The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-10-29
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (24,798 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council held its regular session on Wednesday, October 29, 2025, convening at 9:34 a.m. with roll call establishing a quorum and the standard rules of order read into the record. The agenda was amended to add a resolution affirming continued operation under City Code Chapter 3.02, with votes occurring on that addition; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. Public communication included testimony on arts and culture funding equity, decriminalization of sex work, seismic resilience and emergency-route access for the North Peninsula, and concerns about council priorities regarding public safety, homelessness, and international resolutions. The consent agenda, covering advisory committee appointments, was voted on. The council discussed and voted on a settlement authorization related to streetcar ramp construction litigation, a revenue bond authorization for city fleet facility improvements, an eminent domain authorization for a water bureau pipeline project, and acceptance of the Bull Run Treatment Projects 2025 Annual Report, with extensive discussion of costs, financing, resilience, and customer base. The council also voted on appointments to the Development Review Advisory Committee and, later, on the resolution affirming continued operation under Chapter 3.02, including a proposed amendment regarding committee referral that was also voted upon. All vote outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned with a reminder of a recessed session scheduled for the following afternoon.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 Good morning. I am going to call to order today's Portland city council meeting. It is Wednesday, October 29th at 9:34 a.m. Keelan. Could you please call the roll?
1 Yes. Sorry, sorry, just a moment.
2 That's okay.
3 Clark Green.
Procedural episode · turns 4–18
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4 Present.
5 Zimmerman here. Avalos. Dunphy here. Smith. Canal. Ryan here. Koyama Lane. Morillo here. Here. Sorry.
6 Councilor. Koyama Lane is online.
7 Okay. Thank you, thank you. Councilor. Novick here. Pirtle-guiney here.
8 And can we please get the rules of order and decorum?
9 Welcome to the Portland city council to testify before council in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the council agenda at w-w-w-what. Council agenda. Information on engaging with council can be found on the council clerk's webpage. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the presiding officer states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The presiding officer preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matters being considered when testifying. State your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the council clerk calls for your name. Thank you.
10 Thank you very much, colleagues. The first item on our agenda is approval of the agenda. Usually this moves very quickly, but I'm going to mix us up a little bit today. I will start by flagging that one item has been removed from the consent agenda. That's item number five. Item number four remains on the consent agenda. I am going to put forward a motion to suspend the rules and add a resolution, which I am passing out right now, which I know many of you saw yesterday authorizing council to continue operating under the current city code. Chapter 3.02. We passed an ordinance at the beginning of the year, making some changes to 3.02 and stating that the council president would bring back any further changes or an affirmation that we would continue operating under 3.2 by the end of October. Given the extensive work that the governance committee has done and a proposal that I have in the works right now that you all will see soon, I thought we had met that requirement. I recently learned that that requirement was far more technical and specific than I had remembered, and we actually need to affirmatively vote at this meeting by the end of the year to or by the end of the month. I apologize to continue to do our work under 3.02. As it currently stands, what you have before you is a resolution which would state that we would do. So. I would entertain a second.
11 Second, second.
12 Thank councilor Dunphy was first out of the gate there. The attorneys have shared that this is not a debatable motion. So we move directly to a vote. This vote, because it is a rule suspension, requires nine votes to pass.
13 Clark, a Green. A Zimmerman, a Dunphy, a Smith.
14 Point of order.
15 What? This is changing. Can you.
16 Yes. This is not changing anything. This is stating that we are fulfilling the requirement that we passed earlier this year by affirmatively stating that we will continue operating under 3.2 as it's currently written. I believe that this also refers to the fact that I do have changes that will be coming to the governance committee to debate about 3.02 in the works, which we may or may not see at this council, depending on the actions taken by the governance committee.
17 I don't understand it, but I.
18 Ryan.
19 I look forward to these conversations in governance. I.
20 Koyama Lane. I Morillo I Novick.
21 Although I kind of like the idea of an enforced vacation because it's illegal for us to operate.
22 I pirtle-guiney. I the motion carries with ten votes.
23 Thank you colleagues, are there any other additions or changes? Oh, and I should note we will place that at the end of today's agenda and that will be open for public comment. So if the public would like to make comments, please talk to keelan to sign up. Are there any other motions to reorder the agenda or add items to the agenda? Okay. Seeing none, do we have unanimous consent to approve the agenda? Okay. Thank you colleagues. The next item on our agenda is public communication. Keelan can you please call up our first guest?
24 First up we have blake schell.
25 Hi. Good morning.
26 Go right ahead.
27 I'm blake schell, director of Oregon contemporary here on behalf of the coalition Portland arts and culture for equity. Portland's arts funding challenges are rooted in scarcity. According to smu data arts, we rank 17th in the nation for artistic vibrancy, but 172nd for government support. Our arts thrive despite not because of government funding. In new york, smu reports that 48% of artists make a living on gigs or freelance work, and only eight are full time workers. In our smaller arts economy, that gap is likely even wider. The big five are important employers, but they are not the primary source of income for artists here. Most artists earn through gigs, teaching and creative side work that keeps this ecosystem alive. Last year, the office of arts and culture removed equity metrics from the art tax grants and distributed funds solely based on budget size. As a result, 45 of 80 groups lost funding, while only the big five saw increases. Smaller orgs regularly employ Portland artists and offer affordable, often free arts access across our neighborhoods, prioritizing large institutions with endowments, greater funding and fewer local artists is funneling money to money and power to power. The art tax supports k-12 arts, education and making arts and culture available to underserved communities. In 2024, that mandate was changed without warning or oversight. We met with the office and multiple committees. No correction. Corrective action was taken. We are now entering a second year of harm to our communities. Portland voters expected the art tax to expand access, not diminish it. We asked the city to restore funding for the 45 and to realign arts funding with its original intent. Prioritize groups that provide low or no cost access, employ local artists, and do deep community work with underserved portlanders, all without other significant funding. Our vision is clear support smaller orgs offering greater access citywide, and the artists who make Portland what it is. We need explicit equity and access measures provided, protected from politics. And as costs rise while the art tax stays flat, we need change to provide more funding. Overall, there are over 500 arts nonprofits here and most don't receive city funding for the arts. Give us agency, community and the power to imagine change. And that's why they're under federal attack and why we must protect them locally. We're asking for a bold vision in support of the arts. Help us to keep Portland as vibrant as the artists who live here. Thank you.
28 Thank you very much for being here. And we see supporters behind you as well.
29 Next up we have harper haverkamp.
30 Welcome. Thank you for being here today.
31 Good morning. For the record, my name is harper haverkamp. I'm speaking today as an individual. This summer I heard that some councilors were brainstorming ordinances to support the LGBTQ community. In my opinion, the decriminalization of sex work should be at the forefront of any such policy discussion. Let's reflect on the legacy of black trans elder miss major, who passed earlier this month. Miss major was not only at stonewall, but she spent decades as a sex worker while also supporting the trans community materially and spiritually. The basis of her politics and activism was how she made ends meet, and how police and institutions impeded her survival. This isn't history of a different era. Today. Trans people, women like me, still perform this work and are suffering harm and abuse regularly under the yoke of criminalization, which make us less safe, more marginalized, and legally disenfranchized. Yet the many forms of sex work in Portland, which has more strip clubs per capita than anywhere else in the country, are valuable, vital and remain highly in demand as a form of work. If council wishes to support the trans community through policy or the broader LGBTQ community, there are three things you can do one. Direct the city to lobby the Oregon legislature and governor to revive and pass the 2023 decriminalization public health studies that were within senate bill five 506 from 2023 two, pass our own city specific bill to fund studies around public health and a path forward, which incorporate global best practices to repeal or amend Portland city ordinances that do exist and pertain to prostitution. Three direct opb to stop enforcing, harassing and arresting sex workers, especially along 82nd, the Oregon safer workers coalition has a comprehensive legal report on best practices regarding criminal decriminalization in Oregon, which I will email to you all, and I hope that at least one of you have the courage, conviction and moral clarity to engage with this. As a former sex worker myself, I ask that you listen, learn and act and bring trans and queer sex workers to the table. Stonewall was 56 years ago. Don't let the buzz over restrooms and pronouns distract you from this real, enduring demand from over 50 years ago that's still alive today. Thank you so much.
32 Thank you for being here.
33 Next up we have eve ashkar. Eve ashkar. And donna cohen.
34 Would you put up the first slide, please?
35 Welcome. Thank you for being here. And colleagues, I'll draw your attention to the fact that we do have written testimony posted as well.
36 Yes. Thank you. Councilors. My name is donna cohen. I live in saint john's. This picture shows you what separates the north peninsula from the rest of Portland. Next slide please. And this shows you the location of these bridges and the tunnel. 60,000 people who live and work on the north peninsula are at risk when the earthquake hits. People from every district in Portland will be trapped to die quick death. If a toxic cloud from the cei hub comes from across the river, or perhaps a slow one as water, food and medical help is unavailable due to this area having no lifeline to the rest of Portland. After the railroad bridges and the tunnel collapse, portsmouth and university park, along with u.p. Students, will be included. If liquefaction along columbia boulevard occurs. That's the orange area. These people are constituents of all of you. This is fixable. We tried getting money towards a new bridge at columbia boulevard last legislative session, and 130 community members testified. We held a rally and had coverage on two tv stations, but the bill failed. Can you imagine what it's like for the community to hear our mayor twice testify to the state for money, for potholes and other transportation concerns, while never mentioning the need for an emergency route to save the lives of tens of thousands of people? Other efforts neighborhood leaders meeting with council staff making requests for council to advocate to pbem. Making requests to staff of councilors on the public safety and transportation committees to get agenda items on this issue have failed. City councilors have not spent one minute of council business focused on the lives of the tens of thousands that are in danger, yet council has had time to discuss hot dog stands and trees. It is way past time for council to be talking about this threat. We ask one for a task force. Several community members have come together, along with a PBOT staff member, and agree that a task force needs to be set up by council, one with neighbors. Reps from the port university of Portland, experts from PBOT and pbem, and councilors to have an ongoing discussion on options for making the north peninsula seismically resilient with an emergency route. Two policy committees agenda items. We asked that this issue be placed on the agendas of all relevant policy committees, so that representatives from PBOT, pbem and community leaders can discuss this issue with council. Council shouldn't wait any longer to treat this very serious issue with the consideration it deserves. Thank you.
37 Thank you very much for being here today.
38 Next up we have brian oquendo.
39 Good morning. Councilors brian orndorf. District four. Today marks the 301st day since this Portland city council has been in office. In that time frame we've seen passionate speeches, symbolic resolutions and even an international junket to vienna. What we haven't seen is meaningful progress on the three most urgent issues facing Portland safety, mental health and substance use disorder and economic development. The city council, particularly the dsa members, have shown a troubling pattern of focusing on national and international issues that fall far outside the scope of city governance. It's time to get back to the basics. Let's be clear Portland city council is not congress. It's not the state department, and it's not the united nations. It has no authority over the Israeli conflict. It has no authority over federal immigration policy and has no authority over the pentagon. The council's time and energy are finite. Portland residents deserve leaders who focus on pressing challenges in their own backyard. The three biggest issues confronting Portland today sit right at the base of maslow's hierarchy of needs safety, stability and economic opportunity. A recent report based on fbi data listed Portland as the second worst city for total crime in America, with a total crime exceeding 195% higher than the national average. So many Portland residents and business owners don't bother reporting crimes unless they need a police report for insurance, and our courts are focused on restorative justice. Our crime rate is much higher than reported. Portland is also in the middle of a humanitarian crisis. Overdoses are at record highs. Mental health is untreated, homeless encampments continue to strain public spaces and services and cause damage to our environment. Org is now ranked fourth highest per capita for homelessness in America, worse for mental health, and second in addiction. You combine these three and that is what we have a perfect deadly storm. Portland has lost over 10,000 jobs. City council needs to focus on ways to retain existing companies. On October 17th, six Portland city council members pledged to investigate the city's connections to Israeli military. The investigation singled out only one group of portlanders, those that are Jewish or have ties to Israel. The investigation will focus on several things that have no purview whatsoever to city council, city council. Morillo reposted dsa's message on her personal social media and added, also just wanted to add that members of the Jewish federation were allowed on the call and their org is very pro Israel. It's not too late, but time is running out. The next four months will determine whether Portland is on a path to recovery, or in four years, or stagnation for 40. We don't need symbolic gestures or ideological distractions. We need competent governance focused on the needs of the city residents and the core responsibilities public safety, infrastructure, economic growth and public health. We don't need ideological purity test. We need competence. We need leaders groomed in real world experience who understand to manage the complex city, not activists chasing utopian fantasies at taxpayer expense. Thank you.
40 Thank you for being here.
41 Completes communications.
42 Thank you keelan colleagues. The next item on the agenda is the committee referral list. We don't actually have anything on the committee referral list this week. We had a whole lot the last few weeks. That brings us to the consent agenda, which has one item on it. Agenda item number four. Keelan. Could you please call roll on the consent agenda?
