above the 80 if it's specific, if it's about maintenance, if it's I could get there. But the general idea for me is that our cheerleaders in this community have walked away because they have been pushed away. So I don't know that it's about me going to parks people and saying, you're wrong for feeling pushed away by the parks bureau. Please come back and advocate for our levy. I recognize the point. Councilor Morillo. But I think that we've got we have to also recognize that these are people who have had for decades good relationships with Portland parks and recreation. And for some reason, in this last five years, they they don't feel like they do. So that for me is a big concern. I also, I want to caution on that spreadsheet that we were shown real quickly about the $0.10 gets you this much, and that there is being specific, and then there's being specific to a point where it's not even helpful. Right. If we're going to vet one, am I really qualified to say that one auto mechanic is more important than one light mechanic for 125? No, that's too specific. And it's, I think, used as a tactic, frankly, to get us away from being specific. But I can be specific enough to say I think all community pools should be open past labor day, because last labor day was 100 degrees on labor day. But they said, well, but we always close before labor day. Well, adjust people. I can be specific like that. I can say every park restroom deserves to be cleaned and opened, and if it has a roof that requires it to be done to be open, I'd say go for it. But I recognize councilor Your point, not too much capital, but the idea of a porta potty sitting next to a park restroom because the park restroom is shackled, closed and the porta potty has been placed there. I just don't think that's a winning message for we're the bureau who's doing your money? Well, I just I think we have to be a little bit more cautious about ignoring the polling that came out. I think the I think polling, you know, it told us a lot. And I think that a renewal is very doable. I think a little bit of an increase if we are specific, could be quite doable. But even the consultant themselves said a doubling is likely to fail. And so they said they can do some creative math to get through the next fiscal year. But I've been on the losing side of an operating levy before. It is rough. It is terrible for the employees. It is not a good go. So I, I don't want to go and then have to take another shot in may, which most likely would be a significant decrease to whatever we went for in November. So I want to get it right in November. I want to be specific enough that I can talk about it and be out on the campaign line with councilor Avalos that this will keep every park restroom open. This means no kids sports programs are being closed, that every community center gets to stay open. I, I'm looking forward to kind of where the climate resiliency committee is going because I do think I want to know, like how many coordinators, communications directors, parks planners, budget analysts, those types of employees have been hired in this bureau over the last five years, versus how many carpenters, laborers, trash picker uppers, restroom mechanics, vehicle mechanics, lawnmowers. I that will matter for me in my decision whether or not I want to give faith to the program operating as it currently is. So that's kind of where I'm thinking. And I thanks council president for the conversation.
162 Thank you. Councilor, I think there were a lot of important things there, and I tried to capture as closely as I could what you said at the end there about the things that we want to make sure we keep open or reestablish from where we're sitting right now in our parks. And. I couldn't agree more about making sure we have bathrooms open in our parks all the time.
163 I'm sorry.
164 I meant to say one thing, and then I'll make sure my hand is down, I. Our relationship with the public is going to matter a lot, particularly if we go higher, I think that. Two things have happened. One, we chose not to go in may. We were all fresh. We were kind of we had some pretty bad polling. The other thing is that, you know, I think and that gave us a chance to kind of reevaluate, like, what are we leaving for Portland? The other thing is that the governor's moratorium that her and the previous mayor and the chair agreed to does weigh heavy on me about no new taxes for that three year moratorium. And I, I didn't take that as taxes are bad. I took that as let's let's re develop how we tell the public we're going to spend the taxes that we do get. So they have faith that we're doing it. Well, I, I just want to share with the group that there's a friends of group in my district who has been really talking to my fellow councilors in district four, a lot about a problem park in our in our community. And over the last week, week and a half, it's gone through quite the rewash, if you will. It's been really positive. We tried in my office. We tried to work with the parks bureau to get them to help us fix that park. And it was a pretty deep gaslighting about, well, you know, there's lots of problems across the city. We can't get to it. We can't do it. We won't do it. It's not how we surge. And then last week, we were told councilor on the dais will always surge where there's a problem. And yet to get that fixed, to get the thing that my fellow councilors and I all had to do to get that park the attention it needed, we had to jump the chain of command. We had to go to the city administrator and just lay it down. And that level of expectation I think most dcas get. But even at a councilor Level and the friends of groups in small district areas cannot get the responsiveness from the parks bureau. So I believe the advocacy groups, when they say they don't have a good relationship with parks anymore, and I, I want to fix that more than anything, because as a councilor, I had a hell of a time trying to get attention on a major, major problem. So I believe them when they say it. So let's give them a reason to help us on this levy by being specific and hitting their needs.
