The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-04-07
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (16,695 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 Governance Committee met on Monday, April 7, 2025, with roll call confirming attendance of the body's members. The session covered three agenda items: appointment and reappointment of members to the Portland Elections Commission for terms ending April 30, 2029; discussion and amendment of the Sustainability and Climate Commission code ordinance; and discussion of proposed committee rules and procedures. For the elections commission item, a presentation described the commission's structure and role in the Small Donor Elections Program, followed by statements from nominees and discussion of program funding, past challenges including reported irregularities in a prior election cycle, and staffing levels. A motion to refer the report to full council was voted on, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. For the sustainability commission code, multiple amendments were proposed and discussed regarding district representation requirements, youth member terms and reappointment, and meeting frequency, with votes occurring on each and outcomes recorded in the vote ledger; a final motion sent the ordinance to full council. Public testimony was received on committee rules topics, including notice timing, quorum definitions, and impact statement language, with plans for further refinement and a possible future work session. The meeting adjourned, with the next meeting scheduled for April 14 at 2:30 p.m.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
Procedural markers in this session
Literal phrase counts from the official captions — a measurement of procedure, not a judgment of anyone's conduct. Click a marker to highlight its occurrences below. Captions contain errors.
0 I was I was a field director for 280 java.net. Okay.
1 Good afternoon everyone. I call the meeting of the governance committee to order. It is Monday, April 7th, 2025. It is 2:51 p.m. Keelan. Will you please call the roll? Dunphy,
2 Here. Pirtle-guiney here. Ryan. Here. Clark.
3 Here.
4 Koyama Lane.
5 Here. Ashley, will you please read the statement of conduct?
6 Welcome to the meeting of the government's committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at. The agenda governance committee, or by calling 311. Information on engaging with this committee can be found in this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In in person, testifiers must sign up before the agenda item. Before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item. Individuals must testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony for committee deliberation will not be allowed. If you cause disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess or reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying. When testifying, state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify. Identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls. Thank you.
7 Thank you so much. So today for our meeting, we have kind of three big chunks. We have we're going to hear a report on the appointment and reappointment of members to the Portland elections committee. We will discuss the sustainability and climate commission code ordinance. And then the last part is we will conclude with a discussion on proposed committee rules and procedures and public hearing, and will also have in that some time for public testimony. Let's start with our first item. Keelan, will you please read the first item?
8 Confirm appointment and reappointment of members to the Portland elections commission for terms to end April 30th, 2029.
9 Wonderful. So we will be receiving a presentation from the Portland elections commission on new appointments and reappointment. Welcome. We're so glad you're here to present.
10 Thank you. I'm susan mattei, the director of the small donor elections committee or program. In my role as staffing the Portland elections commission. The Portland elections commission has four members whose terms are expiring in may. And the. The commission is asking council to confirm the mayor's appointees. Pardon me. I'm running the slideshow as well. This is being done via a report to council. That we are asking the governance committee to refer to the full council, ideally for its April 16th meeting. First presenting is the Portland elections chair, amy sample ward.
11 Thank you for doing the slide, susan. Good afternoon everyone. I'm amy sample ward I use they them. I'm the chair of the psc for background. The commission was created in 2019, but voters enshrined it in the charter as an independent body last year. It implements the small donor elections program and is permitted to also implement other related programs or policies if delegated to it. The commission evaluates the performance of the small donor elections program and recommends improvements to it, to the director, and to council. The charter also requires that we provide the mayor and council annual notice of the amount of funding that the small donor elections program needs to be solvent through every election cycle. The commission itself is a nine member body with four year terms starting this next month in may. Four of the members terms are expiring. The charter requires the commission to collectively reflect the diversity of Portland, and it outlines a process as follows. First, the psc recommends appointees to the mayor and council. Then the mayor appoints them and the council confirms the commission continually recruits new members through its web page. We conduct year round outreach and maintain an application that is open year round to ensure there are applicants with the needed expertise and lived experiences that contribute to the commission's ability to collectively reflect the diversity of Portland. Members and staff also conduct additional outreach in selecting applicants to recommend. The commission looks at which members still have time left on their terms, identifies needed expertise and lived experience to continue or even strengthen the diversity of the commission. The commission voted unanimously to recommend first, the reappointment of christina nieves and to newly appoint three members. One adam briggs james mayor wilson has appointed them, and now we're requesting council's confirmation. So I invite all four of you to share a brief statement.
12 I think we're starting with christine.
13 You want to go first?
14 Thank you. Good afternoon. Chair, council president and councilors. My name is christina nieves, and I'm here today to respectfully request reappointment to the Portland elections commission. I'm seeking reappointment because I deeply believe in the power of transparent and equitable elections, values that have guided my public service and my work on the commission. My journey with Portland public campaign finance program began years ago, during my time in the office of commissioner Amanda fritz, where I, with the help of many others, crafted the public campaign finance code and supported the program's launch. That experience gave me first hand insight, firsthand insight into the values behind the program, the hopes it carried, and the challenges it would need to navigate. For the past four years, I have had the honor of serving on portland's elections commission, helping to uphold the integrity of our public campaign finance system. From the growing pains of implementation to navigating the impacts of the pandemic, to making really difficult financial decisions about the program, and now adapting to portland's new form of government. I've remained committed to carefully weighing each decision with the long term health of the program in mind, especially with our new form of government. I'm invested in ensuring that portland's public campaign finance program, as well, integrated into the new structure. This transition is a major step towards more representative leadership, and our campaign finance system should rise to meet the new needs of the system, strengthening access, trust and participation across all communities. If reappointed, I will continue working to ensure that the program is resilient, especially in the face of funding and structural challenges, so it can continue to meaningfully support council candidates now and into the future. This program is more than just about matching dollars to fund campaigns. It's about giving voice and opportunity to those who build with community, who understand community needs, and who can truly represent the people they serve. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today and for your consideration in the appointment process.
15 Do you want to go next?
16 Yes. Good afternoon. Mama of the governance committee. My name is on and I'm an honor to concentrate for a roll of the Portland election commission. I bring a deep commitment to civic engagement, equally shaped by my living experience as a refugee advocacy and community leader. Since resettlement in the us. I have dedicated my career to support refugees and immigrant community, and ensuring they have access to their resources and representatives with the. Representation they deserve. I'm the founder of the color myanmar and a community driven organization focused on fostering a sense of belonging and pride among the burmese diaspora and beyond. Additionally, I serve as the Oregon association delegate for refugee congress, advocating for policy that uplifting communities. My background is data analysis and lawyer allow me to approach complex systems with both strategy, insight and community center perspective. I'm eager to contribute to the election commission by advocating for transparent, inclusive and accessible, accessible election process that empower all portlanders. Thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself and looking forward to support the vital work of this committee. Thank you.
17 Good.
18 In person or okay.
19 I'm right here. Good afternoon to the government's governance committee. My name is adam briggs. I'm a political consultant as well as a father of two who grew up in the northeast. I've been in Portland for the past 14 years, and I've worked in politics in some capacity for my entire adult life. With the decade over a decade here in Portland. This includes direct work with candidate based campaigns for Portland city council that have utilized the small donor election program, as well as statewide and national campaigns that are more issue focused, including Oregon united for marriage and renew Oregon. I have also advocated for candidates on behalf of political advocacy groups, including naral pro-choice Oregon, among many. And my background includes crafting and technology based targeting of campaign messaging, recruitment and development of campaign staff and volunteers, as well as data collection and tracking. I'm interested in serving on the Portland elections commission because I've worked on citywide campaigns since the inception of small donor elections, and I've noticed a substantial decrease in the pay to play mentality that has been a perennial barrier for entry to candidates from diverse backgrounds, and have been very impressed by the adjustments to the program that have been made since its initial rollout. To even further break down some of those barriers. I believe that my experience working with campaigns that have directly benefited from the mission. Along with various hurdles campaigns have faced before it was introduced, will add a great deal to continuing its growth as a successful program and a model for cities across the country. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
20 Thanks, adam. James, do you want to round us out?
21 Sure thing. Good afternoon, chair Koyama Lane and members of the committee. For the record, my name is james. I use he him pronouns, and I'm honored to be under consideration for service on the Portland election commission. The Portland election commission is personal for me. The very first civic campaign that I was involved in in Portland was going door to door for portland's previous public matching campaign, was also involved in the development of the small donor matching program. As you may have seen in my written materials, I have a long history of public service and particularly advocacy around issues of governance and building our local democracy. My nonprofit service includes several years as the director with the league of women voters of Portland, and off board position with the league of women voters of Oregon. Leadership on government issues as part of city club of Portland, and currently I serve as the board president for Portland forward. I also have governance experience serving as a public official for eight years with the Multnomah county tax supervising and conservation commission, and at least for a few more days. I'm currently part of the Multnomah county public financing implementation advisory commission, where we are making recommendations for a public financing system for the county. I'm interested in joining the Portland election commission because I strongly believe in the power of small donor matching to make our elections more representative and to amplify the voices of communities who have often felt shut out of city hall. I believe that the city's small donor elections program must continue to grow and evolve to reflect changing circumstances, and I hope to contribute my skills and efforts to making sure that the program lives up to its full potential now and for generations to come. Thank you again for your consideration.