43 Clerk.
44 I Green, I Zimmerman. Dunphy I Smith. I Ryan.
45 Sorry. Just looking okay. These are for the appointments to the. Okay. I know that we're not having debate. I just want to say this. I found most of the appointments to be just fine. I am concerned that we don't have enough people with knowledge about housing development and economic development, so I'm hoping those that lack that experience lean into those on their committees that have that experience. That's what I need to say because we are in an economic development challenge crisis right now. Thanks, I vote yea Koyama Lane.
46 Morillo I.
47 Novick I.
48 I am seeing councilor Canal online.
49 Yeah, I'm seeing councilor Kanal has joined the meeting. I was going to flag that after you finished the roll call. Pirtle-guiney I.
50 The consent agenda is approved with nine yes votes.
51 Thank you. Keelan and councilor Canal. Welcome. Are you with us for the rest of the meeting?
52 I'm actually only here for the consent agenda and I wanted to express my support in public for consent agenda voting yes on something that includes appointments because of the work session. So that's why I joined. Thank you so much.
53 Thanks, councilor. Okay, keelan. That moves us to our regular agenda. Can you please read item six for us?
54 Authorize city attorney to settle lawsuit related to construction of the street car approach ramp located near southeast second avenue, and accept lump sum payment in the amount of $7,500,000.
55 Thank you and welcome. We have beth from our city attorney's office, beth woodard and millicent from PBOT here. Beth, would you like to go right ahead?
56 Yes. Good morning. Council. For the record, I'm senior deputy city attorney beth woodard. Today's proposed settlement resolves claims brought by the city against TriMet and stacy and witbeck, inc. Related to phased construction of a portion of the streetcar system, specifically the streetcar on grade approach ramp located at southeast second avenue. The approach structure is an on grade ramp that connects the streetcar platform to the viaduct, which spans the union pacific railroad tracks. The second phase of construction was completed in 2015. The necessary transit alignments in this area required locating the approach ramp on a geotechnical challenged site. At the completion of construction, the city noticed atypical settlement at the location. The city self-monitored the location from 2015 to 2018 and completed accelerated maintenance and repairs. To maintain service, the city hired a geotechnical consultant to more fully monitor the approach structure. From 2018 to 2021. The consultant's findings, issued in 2021, indicated the structure required significant near-term repair. The city then hired an engineering consultant to provide mitigation analysis and provide preliminary estimates for repairs necessary to bring the structure into compliance with its anticipated design life of 75 years. In March 2022, the city filed a lawsuit against TriMet and stacy and witbeck for work related to the second phase of design and construction of the structure. To resolve these claims, the parties have agreed to a proposed settlement agreement, including the following terms a $7.5 million lump sum payment to the city earmarked for repairs to this structure. Trimet will additionally provide in-kind services to the city in the form of securing alternate funding sources for the repairs. Trimet will also provide technical assistance for the repairs and will provide bus bridging and other service interruption assistance at no cost, provided that the repairs are performed concurrent with trimet's planned improvements in the area, the city, the bureau, and the city administrator, the city attorney's office, the bureau, and the city administrator recommend approval of the settlement. And this concludes my prepared remarks, but we are happy to answer any questions that you may have.
57 Thank you very much. And keelan, just so we know how to do questions, do we have anybody who signed up for public testimony?
58 No one signed up.
59 Okay. So colleagues, if you have any technical questions, other questions or comments, we can take that all together now. Counselor Ryan.
60 Sure. Thank you. Thank you, council president. And thank you. It's good to see you, director williams. And I appreciate the presentation by our city manager. Are you the debt manager?
61 I'm just in the city attorney's office.
62 Oh, okay. I think I got information from the city's debt manager on this. Okay, great. Yeah. Anyway, I know we're talking about debt financing and legal stuff at the moment, but I want to just acknowledge this milestone because we talk a lot about infrastructure and when I was. Yeah.
63 Can I pause.
64 You why?
65 We are on the settlement issue.
66 Oh, I'm on the wrong issue.
67 We'll have director williams here for both of those. I think that.
68 Might have never happened. I just want to crawl in a hole right now. And sorry, I got off on a few points this morning because the numbers change, so I apologize. Sorry. Now I know why you're not the debt manager and I'm on the wrong topic by.
69 I'm sorry, counselor.
70 That's all right. Thanks for saving me.
71 Well, I will. Just I it took it took me a minute.
72 I would have been like, stop.
73 I'll just say while we wait to see if others have comments that I appreciate your work and the attorney's office, attorney office's work on this broadly, I know that these issues where we have many local governments working on overlapping projects, are always difficult ones, and it sounds like we'll probably need to do future work at this site. And knowing that we have a large portion of that covered already is very helpful. So thank you, counselor Smith.
74 Thank you, madam president. Director williams, this is the the 7.5 million. Yes, ma'am. And where were those funds lie in the in our system. Because I have a concern that I want to make sure that we separate this money from the general tax, gas tax money and that this, this project is actually going to happen three years from now. So I want to make sure that we still have it. And it's and it is appropriately set aside.
75 Absolutely. Thank you so much. Councilors. Millicent williams, director of the Portland bureau of transportation, thank you for the question. I can assure you that the money will be appropriately earmarked and set aside specifically for this project. The guidance that we received when we were working through the settlement agreement was that these funds could be used for nothing other than the structure. So with that in mind, I can assure you that that's going to be the case based on the legal expectation. But also, the bureau does have a history of segregating out funds and dedicating those funds to specific projects based on the funding source and the requirements within those funding source guidelines. So you should not worry about whether or not this funding will go directly to this project. I can assure you that that will be the case.
76 Excellent. Thank you.
77 Thank you.
78 Colleagues, any other comments or questions? Okay. Keelan, could you please call the roll?
79 Mark?
80 Hi, Green.
81 Hi. Hi. Hi, Smith.
82 Hi, Ryan.
83 And another thing. No. Hi.
84 Koyama Lane.
85 I believe she had to drop off the call off the meeting for a few minutes.
86 Morillo. I Novick.
87 Great to approve a settlement. We're getting money.
88 I pirtle-guiney.
89 I thank you both for being here.
90 Oh, I'm sorry. The ordinances passed with nine yes votes.
91 Thank you both for being here today.
92 Thank you.
93 Keelan, could you please call agenda item seven for us?
94 Authorize revenue bonds in an amount sufficient to provide not more than $41 million to finance city fleet maintenance, facility improvements, and related costs.
95 Thank you and colleagues. I believe we have a committee staff summary from christopher hare. I think this came through the finance committee.
96 Apologies.
97 Welcome.
98 Thank you. Good morning, madam president. Councilors. So for the record, christopher hare council policy analyst and I serve as staff to the finance committee. The ordinance before you document number 2025 404 was considered in the finance committee on October 20th or was referred to council with a recommendation to pass. This ordinance authorizes the city to issue revenue bonds pursuant to ors 2878.150 and related statutes in an amount up to $41 million to finance improvements to the city's fleet maintenance facility. The improvements include construction and upgrades to a maintenance garage, office and parts area, installation of electric vehicle charging stations, and other related project costs. The total principal amount of bonds to be sold is estimated not to exceed $43.9 million, accounting for at a conservative estimate 1.9 to $2.9 million for financing and issuance costs. The ordinance further authorizes the issuance of refunding bonds under ors 287 8.360 to 2 878.375 if any of the authorized bonds are used for interim financing, these refunding bonds may be issued in an amount sufficient to repay interim financing and cover the costs of issuance. All bonds authorized under this ordinance will be secured by the city's full faith credit, and available general funds, and bond proceeds may only be used to pay project costs and expenses related to issuing, paying or refunding bonds. The ordinance does not authorize any new taxes, and no bond may be sold or purchase agreements executed until the ordinance takes effect 30 days after passage. The ordinance additionally designates the city administrator, chief financial officer, city treasurer, debt manager, or designee of the city administrator to act as an authorized officer to carry out the necessary actions to issue and manage the bonds. Authorized officers may issue bonds in one or more series at different times or in combination with other council authorized revenue bonds, use bond proceeds for interim or long term financing, including establishing lines of credit or refunding bonds. Prepare, authorize, and distribute official statements and disclosure documents. Set final terms for each bond series, including principal amounts, maturity schedules, interest rates, prices, and payment terms, and manage the sale or negotiation process. Ensure continuing disclosure compliance with rules 15 c two through 12. Finalize and execute bond declarations and related legal documents, including covenants benefiting holders or credit providers. Appoint and enter into agreements with service providers as needed. Issue bonds is tax exempt, taxable or federally subsidized tax credit bonds and take all actions necessary to maintain eligibility. Obtain bond, insurance or credit enhancements as appropriate. Execute any documents and take other actions deemed advantageous to the city in connection with the bonds. The full impact statement of this item includes a financial and budget impacts and analysis, and 100% renewable goal impacts. There was no verbal or written testimony on this ordinance prior to committee action. This concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.
99 Thank you. Christopher councilor Zimmerman. Do you have anything to add? You were presiding over this meeting.
100 Thanks. It's a good recap by the council ops staff. Thank you for that. I think that councilors should dig into this. The questions will be welcomed. It's kind of an unusual setup, and I think that that we should have that discussion and we should be asking questions about owner's rep, about ownership of the property, etc. So with that, I would say, let's open it up, madam president.
101 All right.
102 I see a number of folks in the queue. Keelan do we have public testimony?
103 No one signed up for this.
104 Okay.
105 Councilor clerk, go right ahead.
106 Thank you, madam president. I don't have any questions. I think it's a very thorough report. I think you did a great job in the finance committee. What I wanted to say is, you know, a lot of us had heard about the kirby garage for years. And finally, some of us were given tours of the garage and finally figured out just what a disaster this has been for years. And I wanted to thank maddie sartor for the tours and all of her staff. But also, I really want to applaud all of the city employees who have worked there for years under duress and made it function. It's amazing. It's cramped, it's wet, it's got a leaking roof, it's dangerous, and I just applaud all the people who worked there and made it function. And now we're moving to a safer workplace. The facility eventually. And I think that the arrangements, the long term lease and potential purchases is a good deal. I do have one question, though, about the retirement of the bonds, and I don't know if this is a who can answer this question, but.
107 We happen to have our city.
108 Debt manager here today.
109 Okay. Oh, super. Hello city manager I think that was that was foreshadowed by one councilor Ryan. Yes, it was foretold the way that we're retiring these is an assessment across all of the bureaus. Is that correct?
110 Yes.
111 That's correct. And can you talk a little bit about that? I'm concerned about these the way we do this in the assessments and what alternatives there might be in the future for this kind of financing, and whether or not this is a way of doing it across other governments. I think I remember state government doing this kind of thing for certain functions. But can you expand a little bit on that for us?
112 Yeah.
113 So could you introduce yourself for the record?
114 Absolutely. Matt guerra, debt manager for the record, so the debt service is essentially embedded within interagency charges that are passed through to all the users of the facility. So annually they'll pay a charge to, you know, run the operations and also pay debt service. And so it's embedded essentially in that interagency charge, conventionally.
115 Can you give us a sense of the size of that assessment?
116 Yeah, I believe that the debt service estimate. Is around $3.3 million for 20 years.
117 And so that's spread across the bureaus that use the future cutter. That's correct. And it's proportionate to their use. Is that how it works.
118 I believe so, yes.
119 My name is aaron beck. I'm with business operations, and I can elaborate a little bit more on the rates that we're charging the bureaus. That will include the cutter debt service, lease and operations and maintenance. Basically, that will be flowing through what we refer to as the fixed vehicle rates. So every vehicle that the bureaus own will include a component in it for the cutter garage. So basically anybody, any bureau with a vehicle will be paying for the cutter garage.
120 Leveraged on their use, their number of vehicles.
121 That's correct.
122 And is this I don't know who can answer this question, but is this sort of a normal way of of retiring the debt in other local governments?
123 I believe so, yes. Okay.
124 Thank you, thank you.
125 Thank you, councilor. Thank you both. I suspect we may have other questions. So don't go far, please. Councilor Ryan.
126 Yeah. Thank you, madam president. As I was saying, it's thank you for the report, christopher. And I really appreciate the work that went into this from the debt manager. And I think we're we are talking about debt financing. And I actually did my homework there. And I think that you're doing everything right there. But I just wanted to add on to what councilor Clark was saying, what a big deal this is. We did that tour in 2021 and it was really depressing. We did a tour of all the infrastructure, but that one in particular really stood out because the urgency and that was, again, it's a century old. Building to small was never meant to be the city's fleet, fleet, maintenance function. And for years flags were raised about this and there were no viable solutions on the table. It was not worth the investment to renovate or replace it, basically, because where it's located as well, and it was cost prohibitive to purchase another location to build. So this has been lingering for some time. The solution is a leased space, partnering with the property owner that will allow for the build out in modern city fleet facility. The bond financing allows for that work to be done. I want to give credit where it's due. Maddie souder, you have been on this and every conversation I seem to have with you the last five years would often circle to this. So take a bow. I assume this will pass. So thank you for being a champion and being persistent. You moved to a once in a generation shift for most of our city bureau operations in local government, we often put a lot of energy into important improvements efforts. Without seeing the results of those efforts. I that was the case with the kirby garage. It can take decades of incremental progress on large projects, particularly those that don't have dedicated funding sources. So because of these accomplishments and the professionalism of our public servants, I'm really delighted that we're moving forward on this. And we just have to make sure we keep our fiscal house in order so that our bond rating remains high, which will save us a lot of money throughout the duration of this project. Thanks.