165 Thank thank you councilor and councilors. I just want to flag we've lost two people from the dais. City administrator jordan had a conflict, but will be back soon. As as soon as he can get back here with us. And councilor Avalos, unfortunately is under the weather and had to take off. So she sent her regrets that she couldn't be here to hear the rest of our conversation in person. Councilor Novick.
166 Three things one. Following up on what councilors clerk Dunphy and Zimmerman said, I think that we're not going to resolve all the issues about our relationship with the friends groups or have a whole bunch of new public private partnerships. By the time we send this levy out. But we I think it's incumbent on all of us and the mayor and the parks bureau. It would be incumbent on us anyway, whether we had a levy or not, but especially with a levy on the ballot in November for us to be working hard over the next five months to figure out what is our plan to engage the friends groups more? What are is our vision for public private partnerships and make enough progress towards that over the next few months that that becomes public and in effect, becomes part of the campaign. So the public knows we're working those issues. That's one. Two. I have to make two pollyanna points. One is that although it's conventional wisdom, that if you have a tax measure, you want to start at at least 60%. I have personal experience with winning. When you started at 55 with the gas tax measure in 2016, we started at 55. And I kind of thought, well, we're going to lose, but I can't leave. I can't run for reelection without trying to do something. And to my amazement, we actually won with 52%. So it is possible. And the third thing I want to say, councilor Smith, is that this is possibly another pollyanna point, in a weird way, is that your district is wildly overtaxed because of the operation of measure 50, but as far as levies are concerned, it also a large part of district one is protected by the operation of measure five. The last I looked pretty much every every building east of 122nd was in compression under measure five, and therefore didn't pay any additional taxes. Now, I don't know how you make that part of a campaign, but it is a fact that we might at some point point out. I mean, for one thing, I think that we should be telling the legislature, send something out to reform measure 50 to eliminate these inequities. But in the meantime, the inequities sort of work for us and the sense that there's a bunch of people in district one who really can vote for an increased levy that, because they're already overtaxed, won't add more to their tax bill.
167 Councilor, I just want to note that we do have some budget notes that will be debating. What is that next week that could lead to some of the conversations that you're talking about around transparency. I'm not sure about councilor Clark's and councilor Ryan's notes. Mine actually asks for a report by September 1st, specifically so that we would have a plan back from parks during the campaign. So that may be something that we want to make sure we're talking about during our budget conversations. Councilor Clark.
168 Thank you, madam president. I want to address councilor Pollyanna. I mean, Novick over here. I do have a budget note for you that's around that. And I think some of us are working to consolidate some of those budget notes as well. But I want to go back to maybe riff off of what councilor Zimmerman said is that we not just for parks, but I think we need to really push that culture of, yes, that idea that we are going to work with people, that we are going to take risks, that we're going to try new things. This is a new day dawning, but we don't want the, you know, talk to the hand response all the time. We want the culture of yes, we want a culture of experimentation. So I, we can't exactly write that into the ballot or the levy measure, but I think that's a philosophy that you're going to hear more and more up here on the dais. And I hope, I don't know, council president, if we're going to have another opportunity here from the parks alliance or the foundation or anybody else before we conclude this. And maybe you could outline for us what our next steps are. Do we get our preferences or priorities to you now, or how do we move forward on this culture of yes.
169 Thanks, councilor. And we do have representatives from the parks foundation and the parks alliance in the room, but we generally work sessions don't allow for public testimony. I wanted to make sure this was a conversation we could all have, but I know that it was important to all of them to be here and hear the conversation. And they've been having conversations with a number of our colleagues since those first introductions to the work that we had with them a few months ago in terms of follow up. And I can talk a little bit more about this at the end, but we'll need to have some conversations moving forward to get to the point where we can start to look at language. Some of those will likely happen with small groups, but we will need to come back to the dais to discuss again, probably a few weeks from now. We need to get through some budget pieces, but I wanted to make sure that our team, who are going to put language together for us, had some direction before then, and I am happy to have folks send to my office some of the specifics that you're thinking about, knowing that we've already heard a few places where specific interests compete, but also a lot of places where specific interests align. And we can try to capture what those areas of alignment are and what the areas are, where there's question marks that we still need to figure out and debate and discuss.