22 Great. And now that's the end of the formal presentation. And the governance committee is welcome to ask any questions.
23 Thank you so much for this presentation. I also I want to first express deep gratitude for all of these members who just all these folks that just spoke and. Gratitude for their willingness to serve on this commission. It's not lost on me that all of them are willing to put forward and give up the most valuable thing ever, which is time. So we see that. Thank you so much. Is there any public testimony?
24 Yes. One person has signed up.
25 Let's take that first.
26 Oh. I'm sorry. No, no, we're not taking testimony. Sorry.
27 Colleagues, are there any questions or comments? Councilor Clark?
28 Thank you, madam chair. I just want to express my appreciation also for the three appointees and all the work you do. I'm a great supporter of the program. I think it's really important to Portland. So thank you for stepping up. And I'm really appreciate the broad range of skills that you bring. So thank you.
29 Councilor pirtle-guiney.
30 Thank you chair. My gratitude, christina, to you for your willingness to be reappointed to this commission. I know that continuity and having people who can carry over some of the past discussions and information is always really important. And also, thank you to our three new folks who are stepping up. I know you all have been involved in in civic life in Portland for a very long time in different ways, and this is a really important way for our city to make sure that we continue to have a representative body up here, and we know that the work you do directly affects what these seats look like. So thank you all for being willing to step up and do this. And thank you for taking the time to be here today. I know it's not always easy to be here during committee hours, but it is really important for us to hear from you firsthand why these are important positions.
31 Councilor Ryan.
32 Yeah. Hi, everyone. Sorry I can't be there in person today at home, I sing a bit. I just want to say, as the only person, I think, in the city who's participated in 2020, 2022 and 2024 small donor elections. I have a lot of opinions, and each round had its own sense of a challenge, and it's something we're building. It's not perfect yet and I hope all of you know that. So I'm excited that you're all willing to participate. It's great, christine, to have your perspective as somebody that's built this from the beginning of a lot of respect for that. James, I've always seen you as a really objective public servant in these roles, and I think that's the key word. Fair elections mean objectivity. It means cleanliness, it means fairness. And I just want to hear what you how we can improve upon. Last round where we had some insider trading that was pretty that wasn't a good story. And it, it it tarnished the reputation of the small donor campaign a bit. And I felt like the office was a little slow to respond in real time. So I didn't say anything that should be surprising to you. If so, I might reconsider voting enthusiastically, enthusiastically yes, for all of you. But I would like to hear from the staff lead, or from the chair, or from any of you on how we can make certain that we don't have that kind of a challenge and problem that unfortunately put a little bit of a, you know, there's less positivity about it, I think, because of what happened. And we have to be honest, and we have to continue to improve. So any thoughts that you have to that before I vote.
33 Susan, is it okay if I go and I welcome your additions as director?
34 Yes.
35 I also just can't see you. So. Okay. Hi again, amy, chair of pc. I just want to respond a little bit. Councilor Ryan, also happy to stay on for eight hours and go into the lengthy version of the answer.
36 Yeah, we have a hard stop.
37 At no. I'm kidding. I think what's important is I want to acknowledge the last piece of what you said, and that the reputation of the program is important, not because we want to maintain the program, but because we want that reputation of the program to extend to candidates who are participating in this type of leadership for the first time. And we want them to know that they're in a trusted program where donors trust them because they are in that program. Right? So that that piece, that reputation piece you mentioned is really understood and cared for by the commission. I think there's two sides that that could totally be explored at length, but I just want to acknowledge them here as, as how we are thinking about avoiding situations like that for the next cycle. One is we need the program to be adequately funded so that the creativity that comes from folks feeling like they don't have other options is minimized. So the commission as as part of our standard process, will issue the information from the commission to council on what that adequate funding levels look like. And that can continue to be a conversation on the other side, we also saw through some of the real time communications around those issues, but also from our extensive user experience research that we do post cycle, which includes the candidates themselves, their campaign staff, treasurers, donors, other community members, that there's a real opportunity when we are bringing in from an inclusive and accessible program perspective. Folks who've never been in these conversations have have never run a campaign, have never been part of a campaign, don't know what those components are. A lot more candidate education to support them before they try to become creative and help them understand from the beginning not just what are the hard and fast rules, but what are the implications of trying to maybe maneuver creatively around challenges that come up? Because, again, we want them to be successful, even if they're candidacy doesn't get a seat, we want them to have a successful campaign in that process. And we know that's really part of it. But susan, as the director, I welcome any additions to.
38 Sure. So all of that was excellent there. So amy talked about the need for more specific education, which we're already working toward. Another and also another piece is what we've heard from user experience research, was that the environment really incentivized and created really high stakes for, you know, the difference between 600 contributions and 750 contributions wasn't $10,000 of matching funds, it was whether you got another $40,000. And so and that was a result of the underfunding of the program and the match caps having to be lowered so dramatically by 60% to 40% for council races. And that created this, like desperation to make it to the next threshold, which is why this, this sort of excessively creative fundraising creeped up in 2024 when it did not in 2020 and 2022. And then and then the other piece is policy in the Portland elections commission is going to come out with a report that includes policy recommendations for how to improve the program. And one of the subjects they're looking at is, are there any policy changes that the program should make that would make this less likely to happen or just not happen again? The piece that's harder to change to some extent is the slowness of this type of situation, because the program was there's a 30 day reporting cycle, and then if people collect money from actblue, it can add another seven days to that. So the program was still collecting data about what it had heard about were some quid pro quo donation swaps. But those most the vast majority had not even been reported to them at the time that it had learned about them. And so it had to collect the data before starting the investigations to figure out which were genuine candidate to candidate contributions because they support each other and which were part of a quid pro quo swap. So the reporting period did slow that timeline down. But I'm definitely open to ways we can immediately react while we're waiting for all of the information to get to us.
39 Well, we have an update from you, susan and your team, the commission, before the next election cycle on what you learned from the mistakes of 2024, so that we can so the council and the mayor can be supportive of how to implement the necessary improvements.
40 Oh, yes. After each election cycle, the Portland elections commission issues a report and that will come out this summer.
41 And I think a lot of us were interviewed. Correct. Is it from the interviews we received? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I'll wait until we dive into that report to ask more questions. I just didn't want this. I loved all the positivity, don't get me wrong. But for us to not acknowledge that there are some things to improve upon from the last election cycle. And again, that was my third one and it was probably the most challenging for reasons you mentioned. I'm clean as a whistle since I was the only last councilor That asked where the funding was for this for the small donor program, as you might recall, suzanne, we had to take it off the consent agenda to make that a topic. And so I wasn't surprised that we ran into staffing challenges. But I did find some of the ethics being really slow to acknowledge, and I felt as though it was just a bad look for those taxpayers that were already suspect about their tax taxes going towards political candidates. And so we have just such a big responsibility to make sure that they feel like this is always in complete ethics and integrity. And I think we did take a couple steps backward in the last election when it comes to that. So I hope to hear in the report how you're going to evaluate that, to improve it going forward.
42 Thank you so much for the comments and great questions and thoughtful responses and answers. And just want to name that. I really appreciate this openness to learning from each election cycle and knowing that we can adjust and keep learning, and want to acknowledge what a big lift you and your office is doing. Susan, how many people are in your office?
43 We have two full time staff and then we scale up with four more during the election cycle.
44 Yeah, so it seems like a small number for a big, big lift there. So thank you so much. And without seeing any councilors in the queue. May I have a motion.
45 So moved.
46 Second.
47 So the motion has been moved by councilor Dunphy and seconded by councilor Clark. This is to move the report document number 2025138 to be sent to the full council for acceptance. Is there any discussion? Will the clerk please call the roll?
48 Dunphy.
49 Thank you all for being willing to step up.
50 I vote yea pirtle-guiney.
51 I.
52 Ryan. I mark.
53 I.
54 Koyama Lane I.
55 The motion carries and the report document number 2025138 will move to full council with the recommendation. It is accepted. Keelan. Can you please call the next item?