127 Thank you. Councilor. Counselor Green.
128 Yeah. Thank you. I just this was a really rich discussion in the finance committee and a couple of things that we flagged and I just wanted to raise for the full body was the quality. I think I appreciated the quality of the clarity and transparency in the presentation on the estimated cost allocation and debt service. So if you're following along at home at slide seven in the presentation attached to this item, but you know, they give you the repayment schedule over the lifetime of the bond, which is the $3.4 million annual on an annual basis. But it also shows you which bureaus pay it and that it's roughly 34% of of general fund bureaus will, will, will shoulder the cost of the internal service charge. You know, I think in the absence of other types of revenue streams that pay back these sorts of costs, I, I struggle to think of a different compensation model and cost allocation model. That makes sense. But I do appreciate my my colleague here asking the question. I think for me this is a slam dunk because we currently are dealing with a situation where we we face essentially a growing liability of operations and maintenance costs because we have a capacity or an asset that has very limited capacity value. And so you have the situation. I think, maddie, you had talked about how there's given the constraints on the current cutter garage that there are folks or I'm sorry, the kirby garage, that there are folks in bureaus who think, okay, well, I have to have maybe an extra couple trucks, 2 or 3 couple trucks because I don't know when I'm going to get my asset back. And so making this investment, while we do incur the 3.4 million per year, I'm pretty confident that that's going to result in some savings across our enterprise as we are able to make more efficient use of our resources and staff time and so, and echo the praise to the staff who've been able to managing these conditions for so long. I was there, and I was kind of like, you know, there's a sloped floor. You shouldn't have sloped floors in a a maintenance shop. I felt like I was a crooked little man in the crooked little house at a chain of forced. So I will be voting yes when this final finally does come before. Finally, if you're interested in bond finance, the last slide here, second to last slide does give you a sense of what our recent issuances for our limited tax revenue bonds have been priced. And it's it's pretty favorable. And so I think I appreciate that the the package before us assumes a 5% cost of capital. There's there's the potential that we can probably do a little bit better than that when we do finally place these bonds. And so I think that's a credit to our, our commitment to our financial reserves policies at the city. And I'm looking forward to more, more opportunity there. So thank you.
129 Thank you. Councilor councilor Dunphy.
130 Thank you. Mostly. Want to reflect the comments. My colleagues have already said, and give my thanks to maddie for giving a tour of the kirby garage and the terrible conditions that are are our workers have been enduring. It's been over three and a half years since the Willamette week first called out how terrible the conditions were. I'm glad the city council is jumping on this in our first year to try and finish the work. More than anything, I've been stuck with the image of the sloped floors and the requirement that at least one mechanic has to lay on their back in a puddle at the bottom of the slope. That's that's unreasonable. Beyond the lack of heating and cooling options in the season, you know, seasonal fluctuations. So enthusiastic about getting this done. And let's get rid of the kirby garage and move over to qatar. Thank you all.
131 Thank you, counselor, counselor Smith.
132 Thank you, madam president. Is maddie here? Oh, I'm sorry, I just wanted to personally thank you. And I think all the commissioners counselors up here, they've said the same thing. It was so important for us to see this. It's one thing to read about it. And we have never been there before, but to actually go see it, you and your staff were great in making sure that all of us had an opportunity to go see it. So thank you. I know you're probably like, okay, I don't need all this praise, but but you do because oftentimes people put things on the agenda and they never even offer to let us see what we're talking about. But but you did that. The question that I have as I'm, I'm looking at the financial and budgetary impacts. This is not necessarily for you, maddie, but for our staff. It said that with the issuance of the bonds, the garage will have approximately 7 million of ongoing costs. So this is new costs that I'm thinking that this is including debt service, which we already talked about for the 3.3 million operating and maintenance costs. So can you explain to me what the additional $4 million? I mean, I see that can you kind of break that out for me above and beyond what we're doing right now, because we're doing maintenance right now, so why would we need additional maintenance dollars on top of the 3.3 million in in debt costs?
133 Yes. The difference between the two numbers is the annual lease cost, which is new for the city out there at the garage. And then there are additional maintenance or just ongoing costs with a newer facility, because we want to really keep it up in good shape. And then there's another component, which is we would call major maintenance. And this is something that when we go into the garage, we want to make sure that we're annually, annually setting aside 3% of the replacement value of all the improvements that we did to that facility, so that we can keep it in good shape throughout the term of the lease. So the combination of all of those makes up the or comes to the $7 million.
134 Are we leasing it to ourselves.
135 Or leasing it from a third party?
136 Okay. And they didn't identify who that was.
137 Yes. So we are leasing it from the meletus.
138 Company.
139 Company. Okay. Basically. Okay. And just to provide a little bit of context. So best practices in facility management is that every year you set aside 3% of the replacement value of a facility to help support the building systems that fail. While you're in that facility, you can think of in your house, it's the roof or the sewer line, etcetera. Things fail. This is a triple net lease which we rarely get into. We try to do full service leases as much as we can, but when you are in this long of a lease, often the only option available is a triple net lease. And so that puts you on the hook for some of the major maintenance funding. So the landlord is responsible for a portion of it. But you also have to set aside money for certain certain contributions you may need to make to building systems. And then of course, within the shell you have your systems as well. So we'll have our own hvac for example, within that area. So one of the concerns that we have, and something that's happened citywide, is that the city does not set aside 3% of the replacement value for facilities when we maintain them. Even this facility doesn't have we're not hitting that target. That is a budget note that's been in existence for probably almost a decade now, is to bring that major maintenance funding up in our rates. But we've never had the institutional support and financial capacity to do that. At the kirby garage, the major maintenance was almost zero. So the net increase that.
140 You had to increase that.
141 In prices is going from basically 0% or very, very little to the appropriate amount. So we decided since we're doing a new facility, let's do it the right way. And so that structure reflects a bunch of new costs that don't exist. One of those costs, the debt service, will go away in 20 years. But ideally, the build up of funding for major maintenance will help avoid some of the challenges that we're currently having at kirby garage, because we'll have money as we go to invest in systems as they start to fail.
142 And director sawyer, this is very important because we passed a resolution in the transportation infrastructure to do an evaluation of all of our assets. And so understanding that too, that I didn't know that information. So as we're looking at that and we get the report back from the city administrator and you all, I think you're probably working on the, on the committee that is going to bring it all back. Those are the kind of things that we also need to keep in mind as we're talking about, how do we deal with maintaining our assets that we do have what is going to be the cost point? And so I didn't think about that. And I was looking at this and I was like, well, where did this extra $4 million come from? But the other piece that that you all did not talk about, I know we're voting on the debt service and doing the bonds, but the the thing that we're talking about is that we're also creating an apprenticeship program with pcc. And currently there are no apprenticeship programs that deal with maintenance of this kind. And so in addition to this, this is also going to help us to create jobs. I authored a resolution around apprenticeships that we passed in the labor and workforce committee. And so this these are the kinds of things that I think that we all need to know about. And that's happening in addition to this. And so I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for this because it is also expanding our base of knowledge of, you know, and creating jobs. So thank you so much.
143 Welcome.
144 Thank you counselor. I said a lot about this in committee. So I'm not going to say much right now, but this is absolutely necessary. It is being done responsibly. Our city needs this for efficient operations. And our employees who work in the garage need this as well. I did want to note that a piece of the conversation in the finance committee was about why this was a lease and not a building purchase. I often look to figure out how we can save costs in the long run, even if that means a little more cost up front. And sometimes purchasing is a good way to do that. I was very convinced by your answers, maddie, about the flexibility that we might need in the future and the fact that doing a lease now so that we can reevaluate where we need these operations in the future, is a a conversation that we can have without the sunk costs of having purchased a building. Now, I just wanted to note that because I really appreciated the deal, the detail you went into in explaining that calculation, both from a fiscal perspective and also from just a practical ability for city operations. So thank you, councilor Zimmerman.
145 Thanks. I have a few questions, but since one is related to the point you just brought up, I'd actually like it if the bureau director can go into that a little bit further to ask the city to invest $41 million into a piece of property we don't own, for me is a big lift, and I want to be confident that not including the property costs was not a tactic to keep the bond low. In order to get the bond through, because I think the case has been deeply made. And I agree that especially for those workers who are in the shop and they have they have been doing a great job with what they have. And we need a new shop. This is a lift, though, and in my career, highly unusual to invest this much money in someone else's property. Can you talk about a little bit what council president alluded to there?
146 Yeah for sure. So we actually already made two attempts to do what I think common knowledge suggests, which is that you should procure a property and own it, or build a purpose built facility for this type of technical operation. So we made a run at that. I can't exactly remember the years, but it was probably 2021 that didn't make it out of committee at the omf level. And then we made an effort the second time to get funding to buy land so that we could then do programing and go out for a bond of some kind, either this type of bond or maybe even a general obligation bond. So both of those efforts were attempted and didn't pass muster because they were too expensive. So that is part of the reason that we switched tactics to this approach. But there is, as councilor Pirtle-guiney explained, a bigger picture challenge, which is within the facility and land management arena, which has come up, I think a couple of times when we've come to the table here, it came up with a small parcel on southeast powell where we prompted a discussion about land management and what that looks like. It's coming up, I think in the asset management strategy, it's been decided where it will be addressed. There's a challenge which is that facilities are are are particularly decayed asset base for the city. We would like to see more enhanced and comprehensive long range facility planning by portfolio, whether it's public safety, public works, etc. We just completed a public safety master plan, actually, and one of the findings of that, and I think you'll find the same in a public works plan, should it launch, is that the city needs large acreages of land in order to do what it needs to do, and that is really hard to find within an urban growth boundary like we have. That's even a particularly added challenge when you think about seismic requirements and what we are really expecting from resilient public works organizations or resilient public safety organizations, etc. So until we solve the land problem and understand how we're going to find these parcels and obtain these parcels to build the facilities that we need, we can't exactly solve for a long term problem. And so we are waiting for the city to take shape in that. I think the asset management strategy is going to suggest some approaches to that. But we are in a situation with kirby where we can't really wait any longer. And so thus this approach worked not just financially but also from a space and time standpoint, which is we have a 23 year lease that is long enough with 210 year extensions for us to feel like that would be the normal life cycle of a building anyway. And so this is probably a warranted investment, but it's not such a sunk cost that if we end up being able to find a parcel of land and build a public works campus, that we wouldn't be able to then also program in a city fleet operation in that campus to support that. So we were you know, sometimes you're not in the most optimal situation you're in what is the least suboptimal situation. And I would say that was the situation here. So over time, our sort of next step is to, you know, we're trying to steward internally discussions about land management for facility needs, not just for public needs like housing, but also for city needs. How we would approach that. And then what does that mean for consolidated long range facility planning and investment to benefit city operations? Because they're vital facilities. You know, you think of the 911 center or police precincts or fire stations. They're not non-essential.
147 Okay? I mean, I certainly think 43 years falls in the long term planning category. So what is the valuation of the lot that we are taking over?
148 I do not know the answer to that offhand. Okay. The value of the parcel that we're on.
149 The other guy's property.
150 We're about to add $41 million worth of work to it. I think we're really talking about $100 million worth of value. Add to that piece of property that if we were to buy it in 23 or 43 years, we've deeply increased the odds. So I'm curious on two fronts. What is in the lease agreement to guarantee our position that if I think you said maltese sells this to Smith, that Smith doesn't, then want to renegotiate. And then also what parameters exist in the lease for our rent to own situation so that we can recognize the value that we put into it?
151 Yeah. So we have an option to buy. So we have right of first refusal on the buy. So if it goes to market where the first group to look at that and then there is just a note, a second unused warehouse adjacent to what we're building out. We have right of first refusal on that property as well. So that would be if other city functions wanted to go and co-locate with us. So, for example, fire has its own fleet operation. It's the only operation that's separate from city fleets for vehicles. So they're on a property that is suboptimal for those operations. If they wanted to and were able to move to that facility, that might be a good co-location to save on operations like parts management, etc. Bts has a slightly adjacent function. They do all of the radio upfitting for police vehicles that's currently done at the pcc building. And so that's another potential adjacency that we could create.
152 So I'm not hearing that there's any protection for our investment to be recognized, because I see today if we were in a purchase agreement, that lot has a number to it without all of our improvements on it. Tomorrow they list it for an exorbitant amount, and now we have first right of refusal. But it's a huge number because we improved that lot. Or have we just given a situation for two entities to increase valuation on a lot and have us either over the barrel or having to or having to not be able to execute, because we've now increased this lot price by so much.
153 Question. You know, we're doing pretty customized. Well let's see. We're doing pretty customized investments in that facility. So I don't think there's any other fleet operator that there. The values that we're putting in there are only for us. But I do agree that would put us over a barrel and the sense that everybody knows how much we've spent on this. And so you want to stay here? I'm going to double your rent, for example. So I suppose that is a possibility.