170 Councilor Kanal thank you, madam president. I appreciate the attention being paid to the operations and strategies category. I'll just highlight that there's a finance line that goes from 4 million to 5 million to 6 million to 9 million the last year and carries on I think there are there is a difference between, you know, the sorts of and I'll also mention the three deputy director line that got created and I'll just highlight that that conversation is a is not dead as far as I'm concerned in the budget context. And then there's, there's the, the types of roles that maybe just aren't relevant at this moment. I do agree there's nothing wrong. And it's a very valid job to be a planner. I do think that we should have some conversation around separate from east Portland. Should we be building more assets that we don't have the money to maintain? And I think that's an important conversation to have. I also want to get this right in November, and I appreciate councilor Zimmerman's point on that. I'll add one other reason more voters vote in November. I think that it's important that when we have when we need to go back to voters, we're going in November whenever possible, and timing this in such a way that if we have to renew it in the future, it's going in November, ideally of even numbered years in, in the long term, because I think this is important to have those who are affected by every aspect of this question be part of the electorate on it. I think, you know, talking about the friends groups, we've we've talked about this in the context in d2, there's the holiday park conversation, and I've seen some of the same concerns that have come up as well in terms of being able to explore different types of activation, different types of programing, and getting out of the habit of, well, we've always done it this way is, I think, really important to talk about in regards to private involvement. I am open minded to well, first off, we should allow people with an acoustic guitar on the corner of any of any park and I'm happy to be one of those at some point. If you are willing to subject yourself to hearing that someday. But the but but also, you know, buying a snow cone is great and I definitely think we should have that. I definitely don't want amazon presents peninsula park at some point. And I think we have there's a there's a line there. We need to figure that out here. And then the last thing I wanted to say is, you know, the focus that I've been bringing to recreation is includes what councilor Zimmerman mentioned with keeping pools open past labor day, which is vital, and I agree completely. It also includes things like keeping community centers open later and on weekends. Charles jordan should be open on Sunday. I want to note that. And I think that councilor Ryan and I, during a climate meeting, brought up with parks that we brought up that the statistic is used to talk about deprioritization of recreation, that only in the ballpark of 60 ish percent of portlanders utilize our recreation program a year, whereas 90 plus percent utilize a Green space within the parks. And those those stats may well be true, and I think they are, but I think there's an access issue that is sort of missing why that is the case, the reason why the less fewer people use the recreation side of parks and recreation is because it is harder to access, and until we start promoting that access, we're never going to have the level of usage that we might want to see, and that there is a huge demand for. I found in terms of when walking around talking to my neighbors. So I just wanted to bring that back up and kind of refocus that side of it. And I'm excited for this. I did want to also ask, and this is you can get back to us later on this perhaps it was mentioned that the proactive tree maintenance added $5 million a year. I believe some of that first, I believe all of that is on top of the reactive tree maintenance which continues. And I'm seeing nods back there. And the second part of it is that I'm not 100% sure how much of that is still covered by the levy versus by PCEF dollars at this point. And I'd love to clarify that, because that would be to councilor Ryan's question, a place I would look at a subtraction. Personally, I think that there's a lot of really important priorities. That to me is important. And there are other things that are very or critically important. And that's where I'll leave it.
171 As sonia, would you like claudio to come answer that, or do you want to take that one?
172 Claudio, please.
173 Claudio, can we welcome you back up here?
174 I always feel welcome. So. Yeah. So I think the two items, one was in the finance line item. So that is actually what we call sort of a fund level, fund level cost center. For the most part it covers it covers bureau wide expenses. So that's actually where you see increases in facilities costs from from central services, increases in telecom. So really a lot of those, those those increases that I think you've probably heard about from, from other bureaus as well. So that was all. Of them. Yeah. So that was question number one. And I'm sorry, the other one was.