56 Item two add sustainability and climate commission code.
57 Thank you. So thank you so much for being with us. I want to I want to acknowledge that I am trying to move a little bit fast, because we got bumped and 20 minutes late, and then I know that two of our colleagues have a hard stop at 430. Also, our hard working clerk and council operations team have been doing this all day, so I'm trying to move us along as quickly as possible. All right, so this is a continuation of our governance governance committee's consideration of the sustainability and climate commission code. This conversation we had last week on March 31st. At that time, the committee directed our staff who are with with us today to return with revised code language based on our conversation. And the staff has done so, I think, very elegantly before we begin deliberations on the revised code, I'd like to propose an amendment to the ordinance finding themselves the ordinance findings themselves. So accordingly, I move that the following finding be be added to the ordinance. Nine. On March 31st, 2025, the chief engagement officer presented to the council to the council governance committee about the advisory bodies alignment and modernization project. The sustainability and climate commission will be subject to this project. Is there a second?
58 Second.
59 Keelan, please call the roll on the motion.
60 Dunphy I.
Procedural episode · turns 61–69
Parliamentary activity detected in this stretch (see the markers above). An editor-reviewed analysis has not been published for this episode yet.
61 Pirtle-guiney I'm sorry. Can you read the motion one more time? That was fast.
62 Yes. So just to clarify, and I can get a nod if this is correct, based on the different feed, the feedback that we all gave.
63 It, just just the actual language of the.
64 Okay, it's clear what's happening. Okay. Do I need to say the number nine there? Okay. So nine on March 31st, 2025, the chief engagement officer presented to the council governance committee about the advisory bodies alignment and modernization project. The sustainability and climate commission will be subject to this project. So we are adding that to the ordinance.
65 Thank you. I'm sorry to take us out of order there. I.
66 Ryan.
67 I.
68 Boec I. Koyama Lane I the motion to add a finding to the ordinance passes so we can now begin deliberations on the revised impact statement and code. Councilor pirtle-guiney do we begin discussion? Okay. Go ahead.
69 Thank you. I appreciate the work to capture all of our discussion. I pulled this up and pulled up all of my notes and almost everything is in there. Thank you. Councilors. There are a couple of things that stood out to me in this amendment, which I predominantly support, that I just wanted to put out there in case they are concerns other folks had as well. In section a of the members and terms, it now says the membership must include a balance of representation from all four of the city's council districts. I don't know what a balance of representation means, and I'm wondering if we want to have a minimum number, if there are 20 members, if we want to say three from each district, and then that that allows for some flexibility for other seats, or if you don't have a full commission, you're still in good standing with the requirements. I'm open to how we approach that, but I just that stood out to me as a piece that maybe could be a little bit cleaner. I also was wondering if we wanted the youth terms to be two years instead of one year, to give our young folks time to learn what was happening and really be able to add a lot of value. They're wholly open to feedback from staff. If you think that that doesn't work with the age requirements, it seemed to me like it was a broad enough age requirement that that could be okay. And the third thing I wanted to flag is that we did change the language around ten meetings a year in the procedures and meetings section, but I still think that we're locked into this idea that there must be at least a certain number of meetings which can create problems if there are conflicts in scheduling. And I had thought that from our conversation, folks didn't want that to be included at all. I don't know if we want to take that out or not, so I just wanted to throw those things out there for discussion.
70 Councilor pirtle-guiney, I think it says may meet on procedures and meeting.
71 Yes, may meet at may meet ten times or more a year.
72 So it's not.
73 That mean.
74 Well they can meet up two.
75 Or more or more. They can. They may meet this many times. They may meet. It feels somewhat meaningless to me.
76 I see what you're saying. Do you have alternative language? Potentially.
77 I think we could take it off. I think we could also say they must meet at least with a lower number of times. Okay. I'm open. This just seems to me to be to not say anything and be a lot of words that will trip people up in the future around what is or isn't required and lead to conflict.
78 Point well taken. I you is six. You know that's every other month or they must meet every other month or.
79 To return to the original. The commission must meet at least, but change 10 to 6 times per year and may meet more often.
80 Could do that.
81 I would be supportive of that.
82 Okay, should we offer an amendment or. Do you want to hear from vivian?
83 I'd like to hear from vivian. Yeah.
84 Committee chair.
85 Members of the committee. Vivian satterfield, your chief sustainability officer. Thank you so much for the consideration. Would you like me to go through some of my feedback off of council member pirtle-guiney? Excellent. Thank you to your concern and question around section a, the members and the term. Balance for the youth, the minimum number and the balance for the young people. Youth engagement is something that both myself and elaine livingstone care deeply about and actually have a bit of experience around, and we consulted with the Multnomah youth commissioner, which is the youth commission liaisons, the official youth policy body for the city of Portland and Multnomah county. And we agreed that based off of the virtue of the age of youth being young people, that one year was the best way to consider school changes. Me aging out and having to move, while also having the ability to be reappointed to a longer term. Just. It was based off of our experience working with young people that life can happen a lot, and didn't want young people to feel burdened with not knowing what two years can look like, and knowing that they could also be reappointed. Alongside that, we are creating a cohort type model for young people. That's a bit of the work that we're doing that's supplemental to this with Portland state university and pcc as well, to help support the young people in a more cohort model, to have that longevity. Of course, the decision is ultimately up to you. All that is my recommendation, however, is to appoint the young people to a one year term.
86 Was there any consideration around specifically calling out that they can be appointed to consecutive terms? Because right now there is consideration of that for the four year terms, but there is no consideration of reappointment and whether or not that would be allowed for the youth terms.
87 For the record.
88 The language currently says youth designated appointments serve one year terms.
89 Yeah. Thank you, governance committee. For the record elaine livingstone I she they pronouns and I'm the sustainability and climate commission coordinator. Thank you for this question councilor Pirtle-guiney. We did consider whether or not to have a requirement about whether or not they can serve consecutive terms. Part of the reason why we don't have a two year limit is that if they are, let's say there's a 16 year old who's appointed, who wants to serve multiple years, and they keep getting reappointed, that they are not subject to just two years. Now, if a youth member serves one year and then thus are appointed to a full four year term, then they will be subject to their full terms of the maximum consecutive terms.
90 Right now, the language is silent on reappointment. I'm wondering if we want to add something, not necessarily limiting it to two consecutive terms like we do for the adults, but specifically saying youth may be reappointed or saying youth may be reappointed up to four times or whatever the number is. But the silence, I think will lead to questions.
91 Madam chair, are you looking for amendments or what's the process here? I'm not sure.
92 Would you like to make an amendment, councilor?
93 I'm happy to. Should we take this one first since we've gotten a response on it. So I would move that. We amend the. Question. Chair, do you prefer to adopt this and then do further amendments or to take amendments to the amendment because we didn't propose it? It's not the friendly amendment changes that we sometimes see at the dais.
94 Clerk what do you recommend?
95 So have have the proposed amendments as they were posted on the item been moved and seconded yet? I don't I don't think.
96 I believe you opened us up for discussion first. Yeah. Clerk would you like us to move and second, and then amend the amendment and then adopt the amendment?
97 I think that's probably the cleanest way to do it.
98 Okay.
99 I would move that. We adopt the proposed amendment to exhibit a presented by. Our sustainability officer, second, second.
100 Okay. So councilor Pirtle-guiney moves to amend the amendment and.
101 Moved to adopt the amendment. So we're now in discussion, and I could move to amend the amendment if that's okay with you.
102 Yes. Is there any discussion? Yes.
103 So I move that we amend the amendment to in the members and terms section, subsection c, in the last sentence, youth designated appointments serve one year terms. Comma and may be reappointed. Would we like to say up to four times or just and maybe reappointed and maybe reappointed, period. I would need a second.
104 Second.
105 So the motion has been moved. It's a motion by councilor Pirtle-guiney and seconded by councilor Clark.
106 On the motion.
107 Is there any discussion? Discussion on the motion? Okay. Will you please call the roll?
108 I.
109 Pirtle-guiney I Ryan.
110 This is on. If a youth can serve consecutive terms more than one year, right?
111 Yes.
112 That's what we're doing, right?
113 Correct. Sorry I.
114 Got lost in the translation of the audio I.
115 Clark,
116 I.
117 Koyama Lane I. The motion carries.
118 Madam chair, may I offer an amendment to the membership? Given what councilor Pirtle-guiney had recommended, how about we try instead of the membership must include a balance of representation from all four of the city council districts. We say the membership must include three individuals or three people from each of the four of the city council districts. And that actually.
119 I would love if. Oh yeah, I have spoken to our guests here today a little bit about this. Would it be okay with you, councilor, if they were to speak a little bit about the process and their hope and need for some nimbleness in this too?
120 Madam chair? Thank you. Councilor Clark, to your question and councilor Pirtle-guiney to this as well. I can appreciate wanting to assign a certain number of seats per district representation. I will offer that some of the thinking that staff had behind this is to think about the importance of representing communities that have traditionally been not excluded from these types of processes, and wanting to put a bit of a thumb on the scale of equity here. I know that in our recruitment process, for example, I decided to make the choice to interview every single candidate from district one who applied regardless of how city staff scored them. With the interest of geographic equity and racial and economic equity here as well. That's just a consideration. Of course, you may choose to still want to have those, but we do see that disproportionately, even in our recruitment processes, that we still do not have an equal number of applicants coming from certain districts. And given the importance of climate action and wanting to be inclusive in this process, we offer that a balance may may allow us to apply equitable practices rather than a stock number.