154 I'm less concerned about the doubling of the rent. I'm more concerned with this idea that we are the entity increasing someone else's lot value. And because we have first right of refusal, that sounds like it might be a good option for us to acquire that property in the in the future. But now, instead of a blank piece of land or a or a lean to piece of land, we've got a piece of land with, I think, probably a future 50 million to $100 million piece of improvement on top of it, that we might not even be able to fathom purchasing the land from out because somebody else can give them a bigger number. That's what I'm curious how we protect our value.
155 Yeah, I, I guess I would have to think about that a bit. The tenant improvements that we're making are so specialized to a fleet operation that I don't know that there's another fleet operation that would come in and say, well, I'm going to buy that instead.
156 Except that swan island has a lot of fleets, right? Diamond trucks that operate on that. In fact, I think it's almost the only thing that operates there. So it's not beyond me that mayor wilson's former company could expand into this place. It's not beyond me that daimler could expand into this place in that sense, because we have big trucks, we have small trucks, other people have big trucks, other people have small trucks. Maybe the maybe the. But in 43 years, if there's not a fleet who is challenging the city of portland's fleet at that site, I'd be surprised by that. Because of the business that happens in this location. So for that, I do have some concerns in that area. I think that that hasn't really been to me, fleshed out in enough of a way by the bureau to. For such a significant investment. And what is different than most of the bonding that we do on improvements that we do in government. The other piece, and I really appreciated the 3% maintenance reserve I would like to see, of course, our facilities in each building, having that reserve to it. And I hear those notes that we're missing. I'm also. I'm I am wondering how the bureau how you are going to tackle this with the customers or the customers in the presentation are all those who are who are paying for this building and out of their off the top of their budget. Each year, PBOT water. Parks. Other. Police. Fire bts. And when one of the common themes I hear from all other bureaus is that they feel like they're screaming into the void when it comes to internal service funds, internal service rates, how to feel like the customer in their relationship with facilities. And this is much less about fleet. I think that that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the occupant of a building feeling like they are. I am wondering, and I want to make sure that these bond rate, excuse me, these debt service payments are not contributing to increased internal service rates, when that remains a very big question mark in our organization about the validity of what customers are feeling. And I want to make sure that these are separated out. That fleet isn't going to cause any sort of other wrinkle with a part of our organization. I think that is going through a let's figure it out and make sure that our rates are all true to one another, because this is an area that I haven't been able to get a coherent answer on yet for the direction that we're going and how to improve that customer relationship. Because I, I think of the bureaus as customers of facilities, but they don't often portray that to me.
157 So. I'm not exactly sure what the question is. But so.
158 Do you think that to make it easier, do you think that the bureau is positioned to take on this project and work with all of the bureaus, all of the departments to ensure that our internal service rates are more transparent and that the customer service relationship is improved?
159 Yes. So there was a an evaluation done by a third party consultant related to internal service rates earlier this year. In fact, the first internal service fund governance meeting is actually this afternoon. And the first order of business for that committee is to help ensure that the bureaus, as customers, have a better comprehension of the actual escalation and costs that are creating internal service fund charges as compared to what has historically been communicated to the bureaus, which was just the rate of inflation. So there's a big delta there. You know, internal service funds don't fundamentally generate their own costs. They are just accounting vessels through which the cost of the city flow to provide those types of services. So to control internal service fund costs, we are really talking about controlling city costs. And that's making sure we have a strategic plan that we have efficient bureau operations that people participate in. You know, standards where possible, because those reduce long term costs. I think there's a more holistic discussion about, you know, really, what is it that drives a cost within the city, within that? I do think that we aspire to have a customer service orientation. I do think it's been really hard to communicate why we have rules about some of the things that we do. You know, like, for example, why would we buy standardized furniture, right? Why is that an issue here? And that's because it's warranted. It's commercial grade. It's a little more expensive up front, but over time the life cycle cost of that is lower. In fact, when we built out city hall, we saved over $600,000 because we have a furniture standard. So we were able to reuse furniture from PBOT and deploy it here. So I don't know that that has to be a tense conversation in terms of being able to create some mobility for people when they want things that are different than what is standard. But I do feel like holistically, it is important for the city to at least understand that when we have a lot of variation in things, we end up with a lot of costs because we end up kind of with a boutique service as opposed to a standardized array of public services that we're trying to offer everybody. So in fleet, for example, we do have standardized equipment, you know, not one of the biggest wins we've had recently is getting people to not have to have their dodge pickup. You know, we don't have dodge pickups. We have ford pickups. And that helps with parts. It helps with training. It helps with efficient maintenance. So one of the challenges I think in in charter reform is just changing the culture of the city. You know, we are a culture of a lot. We have a lot of autonomy here. We have a lot of expectations of autonomy, and autonomy is very expensive. And so trying to help people understand that as, as one city, that means sometimes we don't get all that we want. We we get, you know, what we want within an array of things. Like that's just a much more efficient and cost effective way to run the city. But I do agree that that balancing that has to happen in relation to understanding that, communicating that and then creating options and being flexible where possible. And so I think we're all on that learning path together, trying to make sure that people have a balance between cost effective, warranted standard options and, you know, a desire to personalize a little bit. And so we're we're learning that balance as well. Right now it's we're going from.
160 A culture a lot of. This to I think a lot of what I've heard actually existed far before this change in government. These are bureaus that have existed for decades, if not longer. But moving on, with respect to the project, will you plan to bring on an owner's rep for this, or is this going to be managed internally to the city of portland's employees.
161 For design and construction?
162 Yeah.
163 We're bringing on an owner's rep right now. So in fact, this week we're bringing on an owner's rep.
164 And will that be coming back to council for action or approval of that contract? Or how does that work?
165 Know that there's already an existing contract with the city. It's a contract with cumming group. It's owned by bts. So all we do is put a purchase order together and they'll be overseeing construction administration.
166 Okay. Thank you, madam president.
167 Thank you, councilor.
168 Colleagues, I believe most folks in the queue have spoken once already, so I'm going to jump to councilor. Novick.
169 I just wanted to note that first of all, I want to reiterate everything that everybody has said about the thanks due to the employees who've been working in this facility under dire circumstances for years, and thank maddie for her very clear, crisp, direct and blunt explanation of the issues having to do with the garage. On the issue of the internal service charges. I mean, one thing I wanted to note is that from the perspective of the taxpayer or ratepayer, I think it generally doesn't matter what bureau is paying for for something, they want to be sure that they're getting good value for what they're paying for. I mean, there are some variations on like property tax payers versus water ratepayers, but I think in general people don't care in terms of how the bureaus feel. Obviously, we should be able to articulate why the charging mechanisms and the distribution is fair. We also need to be aware of that. There are some bureaus for which it is kind of easier to absorb costs than others. I mean, obviously they don't like doing it. We don't either. But the water bureau can, or the sewer bureau can simply raise rates to cover costs. Pbot, which is always in dire financial straits, has no similar way to do anything. So it's our job as the council to be sure that when we are loading costs onto bureaus with no money, we take that into account and figuring out how we get them more money. I also just I mean, having these these charges go out to bureaus should have the effect of getting the bureaus more invested in keeping down the overall cost for this kind of service. And as has been noted before, I think, by councilor Clark was pointing out that the current situation, the kirby garage, or maybe it wasn't councilor who was that has had the distorting effect of bureaus thinking they need to buy more trucks because they don't think it would always have access to ones. They have that councilor Green. Anyway, that's my rambling contribution to the discussion.
170 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Green, back to you.
171 Thank you. I had originally put my hand up because I was anticipating we would go down the discussion of the ownership versus the lease, and I'm glad we had that discussion. It's really important. I just like to offer that this is timely because of the asset management work that we're planning to do, but note that in any large enterprise that has to face an intergenerational investment problem, it's pretty typical to to engage in flexible contracts that provide what's called option value. Okay. And so I'll just provide an example from the standpoint of my prior career, which is in the energy business, you know, bonneville power administration can work with one of its customers to build a new power plant, and they would own that. But it may not be the most viable or long term cost efficient solution. When you have an uncertain future. And to your point, mattie, the ideal state is is a is a campus like sort of a public works campus, if you will. But there's a lot of unknowns before we can really chart that course and put that to voters to say, is this something that you want to pay for? Because we're still getting a handle on our asset management problem. And so I think I'm sympathetic to the argument of like, well, what is our exposure going to be at the lease option? You know, at the end of the end of the lease, do we want to buy it? Do we not want to or do we have to kind of roll forward on the lease? Those are reasonable questions to ask, but I think that we might find ourselves in a situation where the cutter location is no longer the appropriate location for the future state of our public works campus, if you will. We might be able to imagine a situation where there is a zoning change that allows for a different contemplation of different parts of of land acquisition around the city, or partnership with the port or whatever. The point being is, this provides some certainty on cost right now. So that way we can get out of the business of the uncertain operations and maintenance cost that comes from the the bottlenecks that we experienced with the kirby garage and allows us to move forward right now, rather than continuing to wonder if we're going to make the right sunk cost investment for the bigger contemplation. And so I see this as part of the option value exercise. It's I didn't see it presented formally in those terms, but this is what I see when I see, you know, this fits into my experience. So when we do the asset management work, I hope that we're also talking about option value in our investment decisions as well. So I just wanted to share that with with my colleagues here.
172 If I could reply to that. I just want to say that that is a very keen understanding of the challenge that we need to solve in the asset management strategy related to land and facilities, which is facilities are one of the only types of asset bases that also fail, fail and quotes not just of condition or age or obsolescence, but because of their location. And so we already see that right now, for example, with public safety assets, is that they're in the wrong space, they're in the wrong place because we've had all these demographic changes. So exactly as we one of the most interesting and complicated parts of managing this type of asset is that you're interfacing with these demographic changes and you're interfacing with the market. And so creating optionality, being able to take advantage of opportunities and shifting for something that is fundamentally very expensive is very it's unique and it's challenging. It's different than roads etc. So that is why I think it's so complicated. And maybe that's why it's simmering down here is because it's so complex. But I appreciate that because that is exactly what we're trying to figure out is how do we future proof this a little bit so that we're in the right place now, but we're not in the wrong place 20 years from now or 40 years from now.
173 So appreciate that. And just to finish the analogy, because I realized I didn't. So instead of buying building the plant, bonneville purchases engages in long term power purchase agreements. So that's the analogy here. Thanks.
174 Thank you. Councilor.
175 Counselor Clark.
176 Thank you, madam chair. I originally like you, had put my hand up because I wanted to ask about ownership, but I think we've kind of beat that to death. However, I would just say that maybe at the first term, the first 20 years, we ask them a leader's family to just donate it. You know, there could be certain advantages for that big family to donate it to us. I'm glad you. We're talking about asset management and a maintenance reserve because I want to put a a point on that that we should talk about that when we have our asset management discussion and we're going to get a quarterly report in our committee where how it's going on asset management. And I would like to at least have that conversation how we fund it, I don't know, but I think we should be talking about that. And for your comment, councilor Green, about future proofing and what we know and don't know, at least that we're going to have a discussion about the water treatment plant here in just a moment. And they actually purchased property, I think, in 1971, something like that out, knowing that they were going to need something at some point. And then other issues come up as a result of that because of the location. So these these issues are really complex, but I appreciate the conversation about thinking forward about what we need. Really appreciate that. And also your comment about autonomy. Or maybe it was actually councilor Zimmerman's.
177 It was a good question. It was me.
178 Okay, undoubtedly. But I constantly talk about the culture change that we're going through with the bureaus and kind of the new world order, how we think about things. And that question about autonomy, I think, is really the crux of it. And you're doing a great job. I just I really appreciate what you're doing, but this has been a great discussion for future discussions as well, not just on kirby and cutter. So thank you.
179 Thank you, councilor, councilor Smith.
180 Thank you, madam president. Finance chair Zimmerman, I think I know where you were kind of going with this because I think we have to have a bigger conversation about, you know, what has our internal service fees been over the past 20 years and how have we increased our internal services over the years? And if it gets to the point that we are taxing each other or billing each other to death and not bringing in new revenue, we're going to get to the point where we're spending 50% of our actual budgets on internal services, when we need to be figuring out how to bring in new revenue, like we have the bull run coming up next. We've lost four customers water customers, rockwood Gresham that we don't have when we build this new bull run. So we need to figure out how to bring in new revenue and not charge ourselves to death with our current budget, particularly since we are losing money, we're having big gaps in our budgets. And as someone talked about earlier and Dan Ryan said, we need to be about the business of economic development. And so I hear you, I heard what you were saying, and maybe that might be something that you want to bring up in the finance committee. As we're looking, I didn't know it was good to know that we're looking at internal services, but I have a huge problem with how we're being and I won't say taxed, but how we're being charged through the internal services division because it takes up a lot of our budgets. And we have a very small budget compared to others in the city of Portland. But I thank you for what you're doing. But I think we need to we do need to follow back up on that conversation. Thank you.
181 Thank you. Councilor. Counselor. Ryan.
182 Yes. Thank you, thank you, council president. I'm I'm enjoying this conversation. It feels like we're in a work session suddenly, but. So it's hard not to drift into that type of thinking. I just. I'm. I have to hear from you, christopher. What was the vote again? From the finance committee?