175 $5 million. That's been added for proactive maintenance. How much of that, if any is now covered by pcf.
176 Yeah. That one I would need to get back to you on I've got I would just need to make sure that I get an accurate response. I wouldn't want to.
177 Thanks. And that brings up another point that everybody I think it's outside of the scope of this, but it's relevant. We need to have a conversation about the costs that bureaus are charging each other and the rate of increase over the course. It's a weird way to do budgeting. There's a rationale for it, of course, but there there is a significant increase, much greater than inflation in a lot of the costs that that bureaus are being charged by central services. And I think that's an important conversation we need to have.
178 Yeah. And just to two other follow up, I remember the other item, the deputy director line item we actually created, that it was pulled out of the director's office. That deputy director has existed for many, many years. It was pulled out of the director's office because as vibrant community support services was created and so vibrant community support services was intended to. Was led by that deputy director. And so it really is just a net zero change out of the director's office. And then finally, if you want to play your guitar, as long as you're not above 50db you can and not charging anybody, you can go ahead and play.
179 Promises on the 50db, I will. I will note that the line for the director's office has gone up. Even it went down in the projection for next year, but it did go up from 2.2 million to 2.8 million from last fiscal year to this fiscal year, even as the $718,000 line item was created from zero in.
180 The deputy. And I would need to check. But my guess my guess is that that actually increased to match the increased revenue associated with the np that we talked about earlier, the idea being that we wanted to make sure that that that that was set aside and wasn't available resource that could be allocated, that could be allocated more flexibly.
181 That makes sense. I'll look forward to getting more info. Thanks.
182 Thank you. Counselor councilor Novick.
183 Yes.
184 Two things one councilor Kanal I know that you can count on counselor Dunphy to defend your right to as many decibels as the law allows. Second, I forgot to ask sonia a question, which is? I think we might have some new facilities coming on board over the next few years. And I was wondering if the levy amounts that you presented, what assumptions they make about whether the levy is going to be funding expensive new facilities?
185 Yes. Everything that is in the capital plan to come online into the system over the life of a levy is accounted for on the operations and maintenance side in the levy.
186 Councilor Dunphy.
187 Thank you. I just want to add one more thing. Building off of councilor Kanal statement, the at the risk of sounding like a broken record, recreation saves lives. And it's not so much about how how meaningful swimming lessons and after school sports are. They are they absolutely are. But truly, for many of our young people in this community, they have nowhere else to go between the hours of 2:00 and 8:00 at night, and they will find a place to go if they don't have a positive adult supervised. Fun place to be. And I, I have glibly said in the past, and I can't prove that this is a dollar amount. I'm working on it, but that every dollar we spend in rec is $10 we don't spend in public service. I don't know what the actual number there is, but the police are our most expensive outreach workers in the city. And to be able to expand on the teen force program or some of the sports or some of the open gym opportunities truly will give some kids in our community an opportunity that that without it, they will not live fulfilling adult lives. So as many after school hours as we can get, as many open gyms, as many of those things, I think that is that is key to our, our, our success as a community. So thank you.
188 Thanks, councilor. I was just going to say I didn't see anybody else in the queue but councilor Zimmerman.
189 Thanks. I'm hoping that we can get some indication for the number of employees that these various options will employ for things like a maintenance worker, like a youth coach, very specific. I feel like I'm having to really beat that drum because it doesn't come naturally to these documents and to the way that we're being presented this information. And so, to be explicit, a levy for $1.30 or for 80 or for $1.60, I want to understand what what those in those I'm going to call them core services, because I'm not in the mood to sell a levy for new coordinators. I'm in the mood for selling a levy for new coaches or sustained coaches for hours of operation, and for laborers who keep the parks going. I haven't seen that yet. I've just seen large buckets. So if you're gathering a list, madam president, that would be important to me. And then I also, I think I said this earlier, but I want to reemphasize this spreadsheet is nice, but it it doesn't. For instance, looking at a program, who in this program is listed as just a ten employee program? I know that if I were to open up my budget book for right now, it would see a 37 employee program. So the other things that are funding parks, programs and kind of getting to other councilors comments, I think makes this a whole picture where we're going to make some trade offs. And, and this document only gives us a part of the picture. And that's not enough for such a big decision. Thanks.