121 Counselors, I think I am happy to move in different directions with this. My concern is that a balance doesn't. A balance could be used to say that it does need to be even, that the balance needs to be even. I don't think it provides direction to folks in the future. We have somebody here bringing this forward who will be implementing it now, but others will be in the future. And the reason I pulled the number three out is because it does leave room for flex. Beyond that. That would get us to 12 members with eight other seats available. If folks don't want to move in this direction, that's okay. But my concern was having clarity as we move forward.
122 Well, as the councilor from district one and proudly representing the least represented part of our city, I do worry about the current phrasing, right? It basically says nothing and could be used in future years to interpret different things. I also worry about having a minimum, simply because sometimes there will not be that many qualified members, and I would not want to necessarily seat somebody who is grossly unqualified if they just happen to be the only people from district one I. Want to propose, perhaps a language change that would get us there. I would recommend potentially removing the words a balance of and just replacing it with the word meaningful. So that it would read. The membership must include meaningful representation from all four of the city council's districts. Gives us some flexibility. It's still a little squishy, and I'm open to that, but I worry about having a specific number.
123 Since there is no second to my proposed amendment. Let me just comment on yours. I think it's just as squishy as saying on balance. So what if we just said the membership must include representatives from all four districts? I mean, that's bottom line really. That I would prefer that there be a number just to make sure that, you know, there's 1 or 2 or maybe two.
124 Councilor I was remiss, I would have seconded your previous amendment and did not realize that we hadn't, because we moved on to the response, I apologize.
125 No, no, no problem, no problem. So. Okay, well, can I amend my motion then? Let me let me try this.
126 Or can you, can we check in where we're at. What's on the table. So we're.
127 Yeah. So I believe councilor Clark's motion to amend membership, you've just kind of revised it to include this statement about representatives from all districts, which councilor Ryan has seconded. So we currently have two motions on the table.
128 Well, can I try to amend my motion again?
129 One motion.
130 Is that okay with you? I hope we're following robert's rules. I'm not absolutely certain, but.
131 Call us back if we if needed.
132 If I can amend my motion again to say given councilor Pirtle-guiney comment that the membership must include two represent two individuals that represent all four of the city council's districts. Or maybe I'm not saying that very well.
133 The membership must include at least two.
134 Individuals.
135 Individuals from.
136 Each of the four.
137 Council districts.
138 Second.
139 Okay, I would I just I understand what you're saying, councilor Dunphy. I just would prefer that we are a little more specific. And even two is I mean, pretty low number. And that only makes for eight. So there's plenty of room.
140 So the motion by councilor Clark is to change the language around membership to include that, the membership must include at least two members representing each of the four of the city council's districts. And that has been seconded by councilor Pirtle-guiney. Is there any discussion?
141 Yeah. You said for me to speak. I can't.
142 Councilor Ryan.
143 Yeah. My question is I appreciate what vivian had to say. So in real time, say you suddenly have somebody that just left one of the districts. So there's only one from a certain district. Does that mean the commission can't meet until you fill the next? You recruit another person. So I just don't want us to put in some micro details that make it so. It's difficult for the commission to operate. I was comfortable with your first one. That's why I seconded it so quickly.
144 Would you like to respond?
145 Can I hear from vivian.
146 On that? Yeah, yeah. Vivian.
147 Please respond.
148 Councilor Ryan, I appreciate that for this first inaugural meeting of sustainability and climate commission, we have chosen alternates, five alternates. Actually, there's been a little bit of movement due already. Already due to some folks realizing that they may have overcommitted. We have an embarrassment of riches in this city of folks who want to volunteer their time, but still. And so that did impact the way that we thought about selecting our alternates and the district. So we will. That is, again, just the practice that we came out of the gate with. So we can continue that as well in the future. That's not codified here in code. That's just in practice.
149 So that was a no. This won't impact the functionality because of alternates. And you'll always assume that the alternates will have enough balance to cover all the districts.
150 That is correct. Council.
151 That is correct. Councilor Ryan, I'm just trying to think through in real time.
152 Well, me too.
153 I guess if it works for you, I tend to in policy. Stay away from micro-adjustments like that. I thought balance was enough, but I'll live with the majority if that's what they want. And if it works for the staff to function with.
154 Yes, that does work for us.
155 Is there any further discussion? Are we ready for the clerk to call the roll?
156 I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I Clark. I Koyama Lane. I sorry.
157 So the motion carries and that language will be added about membership details.
158 Madam chair, did we already amend the number of meetings? I know we haven't done that one yet. Shall we?
159 Did we do we want to hear from our staff about that?
160 Madam chair, members of the committee. Thank you, councilor Clark, for flagging this as an issue. The reason why we had this as a bit light is because we didn't want to presume that they would have to meet at least once a month, or that that would be the cadence of meeting those policies and procedures will be codified in the bylaws when the when the committee comes together. We don't have a sense yet of how often they want to meet. We're still also gauging the consideration that this is the body that will be creating our next climate action plan. There could be a need to meet more often or less often, but for the purpose of this commission and the task they have in front of them. Ten meetings within a calendar year, we felt that gave us the latitude that we needed for the commission to conduct its work. It could be more often, it likely at certain times, but especially for this inaugural commission, it will at other times, if they're in an evaluative stance, could be less.
161 Respond.
162 Councilor pirtle-guiney was more concerned about this than I am.
163 But councilor.
164 Pirtle-guiney could I recommend that we just strike that sentence? If the bylaws are going to address this, rather than put something in code that then creates confusion later? What if we just strike the sentence so that instead this section reads the commission must establish bylaws to conduct its duties subject to chief sustainability officer approval and city attorney review, the commission must elect its leadership. We could even replace it with a line that says, actually, I would just do that. The commission must elect its leadership. Executive meetings may be held between commission leadership, the chief sustainability officer and other city staff. Just strike the line about number of meeting times.
165 Madam president, I can live with that.
166 It was that a motion?
167 Would you like to make a motion?
168 I would move that. We strike the line. The commission may meet ten times or more a year from the amendment.
169 I'll second that.
170 Councilor pirtle-guiney moves to strike that line, and councilor Clark seconds that. Is there any discussion? Can the clerk please call the roll?
171 Yeah.
172 Councilor ryan's hands up. Sorry, councilor Ryan.
173 Go ahead. Sorry about that. Yeah.
174 I got lost, right. I thought we kind of nailed it when we said that. Must meet a minimum time of six per year. Was that ever in there? And now it's. Then we went to, like, a hyper the other way. And now we're. Now we're just getting rid of any thing any number of times. Is that what just happened over the last 24 hours when I've been looking at this?
175 That is.
176 What that's where we're at right now. I did also hear that vice chair Ryan, that there was talk about a minimum of six. And now it's been there's a motion on the table to just strike that line.
177 Councilor if you prefer a minimum of six, I'm happy to withdraw my motion. I was trying to be responsive to our chief sustainability officer, but I am I'm happy to have our code say that they must meet a minimum of six times, and may meet more often as necessary, if you prefer that amendment, so long as my seconder is willing to withdraw.
178 I appreciate that. I think it gives more clarity and I don't think it's difficult to implement. I think a commission of this magnitude, not meeting six times a year, means that it's off kilter to the point where there needs to be action. So I think that having that minimum requirement seems pretty basic, and then you can build the bylaws around that. And I speak from experience when I've been an executive director of nonprofits and bylaws, that was always like a safe number. It never felt squishy.
179 I would withdraw my motion if that is okay with my seconder, and submit a new motion, which is to amend this language to say the commission must meet at least six times per year and may meet more often.
180 I'll second.
181 All right. So now councilor Pirtle-guiney moves to do I have to repeat that language? Can I just say moves to change the language? And councilor Ryan seconds that.
182 Yeah. Just to make sure everybody's clear on what they're voting or just the motion is to amend meeting times to require a minimum of six times per year and may meet more often. Is that correct? Okay.
183 Correct.
184 Is there any discussion? Councilor Ryan, is your hand still up? Or.
185 Sorry? No, sorry.
186 Okay. Will the clerk please call the roll?
187 I pirtle-guiney I. Ryan,
188 I mark, I.
189 Koyama Lane I the motion carries. Any further discussion.
190 Chair I would move that we adopt the amendment to exhibit a of the. Agenda item number two.
191 Do you need a second?
192 I thought we already did that.
193 We've amended the amendment, but I don't believe we've adopted the amendment into the original exhibit yet.
194 Okay, then I'll second.
195 All right.
196 So moved by councilor Pirtle-guiney, seconded by councilor Clark. Do we have any discussion? Amendment. Are we ready to call the roll?