183 Yes, the vote was a four eyes and one absent.
184 One absent. Okay. And we're all up here. Just look to you, chair. Were these issues discussed in the committee as well?
185 Some of them were. Some of them were. I think that the ownership discussion happened. There was a question that has gone still unanswered regarding, I think, the overall costs of maintenance at the new facility. There was not a conversation at that time about the internal service rates for me, since I asked some of those questions. That's come from the position of diving further into how we're how we're billing it back and understanding those. So I'd say it was partial, so it should still be supported. I don't think that that's the line of questioning. I think that what's important is that what's important to me is the finance chair. Is that you all understood we were about to invest, I think, quite largely in a piece of property we don't own. And for me, in my almost 20 years of government, that seemed out of the norm for me. And then with respect to the to the internal service rates, this is the only government that I've worked at where even in my own, I cannot make heads or tails for how internal service rates are charged back. So I actually don't think we're in a normal situation there. And so the more I dug into that between finance and this hearing councilor the I grew concerned that we have this one study going on and I didn't want to see it sub planted by a debt service that wasn't accurate to just that debt service. So that's where that's where my my questions came from. I still think it should be supportive. I think any of us who've seen this cutter garage would know it needs to be replaced. Excuse me, kirby garage knows it needs to be replaced, but I didn't want six months from now you to come and say chair finance. You didn't tell us we were investing in a non Portland owned piece of property. I wanted that to be very clear to everybody.
186 Okay.
187 That's fair. And I actually need to hear that based on not being on the committee and trying to follow what's happening in this dialog, I that's really what I wanted to say. I will say that I'm more accustomed to knowing that this practice of doing long term leases is pretty standard in the marketplace. So I'm not as bothered by that as much as I'm liking the elevated conversation we were having. That does start to get to, I think, a workshop work session that we could have on this topic in general, because we're starting to get much bigger picture than that, which I think is healthy. Thanks.
188 Thank you councilor. Colleagues.
189 See no other debate or discussion. Councilor Smith final words.
190 Just final words. So as you talked about that, councilor Ryan, I have a question. Did we put out an RFP for this or is this a sole source agreement.
191 An RFP for the property?
192 Yeah. To do the lease.
193 No. So leasing doesn't go through the procurement process. Leasing is an independent function. We have a three mile radius that we have to maintain. Our ideal would be ideal to maintain right now in adjacency to PBOT. And so that greatly between the acreage and square footage and the radius with PBOT it greatly delimits what properties were even considerable. And so it basically led us to swan island. And then within that we're just waiting.
194 We waited.
195 I do understand, but there's a bigger issue here. And when we're spending this kind of money and we have a lease, and what I was trying to explain during the budget cycle when I put forward a budget note that we need to be seen. All contracts, particularly these, these multimillion dollar contracts, before they come up and we get surprised by them. Like I said, I support this. I'm not saying that, but what I'm saying is we need to see contracts like the previous council saw them before you sign off on them, because I just can't imagine having this, this huge contract without having council's eyes on them. And it's going to cost. It's going to cost our council, our our city a considerable amount of money. And that part you don't have to answer. I'm just I'm just I'm just saying I am saying this for the benefit of the chair of the finance committee, because there's some things that we need to course correct.
196 Thank you, councilor.
197 And I think there are a lot of different ways that the city enters into agreements to spend money, some of which are captured in the language to come to us and some of which are not.
198 May I, may I, may I briefly would you like to. Yeah, it actually did go to council. It was just the last council. So that's why we so we signed the lease. So, so we were already under contract at this site for the lease by July 1st of last year. So otherwise.
199 I understand I saw it, I saw it, I knew they wanted to be under the previous council.
200 Okay.
201 Councilor Ryan, did you have something additional?
202 Oh,
203 No, that was a mistake.
204 Okay.
205 Seeing no other questions. Thank you all for being here and for the robust discussion. We know this is a really important decision for all of your teams, for our city employees and for the future efficient operations of our city. We will move this item to second reading at a future council meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please read agenda item eight for us.
206 Authorize the city to acquire certain permanent and temporary rights necessary for construction of the 3260 southwest upper drive north to 3139 southwest upper drive project through negotiation or exercise of the city's eminent domain authority.
207 Mr. Haire.
208 This is. Good morning once again, madam president. Councilors. For the record, christopher haire, council policy analyst, and I serve as staff to the finance committee. The ordinance before you document number 2025 405 was considered in the finance committee on October 20th, where it was referred to council with a recommendation to pass the ordinance authorizes the acquisition of certain permanent and temporary property rights necessary for the 3260 southwest upper drive north to 3139 southwest upper drive project to replace an 80 year old water main. The acquisitions will affect ten property owners, and the specific property rights will include 14 permanent easements and five temporary easements on or adjacent to the existing private drive, as shown in the exhibit a attached. The ordinance grants the water bureau the authority to use eminent domain pursuant to section 9-108 of the city charter and in accordance with eminent domain procedures provided for in Oregon revised statutes, chapter five eminent domain public acquisition of property to acquire the interests. If voluntary agreements cannot be reached with property owners, the ordinance authorizes water bureau staff and the city attorney's office to negotiate with affected property owners regarding compensation. If negotiations are unsuccessful, the city may initiate and and pursue condemnation proceedings to determine just compensation or resolve other matters appropriate for judicial review without expanding the jurisdiction of the court. Beyond those determinations, the ordinance, also in accordance with ors 35.265, authorizes the water bureau to evaluate the continuing necessity of each acquisition and, as appropriate, reduce or abandon any acquisition identified in exhibit a. Additionally, it authorizes the creation of a sub fund in an amount estimated to cover just compensation for each property interest. If necessary, funds may be deposited with the court where legal proceedings are initiated, and finally, the ordinance authorizes the water bureau, city auditor, or their designees to pay obligations, agreements, or relocation benefits related to the project from the water fund. Once approved by the appropriate authorities, all costs associated with the acquisitions authorized will be charged to the water fund for the fy 20 2526 budget. The full impact statements on this item includes a financial and budget, impact and analysis, and community impacts and community involvement. There was no verbal or written testimony on this ordinance prior to committee action. And that concludes the committee staff summary. Thank you.
209 Thank you. Christopher councilor Zimmerman. Do you have anything you'd like to add?
210 No, this is good. Thank you. Christopher, this note that councilor Green and I both sit on this committee, this piece of property that we're discussing is in our district, and it's in the old parts where I'm sure pipe was being installed before we even had words like easement in the government. So I think this is probably welcomed by the folks who live nearby and certainly needed by city infrastructure. Thank you for the time on that.
211 Thank you. Councilor keelan. Do we have any public testimony?
212 No one signed up.
213 Okay, councilor Smith, is your hand in the queue for this item, councilor Dunfee?
214 Yeah. Thank you. I don't know who to ask this to, but I similar to the pleasant valley neighborhood. Lack of response. I'm a little worried that there isn't testimony from any of the property owners. Do we know? Have we heard from the property owners who are affected by this in a positive or negative way?
215 Quisha light interim director of the water bureau I do have staff online. Keith walker and ben garcia, and we have had some contact with the owners. I don't know if keith or ben want to talk about that. Are they?
216 Go right ahead.
217 I can talk about that. Ben garcia, for the record, water bureau right of way section. We have had some extensive outreach to the property owners affected by the project. We personally have talked to almost all the property owners, and many of them are aware of the need to replace this infrastructure due to some recent leaks in the area, and they've been aware of the project for the project for quite some time. So there have been a lot of conversations with property owners.
218 This is keith walker, Portland water bureau. I would also mention that the the easement areas, both permanent and temporary for construction only areas, are primarily in the existing access roadway, which is private. So that is the goal of the easement is to gain access to that and to abandon an old easement, which is only ten feet wide and in very steep terrain. And the goal is to replace the 70 year old pipe, which is a galvanized pipe. It's prone to failure and also remove that risk of the old existing easement, which is their water supply, which due to the steepness, if we had to work on that on an emergency basis, it it could incur additional risk to our neighbors there. Yeah. So thank you.
219 Thank you. I, I am certain that this is a vital infrastructure upgrade. I'm positive that this is what is necessary. And I'm certain that the neighbors are probably going to be supportive. I will just note maybe for any city employees who are listening, we got to make sure we are positively hearing from folks in a in a way on these items. Silence is not consent. And just as with you know, I don't know if there was outreach done to the neighborhood association in the in the neighborhood or any additional work around there. But and I'm not it's not going to impact my feelings on supporting this. I just want to note that I think it is if we are taking property and nobody has said anything that that feels concerning to me. I trust that the staff are doing a good job of maintaining those relationships, but I just wanted to flag that again. So thank you.
220 Thank you, councilor, for bringing up that important point. Colleagues, any other discussion on this agenda item? Okay. Seeing none, we will move this to a second reading at our next meeting. Keelan gets okay. You look like you had something with that item before we moved on. Sorry. Thank you both for being here. Keelan could you please read agenda item nine for us?
221 Accept the bull run treatment projects 2025 annual report.
222 Thank you. And we have a committee staff summary. Go right ahead.
223 Good morning, madam president and councilors. For the record, claire adams, council policy analyst and staff to the transportation and infrastructure committee. The report before you document number 2025 383 requests acceptance of the bull run treatment projects 2025 annual report. The report provides an update on the bull run filtration projects and the improved corrosion control treatment project and related milestones to maintain compliance with federal safe drinking water regulations. The full impact statement on this item includes information on financial and budgetary impacts and analysis, economic and real estate development impacts, community impacts and community involvement, and on the city's 100% renewable goal. And excuse me, I failed to say that the committee met and recommended the passage of this or that the report be accepted on October 6th, 2025. At that committee meeting, 11 people submitted written testimony on these items prior to committee action. There is also a water bureau memo that's posted to the council agenda item, which is in response to that written testimony that's available for your reference. And one person submitted, submitted written testimony prior to full council agenda posting. The general themes of that written testimony included concerns about increased project costs due to construction delays and conditional use approval requests for improved forecasting of impacts to ratepayers in light of project costs, and fewer customers to absorb overall costs. Suggestions regarding the use of ultraviolet or other alternative treatment options, and finally, community impact, community and economic impacts of the filtration plants. Construction. Due to potential road closures and detours that impact small businesses along haul routes. And that concludes the committee. Staff summary. Thank you.
224 Thank you, councilor Clark. You were presiding over this meeting. Anything you'd like to add?
225 Thank you. Just thank you. And thank you, claire, for that summary. Colleagues, this is a report that was required by a previous council, and I think it was 2017 or 2018, required that the bureau bring a report, an annual report. So so that's the the origin of this. You know, the previous council dealt with different options on the treatment plant. I think now in hindsight, they made absolutely the right decision to have the plant that we're building now. It went from cryptosporidium to something much larger around impacts of climate change, which are very, very serious. Interesting that we just had a conversation about facilities when the water bureau had purchased this land sometime in the early 70s, I believe. And, you know, we've had conversations about how it was held up. At luba, but construction has restarted, I think maybe this July. So we did have a very robust conversation in committee. We talked about all kinds of things, including impact to minority contractors due to the shutdown. And we also talked about the hope and desire that the the largesse of this project does not end up cannibalizing the operating funds of the water bureau and how we finance this. In any event, I welcome questions. I know there's lots and lots of interest in this, as evidenced both by citizen input in our own conversation. So I really appreciate the work of the water bureau in bringing this forward.
226 Thank you, councilor. Thank you, claire keelan. Do we have anybody signed up for public testimony?
227 No one signed up.
228 Okay, then, colleagues, let's take any technical questions. Other questions or discussion all together on this report. Is there anybody who'd like to ask a question? Okay. Councilor Novick.
229 Is this our one chance to ask a question? Or could we wait until we've heard the report to ask questions?
230 Generally because this was well vetted in committee. What we have done in council, like with previous items today, is just move into questions. Assuming that folks have had the opportunity to do background research or check with their colleagues who are on the committee that heard the presentation.
231 Okay. Thank you, madam president. So I just think that it's good to take any opportunity to have a discussion about an issue that we periodically hear about from constituents, which is why did you choose to do the filtration plant as opposed to ultraviolet treatment? Isn't it incredibly expensive, given that the costs keep on rising? And I think that it's fair to say that the cost of the treatment plant plays a pretty significant role in the projected increase in the combined water bill for a single family home by about $30 over the next five years, is that right?
232 That's correct. Quisha light interim director of the water bureau? That's correct. It's going to be probably around $40 additional.
233 So I think that it's useful just to sort of sort of spell out in public whenever we can what the consequences would be if we either had originally decided that we're not going to do this, we're just going to do ultraviolet treatment, or what the consequences would be if we suddenly decided now we wanted to switch. One of the benefits of, as I understand it, of the, of the, of the treatment plan is that it makes the system more resilient to wildfires and earthquakes. So can you take a little time to sort of spell out what might happen in an earthquake or huge wildfire to the water system without the treatment plant, and what we think will happen with the treatment plant.
234 The technical pieces of that.
235 Sure.
236 I'm david peters, I'm an engineering manager with the water bureau. I'm overseeing. The the bull run. Filtration facilities. And the question about what what would happen. If we didn't.