190 Thanks, counselor and sonia for the list that I am hoping you are keeping. Of all of the asks, I think what we're what we heard there is for those core services, not meaning the central services, but meaning things like parks, maintenance, rec programs, rec center staff, even if they're not running a program to allow the rec center to be open, even if it's not a programed hour. What are we actually looking at in terms of staff levels? And I think we're well, there are many numbers between 80 and 160, and there are numbers more and less than that. If we do the 81, 31, 60, I think that allows people to extrapolate from there.
191 Yes.
192 Thank you. So councilor Seeing nobody else in the queue, I'm going to try to wrap us up here a little bit. And I haven't said much because I assumed I'd say a little bit more. Now, this is a decision about the kind of city we want Portland to be, and I appreciate everybody bringing forward your thoughts on where we need to land there. And I heard a lot of acknowledgment of the role that both our parks and our rec system play in creating the city that Portland has been, and that we want it to be moving forward. I've also heard a lot of people acknowledge that a failure to address parks funding results in very painful losses, both on the staff side, on the outdoor space side, on the rec side, and on all of the pieces that move forward from there and that that falls hardest on those who, frankly, have the fewest alternatives. The question of what to refer to voters is going to be a difficult one, and I know we have a lot of conversation left to have before we can get to a specific number. We're standing at a fork in the road where we really need to make a decision about the resilience of our park system, repairs in our parks system. How we fix our pools, maintain our open spaces, and ensure that as we get more dense, we have enough open space and enough space for recreational opportunities for everybody. I mentioned earlier that the foundation and the alliance have representatives in the room, and I want to thank them for being here. We know that you both will be your organizations. Both will be important partners as we move forward. But colleagues, I also want to acknowledge for all of us that we can't just rely on the foundation and the alliance. And there's been a lot of conversation about the partners who are advocates. And at the end of the day, we have to be the strongest advocates for whatever levy we put forward, and we have to be as aligned as possible around what we put forward. We've heard some differences in opinions, some differences in thoughts on where we can land, some differences in thoughts on what's possible. But I think I've heard a lot of commitment to moving forward with something that keeps our parks system as sustainable as possible. I'll share that for me personally. There are some cuts in the budget that we will likely move forward, that I think it's critical to restore. Some of them are small. I think it is critical for us to restore summer camps because they are the only affordable, all day option in our city for working parents. I also think it's critical to make sure that we maintain our open spaces. And, you know, I'll have the debate later with some of you who think we shouldn't grow those about why as we get denser, it's actually a resilience issue to ensure that we do grow our open spaces. I know that that's a place where we don't all align. It's important, though, that we craft a levy referral that reflects the needs and concerns of every portlander in this moment, and that balances the needs for our park system, which are great, and the ability of people to pay for it, which is difficult. And I think, as we heard today, there's an important balancing of that that we are all doing in terms of next steps. I know many of us will be having more conversations with our partners who are in the room and with each other, obviously in ways that do not violate our public meetings laws. And we'll meet back here to consider some options as we move forward. If you have specifics that you want to make sure are incorporated into drafts that staff put together that you haven't shared today, please get those to my team. We'll make sure to streamline all of that and get it to our staff, who can start to work on what some of the things they've heard today could look like on paper. And if you have data that you need that you didn't share today, if you get that to us, we can streamline those requests and get them to dca schimanski as well. So yeah, I see you nodding there. And is it reasonable to get all of those data requests back within a week, or is that pushing folks? Okay.
193 Well, no, but we're happy to do that. Yes.
194 We're on a tight timeline. We've got a month and a half before we need to try to get this to the ballot. So if we can have that as close to a week from now as possible, or at least the first cut at some of that data a week from now. And then if there are some things that take a little longer, let us know what those are. So we know what to, what to wait on and when to expect it. That would be great, counselors, I'm committed to being a fierce advocate for a parks levy, and I'm committed to working with all of you to make sure that it's a parks levy that we can all advocate for together, because I think that's the only way that we can get to a win here. And as many of you have pointed out, anything short of a win is unacceptable for our city and the system. So thank you all for taking the time on a Monday. I know we don't always do work sessions at the beginning of the week, but this was a time when we could fit it in. And with some time back in your days, I am going to close today's work session.