197 Dunphy I.
198 Pirtle-guiney I.
199 Ryan. I Clark.
200 I just want to say thank you for the for working with us and this iterative process. I know it's a little spontaneous, but I think we're getting to a good result, so I vote I.
201 Koyama Lane I. All right. So now we have passed two amendments.
202 Yeah. And you've adopted the amended exhibit a which incorporates all of the amendments that you've worked out here. And I think, vivian, do you have what you need to reflect that?
203 Thank you, councilor Clark.
204 Thanks.
205 And so the last step is so this is a non ordinance with amendments. And when we're ready then I'll get a motion to pass. The non-emergency ordinance with the amendments. Is that correct okay. 2nd may I have a motion.
206 Oh I'm sorry.
207 Am I ready for that or. Actually we have public testimony on this one. All right.
208 Come on up. I'm assuming it's you.
209 This has been a great exercise for you. And it will flow right into your next agenda item. As for the substance here, I was going to testify before all of this amendments to say this was a great set of amendments that were responsive to discussion, responsive to comments last time. And I think as a body, it will be important for you all as a governance committee, but just council committees in general to find the time to be able to do that and to dive in and get it right. So that's what I was going to say. But instead I'll say, I actually like the amendments that you did. I especially appreciate the additional finding and would point out that my hope is that the alignment of advisory bodies will include meetings. Minimums will include the representation requirements will include appointing alternates, and will include standardized bylaws so that not every entity has to write bylaws around all of those things again. So I think it's important for that alignment process to move along to clarify all of this. So you don't have to do this for every single body that comes before you. So but much appreciation for turning around these amendments very quickly to that have captured the previous discussion and for your attention to them. Great work.
210 Thank you so much, terry. And I know amanda garcia snell, our engagement officer, is watching all of these either live or later on, hopefully on double speed, and is working really hard on making sure that there's some standardization. So we'll make sure to flag that when she checks in with us. All right, colleagues, are there any more questions or comments at this point before we move on to the motion language? Councilor Dunphy.
211 Thank you. Yeah. You know, during my comments last week or two weeks ago now, I had expressed an interest in having a dedicated seat to labor on this board, similar to how there's a dedicated seat on the public utility board and a couple of others. I understand from our chief sustainability officer that there's a whole process, a whole lot of other things that are into consideration. I have every confidence that they will be have a, have a place, and I'm not going to be making an amendment at this time to make that happen, but definitely want to make sure that we know that our labor partners are represented. Also recognizing, though, that the requirements for this board are that they person cannot be an elected official and cannot be a city employee. So all that to be said, I want to make sure that our labor partners are having a voice in the work that the city does around sustainability. So thank you.
212 Thank you for acknowledging that and for that comment. Anything else from my colleagues? All right. Now, may I have a motion chair?
213 I would move that. We send the ordinance and exhibit to council with a recommendation for adoption.
214 Second.
215 The motion has been moved by councilor Pirtle-guiney and seconded by councilor Clark. Is there any discussion? Do you need any specific language from either of them that states that it's as amended or we're good. Okay. Will the clerk please call the roll?
216 I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan.
217 Yeah, I think we got the perfect infrastructure to then go ahead. And next we'll hear about who will be appointed to this commission on this point that we've been discussing. I vote a clerk.
218 I Koyama Lane I.
219 The motion carries and the ordinance document number 2025118, as amended, will move to full council with a due pass recommendation. Thank you so much for your patience and hard work. I'm so excited about this group getting up and running.
220 Thank you, madam chair. Thank you members of the committee and the willingness to work live through this and to try to find the elasticity between staff and council on this. Thank you for your work.
221 Thank you.
222 So much. Will you please read the third item?
223 Discussion on proposed committee rules and procedures.
224 Wonderful. Well, just like terry said, this is a great segue into the next conversation that we're having, which is about our committee rules and making sure that we have something that we can be handing to committee members and to chairs to make sure that there is clear guidance. And also the same thing happening in each committee for those who are following along, there's an attachment posted on the agenda website for today's committee meeting. And for this agenda item specifically, and just want to highlight that this is a presentation. So we're not voting on anything today. It's really a discussion to talk about the different committee rules and procedures, with the hope of us getting some really great notes so we can in hopefully in two weeks, come to you with something that is written more formal and is a resolution ready for us to talk about. I want to acknowledge vice chair Ryan, who has been a great partner in making sure that we get these rules up and running and have these conversations. He's with us virtually. And so I was going to have him talk a little bit, but I'm just going to say thank you to him and say that they are out here and they're up online. And hopefully you all have a copy that you're ready to discuss. There's no official motion needed for this, this item, but I'd like to open up discussion, and I'll start with just talking about some of the key outline, the outlines of key topics. So if you. Does everyone have a copy in front of them? I can also pass one out if you'd like. We have information about the actual meetings, about quorum, about when our meetings and are noticed and what that looks like about agenda item filing, about public access and public testimony recording deliberations, the different actions we take pieces about motions requiring a second, also about the documents that accompany items and the clerk disposition, how to suspend committee rules. And there's also a piece about conflict of interest. Okay. To get us started, I am going to point out that the clerk's office was very helpful in identifying a couple housekeeping areas where this could be a little bit cleaner. So since I don't see any of my colleagues hands raised, I can point those out first. Number three, there is the comment should we align the agenda posting requirement with the what we already have for the entire Portland city council, which says at least 24 hours, instead of specifying a day of the week. Clerk. Is that what that means? The pcc, Portland city council 3.02.020. A.
225 Yeah, actually it's to align with what is in Portland city code.
226 Within okay. Within code.
227 Yeah.
228 Can I get a sense of from my colleagues if that seems to make sense, that the language aligns and says at least 24 hours. Okay. So that sounds great. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. Clerk. And then also on number six, another thing that was brought to our attention that is more of a housekeeping item. Should this be revised to include minutes, recording or written minutes, all committee meeting shall be recorded or written minutes taken. So the suggestion is suggestion is that we add or written, minutes taken. And there.
229 I would I would love to see that inclusion, especially because I have heard from some of our colleagues talking about potentially having future committee hearings, not in this building. And we understand as we're having conversations right now about setting up a district one office, the technology is a significant barrier. So it may not always be reasonable or possible. I think that including an option for written minutes would be sufficient.
230 Can I get a sense from my colleagues if those two seem appropriate? Councilor pirtle-guiney.
231 What is our I should know this, but I'm not looking at it right now. What is our requirement for minutes for council meetings? Is it required that those be recorded.
232 In our city code? It just speaks to providing minutes, preparing minutes of the meeting.
233 It doesn't specify.
234 No. And then we align that requirement with what is in Oregon revised statute, which requires a recording or written minutes.
235 Rather than specify it. My preference would be to use the same language that we use for full council, therefore allowing ourselves whatever flexibility we need for both council and committee meetings, which I hope will create more continuity for portlanders who are watching to be able to expect things in the same formats.
236 Can you confirm keelan what that language is?
237 Yeah.
238 Yeah, I'll look it up.
239 Madam president. Well, keelan is looking. May I make a comment? Regarding number three public notice? I just want to put a pin in this that I'd like to come back at some point. Maybe not right now, but come back at some point and have a more thorough discussion of public notice. I mean, it's come to my attention from various people that our turnaround time is very, very short, particularly for citizens and not necessarily for professional lobbyists who are watching us all the time, but that we might may want to come back to this topic at a future meeting and really get into is this enough of a turnaround time, particularly for the committees that meet on Monday? You know, we do. We have a deadline of Thursday. It gets posted on Friday. That doesn't give people very much time to react. So I just want to put a pin in that for a future discussion.
240 Thank you for flagging that.
241 I have a related comment on the time is right. Okay.
242 My I had my hand up, but it it's not adding on to the smart discussion that councilor Clark mentioned. It's kind of in this one that we're discussing, which is about transparency of the minutes of our meetings. And when someone reaches out to our office who is english is their second language, and they would like the minutes in spanish keelan I, I should know this. Does the clerk's office provide that translation? Or have I know in the past our office has done the best we can to help with that, but do we have that formalized with the city offering in vietnamese or in spanish or russian, depending on what someone might need?
243 Yeah. Thank you, councilor Ryan, for that question. We provide that service when requested.
244 Okay.
245 Yeah.
246 I wanted to make sure we stated that in this conversation then. Thanks. Happy to hear that and hope we all continue to know that. And that's probably what my staffer did in the past was request. They would request it from us and then we would get it from you. So thank you for doing work that I didn't even realize until right now.
247 Thank you.
248 Council.
249 You're welcome.
250 Thank you, councilor Ryan keelan, as you're getting that official language for number six, can I get a sense from my colleagues how you're feeling about aligning number six with what we are doing in the full council? Rather than aligning it with aws? That was the suggestion, right?