237 Have filtration.
238 And we had an emergency event.
239 And I'll.
240 Use the case of a forest fire. If we had a forest fire in the bull run watershed, and a significant portion of the watershed was burned. What happens is during the winter when the rains come back, all of that burn material gets washed into the reservoirs. And if you don't have a treatment system like filtration, it could be years for that sediment to filter out of the water to where the water could be usable, drinkable again. In the meantime, we're going to a secondary source, which is our groundwater system, to provide water. During those times. Our groundwater system, however, is only sized for what I call a33 seasons, so it's not enough capacity to be used during the summer to provide all of our demands during our peaks during a hot summer. But it can be used in the shoulder seasons. It can be used during the winter to meet those demands, so we'd have a deficit of clean drinking water that we could provide to our customers and in. Yeah, you mentioned uv. Uv would not have solved that problem. It does not remove sediments. It specifically is focused on inactivation of cryptosporidium. And so it wouldn't solve problems like landslides or wildfires or storm events that would happen in the bull run watershed. In those cases, we would still be shutting that system down.
241 And it's the same kind of rationale applied to the effects of an earthquake. And an earthquake also cause major sediment deposits in the reservoir.
242 That it could, if it creates landslides in the watershed. What what I'd like to say is the two supplies that we have, our groundwater and our surface water are structured to be to benefit us during different emergencies. So our groundwater system is down by the columbia river in areas that are liquefiable. So it's likely that that system might be impacted more than the our bull run system. Our bull run system is up in the hills on on the basalt. And it would be less likely affected by an earthquake. But an earthquake could create a landslide up there that if we have filtration, we'd be able to continue to provide. So so we I think we that's the benefit of having the multi-source system that we have is to protect us against the the different types of risks that we have.
243 Another question is if we just in addition to what we just discussed, if we just refuse to do anything, what could what could the Oregon health authority or EPA actually do to us?
244 We have won a compliance agreement that we're under. So the option to do nothing. We long signed away that because we're on an agreement that says we will deliver filtration by the end of September of 2027, but if we do not, we one run the risk of the EPA coming in and taking over our system, right, and saying that our water is not of the quality where it can be delivered, which means that impacts our hospitals, that impacts our businesses. That is not just us. It means a shutdown of our city, essentially. And I think the other piece that we look at is if they say that that impacts our bond rating, we can no longer get the bonds at we can't get the low cost interest that we need for capital projects. I think it just would have numerous effects on us.
245 I might be making this up, but I think I heard somewhere that one thing oha could do if we're not in compliance is like order us to tell people to boil their water every day.
246 You we could tell people to boil their water every single day. And so to have us in a continuous state of boil water is rough. But no hospital can do that, right?
247 Thank you very much. I mean, I know you've gone over this before, but I just think it's important to daylight it whenever we get a chance.
248 I thank you, I appreciate it. I think it's important that the public hears and understands this over and over because it. This is an expensive endeavor.
249 Thank you.
250 Thank you, councilor. Counselor Dunphy.
251 Thank you. Yeah, I do just want to take an opportunity to to reflect the real fear and concern that I hear from constituents every day about this project. Both neighbors who I've been neighbors of the project itself, who are lobbying. They're not in the city of Portland. They're not my constituents, but they are very organized and passionate. And this is absolutely impacting their community. But also, I really want to just acknowledge the the genuine strain that this will put on families, especially in low income families who are a lot of times living paycheck to paycheck and seeing a huge increase on their water bill like this is going to it's going to hurt. It's going to require sacrifice. And I do agree that the the need to respond to climate change is very important, that a fire would absolutely be devastating. And we had similar situations, you know, this last couple of years where the fire has gotten pretty close. So that's a real, real concern. But it is a secondary concern to what the previous city councils talked about when when this plan first moved forward, I was working in nick fisher's office and climate change was not the reason we were responding. The reason we were responding was cryptosporidium and the conversations at that time, the cost of this facility was a quarter of what it is now. I just need to daylight that that is a real concern. And if we are going to not only put this cost on top of the bills of ratepayers going forward, we need to keep a really careful eye on all the additional costs that we're going to be having in nick fisher's office at the time, the mandate coming from nick was that we didn't increase the water bill by more than 5% every year. We have had to move away from that as a standard, as a combined rate increase. Understanding there's differences between water and bs, and there's a lot of good reasons for that. But I really, really implore the future one water bureau to keep an eye on on anything we can do to keep costs down over year, year over year, because this is genuinely going to impact people for generations. Hopefully the benefits will outweigh the costs, but I just needed to to to to voice those concerns that I'm hearing a lot.
252 Thank you. Councilor councilor. Ryan.
253 Yes, thank you, council president. I think there's gremlins in my computer right now. Okay. One second. There we go.
254 We're on agenda item nine.
255 Oh, I know that, but the thing just went wild and went away from the screen. I'm here. I'm present. It's almost halloween. It's beautiful outside. Hi. Thank you, deputy city administrator priya paul for being here today. And I want to acknowledge your steady leadership at the water bureau, particularly you, director quisha light. You've really navigated an extremely complex project, and you've been moving through it with a lot of recent hurdles. I think we've all been reading about them, but I'm not in your shoes, so I just want to thank you for all that you've been going through to get this project back online. And it is back online, so thank you. It's great to hear that update. I benefit from the four year term as a commissioner Prior to this to understand the complex evolution of this project, and I really appreciate the questions that were raised by two of my colleagues just prior to me speaking. And yes, it's really complex, and I highly suggest that we have all the councilors eventually do field trips up to bull run. It's something that I waited about a year to do, and it was so beneficial to finally spend time up there. I spent almost the entire day up there asking questions, just seeing the complexity. And you can't leave, but noticing that we have right under our nose, we're not far from us, just the most precious resource that every city wishes they had, which is pure water, drinkable water that is close to our city. It's I can't think of a more important asset for our city on so many levels, in terms of the decades that are moving forward. So it's been frustrating, of course, to all of us to see the cost escalate. I think that you've handled all of the questions well, but I'm going to pivot to something that I want to daylight for my colleagues, because it's been my main reason to support this from the beginning. And it goes even beyond the fact that this will be such an important, precious asset for Portland that others will really want to hook up to it. I have faith, councilor Smith, that other municipalities will want to play once this is all done, because it will be a very sacred resource, I think, as we move forward, unfortunately, and I'm really glad we're protecting it. This project also has such an opportunity to really go deep into workforce development. You can. I picture the student graduating from a high school locally, especially out in east Portland, and getting into a pre apprentice program. And in the duration of this project, they have the opportunity to get the skills to move up to apprentice, to move up to journeyperson, and that means they're steadily improving their opportunity to have a living wage for the rest of their life. And so we talk a lot about equity opportunities and workforce. And I think we have such a golden opportunity here. And so I want to keep tracking those numbers as we move along on who the workforce is, who we're hiring, and with the demographic makeup, is that the pre-apprenticeship level. So we really get to the heart of the matter of having impact on something that we talk a lot about, but seldom do we have such a crisp, clear, concrete opportunity to do that. So I just wanted to highlight that since it's a new council, and I had had a chance to say that in front of all of them. I have full faith in you, keisha, and your team at the water bureau. I did read through this because this report annually has been of interest, and I thought this one was the most improved of all of the reports that I've seen in the four years that I've studied it. So thank you.
256 Thank you.
257 Thank you, councilor, councilor Green.
258 Yeah. Thank you. I mean, these are really important things that we need to engage on. And I understand. Councilor novak, I appreciate the way you posed some of those questions, because it places into public a lot of what we're receiving in our inboxes. I think the things for me that reinforce my commitment to this project is that the cost of not doing anything is a significant burden that future generations will bear, because wildfire risk is only increasing. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the efficacy of a uv filtration approach is a function of turbidity in the water. So if you've got too much sedimentation in the water, it's not going to be as effective anyway. And so I know that the original conversations was about cryptosporidium, but I think it was good that we contemplated other coincidental benefits that would result from the investment in a infrastructure plant that will increase our regional resiliency. We can't ignore the cost control problems, but I'll just note that the cost control issues related to or the cost escalation issues related to this project are the same issues that plague every other construction project, particularly in the post pandemic period, which is rising inflation. And I'm the city's representative to the regional water providers consortium for the city of Portland. In our last meeting, we did introduce the topic of maybe reconsidering joint purchase arrangements to pool our resources and, you know, purchase ahead of demand. The the infrastructure inputs. So that way we can have a kind of buffer stock of those commodity inputs to control our costs. Now, the city of Portland would be the biggest mover in that. But in the spirit of making sure that we're approaching this regional problem with some sort of solidarity, mutual aid, that I think those benefits need to be extended to our partners in the consortium, and maybe they'll come on back. As the councilor Noted, as a risk of them leaving. But, you know, director light, you hit on a really important consideration, which is if if we get into a situation where we fail to live up to the terms of our. What is it, compliance obligation, then we're leaving our economic actors who rely upon steady water out in the lurch. And that is a serious risk to our economic development prospects, not only in a time where we're sort of trying to understand how we can accelerate our economic development, but forestall a bigger decline. So if we have big, major institutions who maybe think twice on locating in in our city because they're not sure we're willing to back our major infrastructure requirements, that is just going to accelerate the doom loop. And we can't we can't afford that. And I think, you know, when we think about rate schedules and rate trajectories over time, I mean, we don't have to be passive. You know, we can always make choices in our budget on what to subsidize and what not to subsidize. So that's always up to us. We have the low income discount program, which we must continue to emphasize is there, but also the way that you deal with fixed cost disease, which is what this is, is to grow. You grow your way out of a fixed cost problem because you spread the fixed costs over a larger and larger base. And so, you know, as you're getting the sort of roadshows from prosper portland's tif districts, what you'll note is that there's a dedication and emphasis on infrastructure spend in the new tif districts, particularly in westside. Something like 20% of the tif resources are going to be about upscaling our infrastructure capacity so we can enable more dense development, which will allow us to spread our costs over larger base. That's where we have to go, colleagues, it's really imperative for us to clear the bottlenecks and red tape to to housing production and commercial production in this city. I again, I'm going to keep hammering this, but we absolutely must upzone large swaths of this city. And we can't wait three years of process to get that done, or else we're going to be three years later on getting our fixed costs spread out over a larger base and lowering the rate trajectory on average for every ratepayer. So that's my spiel, and I'm excited to see moving forward on this. And, you know, appreciate your frank willingness to kind of share some of the tough truths out there. As we hear from community members who are pretty upset about the cost problem. Thanks.
259 Council president. May I say one thing to because you're right, we do need to be able to spread those costs across more people. And what we're seeing, and I know we talked about this in the tni committee, is what we're seeing is multifamily being built. And we need that multifamily to be built with separate meters. Without that, that's not more people to spread those costs across. And then we have to start having a different type of cost causation, cost allocation conversation and, and which we know we need to do anyway. But that is where we are right now. We are getting more people. Living in multifamily doesn't spread those costs across more people. It just doesn't do that in our system.
260 Thank you for noting that. I'm looking to the vice chair of our housing committee, as I say, that councilor Smith. Go right ahead.
261 Thank you. Thank you for the report. I want to go back to something. Who are the four wholesale customers that have decided to back out of the bull run after it's completed?
262 We've listed hill, rockwood and Gresham. Gresham.
263 Okay. Do we have a strategic plan to increase the customer base.
264 So we have we're you know, we have conversations. We're definitely having conversations with folks around. No master plan on that one yet. That is definitely something that we have as our leadership team within water bureau. Been looking at not only, you know, what are the other revenue streams, but how do we create a system and that those utilities, those utilities want those cities will want to come back? The challenge we have is, you know, they you have to build out the system to for people to connect to you. All the things that come with that. Or you take tvs, they're investing their own facility. Their their facility is costing them at this point about 1.6 or something like that. So but what we do have with them is emergency agreements, right, that we're working through. I think there's a potential that we, you know, rockwood and Gresham could come back. They're they're relying solely on groundwater going forward. And there's the potential because of filtration, that we may see some of that come back our way.
265 So did they give us any indication why they left?
266 I will I can only tell you what I have learned over this time. Some of it is cost, okay. Some of it is wanting to have more control, and some of it is just politics that has existed for years between the cities. And some of it, I've been told, is just, you know, how we are able to share ownership when it comes to the bull run. So, yeah.
267 Very complex relationships. I'd like to see if dca could come up here, because I have an idea that I want to throw out at you guys because you just said something very important. I had these in my talking points. When you say you have to build out the system, you know, the warm springs reservation, they're always out of water. They're always having to boil it, having to have restricted use of their water source. Have we tried to reach out to them to see if they could actually be one of our customers?
268 I'm going to check with the water. Sorry for the record.
269 But maybe it's too far. Just I'm just trying to think. I was reading some articles last night about them in their water and I was like, well, maybe there could be a relationship.
270 I think you councilor Smith this is for public works, and we have not reached out to the to that particular customer or potential customer. We can look into look into that. And we're always open for ideas on connecting with future potential customers. Yeah.
271 Thank you. I just want to say ditto. Ditto ditto to my district one colleague in regards to the cost it is costing. And I know every dca is hearing this across the board because we're infrastructure government. But the cost of the water is incredible. I looked at my bill last night and paid it. I was like, wow, this is this is huge. And I'm just one person that uses water. So I can imagine what it looks like for the use of a family and on top of the water and everything else is going up the food, and it's just a nightmare across the board. And we have the federal government who's not working right now, and they're closed down. So that is just adding to all the stress of of what we have to pay for and how things are going to rise rapidly. But I do want to say that our district, I say district one is probably one of the most dynamic districts in the city, and I believe is the new front door to the city of Portland. But we have some challenges. The average salary of a family in district one is $60,000 a year, compared to the average salary in the other three districts of 90 average 92,000. So I just wanted to keep that in mind. I know we have to build something, and I know we have to pay for it, and we we cannot actually pay for this on the backs of a internal service fee, because it takes a lot of money to to build one of these. And I appreciate the partnership that we have with the federal government in terms of helping us to have the resources to actually build this. And it's needed. But I just want to just say ditto to what my partner is saying as well. And thank you.
272 Thank you, counselor, if I may add one thing, yes, yes, the builds across across everywhere is going up. The one thing that I do want to mention is for those who are not able to afford the bill or have difficulties, we have a robust affordability program and financial assistance program. So just an opportunity for people to reach out to the water bureau to learn how, how we can best support them.
273 Would I qualify for that? I didn't get a cola this year, so I won't be able to pay any of those high bills. Maybe when I get a cola I'll be able to do that. But just just checking.
274 Look, we are trying to, but this is why we're doing our smart discount. We're. That pilot is so important because it is trying to help us think about how can we get just even a small discount? Because when we did the randomized trial, what we heard from people who got 10% or 20% that they weren't expecting is that that made the difference between them being able to pay that full bill that month because they got an unexpected discount, which tells us that there is a need. It may not be the 60% or the 80% that some of our other customers are getting, but and just 10% of 5% can make a difference and let people know that we get it and we understand. So we are looking at all those things. And I do hear you all. It is a thing that we spend a lot of time thinking about.
275 And just for those folks who are watching this, I was just kidding. I'm not asking for something from my local government. Thank you.
276 Thank you councilor. Thank you for the discussion, councilor Clark.
277 Thank you, madam president. Just a couple of things I want to echo what my colleague here said about the cost escalation, inflation, tariffs, but also the delay and the delay was brought about by neighbors using the land use system to object to the facility. So I just want to make sure everybody knows that, that that's it's not our fault that some of these costs went up. I also wanted to add that when I first we first started meeting as the t&e committee, we had water. And I was just flabbergasted by this program that you have to assist low income people. And in fact, we talked about it being transferable across potentially other programs or other bureaus and the innovation that you're employing on the system is just is admirable and really, really appreciate it. Just one last point. I think that Portland is one of the last cities, maybe of our size, to have unfiltered water. We're kind of behind the rest of the country in doing that. I mean, yes, councilor Ryan, we've had a we have fabulous water. We have a great system, and it tastes really great, but we are one of the last in the country to actually filter it all. So we're kind of behind in that in that way. But thank you very much for presenting the report, and I hope everybody votes positively on this.
278 Thank you, councilor. And I just want before we move on to express my gratitude to the committee for your work on this, because this is exactly the type of work that needs a deep dive, exactly the type of project that needs the oversight that council can provide. But we know that we don't have the time to provide the deep level of oversight over every important project in the city. In this body, there's just too much, and there are too many, too many of us to weigh in on every single project with this level of detail. So I appreciate our colleagues on the transportation and infrastructure committee for doing a deep dive on this, and for what I know will be continued oversight work as the project moves forward. I'm glad that it's back up and running, and I'm glad that we have such a thorough report before us today. So thank you to all of you for that report as well. Colleagues, I don't see any other hands in the queue, so I would entertain a motion to adopt the report.
279 Move to adopt second.
280 Okay, I think we're going to take councilor Clerk on the motion and councilor Novick on the second keelan. Could you please call the roll.
281 Mark I.
282 Green hi. Zimmerman I.
283 Dunphy Smith. I canal. I Ryan I. Koyama Lane no.
284 She's not returned yet.
285 Maria.
286 Hi.
287 Novick.
288 Hi,
289 Pirtle-guiney. I the report is accepted with ten yes votes.
290 Thank you. And I'll note for folks watching councilor Koyama Lane did have to jump to some other business. Councilor Kanal, who was not here at the beginning of the meeting, has rejoined us. We've got a little bit of movement online, but folks are keeping in touch with keelan so that she can keep the roll counts appropriately. Keelan, we are back to agenda item number five. Could you please read the agenda item for us?
291 Appoint and reappoint members to the development review advisory committee.
292 Thank you. And we don't. There is a committee staff summary prepared online because this was on the consent agenda. We don't have a verbal report for it. Councilor Avalos was the committee chair and she is absent today. Councilor Dunphy, is there anything you would like to share with us about these appointments coming out of the homelessness and housing committee?
293 Yeah, I actually chaired this meeting, and there were some fantastic folks who were willing to volunteer their time. I was we were impressed. They stood up to our scrutiny and our pointed questions. This is an interesting board. Just broadly, dracque is a is an interesting one that deals with some some tricky issues, and I appreciate the sort of prescriptive way that they have built out different membership categories for members. And it has seemed to be going well. So I'm excited for the folks who the housing committee approved to move forward and urge my colleagues to support this.
294 Thank you so much. And councilor Kanal you pulled this off of consent, is there anything you'd like to share with us?
295 Nothing specific to the people who are being appointed. I had a couple, you know, general questions about the the structure of it that I've asked separately and will continue to to follow up there. I just wanted to to note that I, I did leave the other item on consent agenda because the, the, the full council did discuss it already. So thank you for that opportunity.
296 Thank you. Councilor keelan. Has anybody signed up for public testimony since this was removed from the consent agenda?
297 No one signed up.
298 Okay, colleagues, we do have mr. Karen here from ppe. And if there are any questions, does anybody have any questions or comments? Councilor Smith, are you in the queue?
299 Yes, I'm in the queue. Go right ahead. Thank you so much. Madam president, I have a question. I'm not familiar with this this particular committee and responsibility will be.
300 Karen I'm with Portland permitting development and I am the liaison to the development review advisory committee. The committee is is a is a citizen volunteer or community volunteer advisory committee. And as was mentioned, it has representatives from both the community as well as our industry partners that are involved in the development, review and permitting process and really acts as an advisory committee for changes to codes, rules and processes within ppd, as well as with our partner bureaus that also are involved in the development review process. So the committee members both advise, make recommendations, and also anytime we make changes or improvements, we engage that group to get community and industry partner feedback that we then take into consideration or act on as we move those changes through our legislative processes, or just process improvement processes. The members are appointed to three year terms. There are 17 members in total, and they have the option to serve one second term, and their immediate responsibilities are are joining the committee and then representing the different perspectives or the different seats on the committee, and advising the city on changes, codes and rules related to permitting and development review.
301 So will they actually look at we did the system development charges waivers? Are they going to be looking at that to see if that program is actually working and how it's working and where it's working at?
302 They so they were involved in and they were engaged in that. The sdc waivers providing feedback and perspectives from the community. And as we monitor the performance of that, we will be reporting that back out to the development review advisory committee.
303 I know this is off topic, but have we experienced a overwhelming response to our waiver? Have we gotten more people? I see administrator jordan, he's cringing over here, but I'm just curious to know this was months ago and we were told that people were in the queue and all they need to do is get this waiver. And so I'm wondering, has it worked yet?
304 I, I could, we could, I could follow up with our deputy director and director and, and follow up with you on that, but I don't.
305 If you can talk to me offline and kind of give me a a lay of the land. Thank you.
306 You're welcome.
307 Thank you. Counselor. Counselor Green.
308 Yeah, just very briefly, I just wanted to note that I appreciated seeing the bio summaries kind of clearly laid out. Every single one of those people made it very clear that their purpose is making sure that we are overcoming the hurdles to housing production and broad development in the city, respecting other nuances of the broader array of things we should care about in our built environment, that it's going to continue to be very important to me for all the reasons I've already said. So happy to support these appointees.
309 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Ryan.
310 Yeah, two things. One is thanks. Good to see you. I thought that the track appointments were just outstanding and we had such good dialog at the meeting about their values and why they're serving, and also their iq about what it takes to do development. Councilor Smith, I really appreciate your question. Our office has really been trying to track that. We're seeing some good trends on pulling permits for housing developments that are, say, under 19 units, 19 and below, and we kind of know why that is. But other than that, I really haven't seen a lot. But that's better than what was happening for months prior to that. So I'm hoping that even though it's a really disappointing year in terms of pulling permits and doing any economic development in Portland, we are seeing some upticks in the smaller units. Yeah, at least in north, at least in district two. Thanks.
311 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Dunphy.
312 Yeah, I just wanted to very quickly point out to my colleagues, because I screwed this up in committee. Drac is not design review, by the way. This is development review. That is a separate conversation. I screwed that up in committee, I think maybe twice. So just wanted to make sure that's very obvious for everybody.
313 Thank you, councilor, for that clarification both for us and for others listening. Councilor canal.
314 Thank you, madam president. I wanted to first echo and appreciate councilor Smith's questions and ask for the same data as well. And I guess also from councilor Ryan also, but and also echo everything that that councilor Green said, my question was as to whether or not it's maybe not a yes or no. Actually, the level of detail that goes into these individual slots, are there any of the particular positions and specific backgrounds that an individual needs to be on track, which are more challenging to fill or to find applicants for?
315 That's I've, I've been the liaison to track for the last almost two years, and we filled a number of seats. So I don't know councilor Kanal if I have the the information to to respond to that question. But I, we, we generally have pretty good turnout. Sorry.
316 I'd be happy to follow up with you offline if you need time to get it.
317 Sure.
318 Put you on the spot.
319 Yeah I will do that. Thank you.
320 Thanks.
321 Thank you, madam president.
322 Thank you. Councilors, colleagues. Seeing no one else in the queue. And with my gratitude to everybody who has stepped forward to serve in these roles of all residents of the city, I think we should move to a vote. Keelan, can you please call the roll?
323 Madam president, this is a.
324 Oh, this is a report, isn't it? This is listed as a report. I apologize, I would entertain a motion to adopt the report.
325 So moved. Second. Second.
326 Okay. Councilor Dunphy and then councilor Ryan, I believe. Yeah.
327 Clerk.
328 Hi, Green.
329 Hi, Zimmerman. Hi, Dunphy. Hi.
330 Smith. I know.
331 Hi, Ryan. Hi.
332 Maria.
333 Hi, Novick. Hi, pirtle-guiney.
334 Hi.
335 The report is accepted with ten yes votes.
336 Thank you. Keelan. And we do have one additional agenda item. Keelan. Could you please call agenda item ten?
337 Authorize council to continue operating under the current city code. Chapter 3.02.
338 Thank you. Keelan and colleagues. You do all have a paper copy of this in front of you. And for folks watching online or in the room or who do better on screen, this is now posted as item ten on today's agenda as well. Keelan do we have anybody signed up for public testimony?
339 No one signed up.
340 Okay, so I would draw your attention, colleagues, to the first, whereas and the first, therefore, as the real meat of this, we passed an emergency ordinance previously that required me as council president to ensure that we had a proposal to replace or extend chapter 3.02 of city code no later than October 31st. Given the enormous work that has been done in the governance committee, including some updates via resolution to our rules and a package that I have in the works right now that I have been working with the council vice president to make sure we have time to hear before the end of this year. I had thought that perhaps we had met the requirements there. I recently learned that the language that we passed was far more prescriptive than I had recalled, and that we did need to do something. So today, I have something brought forward for us which says, therefore, be it resolved, the council will continue operating under the current language in chapter 3.02 of city code, which allows us, without making any changes today, to meet that requirement. This resolution also notes that I do have a package in the works, which we will be posting as soon as it is through legal review. Where it is sitting right now, I'm very interested in what my colleague is cooking, and we will have that posted. And before the governance committee, likely on the governance committee agenda next month, I would encourage anybody not on that committee who has an interest in the topic to come testify there and share your thoughts with us. One of the things that we hadn't discussed when we first passed the emergency ordinance earlier this year was that if something didn't make it to full council because we couldn't get agreement in committee, we wouldn't be able to fulfill this requirement. That's why we didn't just extend the date of the requirement, but are instead specifying until something else comes forward. We will continue to operate under our city code as it currently stands. We've developed norms. We have been doing this, and that gives us the flexibility to have the conversations that we need to moving forward. Councilor canal.
341 Thank you, madam president. I have a question for you about the second. Therefore the second, be it further resolved currently under city code 3.02.02 0b1a1f, it says that ordinances amending council rules generally will be assigned to the full council without committee consideration. But in the there be it further resolved, it says that we'll go to the governance committee. And I just wanted to understand the the legislative intent there can speak to that. Please.
342 The governance committee has been having a number of conversations about how council operates generally, many of which were not in ordinance form. They were in resolution form or in the form of conversations about a potential handbook, because those conversations are very related to some of the items contained in the ordinance, I felt that there was a compelling reason to make sure that there was some cohesiveness in those conversations by placing it in governance, where the rest of that work is taking place.