251 Councilor pirtle-guiney.
252 My comment was actually not to what was written here, but to what you had read off of your page, which was the conversation about putting in specific language. If what we have in code for council points to aws, I'm fine with this pointing to aws. Also, I just would like this to be as close to what we have for full council as possible.
253 To most of my colleagues agree that we want number six to align with what we have for full council, whether that's. Yeah, okay. That's great. Okay. So thank you for discussing those two items brought to us from the clerk's office. That's very helpful. Before we dig into a deeper discussion, can we hear from our public testimony? Is that okay, colleagues? Okay.
254 Terry harris.
255 Okay. Terry harris again, for the record. And again, I, I am here with an ancient curse where I have to sit here in the governance committee until you get your rules written. I have a lot of comments and I have written comments that I've submitted where they're all written down. So I'll try and hit some highlights, small and large. Small. The robert's rules is up there in the introductory paragraph. That's got to be down in your rules, because those are the underpinnings of everything else you're writing here. That's small. You know, the median section is doing a lot of different things. I would break that up into some different rules or some subsections. It subsections might be, you know, duties of the presiding officer. What happens in the absence of a presiding officer, how to schedule items for a meeting, that sort of thing. With respect to the scheduling of items for a meeting. The rule seems to say if it's not scheduled by the chair, then a majority of committee members can require the item to be scheduled within four subsequent meetings. I'm assuming those are committee meetings, which leaves some to some policy questions that I would have. Like what happens if there is no hearing and no four council members can force that hearing? What happens to that legislation? Does it simply die on a vine or is there an automatic do not pass deadline, or is it in limbo until a committee majority decides to act? Or the full council petitions it out? It's. You probably need to clarify that. And just more broadly, does it mean specifically that some items will never get a hearing, may never get a hearing? And that's sort of a policy thing that you need to come to terms with. I would prefer strongly that all items get a hearing in some committee at some point, and that should be sort of an automatic thing. And different jurisdictions do different things, and you have different powers of the chair and you know, but that's a that's a policy concern that you need to deal with. Another concern I've got is on the quorum. It talks about other councils, other councilors attending. And there's it relates a little bit to the deliberation thing at the end. It should be explicit that councilors can attend. They can present their sponsored legislation, that they can testify before a committee. And none of that is deliberations by the committee, which would be contrary to law. I could go on for a minute or two more with your indulgence, or I can sit down.
256 If no one else is signed up, then we are okay to hear a few more minutes.
257 Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. The posting and notice you talked about again, it is just from personal experience, hard to turn something around from Friday to Monday into written documents or public testimony. More notice is necessary. Different jurisdictions, even with tight turnarounds, are like two business days or three business days. And again, that doesn't quite work with how you're operating now, but it should be a consideration. To. There are some other written stuff that I will say. One thing that comes up here is must all committee members vote on a committee item? Can a committee member abstain on his or her own, or is that a requirement? That should be clear in these committee rules. And then I think in the suspension of rules section, you might want to have some limitations as to what rules can and can't be suspended. I don't know what they are, but it's worth considering because I don't think you want to be able to suspend some of these things. And some of these things are rules that happen before a meeting and really can't be suspended anyway. Like the notice provision, you can't suspend that in advance. And then I give you some examples here of other things that other jurisdictions are doing and you might want to consider. I looked at baltimore because I know it pretty well, and I looked at seattle because it's nearby. And finally, I would strongly recommend a committee of the whole and that that be included in this committee rule. That committee of the whole will help you in those big committee hearings that spill over to the big, full council hearings that go on for multiple days as we're seeing when you establish a committee of the whole rule to handle that, you don't have to worry about the quorum issues. And 12 council members going off on a different agenda item, and you don't have to worry about it. So that's what that rule does for you. And I think it's worth having in either this rule or a separate rule that's related. But that's that's the quick list.
258 Thank you so much for being with us today, terry. So just want to say again, the item in front of us is a discussion. Public testimony is not required in discussions. But it's important to me as the chair and I know to many of my colleagues that we bring in the public voice into discussion of our committee rules, and that's why we put that on there. So please note that when this item is finalized and returns to us as a resolution, there'll be another opportunity for public testimony. And thank you for all of the things that you brought up. I will look closely at your written testimony. I, I will say this on the record. I would I know it's hard for me at times to find that. I'm hoping that we can make it a little bit clearer. So when I, we click on on the agenda item, it's easier to find from there. And then just to explain to the public and to my colleagues another time the what's happening right now for to explain the process is on this discussion. We have staff members from my office and staff members from vice chair ryan's office, and we have folks from council operations who are taking notes as we have this conversation and will include all of the written testimony also to influence the more formal resolution that will come before us. All right. So I think we're ready to dive into this, and I will call on a counselor to bring up something that they'd like to discuss. And then I'm hoping that maybe we can be a little flexible. And rather than raising hands, we can kind of jump in and discuss it before we move on to the next hand, because I have a feeling when I call them the next hand, they have another thing they would that council would like to bring up. That sounds okay. All right, let's try it. Councilor pirtle-guiney.
259 Just to clarify, I had three items I wanted to bring up. Would you like me to pick one to start with and then get back in the queue for the others?
260 Yeah, let's start with one.
261 Okay. Oh, I have to pick. I am thinking about councilor Clark's comments about notice and tying that to the item below. Agenda item filing and posting. And one of the things that I've been thinking about is how do we not only have enough notice on an agenda, but have something filed with enough time that the council president can refer it? It can be on that referral list, and the public can know it's coming to start to prepare their comments even before it gets on an agenda. So while I do hope that we back up notice to give people enough time, I'm comfortable with the 24 hour language that parallels what we do at council or Friday, or our current practice, which is Thursday. I do prefer an amount of time than a date, just because then if in the future we want to have flexibility around posting for items that are up different days of the week, we can. And if we want to continue to post all on one day, we have that option too. I'm comfortable with that. Staying shorter. If we perhaps think about number four a little bit more. And right now it says that items have to be filed and posted per the requirements of the council clerk. But I wonder if we actually want to be a little bit more explicit about what our filing and posting requirements could include, and if we in fact want to say filed and posted per the requirements of the council clerk, at least x number of days before the committee meeting for which the agenda is being filed, something that has an added requirement there about notice for the public in general, not something that we currently have written down anywhere, but something that functionally is happening. If agendas are being set on Tuesday and posted on Thursday and items have to be on that referral list first, we could actually create a little bit of space there. That's my first item for discussion.
262 Okay? And feel free to jump in colleagues. We can see if we can do this.
263 I want to thank. Pirtle-guiney for bringing that up, because I have strong feelings about that. There are other local governments in our region that do this differently and actually post change and make sure that people understand the changes. So I think we can build in some flexibility and hopefully we come back with something really quickly. And I know we're in a time constraint. I just want to thank terry, really anxious to go through all of his recommendations. I haven't had a chance to do that, but I had the same thoughts that he had on number one. And I think councilor Koyama Lane and I talked about this earlier is breaking up number one into, you know, a, b, c, d or whatever, you know, sub headings along the lines of what terry was recommending. Don't have to go into that. Now. I will just say that. And number three, the three quarters kind of bugged me. I don't know if that's really what we want to say or if it's 4 or 5 or 80%, or how that aligns with what we do in other rules. I don't three quarters is a little awkward, given that we have a five member committees.
264 Councilor by our code. Our committees can be four or 5 or 6 members, and I don't know if three quarters was chosen for this reason, but three quarters is the equivalent of 9/12, which is what the requirement is for full council. So I blew right past that, not thinking anything of it. I don't know if that was the rationale, but I wanted to point that out.
265 That seems to make sense. That makes sense. It's just that we won't be able to divide. We won't be able to have three quarters depending on the size of the committee. So maybe we can clarify that. Thank you.
266 Where is that exactly?
267 Number three.
268 I wonder if we add at least three quarters because it would be. Sure not 75%. It would be 80%.
269 Yeah, exactly.
270 Okay. So the so councilor Pirtle-guiney brought up changing Friday to at least 24 hours to be in line with what we have for full council. How are there any folks that want to jump in about their their feelings about that specifically? I feel okay with it. And then, I mean, I would love to have at least a week's notice. I don't know if that's something we write in the rules or if that's something we try to work on ourselves.
271 And I think we need some more time to really flesh that out. Maybe look at, you know, Washington county, for example, is a good example of giving a week and how they manage that week, how changes happen along the way, which provides some flexibility. But I really I think we do need to address this.
272 I'm wondering what you're thinking. Councilor pirtle-guiney about writing it here specifically. Do we do that now? Do we wait?