343 And is is just to clarify further, is the document that you're intending to bring an ordinance or a resolution?
344 That document will be an ordinance.
345 Okay.
346 Is this just a question time or is this also open debate?
347 We do not have public testimony signed up so we can take questions or debate.
348 Okay. Then I will continue and say that I, I'm a strong supporter of the the way the code is now. I'm concerned about creating a either a precedent of resolutions that defy code or and obviously this is not a direct defiance because it does say generally, but one that that is sort of in a different space than the spirit of the code. So that is my primary concern. I am grateful for you, and I think the council vice president as well, bringing forward to a document to do this in the first place. But that is my concern, is that this would go back to governance when as opposed to a work session or a full council discussion. So and I'll also mention that the requirement under the old the ordinance in January is to bring something to the council agenda. This would check that box, but it's sort of about the idea that the full, full council will get to talk about this first. And I'll also, I think I already made that point, so I will stop there. Thank you.
349 Thank you councilor. Is there any other discussion to the resolution? Councilor Zimmerman.
350 I share some concerns with councilor Canal. I think that what I've seen so far as a preview for some sort of handbook or guidance and things of that nature, is not going to meet my expectation. And so I'm not, I'm not, I guess by extending this, I want to make sure that we're not also signaling. To you all that you should expect that what comes out of, you know, a small group is going to be broadly accepted without having a much bigger discussion on this, on this body. And I think councilor Kanal points makes some sense to me on that. And I've said multiple times where I think when a council attempts to do things like. A, you know, a workbook or whatever that has been, that that kind of reeks to me of some of the transition team stuff where we really saw them get sideways with the role of the city council in this new form of government. And I think that they were speaking and they made plans, and it took us months to overcome those issues when they subjugated us to the far side of this government. And I don't want anything that resembles that. So I'm taking this in. I see I understand the administrative piece that you're seeking here, and also signaling to those of you who sit governance of this is due a big conversation. So that's all. Thank you.
351 Thank you councilor. And I'll just note that I don't think support for this administrative vote today says anything about whether somebody would support a package brought forward a handbook which is separate from that package or any other potential rule or code change in the future. Thanks, councilor Smith.
352 Yeah.
353 Thank you, madam president. I'm just trying to figure out what will this what powers will this give you that you don't have right now?
354 Absolutely none. This just fulfills an administrative requirement.
355 Okay, okay. And we had to do it today because of what? Or by the end of November, because of why.
356 We passed an ordinance where we changed some of the rules that we operate under in code in 3.02 at the beginning of the year, which set a deadline of October 31st, to essentially either reaffirm the code or bring a package of changes to the code.
357 Okay, okay, I got it.
358 Councilor Kanal something additional.
359 Yes. So my understanding and I'm finding the exact words here, is that the the the and I don't want to be too, too cute about it. But it does say that, you know, it has to be placed on the council agenda by today. I think my understanding, and that's an ordinance that that I put forward back in January, obviously, a lot of other people, in particular councilors Zimmerman, were involved in developing it as well. But my, my, my thought process at the time was that anything that would extend it would also need to be an ordinance so that there would be that, not that we would have to vote on something today, but that there would be a first discussion on it today. So I think that's a. Consideration for this conversation is whether or not acting on it today is the necessity. Having said that, I think that this is, on the whole, a very good approach to how to address the need from ordinance 192021. I think the concern I have is the exact words in the governance committee at the end of the final, be it further resolved, I think that addresses the concern that that councilor Zimmerman stated and that I alluded to about broader conversation being necessary. So my proposal at this time would be, I think, to amend out the final four words of the therefore of the be it further resolved, this is the second resolved. So removing the words in the governance committee.
360 Colleagues, is there a second to that proposed amendment?
361 Second.
362 Okay. Is there discussion to the proposed amendment which would remove the words in the governance committee from the second resolved? Okay. Seeing no discussion, councilor Ryan.
363 Councilor Kanal, are you saying that you don't want the governance committee to dive into the details of this before it comes to the full council?
364 I think the may I respond, madam president?
365 Yeah, that's I. Asked directly.
366 So it's hard to tell on zoom whether to jump in or not. The the effect of this amendment would be to no longer prescribe that it goes to the governance committee, which I think is more in line with the original intent of the ordinance, that the proposal to replace or extend the code would come to the full council. That's what ordinance 192021 does say. I think there are a lot of conversations that have already had have occurred at governance, as the council president mentioned, which will feed into the development of whatever the next proposal is, but that it should come to a broader discussion first. This amendment would not mandate that, but simply not mandate that it goes to governance first.
367 So I think you answered my question that it should just come directly to council, but not be further vetted. And governance, which hasn't really had this direct conversation yet. I sit on government, so I do understand what we've been doing, and I was happy this was on the docket so we could actually get into the details of it. So what am I missing? I'm trying to figure out what your problem you're trying to solve with your amendment.
368 If it.
369 Relates to council rules, it should go to 12 of us.
370 After governance works on it.
371 The current city council code, which I read, is that things that a man council rules generally go to the full council without committee consideration. We all voted to approve that. That was a a decision we made intentionally to ensure that the full council was weighing in on it, not having it be shaped exclusively by a subset.
372 I believe, in the governance committee. And so I won't be supporting this amendment. I think that you can do both. You can have it be vetted out in the details in a governance committee, and then we can bring it to the full council. So thanks. I won't be supporting the amendment based on this conversation. Thanks.
373 Thank you. Councilor councilor Clerk.
374 Okay, I don't understand this amendment. It doesn't preclude us from discussing it in governance committee. Right.
375 It sounds like.
376 He doesn't. Okay. Councilor Kanal you don't want us to discuss this in governance committee, but you're not precluding us from doing that.
377 Go ahead. Councilor.
378 This is, I think, being shaped in both questions as what do I want or not? This is what the code says. The code says that that ordinances, emergency ordinances and ordinances amending council rules generally will be referred to the full council without committee consideration. So this simply keeps this resolution in line with that code.
379 Did you have follow up, councilor?
380 Well, as the sponsor of this resolution, I'd be curious to know how you feel about it, madam president.
381 Let me take councilor Greene's question, and then I'm happy to weigh in. Councilor Green, go right ahead.
382 Thank you. I understand the intent of this amendment to be about precedent setting. And I think what I'm hearing from councilor Kanal is that we, we, we we all agreed upon a, an ordinance that changed our code and rules of procedure that says changes to our own rules go straight to city council, the full body, and not be passed through committees by other policies. And that was our intent when we passed this. And so I think what I'm hearing from councilor Kanal is concerned that using a resolution to however expedient this is, and it's I agree that it's a good solution to our current problem, could establish some very confusing precedent that we actually can send matters before council in terms of rules to another committee, even though we've said in our code that that's not something that we'll do. So that's that's how I that's how I'm reading this. I don't see any desire to prevent discussion on a committee. I mean, committees can always discuss anything they want by the chair's prerogative. And so I think I would encourage the governance committee to continue to have these robust conversations and maybe present a comment by the committee to the full council when we consider these rules that would continue, I think, in the same spirit. But I share that concern about establishing precedent that deviates from our code by a resolution. So I'll be supporting the amendment.
383 Thank you, councilor, councilor Smith.
384 Thank you, madam president. I have legal counsel. Please advise. Can a resolution change ordinance?
385 No.
386 Resolution cannot change.
387 So what we're doing here is not going to be able to change it unless we do it in an ordinance. Right?
388 So they are.
389 And see what it says. The point of ordinance.
390 Is.
391 Councilor. I don't believe what we're doing is attempting to change an ordinance in this resolution. We're just affirming in this resolution that we will continue operating under the current language that is in code.
392 That seems like that's changing an ordinance to me. I'm just trying to be clear, because I didn't think you could have a resolution to change the the kind of direction that ordinance has already given. I just want legal counsel to tell me if this is legal to do.
393 Madam president. Well, legal research is this if we don't pass this today, what happens? Do you go to jail or what? What happens?
394 In my experience, there are plenty of times where bodies don't actually comply with their own requirements. And unless somebody calls them on it, nothing happens. I think what happens is you all give me a firm, a firm finger wagging. I would say, having brought multiple things both to council and governance committee and having discussed many things brought by my colleagues and having passed at this body items that came out of the governance committee, but that were not ordinances amending 3.02 that we have done significant work that this speaks to, even if we haven't met the specific requirements. So I would hope that even if this doesn't pass, we are comfortable with where we sit. But I wanted to make sure we were dotting every I and crossing every t, which is.
395 And so.
396 For.
397 Me, I'm comfortable with it. But but I just want to know what the I just need to know what is legal and what is not. And so for us to be spending a lot of time on something that's not even it's not it's not in statute that we can do this. So why are we talking about it here? Until we can actually talk about it in a work session or in a bigger conversation that we need to have. This is I'm just kind of thrown off because I didn't know anything about it. Go ahead. Legal counsel.
398 Through this is alan yoder, deputy city attorney through resolution, the city council can agree to extend the current rules that it's working under.
399 Thank you.
400 Thank you. Councilor. Counselor. Hold on. Councilor Novick, have you spoken to this yet?
401 I have not.
402 Go right ahead.
403 I just have a question from councilor Kanal. Sorry, I just pulled up the proposal. Were you saying that what you would do is in the second in the. Be it further resolved, just cross out the words in the governance committee.
404 Yes.
405 Okay. Thank you.
406 I apologize, councilor Zimmermann. You spoke to the underlying, but not the amendment. I should not have skipped over you. Go right ahead.
407 Thanks for the for this. I would just like to limit debate and get to the question of this amendment, and then so we can move on back to the whole.
408 Thank you. I'm going to try to move us without taking a vote on that, because I think we just have councilor Kanal. And my answer to councilor Clarke councilor Kanal.
409 Yeah, I actually wanted to speak in in your defense here, madam president, the ordinance actually just requires that you put something on the agenda, not that the council actually passes it. I don't think it would be fair to require the council president to ensure passage or failure of an item. And this the original ordinance does not do that. So we're actually already in compliance. And that's not to say that we shouldn't try to pass something good, but I just wanted to flag that. And I do think that that the other piece of this to councilor Smith's point is that having legislative intent through a resolution to be an exception to the generally is where I draw a line here. I don't want to say that this item is an exception to the code, where it says generally things will go to the the full council. And and that's where I think the the amendment is particularly relevant here. So that's keeping it to the amendment at hand. Thanks.
410 Thank you. Councilor and councilor Clark, I said I would get back to your question to me. I wanted to make sure all of our colleagues had time to speak as well. Frankly, I'm very comfortable with the language that I brought forward. The code, as councilor Kanal pointed out, says, generally, after passing that code, because that is something that was added this year. This body then created committees, including creating a governance committee. Whose direction includes periodically reviewing council rules and procedures. So, frankly, we have passed things that, depending on your reading, may contradict some. I would also note that committees give recommendations to inform council. They don't create any law or provide any direction on their own. So something coming out of committee to full council would still be fully debated here. I'm very comfortable with the language I brought forward. I also am not. I don't feel held back from my ability to do the work that I need to. If we vote for the amendment, I would note that our vice president, who chairs governance, is not here today, unfortunately, and she has done incredible work leading a discussion about our operations, both within code and within resolution, that guide us under our rules and procedures that are outside of code. And frankly, I wanted to give her the respect of making sure this could be part of those broader conversations, which is why my intent has been to send it to the governance committee. Seeing no one else in the queue. Councilor Zimmerman, is that a new hand or is that a previous hand? Keelan could you please call the roll on the amendment brought forward by councilor Canal and seconded, I believe, by councilor Morillo, to remove the words in the governance committee from the second, be it further resolved.
411 Clerk no.
412 Green. Zimmerman.
413 No.
414 Sorry.
415 Dunphy I.
416 Smith.
417 No. Canal I.
418 Ryan.
419 No. Morillo I.
420 Novick I.
421 Pirtle-guiney.
422 No.
423 The amendment fails with five yes votes and five no votes.
424 Okay, colleagues, is there any other discussion to the underlying resolution? Seeing none keelan, can you please call the roll.
425 Clerk I.
426 Green. Hi Zimmerman. I Dunphy.
427 I Smith.
428 I know. No Ryan. I Morillo.
429 I can't approve this without the amendment.
430 No Novick. I pirtle-guiney. I the resolution is adopted with eight yes votes and two no votes.
431 Thank you colleagues. That brings us to the end of our agenda. Councilor Kanal is your hand up for a purpose of this meeting?
432 Yes.
433 I just wanted to ask for unanimous consent to allow my vote on the consent agenda to be counted, even though it came in after the vote was called.
434 Colleagues, is there unanimous consent to grant that courtesy to councilor Canal?
435 No.
436 Okay. Is there a motion for a vote? Okay. Councilor Kanal is shaking his head. No, he doesn't want to make that motion any. Any other business before we close the meeting. Okay, a reminder that we are meeting in a recess meeting tomorrow afternoon to take back up the item that was brought forward by councilor Smith on disparity studies. With that, I will close today's meeting. Thank you so much. We are adjourned.