273 I.
274 I, I would want to hear from our colleagues, if they prefer that the added time be in the notice or the filing. I just wanted to point out that we do have that additional tool of the referral list that gives the public notice. So we have two levers we can work with to give notice to the public. We have the agenda notice lever and then we have the referral lever. And I think which one we rely on more heavily speaks to where we want to have more tightness and where more limitations, and where we want to have more flexibility. But I would suggest that we think about the two together. And if you want to try to do that now, I'm happy to help us do that. But I folks may need some time to think about that and send you suggested language.
275 I would appreciate more time, and I'm sort of feeling the need for a diagram.
276 I'm happy to make a diagram if that's helpful. Chair and counselor.
277 Do you.
278 Feel like your topic that you brought up has been discussed? Is there?
279 I mean, I would look to my colleagues to see if they have anything to add.
280 Is there anyone councilor Ryan, do you want to add anything specific to what councilor Pirtle-guiney brought up, or can I can we move to the next piece?
281 Good to move on. Thanks.
282 Okay. Councilor Clark.
283 Did you have an.
284 Okay, okay, okay.
285 Councilor Ryan.
286 Yeah. Thank you. Chair I, I think because it's for almost for 20 and we have a 430 stop there. I do I just wanted to give some thinking to what we experienced since we've been taking this on. I think that first of all, we're building something and we're doing the best we can to provide standards for all committees and for the council. And there's been, as there usually is, when you're building something and you're building the scaffolding and infrastructure as you're doing the work, it makes sense that there's been some clumsy moments of late, but I do think there's some urgency around getting the resolution moved along when it comes to especially the topic of testimony and transparency and committees before items go to council. We're a city that's operated without committees from from the legislators in the past. This is new that we have committees within the body of 12. What's not new is testimony and thorough community vetting before it comes to council. That would happen often in commissions and advisory boards. It was always interesting to me, whether it was the planning commission, the forestry commission, when there was something that was a split decision, if you will. I knew that I should tune in prior to the council meeting. So I had more context on why smart people that are volunteers weren't Portland polite and all just agreed with each other, but they actually had the audacity to not agree on the final vote with one another. And any time there was a split vote, I tended to lean in more. I think that it's necessary, and I always would notice. They would have plenty of testimony at those commissions and those advisory boards before it came to the full council. And so I don't want us to ever experience what we did in the housing committee recently, where something did not receive the time of day. For many who had opinions on the issue, experts is a word that's used a lot. Let's just say there's experts on all sides. And so I think one side didn't experience that. And so we then moved it along to council. And now we're having consecutive meetings hearing that testimony. Thank you council president for ensuring that democracy is played out there and that we are taking in that testimony. So I just think that there is some urgency on providing some standards for our council, for our council members who are chairing committees, co-chairing committees, so that we're not confused for much longer on what it looks like to do testimony in committees on a set issue before it comes to council. So I want to thank chair. Elaine for the couple long meetings we had on this issue. We spent a lot of time vetting that aspect of this. It's not in front of me right now. I'm kind of not. I don't have all my tools in front of me here at home, but I can tell you that I really am satisfied with the dialog that brought us to, I think, a much better standardized place that ensures good government and more objective, full transparency. Before we bring items to the council meeting. So I just want to make that statement before the clock ran out. And I thought we were going to vote today, which is probably good that we're not, because it does feel rushed suddenly. And I do hope this item is the first item at the next meeting so that we can really focus on this. We can vote on it. We can provide that infrastructure, that standardization that's really needed by all of our committees. So they're uniform in that regard. And I think it will help if we have that discussion as the first agenda item at the next meeting, and then we can bring this forward to the full council. Thanks. And I know I just will say this, we will add more rules. Some people think, oh, you just need a governance committee and rules committee. For the first six months, I can't think of anything more ridiculous because when you run a big enterprise, you always have. Where I existed in leadership is you've always relied on your governance committee to be a standing committee throughout the duration of an organization, because things do come up. And so I don't think we need to see everything that we're doing now as rushing to providing something, and then we're done. Like, that's not going to happen. We're going to get things started. We're going to try to bring some uniformity and clarity, and then we will continue to fall down and get back up and improve things. That's what a good organization does. So thanks.
287 Thank you so much, vice chair Ryan. I agree we will keep working on this and we're in it together. And I also agree that we need to have more time and have this at the front of our agenda next time. All right. Councilor pirtle-guiney, what else do you have for us to discuss?
288 I just want to flag two other things quickly. And I know councilor Ryan is leaving soon and I have to as well. I apologize. In number one meeting, it says that upon the affirmative vote of a majority of members of the committee, the chair shall schedule the item for a committee meeting within the subsequent four committee meetings from item submission. That makes me somewhat nervous, because you could be six weeks in already and the chair hasn't scheduled something. And then the fourth meeting would be the next meeting. I would propose that as we move forward massaging this language, we change that to the chair shall schedule the item for a committee meeting within the subsequent four meetings period, meaning from the vote of the majority of members of the committee, as opposed to from the item submission. And the other thing that I just want to flag is that on number ten documents to accompany item and clerk disposition, it says impact statements accompanying an item shall be completed by city staff. Our current practice is that impact statements are written by the person submitting an item, and impact analyzes are written by city staff. If we want to have city staff write all of the impact statements, I am perfectly fine with that and I think we could figure out what is written by our. Neutral professional council staff and council operations, and what is written by the city staff on the executive side. The administrative side who currently do the analyzes. But I just wanted to flag that we do have these two things. We have impact statements and impact analyzes. And what's written here is a change from current practice. So not in opposition to that. Would love to have those statements be as neutral as possible. But I wanted to make sure that we're all on the same page on what we're saying here.
289 Could you clarify that second part, what you were when you were talking about ten? So we have impact statements and impact analyzes. We do.
290 Spend a lot of time talking about. Again last.
291 Week the difference in who at this point writes each.
292 So I'm going to look to our clerk actually to correct me if I'm saying this wrong, but there are a number of fields that one fills out when one submits an item in council, which includes some impact statements, including the impact on community and a budget impact, and a few other things. You also write an overview of the item that you're submitting, and then there are impact analyzes which are required to be done by the cbo and by, I think it says prosper Portland. But in effect, that comes through the community and economic development service area. So I just wasn't sure if this language was referring to the impact analysis, in which case I want to make sure we're clear in our language since there are separate statements, or if this was referring to the initial impact statements, and if so, if we are saying that that should be done through the neutral staff in our council operations office, or if we're asking that all of those statements be done by the executive branch, administrative staff side staff. Just looking for clarity on what we mean.
293 I would assume. I thought I think that this is talking about the analysis. It's not this was not an intention to change.
294 Okay.
295 And keelan did I capture that accurately?
296 Yes, yes that's correct. May I add something? Is that okay, chair okay. Thank you. The way this reads, impact statements accompanying an item shall be completed by city staff. I want to make sure that that doesn't preclude council office staff from contributing to those impact statement fields. If they are drafting and preparing items, and maybe that's where the council operations group comes in to support with that. But just want to make sure we're clear on how we're defining city staff and that.
297 Keelan you're asking that we make sure that it's city staff includes council operations or.
298 Well, if that's the intent.
299 Yeah.
300 And council or legislative staff as well.
301 Okay.
302 I also just.
303 So we can.
304 I'm confused a bit about it. I lost track of the ball between impact statements and the other thing, but does.
305 You're not alone.
306 Yeah. But you know prosper Portland staff are required to do the economic but they're not city staff. I think it's bizarre that we are outsourcing it to another government in the first place. And I would like to rein that back in, in, you know, in another conversation. But does does this conflict with that right now?
307 Great question counselor. Do you want to comment?
308 I would ask. Chair and vice chair that depending on what your intent is here, if the intent is to have all of those statements written outside of council offices, let's make sure we're saying that if the intent is that the council offices or the if it's something that's coming through a committee in a more collaborative process, perhaps it's the council operations staff write the statements and then the analyzes are written up by the cbo and prosper through the community and economic development service area like we currently do, that we say that a little bit more explicitly here. Perhaps that impact statements accompanying an item shall be completed by council staff broadly, and impact analysis shall be completed by the applicable administrative or administration staff or executive side staff. I'm I'm very open to the wording, but I think whichever the intent is, let's be a little more clear with it.
309 Okay.
310 Can I just say I am with councilor Dunphy? I'm a little lost here. I'm thinking another diagram. But because I got lost somewhere between impact and analysis and how we're going to tease this out, this really needs to be worked on and maybe even divided up into subsections. Possibly. But it really needs some more work. And I think we're running out of time to workshop that right now.
311 Councilor Ryan, did you want to jump in?
312 Yeah, I think it's great.
313 We're having dialog about the ambiguity about our economic statements, period. I don't think that the council offices will ever be equipped to provide staffing to do that. I don't think that's what I heard. I do think councilor Dunphy brought up a good point, that it it seems as though, and this is new to me, that prosper Portland is on point for some of that. And I think that mayor wilson and his chief administrator, michael jordan, need to give us what they think on this point, because that's who oversees the entire enterprise that has the staffing to do economic analysis. And it's something that's really needed. And we can take a fresh look at what how that process is done. But I expect the mayor's office and his administrative side provide some new fodder on what that looks like, because we are in a new day and we need an upgrade. But let's don't let's not. I know if I heard that, but let's not dump this on staff and political offices to provide that information. There should be objective data from the enterprise.
314 Councilor. I just want to clarify that I was certainly not suggesting that we move in that direction. I'm happy to have as much of this be from from a consistent perspective, regardless of which office things are coming from as possible.
315 I didn't assume that you were just making it clear that it should be from the admin side. So I actually do have a direct a clear opinion that it should come from the executive side and that we get to then debate if we like it or not. But we have a budget office and a lot of staff to provide us such information.
316 Thank you, councilor Ryan. It seems like we need to look at that a little bit more. Maybe some subsections, and we will. Let's dig into that more together, councilor Ryan. I wanted to make sure we talked about okay, so did we finish talking about both parts that she brought up? Okay.
317 I had one about something that she brought up, but she left. So it's okay, but I am I am concerned about the amount of time it takes for an ordinance to go from introduction to a potential for a vote. I think right now we're pushing eight weeks from the date it is introduced, just by procedure, just getting the different code checks and all the statements and scheduling for multiple committee hearings and then multiple hearings. So I think that, you know, we should be a deliberative body. It should be a hard process to pass laws. But if we are also starting to build an extra squishiness and with regard to timeliness of filing something and moving it to a committee, I worry that we are going to be moving into 12 weeks long, you know, 16 weeks before we can actually even have good debates. And I think we need to keep a north star in mind for how what is considered timely consideration.
318 Yeah, I feel comfortable changing. So councilor Pirtle-guiney wanted to change it from the vote of the of three quarters of the at least three quarters of the committee to from items submission. I think I could be on board with that if we change it from for subsequent committee meetings to maybe two because I'm thinking if there are three of us on a committee that are saying this is really important, we need this to be dealt with soon. I mean, hopefully that's being used in more of an emergency sense, but that means that, all right, we need to hear it soon. So in the next two meetings, that's about at least two up to four weeks away.
319 I just make a comment that this is a part of a much larger conversation about our committee structure, how many committees we have, how much we can meet, how much public testimony we want to take, and where we want to take it. These are there are larger issues that you know, that we also need to address, but that impact the timing, how quickly we can actually how nimble we are, how quickly we can get something done. It's very it's very frustrating in some ways. But you know, like we've said, we're just we're making this up as we go along. And maybe at the end of the year we can have some larger conversations about our committee structure and so forth.
320 Yeah.
321 Or at the halfway point.
322 Yeah.
323 Councilor Ryan, jump on in.
324 Yeah. I just want.
325 To add that I understand how important nimbleness is, especially when the city council was executive scene as well. And we could we could actually stop the movement of operations if we didn't take action in a legislative body. This community facing, I think that there's a different tonality, there's a different rhythm to the work. And so I, I think that two months on policy that could have a big impact on how we interface with portlanders and our partners deserves all the daylighting it can get and all the dialog it can it can, especially in the committee before it comes to the full body. So and I hope that as we're on this conversation, we also look at the clutter. So sometimes when you add a new policy it might make another one more questionable. So I think there also needs to be a checks and balance in the process on the impact to other policies that are already on the books and that should be included in our impact. So yeah, that's a great way of saying this is a topic that deserves more dialog, but I don't I don't think that this is a rush job in terms of two months when we're when we're implementing a policy that could have major changes to how the city operates, because this is what ordinances they're in, code and code. When you change code, it's a pretty big deal.
326 Well, I will say that that is part of our our process right now already that the that two weeks for a council code, council clerk code review is supposed to be part of that. But I'll just make another point that I think that we're on the right track in this committee right now getting towards obviously still some more work to do, but I would recommend that perhaps before we vote on a final package to go to the full council, that we maybe consider holding a work session on this, you know, this is the place for us to work out the pedantic details, but I know that our colleagues are going to want to have a dialog about it before something is presented in a formal way. So I think that while I was I, my exact previous statement was about going faster. I do think that that that might be a nice step for us to consider in the near future.
327 I love that idea. So outside of a full council meeting, a work session where we're not voting, but we're we're working together on this, on the specifics, and we can do that, all 12 of us.
328 Isn't that the go slow to go fast, right?
329 I think that's really smart.
Procedural episode · turns 330–338
Parliamentary activity detected in this stretch (see the markers above). An editor-reviewed analysis has not been published for this episode yet.
330 I mean, what I've experienced more so than my first four and a half years on a council was I've never experienced so many walk on amendments, like we had maybe 1 or 2 a year, and I've already experienced more of that in the first few months of this council. So if I have a concern right now, it's that we have too many walk on amendments where the public doesn't have the time of day to notice something's coming. We used remember the Tuesday memo, councilor Dunphy? So we're missing those kind of systems that ensure that there's one more opportunity for transparency before the meeting the next day. And I always thought those were kind of a bit of a whiplash, if you will. Like whoa, Tuesday memo. I guess we're going to vote on this tomorrow at one on Wednesday. But lately it's been like, oh, what are we voting on? It's 10:00 at night. And someone just said something. I'm trying to figure out what it is and now I'm voting on it. So I think we're all trying to get away from that practice.
331 Yeah. I wanted to come back to you, councilor Clark, and make sure I understand. In number one under meeting when you were talking.
332 A second. Bye, everyone.
333 Thanks for accommodating me.
334 Thank you, vice chair. Ryan. Have a great meeting. That when you were talking about separating out, did you mean it would say something like the presiding chair? Will a call meetings next? Next line be set? Agendas. See, maintain order and decorum d is that what you're talking about?
335 Well, that's one possibility. I also thought that there might be other subheadings under meeting, not just the chair's responsibilities. At one point I thought we should put agenda items under meeting, but this is getting a little too complicated. What I really want to see what terry has to offer under number one, he was starting to outline some subheadings, but I'm just open. I think it's just clunky as it is. And we talked earlier about starting if the chair does not that we could change the approach there. Yeah, I just think we need to break this up a little bit more. And I also thought that that whole sentence about if the chair blah blah blah should go under number four. But anyway.
336 I like that and I was going to point that out. We spoke about that earlier. The idea of taking from if the chair does not schedule an item for a meeting, that that whole part about how you can get something on the committee agenda meeting to move that under number four. I also was wondering, because that is, if a chair doesn't put something on about putting something before that, that's more affirmative saying like the chair shall matching Clark, is it true that or is it accurate that currently we have it where the council president has 90 days to put something on the agenda, on the full council agenda? If we wanted to mirror that in committees? Is there a 90 days.
337 I can look that up? Okay.
338 I guess what? I'm hoping to put something affirmative there first, before we say if the chair doesn't do it, this is what we do. Well, here's here's the goal. So how do councilors feel about something? Okay. And then the other piece I wanted to add, which I wanted to confirm with an attorney, I don't know if we have someone available, but under seven on seven in deliberations specifying I believe that this is true. So I want to confirm a quorum of the committee shall not meet privately to deliberate. And then I wanted to add on matters of the committee, unless expressly permitted, and need to confirm that if us three meet separately to talk about things that are not related to governance, is that quorum? Right? Yeah. So it was hoping we can specify and add on matters of the committee. How do folks feel about that? Okay, so it sounds like for to review for our staff and for council ops who are helping us with working through this. I've heard the ask for a diagram to kind of see what this would look like to think about when noticing the difference between referral, when something is referred to committee, and, and then also when it's the agenda piece of when it's when we're discussing it. I've heard that we're going to change the language to at least 24 hours instead of saying Friday, but then we're going to have more of a conversation about what do we need to put in here or agree to give the public more access? I hear maybe some formatting to make this a little less clunky, and specifying what quorum means specifically to committees. And then it sounds like for number ten, I need some clarification to perhaps another diagram of impact statements versus impact analysis and what we might what we need to flesh out here. I also hear that committees need some direction. So we want to get something as soon as possible, but also want to make sure that it's thought through. And so there might be some things we table in order to get this to full council. But before we bring it to a full council meeting, the idea of having a work session together to make sure that it's really ready makes a lot of sense. Did I miss anything that I should highlight.
339 That was really thorough? I appreciate that. I want to also commend whoever put in number five. The city attorney will determine what constitutes a substantive amendment. Really appreciate that it wasn't there before, or it was a little squishy.
340 Yeah. We didn't want to leave that one up in the air. Great. Thanks for sticking through all of this. Everyone. Everyone who's watching and engaging. Thank you to those who came and gave public testimony. Our next meeting will be on April 14th at 2:30 p.m. The budget. The finance committee is not allowed to go over next time. And thank you to everyone who participated. And with that, I will close the meeting of the governance committee. It is adjourned.